This passage is one that pastors love to preach on. It’s one that most people like to hear, too. It has a message about love, and that’s a message that we always need to hear. The message that God loves us, the message that God is love, the message that love is the most important thing of all, is one that never gets old for us.
And that’s all fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s more to this passage than we might realize. It’s not just a nice, sweet message about the importance of love. It’s okay to feel good when we hear this passage, but there’s more to this passage than just good feelings. This passage is about a way of life.
If you were here for the communion service Thursday, you may remember that we talked about how we are all part of the body of Christ, and how we each have a different part within that body. Sometimes that part may seem like a really big part and sometimes it may seem like a smaller part, but all of the parts are important. But at the end of the passage we read last week, after going through all the different types of gifts and telling us that we each have a part to play, Paul says this: strive for the greatest gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
What we read today is that greater gift. What we read today is that more excellent way. That greater gift, that more excellent way, is love.
Listen again to how Paul describes love. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way. Love is not irritable or resentful. Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
You know, when you think about it, that’s a pretty tough standard. None of those things is easy. Patience is not always easy to have. It’s not always easy to show kindness. It’s hard to not envy others sometimes. Slipping into boastfulness or arrogance, or even rudeness, can be easy to do. It’s hard for us not to want our own way, especially when we’re convinced that we’re right. When things are not going well for us, it’s easy to start feeling irritable or resentful. Paul’s description of love may sound really nice, but it’s a lot tougher when we actually try to put it into practice.
And what makes this especially hard is that love is no good if we only show it on a part-time basis. We are not called just to show love when it’s easy or convenient. Love that just makes itself known once in a while is not really love. For love to be effective, we have to show love all the time. And there are times in our lives when we just don’t feel like doing that. Love may be the more excellent way, but it’s not the way that always comes naturally to us.
See, this passage was not written just to make us feel good. It was written to challenge us. Love is not something that we just sit around and have. As Paul says, love is something we’re called to strive for. Love is something we have to work at. We need to consciously try to show love to others. It’s not like we can get up one day and make a decision to love others and that’s the end of it. We have to constantly renew that decision every day, sometimes every hour of the day. We need to make love a way of life if we’re going to show the kind of love that God calls us to show.
But even that’s not really enough. Because no matter how hard we try to love, we’ll never be able to do it the way we’re supposed to as long as we try to do it by ourselves. The only way to truly feel love and show love, the only way to make love a way of life, is to rely on God.
The reason love is the more excellent way is that love is the more God-like way. The reason love never ends is because God never ends, and God is love. For God, love is a way of life—love is a natural part of God, as natural as breathing is to us. The reason this standard is so hard is that when we’re called to love, we’re called to be like God, and who here can be like God? Not me. Not any of us. It’s not possible for any of us to truly be like God, and it’s not possible for any of us to have love be a way of life for us the way it is for God.
Even so, we need to do the most we can. Because when we love others, we reflect God. We don’t become God, we don’t even become like God, really, but we give people a glimpse of what God is like. It may be a poor reflection, a dim mirror, as Paul says, but it’s still a reflection. When we love others, we bring God to them.
And you know what else? We also bring God to ourselves. Because we cannot show God’s love to others if we don’t feel it ourselves. We cannot bring God to others if we don’t have God’s spirit within us. And it’s only by having God’s spirit in us that we can, in any way, make love a way of life.
So, while this passage was written to challenge us, it was also written as a gift to us. It was not written just to call us to show love to others. It was also written to help us make love a way of life, so that we can feel God’s love in our lives.
Love is the more excellent way because God is love. May we all feel God's love in our lives. And may we go out and show God's love to others so that, through us, they may feel God's love in their lives. As much as we can, let's make love a way of life for us, just as it is for God.
No comments:
Post a Comment