What Really Matters To God

Sermon by James W. Crawford

February 1, 1998

First Corinthians 13:1-13

A religious magazine known as the Christian Century crosses my desk each week. It carries various articles on the state of the church, editorial opinion on the news of the world, book reviews, Bible studies. In the news section it tells us what is going on in the life of the churches, and among other things, it lets us in on the latest church fights. A week or two ago under a headline reading, "Episcopalians Tangle over Name," it described a fight  among Episcopalians where a so-called traditionalist Bishop in Wisconsin gained legal control over the denomination's name and flag in what the report called, "an effort to hold the denomination hostage to traditionalist demands, which are in opposition to the views of generally liberal church leaders." "An embarrassment," wrote the presiding Bishop.

Another article pointed to the Reformed Church in America kicking out a local congregation in Michigan for, as it said, "allowing a predominately gay church group to use its facilities." And yet another story told of a  struggle among Baptists in South Carolina, some urging the removal of the Confederate flag from the dome of the capitol in Columbia, and others stating their opposition to the removal in a paper entitled, "The Moral Defense of the Confederate Flag: A Special Message to South Carolina Christians."

Well, most of us know Southern Baptists, the Dutch Reformed, and Episcopalians are hardly alone in quarreling; they are just in the headlinesthis week. Every denomination -- Catholic, Protestant, our own United Church of Christ -- faces a host of issues and battles. They surface over sex and social action, who should teach in our seminaries or preside at our altars, what texts should we use in our hymns, what prayer book should we use in public worship. And like all battles we discover in the most benign of agencies and situations, those gentle institutions devoted to human welfare and uplift -- libraries, school committees, university faculties, high school music departments, hospitals and churches -- the fights can be mean and dirty.

Well, those of us who have been around churches for any length of time know this kind of controversy is anything but new. Churches have been fighting for years. Indeed, the New Testament shows us churches riddled with all kinds of tangles. We just read about one in this morning's scripture. It is that church in Corinth. What do we see but factions pulling, tugging, shoving each other around; bad chemistry, turf battles, dirty politics, divided leadership -- each faction claiming a monopoly on the truth. The charismatics impugning the scholars, the liberals demeaning the conservatives, the social activists condescending to the contemplatives -- each faction claiming the truth while all others wallow in supposed sacrilege, blasphemy or apostasy. There is no love lost among them. It is a holy war.

Paul deplores these church scraps. In his desperate letter to the Corinthians he asserts his authority to join the controversy -- and like everyone else he claims to be the last word on the subject. (That is just like him!) In one of his ingenious images Paul tells that congregation their diversity ought to illustrate the very nature of their unity. Their differences, he writes, are analogous to different parts of the body -- the head, or the heart, the hand or the foot -- each part serving a particular and important purpose, each one vital to the smooth and healthy functioning of the body, none less important than the other. In that way, he says, you are the body of Christ.

But after using that wonderful metaphor, the Church as the Body of Christ, Paul goes on. He extends his argument. He tells that fragmented, dissension-ridden crowd that as important as each person's spiritual gift may be, there is really only one gift, and that gift authenticates all the rest. The one criteria, he says, the one criteria for judging what you bring to the life of the church and the world is the gift of love. Amid all your personal claims to truth or tradition, behind each stand you take on dogma or creed, overarching every reference to your authority, your place in the hierarchy, or special spiritual discernment, there is a higher claim, a more vital accountability, a more profound allegiance -- and that is to love.

Remember what Paul says? "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal." In those first three verses of 1st Corinthians 13 he is making a point about "love" and our worship together. Paul tells those Corinthian church folk -- no, he tells us -- that what we do when we meet may be filled with beauty, inspiration and all kinds of ceremonial polish, but if it comes without love,  it is no better than one of those raucous brass bands blaring out its pagan salvos on first night. Our sanctuary can be resplendent; our choir impeccable; our order of worship valid; our rituals flawless; we can hear glorious choruses from handsome and beautiful young people (and, my young friends, how we treasure your being here among us this morning!); we can resonate to the whispers and thunder of the organ, but Paul insists all of this without love is empty racket and no more spiritual than a three ring circus with its clowns, elephants and sword swallowers.

And if worship is not enough, he takes on preacher types with no holds barred. Put together your words, he says; make that grammar and syntax perfect; wow that congregation with insight and knowledge; dazzle them with stories, erudition, interpretation, and jokes; prove to them you have faith that can move mountains; do the impossible: raise a ton of money; fill the house to overflowing, but if all that comes apart from love, you are nothing, zero, zip, zilch.

And when he finishes with preachers, Paul begins with our claims to public virtue. Is your body in the trenches for some good cause? Do you want to do social action? Do you want to march for human rights? Do you want to demonstrate against abortion? lobby for reproductive rights? Do you want to build houses, improve schools, fight for better day care? Go ahead, but if you do it without love, if you are in it for your own self interest, OK. So what? That is what everybody does; it is really no credit to you. Love is what really matters.

When Paul finishes putting worship and service into its proper perspective, you will see he launches into a vivid description of how church people --church people -- treat one another. "Love is patient," he says, "Love is kind." Do you know what an accurate translation of that sentence says?  "Love has a big heart and practices sheer goodness." Now there is a heading for all the rest. Paul has heard some bad news from that congregation in Corinth. Some folk are obviously jealous of one another; others compete for more room, recognition or status; still others blow up when you try to explain things; others want everything under their control; still others hold grudges over some long forgotten incident; and yet others smugly exult when someone else -- even their best friend -- crashes, gets caught in some dumb stunt, stumbles into failure. A secret smugness creeps into their hearts.

You see, Paul knows what tears churches apart: lovelessness. Paul knows what binds us together through all our weakness, divergent needs, smorgasbord of priorities and stupidity: love, "the possession of a big heart and the practice of sheer goodness." Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and amid all of our quirks, crankiness and conceits,  love endures all things.

And before he is finished with us, Paul offers a fundamental assurance. "Love never ends! -- Love never ends!" he insists. Paul tells us at the close of this wonderful reflection that everything else we think is stable isn't . . . except love. And in every way he means the one thing holding us together while everything else dissolves: the trustworthy, unimpeachable, indefatigable Love of God.

Paul is convinced everything we tend to believe will last forever really comes to an end. Some of us here remember Governor George Wallace of Alabama standing in a schoolhouse door just thirty-five years ago, facing down the US Army over integration of the Alabama Schools, intoning the words, "Segregation Now! Segregation Tomorrow! Segregation forever!". . . . Gone!

Just last week, Fidel Castro -- anti-church, anti-Christmas, anti-religion, for forty years, promising atheism forever -- last week host to a Catholic Prelate celebrating Mass in Havana's Revolution Square with a huge mural of Che Guevara obliquely to his right, yet hanging from the building behind him a massive mosaic of the face of -- guess who? Jesus Christ! In one week that furious, seemingly everlasting, ideological antipathy -- Gone!

Did you think Latin would last forever in the Catholic Mass? Did you believe the texts in your hymnals would never change? Would you believe that the high school young people in this balcony know more -- perhaps exponentially more -- than Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein? Knowledge will cease; our creeds will crumble, our churches fold; the things we hold dear will turn to dust. If I may use a Hollywood analogy now sweeping the country -- everything like the good ship Titanic, the ship its builder claimed, "God himself couldn't sink," will finally tip, tilt and sink beneath the surface. Everything, Paul reminds us, is transient.

Everything but love. The love we see at this holy table, symbolized for us in a body broken and blood poured out, love tested to the ultimate by the hatred, the violence, destructive forces at the foot of the Cross, love that embraces you and me through the worst of human circumstances, love that offers forgiveness and recreation even when mocked, spit on, scorned --  love that will not let any of us go -- not you, nor you, nor you -- even through the most troublesome, tragic, and grief-filled circumstances, even when we feel everything about us is collapsing or sinking - that is the love binding churches together no matter what. That love, affirms Paul, is love that will never end!

So, he concludes: faith, hope and love, these three abide. But the one that finally matters, the one providing the lens defining all the others, the one sustaining us through thick and thin, tragedy and triumph, life and death, yea, the greatest of these is love.