Love is THE Agenda

 Today was a day where I was on-edge. I have never led a church Annual Meeting. We were going to be electing new vestry members and adopting bylaws for the parish.  I was preaching and celebrating at the table. It felt like a lot. And, as always, God came through to keep me calm. And it all went well. 

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I couldn’t have asked for a better set of readings on the day of the Annual Meeting of the parish.

We have the call of Jeremiah, where our dear prophet is so delightfully honest:

“Ah Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak for I am only a boy.”

(Yeah, God isn’t gonna take that cop out!) Basically, God tells the prophet…you will go. I will speak through you. Do not be afraid. And for the record, Jeremiah does go, he speaks, he endures much hardship, and God is with him throughout.

We have Jesus in his hometown synagogue. At first, the gathered crowd was skeptical. You have those who whisper to their neighbor “Isn’t this the carpenter’s kid?” And then Jesus hits them how Israel as a nation didn’t do all the things Isaiah said to do…but recalls how their two prophets Elijah and Elisha turned to the Gentiles to bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted, discouraged, and forgotten. Being told hard truths and judgment didn’t go over well. The crowd wanted to kill Jesus…but God kept him safe from their wrath.

And then we have the Epistle lesson.

“Love is patient, love is kind, love is not boastful, or arrogant or rude…”

I know. We’ve all heard this passage from First Corinthians before. Heck, it’s in a framed poster right outside the door of our sanctuary.

We’ve been to that wedding…religious or secular…where we’ve heard someone read these words aloud. And we get all misty-eyed as we gaze upon the couple, the flowers, the pretty white wedding gowns, and snazzy tuxedos…the string quartets playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major. Ahhhhhhh…..

That’s SO not what this reading is about!

In fact, to truly understand what Paul is saying here and why, we need to recollect the portion from this letter to the Corinthian Church that we heard LAST week.

Not to go over it in detail again, but it was one of those moments where he’s using the body as a metaphor for the church…and that idea that we need each other, with our individual gifts, to make up the whole body. It’s that notion that an eye can’t tell the hand or foot to get lost because they aren’t eyes. If we were all eyes and no hands and feet we’d all be cyclops’s…and how weird would that be?

Paul is addressing a particular problem that was happening in Corinth. And some things to know about this area of the ancient world:

It was a diverse urban center with many different ethnicities making up the church population.

The major industries involved metal and glass working, hence Paul’s use of the clanging cymbal and looking through a glass darkly language. He knew the Corinthians would readily understand those metaphors.

And it was a church that was fracturing, largely over egos.

There were those who had particular gifts…such as speaking in tongues…and they believed that unless you had that gift, then you weren’t really one of them and couldn’t possibly be a real believer.  Same with those who regarded prophesy as the most important gift. And those who valued “knowledge” and “wisdom” and believed those speaking in tongues or claiming prophesy were not “the real deal.”

In other words…they sound like Christian churches of the 21^st century! Everyone has their own field of interest, their own ministry, their own agenda. Their own right way or the highway attitude.

And Paul is reminding them in this part of his letter that there is only one way and one agenda item: Love!

“Let me make this clear to you, my dear Corinthians: if you think that gift of yours is so special and you don’t recognize that it’s only a part of the big wide expanse of Love….well, then you’re nothing more than a clanging cymbal,  a bunch of noise with nothing to really show for yourself!”

And—hey—as important as any particular gift might be…those special gifts aren’t going to last forever. Tongues go silent. Knowledge dies off. Prophesies only last until there’s a new vision.

Love?

Love lasts.

Love lives on.

Love is not just another spiritual gift; it is THE gift that keeps on giving.

And what’s good for the Corinthians is good for us here today.

Just like with the Corinthians, Paul is telling us that whatever we think is the most important thing for us to do at St. Barnabas…it must start with getting grounded in the love of God…as known to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus himself gave us the bare essentials of what it takes to live into that love. We heard him last week when he read from the prophet Isaiah:

The spirit of the Lord is upon me

To bring good news to the poor

Release to the captives

Return sight to the blind and

Free the oppressed.

As our excellent preacher, the Rev. Hailey Jacobsen, noted for us… that spirit is laid upon us…all of us…right now here at St. Barnabas…and isn’t waiting for the day when our aches and pains aren’t acting up…or holding out for when we have three or four families with young children to come in the door. We’ll rejoice when that happens, but for now, we are called upon to live into the community we have. Be the hands, feet, eyes, and ears…working together in love and unity of Christ’s body so we can serve our wider community. We need all the of the body parts working together as we become a beloved community.

How do we get there?

Just as God’s love is given freely and we have that love in us, each one of us is to share our love with others…both here in our parish and outside our campus.  

Each one of us must ask ourselves: What are the gifts I have… empowered and amplified through Love… and how can I share those gifts with others around me to build more love in this community?

 

Finally: how can I encourage, honor, and make room for another’s gifts to flourish?

One way is through prayer and allowing for God to work through us…that whole “let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to God.”

Maybe we need to practice empathy and step into another’s shoes and understand that everyone is struggling with something right now. In what ways can we give encouragement and support to one another? Sometimes, it’s better not to say things.

This puts love into action.

That’s what Paul was driving at when he talked about putting away childish things. We are called upon to grow up and bring a more mature, loving, giving faith to the table…this table… and to allow that bread and wine to soften our hearts and bring us back in line with Jesus.

This is our mission, if we choose to accept it: Love one another as Christ has loved us. We’re all in this together to make this place a beacon for Christ and God’s love for the world.