The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany ----- 31 January 2016

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. ²⁸And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. ²⁹Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? ³⁰Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? ³¹But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

1 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. ² And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. ⁴ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷ It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. ⁸ Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹ For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰ but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹² For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³ And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

                                                                                                                                           

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.

·        Have any of you ever heard a person “speaking in tongues”? Not a person speaking in a language you didn’t understand, but a language nobody could understand.

·        I heard what was said to be the gift of tongues a number of years ago and it scared me. One person spoke what sounded like nonsense syllables and a moment later another person gave the interpretation. During that time, I could feel the hair on my head rise up – a sensation some of you might have had in other circumstances.

·        I’ve never been present at a spontaneous healing, a prophetic utterance, or a word of special knowledge. I have heard of such things being faked, but I can’t say that for certain in all cases.

·        These things, should you encounter them, are certainly spectacular and out of the ordinary. There are people who seek them out in order to experience them or to have those gifts themselves, and for their own reasons.

·        Paul acknowledges the existence of all these gifts in the Corinthian Church. He also tells the Corinthians that these gifts are not the highest and might even be a source of a sinful pride. After all who want to be just ordinary?

·        Just before the quote we started with, Paul says something odd: But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. So there is something better? What sort of sensational thing is Paul recommending to the church at Corinth?

·        What follows is such a well-known passage that we’ve all heard it. It’s a favourite reading for wedding, although it is not specifically directed to marriage and married couples. Let’s just say it is spoken to us.

·        I hope that we all realize that we are all gifted in different ways, all of which have value. Paul is not talking about those gifts nor is he talking about the more spectacular spiritual gifts that we hear abounded in the early church and are outlined in this letter. Those gifts still exist; there are prophets and healers in our own day and there are those who speak in tongues, even if they are not here with us today. They’re not the ones Paul is concerned about.

·        Paul wants to know if there are any lovers in the room. He wants to know if any of the people he is writing to are able and willing to love. He says that is the greatest gift of all, or has he called it, a still more excellent way.

·        Now this sounds awfully ordinary and mundane. Love is something we have all experienced. Paul, however, is not talking about our experience of being loved, but our experience of loving others. He takes love to the highest place, the unselfish love that is called agape. In Paul’s language, there are a number of words we’d translate as “love” and they don’t all mean the same thing. Here he uses the word that indicates a self-less love, the sort of love God has.

·        Paul gets beyond the surface of things and calls love the greatest of gifts. We however might call it ordinary and common when compared to gifts and actions we might consider more amazing.

·        So what is more truly amazing – speaking in tongues or a parent’s love for a special-needs child with all that calls for?

·        What is more amazing – a word of knowledge (whatever that may mean anymore) or the love that leads a person to give of themselves to another through thick and thin?

·        What is more amazing – a prophetic utterance or the love that fills you and fulfills your life.

·        Those are questions you have to answer for yourselves. It seems that love is quite important to all of us. We want to be loved… and we want to love as well.

·        Love might not be the most spectacular of God’s gifts. There is truth to what Martin Luther said: Our Lord God has made His greatest gifts the commonest. However, the gift of love could well be the most necessary and the most wanted gift when we get right down to it. It is the most lasting and perhaps the most powerful. It is not tongues and miraculous power that draws people to Jesus Christ; it is love of God reflected in Jesus’ disciples. It is that love that remains and abides, as Paul would say. Paul even says: But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end… And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. 

·        Love “abides” because it is the very life of God. Such love was the reason behind all that Jesus did and still does. It is the reason for creation, for redemption and salvation, and for God’s sustaining of all that exists. Because love reflects God, Paul calls it the still more excellent way.

·        On love, we can remember what is said in another letter, the first letter of John: Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love… …God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.  (1 John 4:7-12, 16b)

·        Now I ask you - what could be more powerful than that? What could be a greater gift? What would mean more to the Church? What would mean more to the world?

·        But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.