If
you have been to a wedding recently, more likely than not you heard 1
Corinthians 13 read. It is chosen by the couple in about
three-quarters of weddings. And it is a wonderful hymn of praise of
love. Couples see it as both inspirational and aspirational – what
they want their love and their relationship to be.
But
Paul isn’t talking about marriage, or about the love between
husband and wife, or even about families. He wasn’t writing some
abstract musings about love, because he had a good idea that he
thought would be valuable to others. Paul is talking about the
church, and addressing a specific situation.
The
congregation at Corinth could be described as the very first
dysfunctional church. And it was very dysfunctional. Paul got word
of this, from letters from the leaders of the congregation, from
gossip on the missionary grapevine, and wrote a long letter back to
set them straight.
What
were the problems? They were legion. There were some deep factions
in the church. Some members proclaimed their allegiance to Paul,
some to Apollos, some to Cephas. They all looked to the leader or
spiritual father of their group, rather than to Christ, and argued
about which group was right. They were spiritually immature: since
their conversion to Christianity, they hadn’t changed their
behaviour one bit, and disputes arose among them as to which foods
were proper to eat, and about sexual mores (Nothing has changed in
2000 years). They were suing one another in court, rather than
working out their differences like brothers. They were refusing to
share. They came together for a common meal before worship. Each
person brought his or her own food, and they didn’t share. So the
rich would bring a full feast for themselves, and the poor would have
their little bowl of rice. When someone suggested that wasn’t
right, the rich began coming early, so that they had eaten everything
before the poor arrived. They boasted about status: who was more
important, and whose role in the church was foremost. They even
jockeyed for positions in worship. Since they didn’t yet have the
Book of Common Prayer, worship was a bit more free-form than we are
used to, and people would jump up as the Spirit moved them to offer a
prayer, a reading or commentary, or to speak in tongues. What
resulted was probably similar to what Thomas Merton describes of his
experience of Quaker worship when he was seeking a spiritual home: a
woman felt moved by the Spirit to talk about her recent trip to Italy
and to share the pictures with her captive audience.
So
Paul writes to the Corinthians to try to get them back on track as a
healthy Christian community. Last week, in chapter 12, he talked
about the church as the body of Christ. Just as, in the human body,
each member or part of the body has a specific function, and the body
does not function as intended unless all the individual members are
functioning well and together, the church, the body of Christ, does
not function well unless all the individual members, with their
different gifts and roles, use their abilities for the common good.
Paul catalogues the various gifts of the Spirit: teaching,
leadership, healing, prophesying, speaking in tongues, deeds of
power, interpreting. But, Paul says, there is a gift greater than
any of these, and everyone should strive toward it.
That
gift is LOVE. Love is patient, kind, not boastful or arrogant or
rude; it rejoices in the truth; it hopes and believes and endures.
The
lack of love is the source of all the divisions, the boasting, the
fighting, the uncharitableness. It’s not just a matter of
recognizing the gifts that others have, because, without love, all
those gifts are worthless.
The
touchstone is not whether we preach well, whether we are skilled
teachers, whether we have a very visible leadership role or toil
quietly in the background, but whether we fulfill our roles with love
toward one another. If we have love toward one another, if we are
patient, if we are kind, if we are not boastful or arrogant or rude,
if we forgive and hope, then the church will function as a healthy
body.
Throughout
history, there have been dysfunctional churches, because we have
failed to heed Paul’s advice, or have relegated it to weddings.
May
we seek the greatest gift of the Spirit – love – and be a body
built on love, in all our doings as a community.
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