The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany-Year C

The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C January 30, 2022 I’m going to say something that may upset some of you. This passage from 1 Corinthians that we read today isn’t really about the love between a couple. While it is the favored passage for many weddings, this passage is so much more than just the blissful state of love that almost newly-weds find themselves in. Paul is writing to the church in Corinth which he founded, and he is really angry and disappointed with them. He’s received word that they are fighting about all kinds of stuff, and so this letter is to remind them of who they are supposed to be. “Love is patient; love is kind,” he urges people who have been impatient and unkind to one another. “Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude,” he chides people who have been lording it over one another based on social status and who they were baptized by. “It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth,” he exhorts people who have been spreading lies and rumors about each other. “[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” Paul reminds this group of Christians who have made bitter enemies out of one another. To get the full effect of Paul’s challenging words on love, think about someone in your life who you have gotten cross-wise with, someone you absolutely cannot stand to be in the same room with because of how they act, what they think, how they have treated you. And now imagine Paul is saying these words about love to you about that person. But Paul doesn’t stop there. He goes on to talk about all the things that will come to an end before love ends. Some scholars think that this list of spiritual gifts is something that the community in Corinth prides itself for having: the gifts of prophies, speaking in tongues, and of knowledge. And Paul is telling them that these gifts that they value so highly in themselves as a community of faith are nothing if they are done without love. Imagine Paul naming out the things that we most value about our community—our gift for hospitality, for creativity, the relationships that have been cultivated over decades—and Paul is saying, if you have all those without love, then they aren’t worth anything. In his book Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubled Times, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry writes about this passage from First Corinthians. He talks about how the opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s selfishness. The opposite of love is a life that is completely centered on the self. He talks about how this love that Paul writes about isn’t a noun or a sentiment. He writes, “This love is a verb: it’s an action with force and follow-through. When we pull love out of the abstract, really put it to work, it starts to reveal its extraordinary power. Love as an action is the only thing that has ever changed the world for the better…Love is a commitment to seek the good and to work for the good and welfare of others.”i I’ve been working on a project for a new formation offering at the diocesan level. It’s a leadership development training that has its roots in the old Church Development Institute. For our first session, one of the topics is how we nurture relationships inside and outside of our churches. The model we are using has an exercise that participants are invited to do—where all but one participant create a body sculpture that depicts a tight-loving community in which the one outsider has difficulty breaking in. The second body sculpture the participants are invited to make is one that focuses solely on reaching out to outsiders. And the third body sculpture is one that depicts a community that values both internal and external relationships.ii The point of the exercise is to teach that a focus on tending to both internal and external relationships in the church is important in order for a church to be healthy and to live into its mission of “restoring all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” iii We at St. Thomas are really good at practicing love as an action with each other here. The many, deep, long-standing relationships here are a testament to that. This year, I’d like to invite us to look for ways that we can build and tend relationships with people, both inside and outside the church, who we don’t know as well. We had 25 people join the church last year! That is an amazing gift to our community, and it is a testament to the spiritual gift of hospitality that is one of the cornerstones of this church! How well do you know them? What can you do to get to know them better? How might we be called to restructure things around here to be more inviting to people who haven’t worshipped here for many years? How might we be called to practice love in action beyond the existing bonds of common affection that exist in our faith community? How might we be challenged to put love into action out in the greater community? i. Curry, Michael. Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times. Avery: New York, 2020, pp 18, 19, 22. ii. This model comes from the book Holy Currencies by Eric Law p 23. iii. Book of Common Prayer. The Catechism. p 855