A sermon preached June 23, 2002

Concord Covenant Church

The Rev. Beth Jenkins Ernest

Text: 1 Corinthians 13

Second in a sermon series on Paul

"Why Love?"

Two weeks ago we began a sermon series on Paul and his contribution to what Christians believe. The familiar passage read this morning from Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth is a favorite of many. I have done so many weddings where the bridal couple chooses this as the scripture, and you can see why they do—all that talk about love and growing up and how we aren’t supposed to be arrogant or rude. Taking the passage out of context of the whole letter, the words do seem to fit the ideal marriage relationship.

Now, I don’t want to offend anyone, but…

I would like to go on record today to say that 1 Corinthians 13 has nothing to do with weddings or sentimental love. Rather, 1 Cor 13 is wonderful example, perhaps the best example, of the Apostle Paul’s conflict management style. He has a problem on his hands and he weaves a clever and flowing argument to convince the church at Corinth that they are out of line in the way they are treating each other. When looked at in the context of his entire argument, chapter 13 is sheer genius.

Paul founded the church in Corinth, not far from Athens. He knew the people and the issues causing concerns. As their mentor, he felt obligated to assert his apostolic authority to get them back on the right track. The particular problem that crept into the congregation was that of disunity. The disunity came about in the way members were exercising their spiritual gifts. In those early years after the resurrection of Christ, churches were very much alive with the Spirit. They were what we today call charismatic—which comes from the Greek word charismata, or "gifts of the Spirit." One of the gifts some of the folk at Corinth got really excited about was the gift of speaking in tongues.

A lot of modern, mainline or evangelical Christians have never heard anyone speak in tongues. Speaking in tongues, or glossolalia, its official name, happens when a person becomes so filled with the Spirit of God that they are caught up in the a moment of glory in which they speak out loud, but not in their native tongue. They speak a sort of heavenly tongue, very different from any human language—or at least, any language I have heard. After they are finished talking, ideally, someone else stands up and interprets what has been said, usually a word of praise to God. The gift of speaking and the gift of interpretation both come from God. I have heard people speak in tongues a number of times—the first time was in Sweden, which was really confusing as I didn’t know the language at that point and didn’t know it was any different until a confused person asked me if I know what in the world was going on! Some branches of Christianity value this gift very highly. It is not so high on the Covenant radar screen—but then, we aren’t from Corinth!

At Corinth, apparently a group of people really got into speaking in tongues, so much so that they considered themselves a cut above the others. They pretty much felt they were in league with the angels—already having become fully spiritual. As such, they didn’t believe they had to confirm to rules and behavior that ordinary mortals did. They flaunted sexual mores, they considered their bodies to have reached the future, resurrected state, and they hogged up all the food at the Lord’s Supper, eating everything up even before the poorer members got to the table.

The argument Paul offers reminds the Corinthians that there is only one God, one Spirit, though there are many gifts. In chapter 12, he talks about the human body, and its many organs, all of which are interdependent. In turn, we as the body of Christ are all different and display different gifts. Yet, we are dependent on each other. In chapter 13, Paul goes into the gifts in detail, explaining that spiritual gifts not used in love are useless to the body of Christ, the Church. Continuing, he zeroes in on the problems all this speaking in tongues has caused—namely, a lack of order in worship and division in the community. And finally, in chapter 15, he discusses the resurrection, reminding the problem children that their bodies are not yet the spiritual ones we shall one day receive.

In the famous "love chapter," we learn that we can exercise all kinds of gifts, but if we don’t use them in a loving manner, they are useless. In fact, all these gifts—like speaking in tongues, interpreting, performing miracles, preaching, healing—all these are only for this world. They are temporal. The greatest gift of all is love because it alone remains and goes on into eternity. We don’t need to preach or teach once Christ returns. We won’t need to be healed. But we will need love. Right now we are like children, or people looking in a mirror at God, seeing only a reflection. But when Christ comes we will be whole and complete; we will see God eye to eye, face to face.

Love is the greatest gift because without it, we become fragmented, some doing one thing, some the other. Love is the glue that holds the community of faith together. And for Paul, the community is always more important than the needs of any individual. That is the Christian way. That whole argument is probably not what the folks at Corinth wanted to hear, but is what they got. And apparently, they listened, because in Paul’s second letter to Corinth, the issue seems to be resolved.

I think modern Christians reading this passage have no difficulty seeing love as the greatest gift God gives us and the greatest gift we can exercise. But I think we might have a problem with some of the other gifts mentioned. If we have any problem today in our congregation, it is not that people are waving their hands around, getting "slain in the Spirit" as people say. After all, this is New England.

So Paul might need to reverse his argument to us. Maybe he would need to say, "Yes, you love one another really fine, but you don’t know the Spirit is among you. How are you showing the gifts of the Spirit?

In my own denomination, The United Church of Christ, I used to serve on a committee called, The Council of Theological Education in New England. It was basically a think tank of professors, deans, pastor, and representative from various Committees on the Ministry that dealt with theological students. I remember once that one of the questions we pondered was, What are the gifts of the Spirit from 1 Cor 13 that are the most important to the church in the 21^st Century?

The gifts again are: 1). The utterance of wisdom, 2.) The utterance of knowledge 3) faith,, 4) gifts of healing, 5) the working of miracles, 6) prophecy, 7) the discernment of spirits, 8) various kinds of tongues, and 9) the interpretation of tongues. How can we look at these gift in new ways for today’s world?

How about "the utterance of wisdom.?" We would probably all believe and hope that there are Christians who have the gift of seeing clearly into the hearts of others and assessing situations in ways that shed light and bring right action. I did my student internship in rural Connecticut where there was an elderly woman in a small church of only 8 members! "Shirley" was not well educated. She lived off the land in a right shabby little house. But she was wise. When the pastor had problems with any of his four, small churches (for this was yoked parish), he went to Shirley. She would listen, and then she would speak with honestly and insight in words of love. A congregation—and a pastor--is blessed to have such a wise person in their midst. It is my understanding that the Friday morning men’s group shares this kind of wisdom with each other.

We can also use knowledge. Mot the secretive, mystical, insider-only type of knowledge Paul was probably seeing in Corinth, but knowledge about God and the faith, about the Bible, and common sense knowledge about people and life. This would include, I believe, knowledge about what is going on in the wider church. This week Ken Koornneef departs for the annual conference in Colorado, where he will gain a tremendous knowledge about what the denomination is doing in missions, in its business life, in its congregations. He will bring back ideas and encouragement based on increased knowledge.

The gift of faith is pretty obvious. Of course, we need Christians who remind us that faith is the currency of the Christian belief. Sisters and brothers who admonish us to hold on when the going is rough and to rely on God’s promises for our future. Last year this time we needed a lot of faith as we hit delay after delay about moving into this building. Now, we are here! Right now, we need people of faith to hold out the vision of a new pastor, whose coming will increase the ability of this congregation to grow and reach out.

How about the gift of healing? Yes, we have modern medicine which heals our bodies and to some extent, our minds. But this medicine is not infallible. More and more we hear about the amazing power of prayer and faith to be healers. And not just for the body, but for the soul. I may have told you at some point about a man I met in the hospital where I was doing chaplaincy training. He was dying of cancer, but the agony of his soul seemed far worse than the agony of his body. He longed to make peace with his family, but his past sins stood in the way. An adulterous affair had left him covered with shame and guilt. Was there no way to heal his relationship with his family before he died? Because you see, he had been raised in a Christian home. He knew what the gift of love looked like and felt like, but sin had gotten in the way. We talked about what he could do. I suggested he might talk with just one family member first. "Ah, yes, my daughter Debbie! I could talk to her." And so, he called her. "Debbie," he said on the phone, "can we talk?" "Daddy," she answered, "we have all been waiting." And they wept together. Before he died, he experienced the gift of healing that allowed love to be restored..

Healing is a gift we might all pray for today, as the church takes some bad blows from sins of the past, causing people to lose the cement of love that holds the church together..

The gift of miracles is a bit harder. Anyone multiplied any loaves and fishes lately? The church will need a miracle in this century to survive and counter the onslaught of secularism, violence, and apathy that faces our world. As we stand aghast at the continuing developments in Israel and Palestine, let’s not forget the miracles of the destruction of the Berlin wall, the dismantling of the Eastern Block, and the re-opening of churches. Sometimes miracles are a process over a longer time. Let us pray for continued miracles to happen—for the safety of Pakistani Christians, for enemies becoming friends in the Middle East, for Christ to be made known to those who have not heard or who will not hear.
And the gift of prophecy. I know a young pastor who went as a guest preacher one Sunday to a small church in Vermont. He had never been there before. He didn’t know the people at all. He delivered a fiery sermon about their need to give up sexism, consumerism, homophobia and the abuse of the environment (as well as a bunch of other –isms he was sure they would be guilty of).. He couldn’t understand that they did not receive his "prophetic" sermon warmly and never asked him back.

The gift of prophecy is not a gift that comes from being disconnected with the people. It is a gift that comes from being very connected with the people and connected with the heart of God. This connection allows the Spirit to help us to see the inevitable clash between our sin and God’s will for us, and then to speak the truth in love.

The gift of the discernment of spirits is a gift we may not think of so much today. Certainly discernment is a highly valued gift in a church undergoing a search—let us pray that the search committee will be oozing with discernment. But the discernment of spirits is a bit different from just making a good decision. Can we tell when the Spirit of God is behind an action as opposed to a spirit of self-aggrandizement, lust for power, greed, or desperation? Basically, Paul was hoping the Corinthians would learn to discern when a godly spirit was working in the people, as opposed to the spirits of disunity and vanity. It occurs to me that a new church is in need of such a gift—always measured with love. Any time we face lots of discussions—as churches in their first decade does—pastoral leadership, location, building a building, fund-raising, establishing a "personality" as Connie talked about at our meeting earlier this month—we must discern with what spirit we enter into such discussions and decisions.

Paul brings up the gift of tongues last. I maintain that this gift is highly important—but not in the sense Paul and the Corinthians mean of charismatic utterances. If the church today is to "go into all the world," we must have people who will take on the task and joy of learning languages! Will high school Spanish class become the place to be for Christian young people? Will we be petitioning school boards to add Arabic, Russian, and Farsi to the language offerings for our kids? Will we be ordering tapes of Tagalog, Creole, and Romanian? The church is exploding in hundreds of languages around the globe, while we just sit here and speak English! How will we communicate with our Christian brothers and sisters? We witnessed God give Pastor Fohle the gift of tongues as he preached to us in English (which he never believed he could do)! May God grant us the gift of tongues to reach out to a world we cannot claim to be masters of, rather one stop in the global village.

These are the spiritual gifts Paul talks about. Our responsibility is to identify and develop our own gifts and to respect and encourage the gifts of others. And we must be sure to use them for the building up of the entire church; in isolation they are meaningless. When used without love, they are worthless, even destructive. The gifts are given to us for our time here on this planet, so that the strength of the body of Christ will increase.

Remember that folk song from the sixties?

"We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord.

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord.

And we pray that all unity may one day be restored.

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love.

Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love."

"And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love" (1 Cor 13:13).