If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)
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If - like me - you find it interesting to follow news from the wild, wacky and wonderful world of religion and faith then the name Kateri Tekakwitha will mean something to you. Except that she’s no longer just Kateri Tekakwitha - she’s now (at least to the more than one billion people in the world who consider themselves Roman Catholics) Saint Kateri Tekakwitha. She was born in 1656; the daughter of a Mohawk chief and a Roman Catholic mother who belonged to the Algonquin tribe, and she lived most of her life in a Jesuit mission in Kahnawake, south of Montreal, before dying at the young age of 24. Without going into any more detail, she’s now the first North American aboriginal person to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, as last Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI elevated her to sainthood. I, of course, am a Protestant, and I have to admit that the whole Roman Catholic concept of sainthood is completely foreign to me, which is probably one of the reasons that I chose a church of the Reformation after coming to faith. But I took note of this event, partly because of a comment that was made by a current resident of Kahnawake afterward. To paraphrase, she said that she was pleased to see Kateri Tekakwitha made a saint, because it showed that someone of her tribe could be equal to the other people of God. And I thought - “how sad.”
The example I’ve used is Roman Catholic, but that’s just because it was in the news in recent days. May sadness isn’t about the Roman Catholic Church. It’s about something that I so often see lacking in many people’s lives. So many seem to have difficulty believing that they are truly loved by God. That lament (because that’s really what it is, far more than celebration) that “one of us is finally as good as everybody else” seems to be a symptom of that problem, and the problem is universal. It crosses denominational boundaries; it crosses racial boundaries. It’s the problem of not grasping the wondrousness of being loved by God, and then of loving as God loves. In 1 Peter, disciples of Jesus are given the following advice: “Now that you’ve cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it.” I wonder what it would be like to love one another as if our lives depended on it? What would a community defined by such love look like? Paul was trying to answer that question for the Corinthians.
Paul spoke of love in today’s passage. You’ve all probably heard that passage many times; it may be the best known passage in the Bible. It may even be that it’s become so common that many who hear it don’t even realize it’s from the Bible. And while it’s wonderful that a passage from the Bible has so impacted our society; it’s troubling that it’s done so by being taken out of context. Folks - this isn’t about marriage. This is not about a romantic love that gets shown by two people holding hands and kissing as a sign of their relationship. It’s good advice about how to love in a marriage; but it’s not about marriage. It’s about the church community; it’s about the family of God; and it helps us to understand what a church would truly look like if it were defined by real love. Jesus himself said that we are to “love the Lord God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength” and that we are to “love our neighbours as ourselves.” Without love, a Christian community can’t function. Without love, the body of Christ shrivels and becomes at best a shadow of what it should be. And so often, we forget or don’t understand what love really is. We reduce love to simply doing nice things for people; we reduce love to a catch phrase like “doing justice” or “seeking justice” and we believe if we do those things we’re acting lovingly, but we miss the point. We can do all kinds of good and wonderful and justice seeking things and still not be motivated by love, and those good things accomplish little if they’re not motivated by love. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
A community defined by love isn’t defined by the good things it does; it’s defined by how well it builds up the members of the community. A community defined by love is a community where every member puts the needs of the other over and above their own needs - and when everyone is looking out for everyone else’s needs, and is willingly sacrificing for the sake of everyone else, you then create a community without needs. That which God gives us is to be used to build up community by binding us together; too often (and tragically) we use that which God has given us to break down community by worrying about who’s better and who’s more important. But love doesn’t care about who’s better or who’s more important. Love simply cares. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” This kind of love - the kind of love Jesus spoke about; the kind of love Paul wrote about - isn’t about romance and doing nice things. This kind of love is about giving until there’s no more to give - and then giving some more.
Many years ago I watched the movie “Crocodile Dundee.” There’s a scene near the end if that movie that some of you might remember. Alone on the streets of New York City, Dundee is approached by a young thug who pulls a knife on him. Smiling as he looks at the knife in the young man’s hand, he suddenly whips from his belt the biggest knife you or I or anyone else has ever seen. smiling, he said to the young thug, “That’s not a knife - this is a knife.” When love truly defines a community, that’s how people should speak of that community - “this is love.” May that be said of us!
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