A STILL MORE EXCELLENT WAY

A Sermon by Rev. James D. Brown

Market Square Presbyterian Church

July 27, 2008

 

Deuteronomy 10:12-22 and 1 Corinthians 13

 

This summer we are taking a close look at Paul’s two letters to the Corinthians.  Over the past few Sundays we have acquainted ourselves with some of the challenges facing the young house churches in Corinth in Greece at the mid-point of the 1^st Century. 

 

Within a few short years the Christian communities established by Paul were faced with all sorts of issues which threatened to undo the Good News of the Christian message to which they had responded so enthusiastically.  My three previous sermons this month have dealt with the rise of factions in the Corinthian Church, with members aligning themselves with leaders such as Paul, Peter, and a newcomer to the faith by the name of Apollos.  Paul makes the case that a church divided against itself in this fashion cannot long survive.

 

There were also down-to-earth questions about sex and marriage and hairstyles that had to be resolved.  Paul had preached an astonishing message about inclusivity so radical that men and women, Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free were on equal footing within the body of Christ.  Needless to say, keeping such an egalitarian community from collapsing in upon itself was an everyday challenge.

 

Last week we looked at another issue, that of spiritual elitism.  Some of the members had gotten caught up in ecstatic speech during worship, calling out in strange words and sounds that made no sense to the other members.  Some of these Spirit-filled members began to assert that those spoke in tongues were superior to those who didn’t.  As you can well imagine, at this point things really began to fall apart as the center of their life and faith in Christ didn’t seem to be holding.

 

All of these issues were dumped in Paul’s lap via letters and communications to him at his current location in Ephesus in what is modern-day Turkey.  Paul’s responses contain his impassioned vision of how Christians are to relate to one another and to God within the Body of Christ. 

 

I recently came across a quotation by Tertullian, one of the early Church Fathers, to the effect that Christians are made, not born.  In other words, Paul’s letters to Corinth are addressed to a group of men and women who took the name of Christian at baptism and were now on the life-long quest of becoming Christians, human beings molded more and more into the likeness of Christ. 

 

Today we have arrived at the centerpiece of his theological challenge to the Church in Corinth and on Market Square.  Paul introduces his theme at the close of the 12^th chapter:

“…I will show you a still more excellent way.”   Listen carefully for God’s Word for us as we read about the more excellent way in the 13^th Chapter of 1 Corinthians.

 

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.

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.

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.

 

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or

arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not

irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but

rejoices in the in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all

things, hopes all things, endures all things.

 

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.  For we know only in part, and we prophesy

only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will

come to an end.  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.  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.  And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;

and the greatest of  these is love.

 

Paul begins by making clear that not one of the spiritual gifts in evidence within the Christian community, whether it be speaking in tongues or preaching clear and profound sermons about Christ, is of any value if love is not the centerpiece.  Without love every Christian becomes no more than a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 

 

The Greek word used by Paul for a noisy “gong” is chalkos, which usually “refers to bronze acoustical vases used in the theater to echo and amplify the voices of the actors.”[i] A person can give everything away, be martyred on a cross, but if there is no love, just shouting Scripture as loudly as one can is of no account.  I thought of this yesterday as I heard professed Christians screaming Scripture verses into bullhorns at the participants in the Gay Pride Festival taking place along the River here in Harrisburg.

 

In clear and simple language that has to remind us of other great works like the Gettysburg Address, Paul moves to the heart of his argument. He uses two positive words about love, qualities that elsewhere he ascribes to God:  “Love is patient; love is kind.”

God is patient. God is kind.  God is love.

Now comes a somewhat jarring transition to a list of eight things that love is not—and it’s clear that Paul is referring to the behavior of the young Christians in Corinth.  Let’s run down the list, and in so doing let’s be sure to include ourselves among those to whom Paul is writing.

 

First, love is not envious.  The word Paul uses is the very same one he employed in the 3^rd chapter of 1 Corinthians when he chastised his listeners:  “For as long as there is jealousy [zēlos] and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh?”  Zeal that flowers into envy is the opposite of love.  Human relationships falter every time such jealousy takes root.

 

Love is not boastful.  When we hear someone suggest they are the best, the brightest, the most spiritual, it’s a good time to head for the door.  For such conversations drain love right out of the room, don’t they?

 

Love is not arrogant.  The Greek here is a word that means “puffed up.”  Love is not puffed up.  Elsewhere in this letter Paul uses the same word in an expression we would do well to post on the mirrors we use each morning:  “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” [8:1]

 

Love is not rude.  Here our standard translation, according to New Testament scholar Richard Hays, misses the mark by a mile.  The term Paul utilizes actually means shameful behavior.  He’s referring to actions like the case of incest that has disrupted the Corinthian Church described in chapter 5—in which a man was found to be living with  his father’s wife.  The word “rude” is not adequate to describe behavior that rips the Christian community apart.  Today’s news gives us a steady diet of examples of such shameful behavior in today’s church and world, does it not?

 

Love does not insist on its own way.  One of the issues at Corinth was whether or not Christians could eat meat that had been offered to idols—in other words, food over which  incantations had been raised to pagan gods.  Paul says that our freedom in Christ allows us to ignore the pagan prayers and eat such food with a clear conscience.  But then he adds that if our behavior will offend one of our brothers and sisters, “Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other….for the sake of conscience—I mean the other’s conscience, not your own.”  [See chapter 10]

 

Love is not irritable or resentful.  These next two negatives have been translated, “Love is not easily angered [and] keeps no score of wrongs.”  When we really take these words to heart, it’s like trying to pull out of the garage with the parking brake on.  Whoa!  When I read this chapter of the Bible at weddings I often challenge the couples standing before me to be aware of how debilitating score-keeping can be to a marriage.  “I’ll never forgive you for what you said to our friends about the burned green beans I served at dinner last night.”  A minor issue, but a death knell if we do not have genuine ways of saying we’re sorry and having the slate wiped clean. 

 

Often times the couple being married hardly seems to be paying much attention to me.  There’s just too much else going on.  But I can’t miss seeing the couples in the congregation give knowing glances to their partners and furrow their brows a bit as they ponder the consequences of score-keeping, of playing “gotcha” in their own relationships.  A certain stillness settles over the congregation every time.

 

We’ve come to the end of Paul’s litany of what not to be doing with his words, “Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing…”  Another good translation of wrongdoing is injustice.  Love does not rejoice in injustice, but rejoices in the truth. 

 

Here we have come to the absolute heart of the matter.  To rejoice in the truth is to embrace God’s way, God’s justice, God’s love.  The word for love used throughout this chapter is agapē.  When we affirm that God is love, by this word we mean the transcendent power that wills the world into existence, we mean love that gives itself away for the other.  This is love far beyond the sentiment of momentary affection.  This is love that is the very ground of being.  This is love that never ends.

 

When Jesus commands us to love God and our neighbors as ourselves, he is ushering us into the realm of agapē.  To love God and neighbor as self is first of all to rejoice that we are alive in God.  In the same breath we affirm, in Sallie McFague’s insightful words, the right of others to exist, to be alive, to receive the same nurture and fulfillment we claim for ourselves.[ii]  Loving God and loving neighbor are cut from the same piece of cloth.

 

Paul rushes to his climax.  Prophecy, knowledge, speaking in tongues—all of these are but foretastes of what is yet to be.  In the present, in our best moments, we see fuzzy outlines of the ultimate as if in a cloudy mirror.  But the time is coming when we will see God face to face; we will know God even as God knows us.

 

For now, faith, hope and love abide.  Faith is the trust we place in the God of Israel known to us in Jesus Christ.  Hope has to do with the desire that never leaves us to live in a world made whole again, for the resolution of all brokenness in Corinth, in Market Square, in creation itself.  Love, as Richard Hays puts it so well, “is our foretaste of our ultimate union with God, graciously given to us now and shared with our brothers and sisters.”[iii]  Faith, hope and love abide, and the greatest of these gifts is love.   

 

A few weeks back I read an enticing review about the movie, Wall-E.  I went by myself one evening, a little surprised to be going to an animated science fiction film directed by Andrew Stanton of Finding Nemo fame.  Once I saw Wall-E I realized there was a direct connection to the more excellent way that is our theme today.

 

It’s set in the year 2815.  Seven hundred years before, planet earth had been swamped by un-recycled waste.  The planet became a huge dump, a wasteland.  No signs of life are now in evidence, not even one blade of grass.  The members of the human family who survived escaped on starliners, giant cruise ships that supported every need for humans with a fully automated robot crew.  The remnant of the human race aboard starliners, the most famous of which was Axiom, exists in a dreamlike, bloated condition.

This is the backdrop for meeting the central character, the last remaining functional trash compactor on earth, Wall-E, with the initials standing for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class.  Wall-E is worth the price of admission.  His eyes dominate.  Stanton got the idea for them from playing with binoculars and realizing they looked happy or sad depending on whether they were upside down or not. 

 

We meet WALL-E as he goes about his endless work of compacting the mountains of garbage covering the face of the earth. He claims a few things for himself:  a Rubik’s Cube, a box containing an engagement ring—he’s into collecting boxes so he throws the ring away—and a tape of music from Hello Dolly, several songs of which fascinate him, especially the one in which young lovers pledge their devotion to each other until “time runs out.”

 

There isn’t time to do justice to the plot of this delightful fantasy.  What I want to highlight is what happens when a sleek probe robot is sent from the spaceship Axiom to discover whether any life has returned to earth.  By now there are two glimmers of life, a single cockroach and a sliver of a green plant that WALL-E found midst the rubbish and planted in an old boot.  The probe is named EVE, for Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator.

 

The long and short of the story is that WALL-E and EVE fall in love.  There is high drama when the two of them end up on the Axiom, which I won’t try to recount.  What stayed with me is a moment in the film when EVE and WALL-E are back on earth.  He has lost his memory.  EVE takes his hand and while humming “It only takes a moment,” kisses WALL-E. Sparks fly and his memory is restored.  The two of them clasp hands and become part of a renewed effort to reclaim the earth.

 

I suspect Andrew Stanton might be a little surprised to hear his movie used as the concluding illustration in a sermon about the still more excellent way of agapē.  What touched me so deeply in the movie was hearing the gentle sighs of children near me in the theater as WALL-E and EVE kissed and held hands and then went about the business of reclaiming earth for the human family.

 

I found myself thinking about faith in the One who brought creation into being, about hope for a world aching for renewal, about it taking only a moment for love to be rekindled and new life to be embraced. 

 

This is a movie for the very young who have been born into a world in travail.  It is a movie for the young at heart who need reassured that nothing, absolutely nothing can truly separate us from the love of God.  It’s a movie for each of us. 

 

If Paul could appear out of the clouds and see the movie with us, I think he would be utterly flabbergasted.  At the same time, I think his eyes would mist up with the rest of ours as these two little robots went about the reclamation of the world.  In his own time, this is exactly what Paul was challenging the Corinthians to do, was it not?  God’s still more excellent way is the same yesterday and today and forever. 

 

MARKET SQUARE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

A Still More Excellent Way