Hespeler, February 2, 2025 © Scott McAndless – Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
Jeremiah 1:4-10, Psalm 71:1-6, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30
When you have been a minister as long as I have been a minister, you will find that the passage we read from 1 Corinthians this morning becomes an old friend. When I perform a wedding, I usually ask the couple to choose which Bible passages we will read and then I use those texts to talk about that couple and what has brought them together.
What Paul was Talking About
But it’s not. Sure, it contains wonderful teachings about the kind of love that can help to sustain an excellent marriage. But Paul did not include this as something for the church in Corinth to read at their weddings or to use in their marriage counselling.
In fact, married couples were about the furthest thing from his mind. Earlier in this same letter (Chapter 7), Paul actually tells them that he would rather they didn’t get married at all, though he understands if they do.
So, what is he talking about? He is talking about the whole congregation at Corinth and how they need to treat each other because apparently they have not been getting on very well.
Troubles in Corinth
So let’s step back and take a good look at what was going on in the church in Corinth that made Paul feel that, in order to find their way forward, they needed to receive what is arguably the best teaching on the nature of true love that has ever been written?
Well, part of it had to do with the fact that they were not very united. In fact, in many ways they behaved like they were several separate congregations often disagreeing with one another rather than what Paul would call the one body of Christ.
Several Different Congregations
This was not necessarily their fault. I think it is important to understand that. In many ways, their history had set them up to be at odds with each other. They had essentially been founded as a bunch of different congregations.
Paul had passed through Corinth and formed and instructed one congregation. Then sometime later a man named Cephas (who might be the Apostle Peter) had come along and gathered a different group and taught them somewhat differently. And then another founder named Apollos had come along.
Common to Many Congregations
Now, to a certain extent this is something that you will find in any congregation that has been around for a while. Various people will have come to the church or lived through their most formative years during the tenure of different ministers. And they tend to conclude that the way that “their” minister did things was the right way.
And so most ministers do get used to dealing with cries of “We never did things that way in Jeff’s time,” or “in Kevin’s day” or “in the time of Wally.”
But things were much more disorderly in Corinth where there had been a quick succession of founders over a very short period of time. They were still very much separate congregations who were having a hard time getting on the same page.
Two Congregations Come Together
And now you are perhaps starting to understand why I chose to preach on this particular passage today. Two weeks ago, St. Andrew’s Hespeler and Knox Preston came together to become one congregation. And it has been wonderful to see how everyone has been willing to approach this with a good will and with open hearts. I know that you made your promises and vows in such a spirit.
But good will doesn’t just erase two separate past histories. It doesn’t just erase expectations that have been built up by past experience. For that reason, I think we ought to be ready for some difficult issues to arise in times to come. That’s why I want to affirm to you today that this passage we read this morning wasn’t just written for the church in Corinth. It was written for us.
What was Dividing Them
Now, the struggles that the Corinthians had are not necessarily the same ones that we will face. Paul lists some of the things that were dividing them at the beginning of our reading. Some of them were speaking in strange languages, some thought that they had a power that allowed them to speak for God. Some of them demonstrated great faith and others thought that they had so much to give that they boasted about it all the time.
Paul actually mocks the attitude of these people by speaking in exaggerated terms about what they thought made them so great. He talks of people who “speak in the tongues of humans and of angels” and who have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge.” He talks about those who “have all faith so as to remove mountains,” and of people giving away all possessions and even handing over their bodies!
What They were Really Doing
Were people in Corinth doing all of that? Well, not exactly. They were engaging in ecstatic speech (probably like you might see in some Pentecostal churches today) but studies have shown that such speech is never actually any identifiable human (much less angelic) language.
None of them were actually moving mountains (that would be a major geological event that we would still find traces of today). No one has ever understood everything. And obviously none of them who were still part of the church had given up their bodies.
Making Good Things Ultimate
Paul is making a fine point here. He is talking about things that they were doing that were good things. They were meaningful parts of their spiritual lives. But Paul is criticizing them because they made them greater than they were. They made them into things of ultimate importance. That was where the problem lay.
Now, as I say, I don’t think that we will have divisions over the specific things that divided the church in Corinth. But I do expect that we have divisions over things that are meaningful to people in their Christian life and practice – good things and legitimate parts of spiritual practice but that we turn into conflicts because we give them ultimate importance.
Worship Spaces
We have actually already named some of these easily identifiable friction points in our discussions together up to this point. There is a recognition that we all find worship space to be a significant and positive part of our spiritual lives. The folks at Preston have all had to come to terms with the loss of a worship space that meant so much to them for a very long time.
But they shouldn’t be the only ones. We at St. Andrew’s also need to recognize that this new relationship will bring changes to our space and we haven’t even begun to process that. Part of that is, of course, finding places and ways that we can honour some significant items that the Preston people have brought with them, but I suggest that, as time goes on, we will discover other changes to our space that might prove more challenging.
Our love of our space is a good thing, and, for that reason, we don’t like to see changes. But the point is that we can manage such change so long as we don’t make the mistake they were making in Corinth and see this good thing as a thing of ultimate importance.
Obvious and Not So Obvious
Some of the other obvious friction points that we have identified include time of worship, congregational names, the Lord’s prayer. Each congregation has different traditions and of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with loving those traditions. It is the temptation to make them have ultimate importance that is the source of possible division.
But, as I say, these are just the obvious ones. There is no doubt that, at some point, we will run into some difference that will take us completely by surprise. Something will change because of this new relationship we have formed, and somebody will see that change as a bridge too far. We will see conflict. I can almost guarantee it because it is almost inevitable.
Paul Speaks to Us
So the Apostle Paul speaks to us, his voice echoing down through the centuries. He is teaching us how to deal with that kind of friction when it arises. He teaches us that the answer is that whenever we start to invest good things and meaningful practices with ultimate importance causing conflict, we need to realize that there is one thing that is more important than any of them. And that one thing is love.
So, when Paul starts to describe the nature of love, you shouldn’t be imagining a young married couple. You need to be imagining yourself dealing with other Christians in your church.
Living Out Paul’s Words
When he writes “Love is patient,” you need to be telling yourself to be patient with your brother in Christ who is having a hard time letting go of something that has been meaningful to him. When he says that “love is kind,” you need to be practicing kindness in all things with your sister in Christ.
When Paul says, “love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude,” you need to be examining your own conduct in the church and asking yourself when you have given into such attitudes.
And when he says that love “does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs,” you definitely need to be asking yourself when you have behaved like that. If you have insisted on getting your way even when it hurts another, you have not been practicing love.
How can we do that? How can we decide to let go of things that have been meaningful and significant to us because we decide to love? I think that Paul teaches us something about that.
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.” He teaches us. “When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face.”
How do we come to the place where we decide that our love for our fellow Christians is more important than some practice or place or name that has always been meaningful to us? We can do that because we recognize that our understanding of such things is never complete. We don’t have all the answers. We don’t have it all figured out.
What Lasts Forever
The things that have mattered to us have not mattered because they are necessarily the best for all times. Frankly, our forebearers in the faith probably just made a lot of them up along the way. And then they became traditions. Then we started to invest them with ultimate value. And then we couldn’t let go of them because they meant too much.
But if we can always remember that, at best, we only know in part, we can be willing to step back and give some space to what someone else has known because we have committed ourselves to love them.
Whatever practices of the Christian faith that we have had, they will not last forever. Our church buildings will all one day be reduced to dust, their names will be forgotten. That one thing that we thought was of ultimate importance and we refused to give it up, it will be gone.
Paul is clear, none of those things will endure. In fact, only three things in our congregation will last forever: faith, hope and love. And need I remind you that the greatest of these is love, so any of us can let go of anything in the life of the church if we do it for love.