Love Is Not an Abstraction
Scripture
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
If I speak in the tongues of humans 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.
Sermon
Last week, we heard from the verses immediately preceding today’s passage. In those verses, Paul offered an extended metaphor about the community of faith, describing it as a single body composed of many diverse parts. Paul stated that members of the body suffer with one another and they rejoice with one another, inextricably linked whether conscious of it or not. We heard that if we are part of that body, then we will necessarily find ourselves entangled with vulnerability, the weak, and those who are disregarded and outcast.
This week and next, as we quickly march toward Valentine’s Day, we’re on the heels of that metaphor, this time, hearing Paul’s words about love.
Today, we’re hearing the first part of a three-point argument Paul makes. This is the start of what Paul called “a more excellent way” in the verses we read last week. This “more excellent way,” is the way of love, embodied in the saving life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
Now, what’s tricky about reading the epistles is that context is king. Some of the recipients of epistles were faithfully living as a community of Christ; some were openhearted yet immature; some were melting pots; some were insular. Because of that, faithfully reading the epistles is sometimes slippery, or at least confusing.
Think about it this way: Paul usually wears one of two hats:
There’s Pastor Paul, who is attentive to the pastoral concerns of a community. Pastor Paul thinks about relationships, material needs, worship, and church governance.
Then there’s Dr. Paul. Dr. Paul is a theologian at heart, who writes about the ins and outs of atonement, sin, and salvation.
The question we should ask is this: Is this Pastor Paul writing, or Dr. Paul writing? Are we hearing Dr. Paul work out theological ideas, trying to make sense of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ? Are we hearing Pastor Paul work out relational issues or flesh out Christian living? Are we hearing both, having a conversation?
We might think today’s passage is from Dr Paul, working out a theology of an abstract love. After all, this passage and next week’s are the most poetic of all of Paul’s writings. “If I have faith but do not have love, I am nothing.” “Love is patient, love is kind.” But we forget that love is not an abstraction. Love is not something to be sequestered in our heads. Love isn’t really for the ebbs and flows of our feelings or heart, either. Love isn’t synonymous with romance, or affection, or attraction; nor is it limited to positive thoughts about others.
Love is a vocation we practice. Pastor Paul isn’t describing an abstraction; he is writing about love to a community that is suffering, knowing that love is an immanent reality. The Corinthians are hurting because of their division. Members of the community are making power plays, others are forming factions, and some are excluding others. And Paul says love is a remedy.
“But we forget that love is not an abstraction. Love is not something to be sequestered in our heads. Love isn’t really for the ebbs and flows of our feelings or heart, either.”
When I worked as a hospital chaplain, I primarily worked in emergency rooms and critical care units. As I started out, I heard a stereotype about emergency department physicians: they’re adrenaline junkies. I thought: “How unfair! How rude! Stop stereotyping!”
Today, let me set the record straight: emergency room physicians are adrenaline junkies.
Oftentimes, patients arrive with a mix of psychiatric symptoms and physical symptoms. They might be experiencing chest pains, or tingling sensation in their face, and arrive at the emergency department to be evaluated, worried about a heart attack or stroke.
An adrenaline-junkie physician would go into the room, spend less than a minute inside, and exit, and the patient would be visibly distressed. In-out. Onto a more exciting patient.
Despite what it looked like from the outside, the doctor didn’t break the news of a heart attack or stroke. Instead, the patients were physically fine, but overwhelmed with emotion. Fear often ripped through the room: “What if the doctor is wrong? She was only in here for a minute.” Or frustration can rip through the room: “I wasn’t making it up… I was having really bad chest pain!”
It wasn’t a diagnosis or worsening symptoms that caused this distress – it was the lack of concern and love.
Those physicians got it so right, but as a result, got it so wrong. They had wisdom and understanding but had not love. They had the words and power, but had not love.
Empirically, there is a pervasive link between emotional intelligence and doctor competency. High emotional intelligence is generally linked with higher doctor competency. It turns out, without love—that vocation of compassion, concern, and altruism—words lose meaning. Actions lose power. Community loses cohesion.
You’ve probably been there, too, when you’ve gotten it so right, and yet so wrong. You say all the right things, or do all the right things, but it makes you feel worse, because it wasn’t done in love. Grumbling, frustrated chores. Visits with family that make you feel apathetic and depleted. Self-righteous “I told you so’s.” We all have been there, on both sides of the coin.
But don’t forget: Love is a vocation we practice.
“Paul isn’t describing an abstraction; he is writing about love to a community that is suffering, knowing that love is an immanent reality.”
In today’s passage, Paul gives us this laundry list of good deeds and gifts: insight and wisdom; faith and hope; extravagant giving and self-sacrifice. They are indeed good! But the Corinthians, despite these gifts and good deeds, are struggling. They are being pulled apart at the seams, all vying for attention and power. The formulas aren’t balancing out. The math isn’t working out. They’re getting everything so right, and yet everything is still so wrong.
We know what that’s like too. If we had more money as a church, we could fix this, or we could start that program. If we had more young people or more children, we could fill our classrooms again. If we had a bolder strategic plan, or new volunteers, or this or that, everything would work out.
The beautiful, terrible truth is that math doesn’t work out in the kingdom of God. Paul shows us that if we try to balance our spiritual formulas with gifts or skills or money or doctrine, we won’t ever get it right. We’ll always be swimming upstream, always getting it right with all the wrong results.
The only thing that will balance the formulas, and make the math check out, is when our souls practice love. When we adopt love as our sacred vocation.
“Love is a vocation we practice.”
To do so, to make love our vocation, or to follow this “more excellent way,” we might take a cue from Thomas Merton. Today’s quote for meditation says this: “Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.”
Love doesn’t take two to tango. It only takes one: the person who is loved. It’s not really about some sort of two-way or reciprocal relationship; it’s a posture in our lives that is unidirectional, always facing the person who is loved.
Love is where the self is set free to the Spirit, and God makes a home in its stead.
Though love seeks the good of the one loved, rather than anything or anyone else, it doesn’t leave us hollowed out, or put us in harm’s way. And it should be noted that love doesn’t erase the boundaries of ourselves, or bottom out self-esteem.
Instead, like Christ, our vocation of love is practiced from a place of wholeness, where we are willing and open to face the beautiful consequences of it.
“The only thing that will balance the formulas, and make the math check out, is when our souls practice love. When we adopt love as our sacred vocation.”
Recently, I’ve been rewatching the mid-90s and early-aughts sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. It centers on a married couple, Raymond and Debra, who try to navigate parenting, marriage, and pesky in-laws the best they can. During one especially contentious argument, Debra laments that the responsibilities for child rearing, cooking, cleaning, and managing the budget always fall on her, while Ray is out golfing, hanging out with his friends, and taking trips for fun. She reaches her breaking point, almost breaking down in tears.
Ray, as stupid as he may be, figures this one out. He tells Debra, “you’re right. You don’t get to do anything for yourself. I need to be doing more around here.”
But then… it dawns on him. If Debra is out at a movie, who’s going to be home with the kids? If Debra is at the spa, who is going to cook dinner? If Debra is at dinner with her friends, who is going to handle bath time? *Poof* Back to regular old Ray.
Ray was so close to practicing his vocation of love. For a moment, he sought only what was good for Debra — her wholeness, self-compassion, and opportunity to enjoy rhythms of rest. Everything else was beside the point. But then his self-interest got in the way. He wasn’t willing to face the consequences of love, no matter how good they may be. Ray didn’t want to spend more time with his kids, and enjoy their youngest years. Ray didn’t want to bring deeper love and appreciation into his marriage. And he didn’t have any interest in supporting his spouse’s wellbeing.
…
In Paul’s words today, we might be hearing an exhortation not only to love, but to open our lives to the beautiful and weird consequences of it.
Pastor Paul tells the Corinthians to stop making the math work out by cultivating more gifts, better ideas, and strengthening their institutional hierarchy. Stop loving because of what it will do! Instead, he turns it upside down: Just practice your vocation of love love. The church, and everything it entails, is a beautiful consequence of that vocation.
The consequence of love is that the Corinthians will become a body of Christ without hierarchy. The consequence of love is that they can hear the wisdom and understanding of each other. The consequence of love is that they will give of their abundance in ways that are healing, unselfish, and empathetic.
Those are not the motivations that will somehow spark love. They are the consequences of love itself.
For us, when we practice our sacred vocation, we will face good and weird and beautiful and challenging consequences of it.
Emergency department physicians will work to heal the whole person, instead of superficially fixing bodies.
Those in the church will commit ourselves to the unity of Christ, following the way of Jesus wherever it leaves, and whatever doctrine or beliefs or politics or ministries it entails.
We will focus not on the institution of our church, but on our ministry and needs of our neighbors before anything else. We will understand that what matters is not our numbers, but the wholeness of hearts and minds and souls.
We will let go of our individual power and control, especially as we serve in this church, because of our vocation of love.
…
Jesus Christ does not establish the church to believe in love. Jesus Christ establishes the church to practice and enact love; to carry out a sacred vocation of love. This is one of the only places on earth where love can become alive, where it can be set free from our egotism by the power of the Spirit. This is where people cross aisles, where people eat shared meals even with their enemies, and embrace a faith where the math doesn’t work out. That’s what will change each other, this community, and the lives of our neighbors in Newton, Sussex County, and wherever God leads.
Amen.
Sources
Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, J. Clinton McCann Jr., James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press 1994)
Yung Suk Kim, “Commentary on 1 Corinthians 13:1-13,” WorkingPreacher.org, 3 February 2019, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-1-corinthians-131-13-6
“A working alliance between physician and patient, characterized by agreement communication on goals and tasks of treatment, along with trust and patient liking of his/her doctor, predicts patient adherence, satisfaction, and quality of life. Psychological dimensions of attachment also predict patient adherence and quality of life.” —Bennett et al, “The role of patient attachment and working alliance on patient adherence, satisfaction, and health-related quality of life in lupus treatment,” Patient Education and Counseling, October 2011, 85(1):53-9, doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2010.08.005.
“These limitations notwithstanding, the present review shows that [emotional intelligence] measures relate to a wide range of competencies that modern medical training curricula seek to deliver. The pervasive link between EI and doctor competence carries significant implications for medical training.” —Arora et al, “Emotional intelligence in medicine: a systematic review through the context of the ACGME competencies,” Medical Education, 15 July 2010, 44(8). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2010.03709.x
