Love that Abides Forever: A Meditation on 1st Corinthians 13, for the 4th Sunday of Epiphany

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity,

I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

 And though I have the gift of prophecy,

and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge;

and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains,

 and have not charity, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,

and though I give my body to be burned,

and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

 

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not;

charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own,

is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

Beareth all things, believeth all things,

hopeth all things, endureth all things.

 

 Charity never faileth:

 but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail;

whether there be tongues, they shall cease;

whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

 But when that which is perfect is come,

then that which is in part shall be done away.

 

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child,

I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:

 now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three;

but the greatest of these is charity.

 

There is much in our readings for this Sunday worthy of deep meditation, perhaps all the more so for the confusion modern culture has created around the themes of these readings.  There is the opening chapter of Jeremiah where God reveals that He has known Jeremiah and marked him for his prophetic ministry from the womb to the nation of Israel preceding the Babylonian captivity; there is Christ casting out demons in Capernaum, healing the sick, and preaching the Gospel to the poor even after He himself was cast out of His own home town of Nazareth; there are St. Paul’s echoing words to the church at Corinth about the superiority of love over all other divine gifts, enduring forever with faith and hope.  While the Jeremiah text is often used to bolster the pro-life movement (which is a valid application), or to suggest that anyone and everyone is intended to have a ministry like Jeremiah’s (which is not a valid application), these are not the primary context of this passage.  Likewise, the miraculous works of Jesus as He preached throughout Galilee are not to focus on the itinerancy of His ministry nor attempt psychoanalysis of what a demoniac may have been understood as then versus today.  And St. Paul’s words on love are not primarily intended for wedding ceremonies, and certainly not as an excuse for modern people to bless or condone evil.  What all these texts do reveal, however, is the love of God for us—a love fulfilled in the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

The kind of love that St. Paul refers to is not what most Western people think of as love.  In Greek, there are words for love that refer to friendship, to the love between family members, to the romantic love between couples, or perhaps the love of a well toasted bagel—but there is a kind of love that transcends all of these, which is divine love.  Sometimes transliterated into English as “agape,” it is a love which often feels alien to mankind, because mankind is fallen in their nature.  Paul uses this term for divine love when he is preaching to the church in Corinth, and he knows that he must elucidate the concept, because Corinth was full of all kinds of love that were anything but divine.  Fallen man often sees love as an economic exchange, of satisfying one’s own desires or ambitions or tastes, in exchange for doing the same for someone else.  When love is centered on satisfaction of the self, it becomes a dark and corrupted thing, no matter what flattery we adorn it with through prose or poetry or cinema.  Selfish love reflects a fundamental love of self, which again reflects our violation of the first commandment as we make ourselves—through out own appetites and pride—our own gods.  Regardless of what we might want to believe, selfish love is not what abides forever because it is not real love, anymore than a contract with a prostitute or loose agreements with serial paramours is authentic marriage.  Real love is selfless.

 

This should give us pause as we reflect on Paul’s inspired teaching about love, and look to see it as God moved through the raising up of the Old Testament Prophets, and ultimately displayed it in the person of His only begotten Son.  When we look at Jesus, we see a love that was long suffering, had no envy, and did not puff itself up in pride; it did not act in unseemly ways, nor was easily provoked, nor thought evil; it did not rejoice or condone lies, but abided joyously in the truth; it believed every Word of the Father, endured all things, and never failed, even through betrayal and death on a Roman cross.  Jesus is the love of God made manifest to us, so that we might know what selfless, authentic love really is.  This is the love which moved God to create the world, even as He knew it would fall by the hands of men and demons into sin and destruction; the love that would endure all the rising and falling of history to bring forth His Messiah for the redemption of the world, even as the world He came to save would crucify Him; the love that would descend to the dead, and rise again victorious over every enemy of mankind, though He Himself needed no salvation; the love that would give all the good gifts of heaven to man by grace through faith in Jesus alone, because man could gain salvation no other way; the love that promises to abide with us to the end of the age, to hold us even as we pass from death to eternal life; the love that has promised to raise us all up at the Last Day, to restore the Creation, and preserve all His people from ever again being tormented by evil.  This is the love we see in Jesus, and the love which He has poured out on us.

 

If we are looking for a fulfilment of the Law, this is the love which does it.  This sacrificial, selfless love is alone what rescues us from the sin which corrupts us from the inside out, from the twisted caricature of love with which we so often abuse ourselves and others.  This is the love which finally polishes the mirror of the Law into its perfect brightness, that we might see Jesus alone as both the perfection of the Law and the Savior of all those who turn from their evil and trust in Him.  And not only does God display this love for us to behold in our Savior, that we might understand what true love is—He pours it out lavashly into you and me, so that we begin to love as we are loved, and to grow into the fullness of His love as the Holy Spirit continues to conform us, day by day, into the image of Jesus.  This is the love of God which gives rise to faith and hope, and flowers into all the other gifts of God bestowed upon the world, be they prophesy, or teaching, or healing, or any other good thing among us.

 

Ah, what grace upon grace is the love of God to us!  A fountain which flows without ever being diminished, a foundation so firm that it will endure though heaven and earth pass away, and a summit so high that we might spend eternity exploring its verdant ascents.  This is the love from which all our blessings flow, all our gifts, all our vocations, all our hopes, and all our life.  This is the love which covers a multitude of sins, that offers forgiveness and salvation and life in exchange for our all our self-made faults and destruction and misery.  This is the love that calls us into community with the gracious King of the Universe, who is Himself the source and summit of all our faith, hope, and love.  Gory be to Him forever and ever, unto ages without end, for the love He has poured out upon us in Jesus Christ!  Amen.