1 Corinthians 13:

1 Corinthians chapter 13 reads like poetry. This small nugget of a chapters is the most beautiful, provocative chapters in the entire cannon.

First of all, in the opening three verses, Paul becomes more and more provocative. Even I am the most eloquent, even if I have the tongue of an angel, it means nothing if I’m not filled with love. Makes sense. There are a lot of smooth talkers out there.

He goes further in verse two. Say I’m filled with the gift of prophecy and I have all knowledge and understand all mysteries. Yeah, nothing if I’m not full of love. But wait, even if I have all faith and all power, so much so that I can command the mountains to move. Nada, without love, it’s meaningless. Verse three ups the stakes still further. Say, I give up everything, everything I have to the poor. Say, even if I give my body to be burned. Still… meaningless without love.

There is literally nothing I can do that matters. No commandment I can keep, no sacrifice I can make, no gift I can bestow, no talent I can acquire that can make up for the lack of love. Love has to be at the root of all we do. Love is at the heart of religion if it’s to mean anything at all.

What type of love is Paul describing here, then? He breaks it down, in rapid succession:

Love suffers long, we are patient with ourselves, with others, with the world that is often exasperating.

Love is kind. With love, we have no envy, we celebrate and appreciate the gifts and accomplishments of others.

With love, we don’t elevate ourselves over others. Love operates within proper context (is not unseemly), love recognizes it’s not about us. We aren’t easily triggered by others when we operate within a loving context. We don’t think ill of another. We rejoice in truth. We believe, we hope, we endure.

Paul concludes this chapter the way he begins. We just cannot know everything. We know so little. We are fools. We see through the glass darkly. Prophecies fail, our words eventually cease, we’ll never know enough. But no matter, we can always love, no matter where we find ourselves, in our limitations, we can always love, the greatest of all.

1 Corinthians 12:

Chapter 12 is almost as important as 13, almost as provocative. Paul makes the case that we need each other. We can find unity in diversity. We all have different spiritual gifts, but they all come from the same spirit. Some of us doubt, some of us wrestle, some of us are wise, some of us are good with words, some of us have a believing heart, but we’re all essential in the body of Christ.

“The body is not one member, but many.”

Paul makes this point even clearer, those members of our congregation who are the most marginal, our weakest members, we elevate and honor them above all. “And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness.”

1 Corinthians 1-11:

Paul is writing this letter from Ephesus during his third mission. He’s received word that the church community he created during his earlier missions are running into trouble. Paul spent a long time in Corinth.

In this letter, he addresses specific problems, answers specific questions. Apparently Corinth was rife with divisions. People got caught up in elevating certain leaders over others – some factions for Paul, others for Apollos, some for Peter. There were the long running concerns about circumcision. Many converts struggled with idolatry. One of the chapters focused on sexual concerns. Paul wrote about marriage. Some of these chapters sit well within the context of the time.

But I love the bits about the wisdom of the world, that it is foolish. We are all children struggling to drink milk. We need to be one and united in our differences. I love Paul’s descriptions of the way apostles interact. With Jews, Paul is a Jew. With the weak, he’s weak, with the Greek, he’s Greek, and so on. So much of what we obsess with doesn’t matter. We have our idiosyncrasies. We come to church in our own context. Some of us are democrats, others republicans. Some are more educated, others less so.

But we all come, trying to develop agape, God’s love, universal, unconditional, often unrequited. We all come, in unity, as fools, limited, in weakness, but with a desire to serve and learn with each other.

This is the gospel of Christ.