Love is....hard

This is the sermon I preached this past Sunday on 1 Corinthians 13:1-8. Click here to read the scripture passage first.

Love is…..hard!

Well in case you somehow managed to overlook the giant candy displays, the mountain of red balloons, the massive crates full of flowers, or the multitude of commercials with couples cuddling, today is Valentine’s Day. It’s a day when a lot of time and energy goes into celebrating our love for one another. We send cards, give candy, buy balloons, go out to dinner, order flowers, and buy things that sparkle. But it’s a day that is received with mixed emotions. It’s a day that is loved by some, a day that’s dreaded by some, and a day that, to some, feels more like an obligation than anything else.

Valentines’ Day for some is a day to tell that special someone how much you love them. For other’s it’s a day that serves only to remind them that they are alone, that they don’t have a special someone or for whatever reason, can’t be with that special someone. And there’s always a few people that say we shouldn’t need a special day to tell us to be thankful for the special people in our lives, instead every day should be Valentine’s Day. And in some ways that’s true. But regardless of how you feel about Valentine’s Day, it’s a day that causes just about all of us to think about love in one form or another.

If you asked someone to pick out a passage of scripture that talks about love, a lot of people would pick 1 Corinthians 13. Perhaps that’s because it is probably the most commonly read scripture passage at weddings. In beautiful and poetic language, Paul describes the nature of love for us. As a result, many of us have come to read and hear this familiar passage in an overly romanticized way. When we hear it we think about how beautiful it sounds, how a relationship founded on that kind of love would be seemingly ideal and how much we want to experience the kind of love that’s described. Perhaps that’s because it is used so often, in the context of such a joyous occasion.

This passage is beautiful and poetic and when we read this passage, most of us are much more focused on how this passage makes us feel than what it actually says. But when you stop to think about what it actually says. It’s basically a really nice way of saying, “Love is really really hard and a whole lot of work.” And it’s not just about the love between a husband and wife, this is the kind of love that Jesus calls us to when he says they shall know we are his disciples by our love.

Let’s look at the passage again. Paul lists several attributes of love. Let’s break them apart and spend a few minutes looking at each one. The first is, Love is patient. Someone once said, “Patients is a quality you admire in the driver behind you and scorn in the one in front.” It’s true though isn’t it? We all want other people to be patient with us but we aren’t so quick to be patient with others. Who can say that at the end of a long day where nothing seemed to go according to plan, you respond in a particularly patient way when you get home and find that your children didn’t do the dishes like you asked, or your spouse didn’t pick up the suit from the drycleaner that you have to wear to a meeting tomorrow? Who here can say that around day three or four of being snowed in you were feeling patient towards your little brother or sister, or your spouse for that matter? I’m guessing not too many of us. Patients is one of those qualities that sounds real nice, but not too many of us have.

Paul then goes on to say, Love is kind. Kindness is one of those qualities that is undervalued in our society. The smallest of kind gestures can make a difference in someone’s day. Maybe it’s as simple as a smile or a wave, letting a car in in front of you, or helping one of us short people reach something on the top shelf at the grocery store. Love seeks good for others in even the smallest and simplest of ways.

Love does not envy. It’s so easy in our society to think the grass is greener on the other side. We’re constantly being told to upgrade our phones and computers, to get the fastest internet out there, or to buy a bigger house. And when we for one reason or another, can’t do those things, it’s easy to become envious. We get to a point where we want those things so badly that we actually begin to have negative feelings towards people who do have them. Not only that, but all this business of upgrading and getting the latest model of something, slowly seeps into how we view relationships. Envy is one of the things that lead to affairs. Sometimes it’s tempting to think our relationship needs an upgrade, so we start looking for a newer model with sleeker packaging. Or we envy the way another person makes us feel or how they seem to have fewer responsibilities than we do. Love means not coveting other people’s position, or possessions, or partners.

Love does not boast. And by the way, boasting doesn’t have to be out loud. A lot of the times, us good Christians, keep boasting to ourselves, but we still do it. Boasting can be as simple and subtle as thinking to ourselves, “I can do that better than they did.” Or “When was the last time someone else did the dishes?!?” or when we get frustrated or impatient with someone who’s trying to fix something, and we literally take it out of their hands and say, “Just give it to me. I’ll do it!” We are being boastful anytime we think or act as if we are better than someone else. Instead, loving someone is

Love is not proud. This is similar to being boastful. I don’t think of myself as an overly proud or arrogant person. But I know I have been guilty of being prideful, it’s a subtle kind of pride. I know for me, the times it comes out the most, is when I’m wrong about something. And sometimes pride prevents me from seeing that as soon as I should, or from being willing to admit I’m wrong when I realize it. But loving others means being willing to admit we aren’t always right. Sometimes we mess up and we need to apologize and ask for forgiveness.

Asking for that forgiveness is made easier by knowing that Love is not easily angered. This is similar to being patient. Love recognizes that none of us is perfect. We all mess up and we all need forgiveness. Love recognizes that and is slow to get angry.

Not only that but Love keeps no record of wrongs. It’s so easy in the middle of a fight to bring up past incidents. We fight with friends and we bring up every time they ever snubbed us at school, or told someone a secret. We fight with coworkers and we bring up every time they were late on a deadline or gave us wrong information so the project was all messed up. We fight with our spouses and we bring up every time the toilet seat was ever left up, or every time they spent too much money without consulting us. Sometimes we bring up past wrongs because we’re being prideful and we want to feel like we’re better than the other person. Sometimes we bring up past wrongs because we haven’t fully dealt with the issue. But love means confronting an issue head on, and working to resolve it completely, so it would be pointless and petty to bring it up again. Keeping no record of wrongs means completely resolving or completely forgiving that that act becomes like a speeding ticket that’s been expunged from your record.

Paul’s description of love is beautiful but when you stop to really read the words, it’s a whole lot of work. It’s all about how we act towards others, and nowhere in this passage does Paul talk about the feeling of love. It’s not some warm, butterflies in your stomach feeling towards someone else. Love is how we act towards others and it’s acting in profoundly self-sacrificing ways. It means giving of yourself and not counting yourself better than anyone else. When we really stop to think about love in these terms, it’s really overwhelming.

If you still don’t think it’s overwhelming, then try this little exercise. Take a minute now to read this passage silently to yourself, except every time you see the word love, replace it with your name. Take a minute and do that now.

No seriously. Try it now before reading any further. Click here for the scripture passage.

How did it feel? Good? Encouraging? Overwhelming? Convicting? I personally always find that to be really humbling and convicting. Because for each one of those things, I can almost immediately think of a time, usually quite recently, when I haven’t lived up to that. This love thing, this Christian Love thing is hard.

Christian Love requires more of us than we have to give. It’s not something that we can just will ourselves to do. We don’t just wake up one morning and say to ourselves, “well I’ve been cranky and selfish long enough. Today I’m going to be kind and really love others.” It doesn’t work that way.

This kind of love, starts be recognizing that God loves you with this kind of profound Christian love. God is patient with us. God is kind to us. Jesus wasn’t boastful or proud, instead he humbled himself and became a human to show us the extent of God’s love for us. He even died on the cross to expunge all our sins, so there would be no record of wrong. Until you truly experience the love of God, the freedom that comes with forgiveness of sins, you won’t be able to truly love others. Until then, the passage from Corinthians is just going to feel like one big list of obligations, things you really ought to do. Instead they are supposed to be a natural outgrowth of our relationship with God. We are capable of love because God first loved us.

And we grow in our capacity to love others when we walk in step with the spirit. Galatians tells us that the fruit of the spirit includes love. When we seek to live each day, each moment in step with God’s will, we become more and more loving. That’s why Jesus ties together loving God and loving our neighbor. We cannot love our neighbor, not this kind of self-sacrificing love, without loving God. And when we love God and truly enter into that relationship, we become more and more loving towards our neighbor.

When you find yourself in the midst of a moment where you don’t feel very patient or humble, or forgiving, when you find yourself in the midst of one of those moments where you’re saying to yourself, “This love thing is hard” remember that God loves you. God loves each of you just as you are. It is this love of God that makes us capable of loving at all. It’s the love of God, that is able to flow through us and into our relationships with one another. When you feel like you cannot love one another, ask God to help you see that person as God sees them, ask God to help you be a vessel of God’s love for them.

I encourage you to continue to allow God to be an active part of all your relationship, in good times and in bad, and to allow the love of God to be the basis for the love you share with one another. In doing so, you will continue to be an example to those around you. May the love of God continue to guide you and uphold you.

Amen.