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January 26, 2001In chapter 12 (from which we read last Sunday and the Sunday before) Paul has been dealing with unity and diversity in the Church, with the diversity of gifts in the context of the unity of the body. In chapter 14 (which is not used at all in the lectionary) he offers a long dissertation on the implications of the gift that the Corinthians seem to have prized most of all: speaking in tongues. In chapter 13, assigned to be read on this fourth Sunday of ordinary time, he seems to sidestep the whole discussion of specific gifts and their contribution to the life of the Church and gives his attention to something much more fundamental, something that sums up and surpasses the more limited charisms the Corinthians were so fascinated with. This chapter gives us the so called hymn to love.
Before we examine the text, it is important to be aware of what Paul is talking about here. The love he is talking about is not primarily the love of the Father for His creatures, nor of Christ for His human brothers and sisters, although God’s love provides the model and foundation for all other loves. The love that Paul is talking about is not a matter of emotion or sentimentality, of feeling good about somebody else. The love that Paul is dealing with in this chapter consists in good will aimed at the welfare of another, in wanting and doing what is beneficial for the other.
Our passage begins with a topic sentence (from chapter 12) that ties what will come with what went before: here’s something better than what we have been talking about. This is what you ought to be pursuing.
Then Paul writes of love from three different perspectives. First of all, all other gifts and virtues are worthless without love. Whatever charisms of tongues, or deep knowledge, or faith, or heroic generosity I may have, they don’t amount to much without love, without generosity toward our neighbor.
Next he offers some characteristics of love, fourteen of them in all, some positive (what love does), some negative (what love does not do). Love is willing to bear hardships without complaint, to ease others’ pain. It is not self-centered, boastful, easily offended. It is not judgmental or suspicious or cynical.
Finally, he deals with the permanence and maturity that characterize love. Love is not some transient and partial gift that serves only a limited purpose like prophecy or speaking in tongues or having great knowledge. It carries us beyond spiritual infancy to full and lasting maturity in the Lord. Compared to other gifts, love leads us to see things immediately and directly instead of looking at an image in a mirror. (Note that in Paul’s time most mirrors were of polished metal and not very efficient.) Love makes us ready for our final and eternal relationship with God, able to know God even as God knows us. In the last analysis, love is what’s important, even more important than the basic gifts of faith and hope.
In these two chapters of First Corinthians Paul has been talking about the most fundamental components of Christian life. The first is oneness in the life of Christ that we share (each exercising his or her own personal mix of gifts, to be sure). The second is love for our neighbor which gives meaning and direction to whatever gifts we may have to offer to the Church and which prepares us for our final union in Christ with Father and Holy Spirit in heaven.
These two basic components of Christian life are not distinct and separate. It is the life of Christ in us that impels us to offer love and service to our neighbor. Love expresses our likeness to Him. Living our life in Christ consists in giving ourselves away in love for the well-being of others, just as Jesus did. If there is no love and generosity in our lives, one could rightly wonder whether Christ is really in them, in us. Love is the way we demonstrate that living in Christ Jesus is really what we are all about. Without hard nosed, practical, patient loving, any claims we might think we have to faith and hope, to being religious, to standing well with God, to living in the Lord Jesus are mere pretense, spiritual gongs and cymbals.
Another way to look at these two realities (Christ’s life in us and our love for each other) is in the context of Christian maturity. To live one’s life for the benefit of others involves understanding what the life of Christ was and is. Jesus was and is not about pettiness and self-serving and whining about our needs. Holding grudges and fostering the memories of past hurts is not what Jesus gives us to imitate. Jesus was and is about giving Himself away. The extent to which our life is a life of self-giving is the extent to which we are really like Jesus, really mature in Him. Do you want to know how grown up you are in the life of faith? Ask yourself how loving you are.
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Conversation Questions
What does love mean to me?
What/whom/why/how do I love?
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