Love Never Fails

 

Read 1 Corinthians 13

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Love God with everything you’ve got. Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.

Let’s raise the bar. Love each other with everything you have.

If you can get this love business right, you have fulfilled the demands of the law. You have fulfilled the heart and essence of the law.

The story was improbable if not impossible. Jesus had to go to the cross. The Jews wanted to stone him, but that would not align with prophetic parameters. His bones could not be broken.

He had surely angered the self-righteous, but had not sinned against his Father. He and the Father were and are one.

Two choices were available to those who wanted to maintain the status quo.  They could throw in the towel and follow this guy or kill him.

Killing seemed more palatable to the self-proclaimed righteous people than seeing the truth and adjusting their own lives.  These people were oblivious that God used their sinful natures to facilitate the sacrifice required to atone for sin once and for all.

There is one constant in all of this: God’s love. God’s love wins every time.

This early morning service and present excitement over something that took place two millennia ago is all rooted in love.

Some years, we break from whatever homiletic course we are on for Palm Sunday and Resurrection Sunday. This year, our journey through Paul’s letters to the church in Corinth put us on Chapter 13 for this Sunday.

It’s the love chapter. We find it between two chapters about Spiritual Gifts. It begins at the end of Chapter 12 with these words: And yet I show you the most excellent way.

 Hear it once more.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

But today is about Jesus rising from the dead. Today is about the promise of our resurrection and eternal life in the reality of his resurrection.

Remember his words: I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even though this body that carries us around in this life will die.

Today we sing, He Lives! He Lives! Christ Jesus lives today!

Remember his words. The moment you believe in Christ Jesus, you have crossed over from death to life.

Today is about resurrection, life, and for us, life eternal.

But why?

All of this life business has been rooted in love from the beginning, for God is love. In his very essence, God is love.

If I can do all sorts of impressive stuff but don’t have God, I am nothing. If I am putting points on the scoreboard of life but don’t have God, I gain nothing.

God is all of the qualities that we desire—patience, kindness, honor, selflessness, and joy in what is good.

Everything we can touch, feel, see, and taste will melt away one day. Only God is eternal.

We know a little, but not everything, but one day our eyes will be opened to so much more.

Once my thoughts were governed by the world that I had been conformed to, but now I have put away those immature thoughts for the ways of God.

One day, it will make more sense to me, and this choice to abandon the ways of the world might just make sense to those who condemn me now.

I won’t paraphrase the last part. It’s too good just as it is.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Consider these two statements. God is love. Love never fails. God never fails.

God never fails!

Love never fails!

That means that we can count on his promises. His word never fails. It will not return void.

We have some powerful promises. Today, we focus on one.

Your belief, which today we recognize mainly in our professions of faith and the act of obedience we know as baptism, shows that you have crossed over from death to life. These are the visible signs. God sees the heart and knows the moment that you believe.

You didn’t surprise him. He knew you would come around and receive the gift.

His heart desires that you spend eternity with him. That part of eternity you live now is to be engulfed in and governed by love.

Yes, today we celebrate resurrection, but there is no atoning sacrifice in the blood of the Lamb without love, and there is no resurrection without the death and burial of our Lord.

There is nothing without love. God is Love. With Love all things are possible.

And Love never fails.

When you have those conversations we are commissioned to have with others we encounter, introduce God as your best friend, Love. Introduce people to Love.

This whole story is rooted in love.

Celebrate resurrection as the best victory ever. Jesus conquered the grave.

Now live a life of love.

Set aside the world's worries and consider the One who overcame the world. Consider love. Listen and rest in these verses one more time as we close.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Celebrate resurrection.

Live a life of love.

Love never fails!

Amen.

I hope you dance

 

Read 1 Corinthians 12

As is often the case, we need to go back one chapter to find the antecedent of what Paul discusses here. Differences are part of who we are—in fact essential to seeing who has what gift or ability or need—but those differences need not lead to divisions (11:17-19). They should bring us together.

One God

One Spirit

One Body

One Accord

One God manifested in every iota of creation.

One Spirit manifested inside of us, all around us, hovering over a formless earth.

One Body and many parts all essential to the full functioning of the body.

One Accord from all of our differences we push forward without division.

The One God has given us One Spirit from whom we receive many gifts that are to be used to produce fruit for the body and bring glory to God.

We are all gifted differently but all made to live in one accord.

 None of us are the whole. We really can’t even be an island unto ourselves. We are all connected, but we are not always in one accord.

I will take a little license with Paul’s explanation.

Foot: What’s going on in the control center? Why am I slamming on the brakes? I was just feeling the road.

Eye: There are flashing lights behind us.

Foot:  You didn’t see them?

Eye: Obviously not, did you?

Foot:  Nice. Why do we keep you around?

Eye: We all put it to a vote.

Foot:  And?

Eye: The Ayes (Eyes) have it!

Foot: Don’t give up your day job.

Eye: The guy with the flashing lights is still there. There’s a spot. I’m pulling over.

Bladder: Good. I will always take a stop.

Sometimes, it seems that one part of our body does not know what others are doing, but those other parts are not dispensable. One part is not to be idolized. No matter what taxonomy we place on the parts of the body, all have a valuable part in the overall design and functioning.

I can live without an arm but not without a heart, but still, the heart can’t say to the arm, I don’t need you. We can live without you.

We need to quit triaging our bodies and think about it working at full capacity.  That’s the essence of the analogy.

How can one part not know what the others are doing?

I just finished the Evasive Dring Course at Bill Scott Raceway near Winchester, Virginia and was headed towards Washington, D.C. The last thing our instructors told us before we left that Friday afternoon was watch your speed.

Yeah, sure, ok.

Somewhere on the outskirts of the capital city, I think near Dulles Airport, I glanced at my speedometer in my Volkswagen Golf and it was over 120 ad maybe 140.My eyes came of the dash and scanned for any extra pretty lights.

Whew! Dodged a bullet there.

Yes, I backed off the accelerator a few seconds later. Why wait a few seconds?

C’mon. I was already right at 140. Why not see what this finely tuned German lawnmower engine will do? Should I go on sinning so that grace could abound even more?

I didn’t. It wasn’t really the discretion over valor thing. It was Mr. Practical showed up unannounced im my mind and reminded me:

·       It’s not like I carried a backup motor with me for long trips in case I blow up one along the way.

·       I was certain that a speeding ticket for doing twice the speed limit wasn’t going to be my budget.

The rest of that drive at only 10 or 15 miles over the speed limit—still driving by grace—was boring. OK, I might have tried 120 again in an open stretch.

What does any of this have to do with the body?  I was driving along as if the week before had been like the past dozen, but it wasn’t. I had grown accustomed to driving at very high speeds. This drive on the interstate seemed like any other drive, other than the unusually high number of people putzing along.

My mind, my thoughts, my awareness had no idea that my foot was having the time of its life.

When I need to pass a car on a state road and need to make it happen quickly, I know exactly what my foot is doing.  On that entry ramp to the interstate, I want to feel the accelerator. My eye can’t do that.

The ramp sign may say 55 but I know I need to do 35 and let the traffic pass or 95 and I need to feel the response now.

But on that summer day a few weeks before I was headed to big sandbox, life was normal for most of me, and really good for my foot closing in on warp speed.

Our bodies are designed to work as a unit. That doesn’t always happen.

Our diversity when used for the common good can give us uncommon results.

Our diversity, when used for its own purposes, debilitates the body.

Let’s do this again.

One God

One Spirit

One Body

One Accord

It is not our differences that matter as much as that we use them for the common good—for the body if you will. To do that, we need to be in one accord.

How can we ever do this with so many body parts or gifts?

By the same Spirt that manifested those gifts in you.

It’s more connection.

It’s more koinonia.

You all get extra points this month for enduring another Greek word. This one is perichoresis. You can find some fancy definitions to go with that one, but I took them all and am going with Divine Dance.

The Father, Son, and Spirit are God manifested to us in three entities—three persons. They are different but never divided. They dance in harmony.

The One Spirit has manifested in us many different gifts but they are to be used in harmony. Paul’s example was the human body, but we have this divine example of Father, Son, and Spirit. In a similar vein, we can also look at the divine Jesus and human Jesus existing in harmony. We don’t dig into that much, and today, I think the divine dance of the trinity will suffice.

Differences do not require division among us. Diversity can take us farther than uniformity if the cause is common to and good for all, or in our case brings glory to God.

 The message of this chapter is not the hierarchy of apostles and teachers or nursery workers.

It’s harmony.

It’s accord.

It’s oneness in our differences.

Our model is a divine dance.  We have been asked to dance by God himself. To join this holy Trio of Father, Son, and Spirit as they do things God’s way and never look back.

It’s sounds great, and I’m sure we will get there some day, but did anyone remember that we are still living in these human bodies with sinful tendencies and would surely muck up any dance we were invited to attend.

I used the Movie Scent of a Woman as an analogy to frame our struggles in life. It was in a First Light service not too long ago. I will use it again to call us to embrace the divine dance to which we are invited.

The movie had Al Pacino and Chris O’Donnell as the lead characters.

Pacino played retired U.S. Army Lt. Col Frank Slade. He was blind. He had seen combat, but his blindness came at the hands of his stupidity, not the NVA. Slade also has no filter. You see why I liked the movie.

But Frank kept pressing on. He was living his life with the occasional depressed mood and even suicidal tendencies, but he didn’t quit.

Chris O’Donnell was to accompany Al Pacino during a school break. O’Donnell’s family lived on the West Coast and the school was a prestigious East Coast Academy.

So, we have a temporary mentor who is struggling and a kid with a problem. The school dean is trying to manipulate O’Donnell. I won’t ruin it for you if you haven’t seen it.

Pacino takes O’Donnell to a fancy club with a dance floor. He asks him to describe the dimensions and layout of the floor. Then Pacino asks a lady to dance, and he is an exceptional dancer. The dance was the tango.

She never realized Pacino was blind until O’Donnell helped him find his seat at their table after the dance.

O’Donnell is amazed but has to ask. What happens if you get tangled up? I love the response.

If you get Tangled up, Tango on.

Tangled up, Tango on!

You keep going, trusting, believing, and living. If you get tangled up, just tango on. Our miscues, mismanaged motivations, melodrama, melancholy moods, and other states of our being that don’t align with my alliteration have already been accounted for by God when he asked us to dance.

The Father, Son, and Spirit hold a divine dance daily—each different and unique but completely in sync with one another.

We as many parts of one body, as people with various gifts, as creatures all made in the image and likeness of the one true God but different in many ways are invited to this divine dance.

It starts—whatever our gifts, talents, and roles we have been given--by us getting in step with the Spirit that lives within us.

We can know harmony.

We can live in accord with one another.

We can embrace our various differences in a common purpose.

And God has already factored in how many left feet we have,

One God

One Spirit

One Body

One Accord

That’s the dance card. Don’t sit this one out.

 

Amen.

Let's talk men's fashion...

 

 

Read 1 Corinthians 11

I know what he is going to talk about. Tom will use these scriptures to tell people to park their cowboy hats and ball caps on the rack outside the sanctuary.

He is going to say that this sanctuary is to be a place of reverence, so park your popcorn and energy drinks in the car.

He is going to post an organizational chart with the man, the woman, children, pets, plants, and then kids in the hierarchy of things.

He is probably going to do an old guy PowerPoint with neverending analogies from the Corps or worse, more dad jokes that he got on sale.

Or not. What did Paul say?

These are the governing words to remember: Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.

That said, Paul starts dispensing some grooming and fashion advice. Men—no head covering.

Women—just who are you to go around with your head uncovered?

Men—get a haircut. High and Tights would be excellent.

Women—don’t even think about getting a man’s haircut.

Here’s the logic.

There is God. That’ not a hard sell.

Then there man. He is next. No ball caps between your gord and God.

Women—sorry, you are a little farther down the ladder.

Now, we should hear the backpedaling. What? Paul became a little conciliatory. Really?

Women, remember when you were just a rib?  That’s just the way the forbidden fruit fell long ago.

I know, ever since then, man has come out of woman.

So, it’s not a governing hierarchy, is it?

Where did we begin?

Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.

Paul said that he was following Christ. If you're unsure about the next step, look to me. I’m doing my best to please the Lord. We’ve talked before about the rights I have as an apostle, but those things don’t matter to me.

Bringing glory to God, that matters to me.  I’m on a good track. My example is solid.

Here is some good advice. It is not directive or punitive as far as I know. I am not going to say it here, but I think you and future believers will sometimes go a different path.

Make no mistake, Paul is not lukewarm about this.  This is our way! While I am in this world leading the Gentiles to Christ, we will do some things my way.

If you have taken the yoke of a Rabbi, and this one was a Pharisee, you sometimes get some strict stuff. This was not a Rabbi-disciple relationship, but Paul was surely mentoring the new church, one in which there were few that migrated from the Synagogue.

These traditions may have been more Hebraic than Hellenistic, but Paul felt them applicable to then and there. What do we do with them?

Embrace the story: God creates man, then woman from his rib, then woman creates a man in her womb and delivers him into the world.

It’s a hierarchy that is a cycle and hardly central or governing. Accept God’s order of things throughout creation. Embrace it. Fighting it won’t change it, but I am not giving it more time today or tomorrow.

Chew on his counsel. Now, let’s get back to making disciples.

Absolute Humble

 

Read 1 Corinthians 11

Paul is motoring along without regard to where the chapter breaks will come. To his credit, this is a letter made into one of 66 books that we know so well.

There is overlap and a little repetition, but the subjects addressed were not only timely for Corinth but for us as well.

This Jesus is Lord business is serious stuff. He is our Lord and that’s more than a perfunctory title. We owe him allegiance, commitment, obedience, and love. Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe.

That means that we take our commission seriously. We make disciples.  I spent a fair amount of time on what some might consider peripheral matters, the grammar and syntax of inviting someone to church. We invite people to become the church.

We invite people to live! Come and know Christ. Come and know life. Come and know peace. Come and know the Lord, and those who also call him Lord.

One of the benefits of knowing the Lord and being connected to others who know him as Lord is this thing we call fellowship. The Koinonia of this relationship is a benefit not everyone comes to know.

We are blessed to know it unless we have what I describe as an out-group.  The Family of Faith doesn’t have outgroups. It’s all family, in whatever shape and size we come in.

We are family!

And today, we look at the Lord’s Supper. This is still Koinonia. It is an intimate fellowship with God—with the Lord. We draw near to him. He draws near to us.

It’s necessary to get into a fellowship with other believers. But what is it?

Bread and Juice?

Bread and wine?

Pellets and Shot Glasses?

Light fare for heavy matters?

Something a little tastier than the Seder Meal? This unique meal included the Passover Lamb whose blood had delivered them from bondage in Egypt. The story was retold each year so that it would not be forgotten. It would be remembered.

 

Just another meal with no meat? This time, the Passover Lamb was headed to the cross where his blood delivered and still delivers the people of God from sin and death.

What is the Lord’s Supper? It is occasion and method by which we were told to remember the Lord, to include his life, death, resurrection, and promises.

Do this to remember me.  Remember?

Hold your horses!  Paul wasn’t at the Last Supper. How could he know what Jesus told the others?

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

 In these first words, Paul authenticated the validity of the instruction. This is from the Commanding Officer. I wasn’t at the original Last Supper. Check Davinci’s painting when it debuts, but this comes from and with the ultimate authority.

Paul references that specific night, not by day or date, but by the betrayal that would terminate the koinonia present among the disciples—sleepy as they were—and their Lord, setting off a series of totally impractical events, which could only be the plan of God.

Then to the elements.

First, the bread represents the body of the Lord, which was broken for us, although He didn’t break any bones. We are to do this to remember Jesus Christ our Lord.

Next the cup, likely full of wine, but a shared cup. Today, we get a lot of grape juice, but this was likely the fermented fruit of the vine.  The Seder Meal traditionally had 4 cups of wine, so it was probably wine, not just juice.

It is the cup. It represents the New Covenant. This is the covenant poured out in the blood of Jesus. We are to remember this as well.

The New Living Translation puts it this way.

After supper he took another cup of wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you.”

It’s not really the meal, though keeping fidelity with the elements is a good thing. It’s about remembrance.

Remember Jesus—body broken; blood shed for our deliverance. Remember.

Paul added a reminder that would have been out of sync at the Last Supper. Paul said that we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes again.

That we proclaim it means that it is important.  What is?

I am good about not letting too many things get under my skin. Some things are important, and some are not. Just let the nonsense roll off. Don’t take criticism from people you wouldn't seek out for advice.

Every once in a while, yell at the television or computer or the idiot that thinks he is Danika Patrick in the construction zone in OKC , but generally, much of the stuff that gets to us doesn’t matter in the fulfillment of God’s plan.

There are some things I just can’t cope with, at least not yet. Whoever said it was ok to have only a single space after a period did not consider the damage to the ego and psyche of old people. We were not consulted. This cannot stand.

How about calling it a disorder to want things in order? I’m not down with that.

Those were a little tongue-in-cheek, but this is straight-up serious. Have you ever seen those posts about how badly someone messed up, sinned, ruined their lives. They should be convicted of everything in the book, but…

JESUS DROPPED THE CHARGES!

No, he didn’t!  Every charge and specification against you was fully prosecuted. You were guilty and sentenced to death.

Jesus stood in your place when it was time for punishment. No charges were dropped. Jesus paid it all.

JESUS PAID IT ALL!

When Jesus died on the cross, that single act of death accomplished more than any other death in history.

It was and it is important. It is something to proclaim. We proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes back to get us. This is important.

The church in Corinth was probably trying to hold a fellowship meal and then partake of the Lord’s Supper somewhere during that meal, likely near the end to maintain fidelity to the original practice. I am glad we don’t attempt that here.

Imagine trying to spend intimate time with the Lord between the first round of plate-piling and dessert. Would you grab me another slice of that pecan pie on you way back?

There were fellowship issues that we talked about last week and now we look at this cavalier approach to the Lord’s Supper. Paul, made his counsel something of a warning.

Don’t approach this table in an unworthy manner. Don’t even strut in here thinking that you are all that when the remembrance of the Lord should take us immediately from puffed up to absolute humble^©.

I’m coining that term right now. I’m going to slap the old copyright© on it and have one writing project already set up for retirement. Absolute humble.

I might have borrowed a little bit from science—absolute zero. That’s when it’s so cold that all molecular motion ceases. It is -273 degrees Kelvin. It even needed its own metric.

Believe it or not, the wind chill here has never quite reached that point.  Back to communion with the Lord. Our destination before we arrive at his table is absolute humility.  We are completely empty of ourselves.

Absolute humble—yes, I know the proper syntax is humility—is that point when all human self-righteousness ceases. We have emptied ourselves of ourselves. 

Absolute Humble

Do we get it. This is the most important death in the history of death.  We proclaim it. It doesn’t make sense in the terms the world knows. Death is the end.

Except for us. This death that we proclaim was the beginning of life for us. The moment we believed in the Son of God who died on that cross, we crossed over from death to life.

That death atoned for our sins. We were made and are right with God. None of this is of our own doing. We just believed and received.

Remember my last pet peeve from earlier. Jesus didn’t drop the charges. He paid our price in full. He received our death penalty punishment. There was no appeal.

And he took the sin of the world upon himself for us—you and me for sure—but the weight of the sin of a world of lost and condemned people was upon his shoulders until he cried out, “It is finished! +

If we remember this, we will come to the Lord’s Table only after examining ourselves. Even if we just had the best week of our life, when we examine ourselves and remember him as he told us to, there is only one destination.

Absolute Humble

I need just a moment more, this time for the rest of the story. We will leave Paul of Tarsus for a moment, and then we will consider Paul Harvey.

The rest of the story is that when we reach absolute humility, the celebration that we know in resurrection is so much sweeter.

Come to this table in absolute humility. Leave in magnificent celebration!

To understand the victory, we must remember the price.

Come to this table in absolute humility. Leave in Extraordinary Celebration. It all starts by remembering him as he told us to remember him.

 

Amen!

 

 

From the CPC Confession of Faith.

The Lord's Supper

5.23 The Lord's Supper was instituted by Jesus Christ on the night of his betrayal. It is a means by which the church remembers and shows forth Christ's passion and death on the cross. The sacrament is also a perpetual means given to the church to celebrate and experience the continuing presence of the risen Lord and her expectation of the Lord's return.

5.24 The elements used in this sacrament are bread and the fruit of the vine, which represent the body and blood of Christ. The elements themselves are never to be worshiped, for they are never anything other than bread and the fruit of the vine. However, because the sacrament represents the Savior's passion and death, it should not be received without due self-examination, reverence, humility, and grateful awareness of Christ's presence.

5.25 This sacrament is a means of spiritual nourishment and growth, an act of grateful obedience to Christ, and a commitment to the work and service of Christ's church for all who celebrate it.

5.26 All persons who are part of the covenant community and are committed to the Christian life are invited and encouraged to receive this sacrament.

5.27 Each congregation should celebrate this sacrament regularly. Every Christian should receive it frequently.