One Body

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1 Corinthians 13:4-8; John 13:34-35

May 3, 2015 • Portage First UMC

He had fallen hopelessly in love with her. He didn't want to, but he couldn’t help it. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he took every opportunity he could to be around her. He knew he shouldn’t, but as with people who have too much time and too much money, he often found himself checking her Facebook page and her Twitter account, trying to find out where she would be next so he could “just happen” to end up there. They talked often, and yet she had no idea of the desire, the lust that burned in his heart.

It got to the point where she was all he could think about. He would get up in the morning worn out because she had filled his dreams. And people began to notice. “Why do you look so beat up this morning?” his best friend asked one morning as they sat at Starbucks. Usually he just shrugged off such comments, but for some reason, he felt he could no longer keep quiet about his situation. He looked at his friend across his cup of coffee. “You know my half-sister Tammy?” His friend nodded. “I think I’ve fallen in love with her. She’s all I can think about.” His friend was silent for a long time, and finally raised his eyes to look back. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

Do about it? He couldn’t do anything about it! That was the problem. “What do you mean you can’t do anything about it?” his friend asked. “She’s only your half-sister. You’ve got money and power; you can do anything you like. Tell you what, here’s what you do…” And then he detailed a plan that, oddly, just might work.

The next morning, when he woke up, he called Tammy on the phone. “Tammy?” he said. “It’s me. I’m feeling really sick this morning. I don’t know if it’s something I ate or if I caught a bug, but I wondered, if you’re not doing anything, could come over and make me some of that bread you make. You know, the kind I really like?” Tammy, unsuspecting as always, agreed. She let herself into his apartment, and began working in the kitchen, making the bread. As it baked, he could smell the aroma filling the rooms. And when it was done, she called for him to come get some. “No,” he called back, “I’m too weak. Can you bring it back here to my bedroom?” So Tammy did.

The next thing she knew, he had grabbed her and forced himself on her. Before she knew it, her half-brother had raped her. It was over quickly, but not quickly enough. And as she turned toward him, she saw that his face had changed. She hardly recognized him; his face was filled with disgust. “Get up and get out,” he said through clenched teeth. What? No! You can’t do this, she told her half-brother. He picked up his phone and dialed his landlord. “Yeah, it’s me. There’s a woman in my apartment. Come up here and get her out of my sight.” At that point, Tammy fled and found her full brother, Abner. She told him what had happened, and that was all Abner needed to hear. He plotted and planned. He tracked their half-brother’s movements. And when everything was set, he had a mob turn on his half-brother and beat him to death. And that was the end of the story, or so they all thought.

Quite a story, right? Sounds like a modern-day soap opera, maybe something from Revenge, or Scandal, or Secrets and Lies. But this true story doesn’t come from any of those evening television programs; it comes from the Bible. Some of you may recognize it as the story of Amnon, Tamar and Absalom, three of King David’s children who created quite a mess in 2 Samuel 13. It’s a story that never should have happened, but did happen because of one man who had a twisted idea of love and another man who had no concept of the power of forgiveness. The author of 2 Samuel tells us that this whole thing spiraled out of control because their father, David, never once stepped in or corrected any of his children. David, we’re told, was “furious,” but that’s as far as it went. So Amnon’s lust went wild. Asalom's hatred turned into brutal revenge. And a family, a tribe that failed to love and forgive found that all that was left was a whole lot of brokenness (cf. 2 Samuel 13:1-39).

Today, we dive into the heart of this series we’re calling “A More Excellent Way,” as we look at the most famous part of Paul’s writing in 1 Corinthians 13. We’ve talked the last couple of weeks about how Corinth, the church, was a mess. Fighting amongst themselves, sexual immorality “of a kind even pagans do not tolerate” (12:1), and arguing over leadership. So Paul has reminded them of how important each and every one of them are, none one above the other but together equally. And then he has promised to show them a “more excellent way” of life—the way of love. In these verses, 4-8, of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul lays out one of the most beautiful and perhaps the most descriptive celebrations of love that can be found anywhere. These words have such wide application, in fact, that we’re going to take three weeks to look at them. In a couple of weeks, we’ll look at ways we love others in the wider world (especially in the world of politics). Next week, we’ll focus on love within the family, but this morning we’re going to focus on love within the church. What does it mean to love one another with this kind of love in the body of Christ?

First of all, as Pastor Deb mentioned last week, we need to be clear on what kind of love Paul is talking about here. The English language is pretty bland when it comes to love. We basically have one word—love—that covers a wide range of emotions, feelings and behaviors. We use the same word to describe our feelings toward a hamburger that we use to describe our relationship with our spouse. I LOVE this hamburger, and I LOVE my spouse. The Greek language, which the New Testament was written in, had no such limitations. The Greeks were quite precise when it came to describing love. I’ve shared with you before that Greek basically has four words which we translate as “love.” Filios describes love between close friends, brotherly or sisterly love; we hear that word in the name of the city “Philadelphia,” the “city of brotherly love.” It’s “emotional love.” Stergos is the love between parents and children; it’s that love that you have for your child even before they are born, and it’s a love that binds families together. Oddly, it’s also used in ancient times to describe the love between a dog and his owner. Draw your own conclusions from that one! Then there’s eros, in which you can hear our word “erotic.” It describes sexual love, passionate love between a husband and a wife, a love that is not just based in sex but based in a covenant commitment.

Paul uses none of those words here, which is also why I say he didn’t intend this passage to be read primarily at weddings. He’s not first and foremost describing an emotion we can summon up. Instead, Paul consistently uses the word agape. Originally, this word was used to describe someone who was generously favored by a god, and in Christian usage it came to represent the kind of love God has for us. No strings attached. Not something we can earn. Unconditional, based in a relationship with God, but it’s also something we are called to show to each other. It’s not “I love you if…” It’s “I love you because you are.” That’s the word Paul uses here: agape. That’s the kind of love he calls these Corinthians to, these Christians who are struggling to live in a Christian way. The “more excellent way” of living is a life characterized by agape. And it doesn’t take much thinking to realize that agape is rooted in the love of God for us because it has to be. There is no other love like the love God has for us. It’s a way of life we cannot live on our own, a way of living we cannot hope to carry out without God’s Spirit living within us. The way to agape can only be found when we allow the Spirit of God to help us (cf. Chafin, Communicator’s Commentary: 1, 2 Corinthians, pg. 163).

Now, over the next three weeks, as we work through various applications of Paul’s words here, we’re going to focus on a verse of two in the midst of this description of love. That’s not to say the other verses don’t also apply in that situation; it’s more because of the time we have. I want us to narrow our focus here and then invite you to consider throughout the week how the other verses might also apply in that situation. So this morning, now for the next few moments, let’s zero in on one verse that seems to be something that not only the Corinthians struggled with, but that we do, too. Paul says in verse 6, “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.”

Literally, Paul says that love “does not greet falsehood but greets truth.” Now, “greet” could also be translated as “welcome” or “rejoice,” but the idea here is pretty clear: if you love someone, you don’t have anything to do with any falsehood that might spring up about them. William Barclay, a well-known Biblical scholar from a generation or so ago, said it this way: “It might be better to translate this that love finds no pleasure in anything that is wrong. It is not so much delight in doing the wrong thing that is meant, as the malicious pleasure which comes to most of us when we hear something derogatory about someone else” (Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians, Revised Edition, pg. 122). In other words, Paul isn’t talking about enjoying doing evil; he’s talking about the ways we react to others when evil is done to or spoken about them. Or maybe, even more to the point, is this: it’s about how we react and what we do and say when falsehood—or evil—is spoken about or done to us.

So the question we have to ask is this: what drives our conversations and our interactions with others, especially other members of the body of Christ (cf. Green, To Corinth With Love, pgs. 65-66)? Are we driven by love, or something else? Do we rejoice in evil, in falsehood? Or do we rejoice in the truth? Perhaps one of the problems we have today is the presence and pervasiveness of social media—Facebook, Twitter and the like. It’s so much easier for falsehood or accusations or even just assumptions to spread. Sometimes it’s hard to tell truth from falsehood when information is spreading so quickly. Who really knows the truth behind what happened this week in Baltimore? Everyone assumes they know, but it was fascinating to me to see people on both sides of the issue pulling out Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes to defend their position. From one who thought the rioters were justified in doing what they did, I saw this quote posted: “These intolerable conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.” Others, wondering how violence heals violence, responded with this quote from King: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” As Christians, it’s vital to fall back not just on quotations from other Christians, but on the actions and words of Jesus (cf. Wright, Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians, pg. 171). He is our model, not anyone else. And we know how Jesus responded to hate, to falsehood. Jesus was accused of a crime he did not commit, and he was executed under a false charge of sedition and rebellion against Rome. Even the Roman governor, Pilate, knew the charge was false, and yet he felt his political hands were tied, so he ordered the execution. And Jesus, who had never hurt anyone, who had never sinned against anyone, was nailed to a Roman cross, killed in an evil way under a false charge. And how did Jesus respond? With only a few simple words: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Jesus, just hours before, had told his disciples, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). And then he lived that sort of love out even in the face of the greatest evil in history.

We deal in smaller falsehoods, smaller evils than being criminally accused and nailed to a cross, and yet we very often find it difficult to live that kind of love and forgiveness out in our daily lives, don’t we? It’s so much easier to delight in the evil, to greet the evil, than it is to rejoice with the truth. And, truth be told, it’s more fun, too, isn’t it? In the church, we tend to share those things as “prayer requests,” so that it appears we have only the best interests of the other person in mind, when really that is only a cloaked version of the water cooler talk that happens at work. You know, don’t you, that so-and-so got that promotion but they don’t really deserve it. You know, don’t you, that the other person got put on a committee and I didn’t because the pastors like them better. I can’t believe they let so-and-so lead worship; have you heard what their personal life is like? Little by little, we find it’s easier to delight in evil rather than to rejoice in the truth. Or we find ourselves building walls around our little part of the body of Christ rather than risking reaching across barriers to (a) find out the truth and (b) secure the unity of the body. We are, Paul says, one body, united through Christ, and we need to act like it. We need to live like it. Love does not delight in evil (or falsehoods) about our brothers and sisters in Christ, but rejoices in the truth.

The loving people Paul is describing here, then, are those who are “happy when the truth is known and acted upon and they have no desire to veil the truth, cover it up, or edit it…Rather than being glad about the bad, those who love have a way of excusing the faults of others” (Chafin 164). It’s not a matter of ignoring the faults of others; it’s recognizing that we all have faults, we all have sin, and no one sin is worse than any other. Paul is calling us to a place where we live in a state of forgiveness toward those who are in the body of Christ, leaving the judgment up to God and extending grace to others. The church, of all places in our world today, ought to be a place of forgiveness, mercy and grace. And yet, instead, we’re known as a place of judgment, of condemnation, of hypocrisy, and, to steal a word from Philip Yancey, of un-grace.

But, pastor, I hear people say, if I forgive their wrong, won’t that be the same as condoning what they did? Won’t I be “letting them off the hook”? Isn’t grace just an excuse for people to do whatever they want and get away with it? If you heard Pastor Deb last week, you might remember she said that grace doesn’t ignore the consequences of what has gone wrong. Rather, forgiveness seeks ways to mend, to build the relationship and it allows God to be the one who judges. Forgiveness isn’t saying the bad thing or the evil or the falsehood didn’t happen, or that it doesn’t matter. It’s saying it will no longer have control over us. Forgiveness isn’t “letting the other person off the hook;” it’s saying, “I’m no longer going to be defined by whatever happened.” The presence of forgiveness changes hearts and lives; the lack of it, such as in the story of David’s children, destroys lives. Forgiveness leads to genuine love and love heals. That’s what love does; love offers and lives in forgiveness.

Donald Miller tells of attending a university in Oregon that was not exactly friendly to people of faith. In fact, one of this university’s big events every year was a festival notorious for drunkenness and all of the sensual pleasures you can think of. In the midst of that festival, Miller and some friends set up a confessional booth, but the booth was not an invitation for people to come and confess the sins they had committed or were going to commit at the festival. Instead, Miller and others used the booth to confess the sins of the Christian church and their own failure to live out the teachings of Jesus. As people wandered by, some stopping in, Miller would say things like, “Jesus said to feed the poor and to heal the sick. I have never done very much about that. Jesus said to love those who persecute me. I tend to lash out, especially if I feel threatened, you know, if my ego gets threatened. Jesus did not mix his spirituality with politics. I grew up doing that. It got in the way of the central message of Christ. I know that was wrong, and I know a lot of people will not listen to the words of Christ because people like me, who know him, carry our own agendas into the conversation rather than just relaying the message Christ wanted to get across” (qtd. in Yancy, Vanishing Grace, chapter two, iBooks edition). And what was the response of the people who came by? Many people gave Miller and his friends hugs. People were gracious and generous. And maybe, just maybe, a few hearts were changed because they heard people who were focused on the truth, who were rejoicing in the truth rather than delighting in evil. Perhaps they knew in that moment they were loved, because love offers and lives in forgiveness.

And that’s why this table is a supreme example and reminder of love. When we come to this table, we remember that, on the same night Jesus gave his disciples that “new command” to love each other (John 13:34), he also gave them two symbols to help them remember that call to love the way he loved. The bread—his body. The cup—his blood. His body and his blood given as the supreme act of love and forgiveness and mercy and grace so that we, the members of his body, could rejoice in the truth with one another and with our world. So that we could be people of the truth and people of grace, just as he was (cf. John 1:14). How will you, in response to Jesus’ love, live out a life of forgiveness? How will you follow Jesus’ example (and Paul’s instruction) to not delight in evil but rejoice in the truth? What one step will you take, as you receive the bread and the cup this morning and move out in to the world, to make this body of Christ and this world a place where truth is welcomed and celebrated? Will you leave this morning the same as you came in, or will you allow this bread and this cup, this sacrament of love, to change you, make you different—more forgiving, like Jesus—today?