Dangerous Love

Fourth Sunday in Epiphany – Year C

January 31, 2016

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

What is love? It's a question that most of us have asked ourselves or another person at some time. Love is one of those subjects that seems to return every year about this time. It seems like every store we go into is decked out with red and pink hearts. The card aisle is full of sappy sayings printed on cards. We are seeing the commercials and suggestions to buy the candy, to order our flowers before it is too late. Valentine's Day is just around the corner. It seems somehow fitting that as we prepare for that holiday, our lectionary calendar presents us with the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians; the so-called 'love chapter.'

Ask any preacher if they have ever preached on this text, and they will likely say yes. I'm not sure how many times I have been asked to preach on this text at a wedding. This is the 'go to' text for most couples getting married. It's easy to see why. The words are beautiful, the ideas and images it presents are wonderful; something to aspire to. When two people are beginning their lives together words like these help to set the stage, give everyone the warm fuzzies. Love is like that.

Love like that, when it's all warm and fuzzy is easy. When you look into another person's eyes and your heart skips a beat, or you get butterflies in your gut, love is easy. Love is easy when buying a box of chocolates, or a dozen roses tells someone how you feel. Love is easy when taking someone out for dinner and a movie is all that's required to show your undying devotion. Loving your brand new baby is easy. Loving the cuddles and the coos, the little fingers and toes. Loving your animals is easy, the way they love you, the way they crawl up into your laps and purr, the way they wag their tails and greet you when you get home. Love is easy like that.

But, what about when your spouse takes off their clothes at the end of the day and just throws them on the floor? What about when you find out they spent more money than you had in your bank account? What about when you ask them to do something, expect them to take care of it; and discover that they totally blew you off? What about when your teenager looks at you with disgust, or outright disobeys you? What about your baby when it's the third night in a row when you haven't slept more than 30 minutes, and you just changed their diaper for the third time in the last hour? What about when your dog eats your favorite pair of shoes, when your cat destroys your furniture? Love gets much harder then.

But, we all know love can be tough. Anyone who has been in a loving relationship, whether with a parent, a spouse, a child, or a pet knows that love can be hard. It's not always going to be those warm and fuzzy moments. There will be those times when you just have to shake your head and walk away. It's one of those reasons why the old, traditional marriage vows had that bit about 'for better, or worse.' We all know love can be tough, no matter how much a congregation and a pastor seek to love and support one another, there are times when conflicts come.

And, yet, no matter how bad those conflicts are, no matter how bad my sermon might be on a given week, no matter how badly I may have put my foot in my mouth, no congregation (yet) has gathered as a mob and tried to throw me off a cliff like the good folks in Nazareth did in our gospel lesson this morning. What was it Jesus said that was so angering, so radical, so challenging, that the reaction from the folks gathered in the synagogue was to drive him out of town and try to kill him?

Well, Jesus had just finished reading from the book Isaiah, that passage we heard last week. It was a passage that most people interpreted as having to do with the coming of the Messiah, and what the Messiah was going to do: bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. If he had just ended there things would have probably been okay. You see, this was the fuzzy level of love. The people of Israel understood that God loved them, that God was going to send a Messiah to do great things. It was great, and it was even greater that one of their own, a child they had watched grow up in their community, was claiming to be that Messiah. Things couldn't have been better.

But then, Jesus had to go off script, and say that God's Messiah, God's redemption, God's love wasn't just for the folks in Nazareth, or just for the Jews. God's love was also for people that the Jews viewed as foreigners, as those outside of the covenant they claimed with God. That went too far. They were the special ones, they were the ones that had been going to temple for years, they were the ones who had been following all those rules Moses had brought down from the mountain, they were the ones that God loved. Not those others. Jesus tells the folks in Nazareth about the love of God, and they go and try throw him off a cliff. The message of God's love that Jesus was sharing was too much for them, it was too challenging, it was too dangerous.

Love, the love that Paul talks about in first Corinthians, the love that Jesus preached, the love that Jesus lived, the love that Jesus calls us to, that love is dangerous, that love is risky; that love is threatening to the world. You see that day in Nazareth, Jesus preached about the love of God; and in particular, Jesus talked about who God loves; and they tried to kill him for it, they tried to throw him off a cliff. Jesus hadn't threatened anyone, he wasn't like John the Baptist who called people out as sinners. Jesus hadn't broken the rules, those of the synagogue, or the state (at least not yet.) All Jesus did that day was talk about the kinds of people that God loves. And they tried to kill him.

Love is dangerous, love is risky. Love is not warm and fuzzy, a nice card and some flowers. They tried to kill him because he talked about love, about loving people that are hard to love, about people that might be dangerous to love. Later, he would tell his followers that they are to love their enemies and pray for them. That's where the rubber hits the road. God loves the people that you hate. On that day in the synagogue, that's really what Jesus said; yes, God loves you, but God also loves the people that you hate.

That is not a statement, a fact, that is easy for any of us to accept. The people in Nazareth tried to kill Jesus for pointing it out. So, what does that mean for you and I? What does it mean when we think about the fact that God loves those people, those people in Afghanistan or Syria or Iran? That God loves the people that we would list as our enemies? Or that God loves those people that really get under my skin and drive me crazy; not that you have any of those, but I do. The God who loves the people who hurt me, the people who hurt my family, hurt my child. What does it mean to talk about that God? The God who loves the people that we hate.

If you think for one minute that love is easy, if you think for one minute that love does not make a difference, then I invite you to spend just one minute of your prayer time every day this week thinking about and praying for the person or people that you hate. Think about the fact that God loves that person as much as God loves you. And then, ask yourself, what it would take for you to love that person the way that God does? What would it take for you to see that person the way that God does?

Love is hard. Love takes strength. Love takes patience; not that I have to be patient with you, but that I have to be patient with myself, because I'm not good at this love thing, not the way Jesus wants me to be. Love takes courage; to love the people that no one else wants to love, to love the people that it would hurt your personal life, your career, your standing in the community to even be associated with. Love takes courage.

Love is hard. Love is dangerous. Love is risky; real love leads to the cross. Every single time, real love leads to the cross. It is hard, it is dangerous, and it may cost us everything. That is exactly what Jesus calls us to: dangerous, risky love. It's hard. I'm not going to lie to you, it's hard. And yet we try; again and again and again, we try at this love; because we know the truth of what the apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, what he says to us: that without love, without dangerous love, without risky love, without love that leads to the cross, we are nothing. Without love, everything else we do is pointless. Without love it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter, without love, how good of a person you are. Without love it doesn't matter how often you come to church. Without love, it doesn't matter how much money you give away to charity. Without love, we are nothing. Without love, everything we say, everything we do, nothing else matters. It has to be with love.

Not with Hallmark love, not with good feelings and niceness, with flowers and chocolates. Real love, dangerous love. Love that costs us. The whole of the Gospel, from the manger to the cross to the empty tomb, the whole of it, is God's invitation to us, to love. Real, dangerous, gets you thrown off a cliff, love. Real, dangerous, cost you everything, change the world love. That's what we're called to. A love that makes everything else matter. A love that changes us, and changes the world.

The apostle Paul says, these three remain: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these, the strongest of these, the most important of these, the most valuable of these, the most dangerous of these; the greatest of these is love. Amen.