What is real Love?
Poets, philosophers, screen-writers, psychics, preachers,
tabloids, and every boy-band of all time have all be searching for language to
accurately describe and define real love.
And in the next eleven days, millions of men will pay
Hallmark to help them find the words. Save your money, guys, and listen up.
1st Corinthians 13. How many of us have heard this at weddings?
Love is patient and love is kind. These are sweet words from
Paul. Aren’t they???
They remind me of a wedding of a young woman named Sophie.
She and her boyfriend started dating in high school youth
group. They dated through college and he
proposed their senior year. The wedding
was beautiful, the pictures beautiful, the bride was beautiful. The words of
1st Corinthians 13 were read, and they were read beautifully.
A few short years later, however, Sophie fell out of love.
She sat her husband down and asked for a divorce. Sophie severed communication
with many people in her life. She said that she didn't feel like she was being
"true to herself" anymore.
Her husband was distraught. He sat in a lonely apartment and
started boxing up his things. He took
the wedding photos off the walls, and as he did, he thought about those sweet
words of 1st Corinthians. What happened? Wasn't love enough? Where
were those sweet words of 1st Corinthians when times got rough?
He went back and looked at those words. He studied them and prayed.
He asked for discernment, and read what others say about love. Here's the
answer that he got.
When you put these words back into the source of the letter,
you realize that Paul has a much different tone than we are used to.The people in Corinth
were struggling to love each other.
It’s important when reading a newspaper to realize what
section you’re reading. You wouldn’t read the front page, the cartoon, and the
editorials all the same way.
The same can be said about scripture. Paul is not writing a
psalm. He is writing a letter. This is advice.
It’s not cutesy love. It’s tough
love.
It should read to us as tough advice.
Love is patient. Love is Kind. Love is not envious or
boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not
insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices
in the truth. 7 It bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things...
There is no easy answer for why some relationships endure
and others do not.
But we can say this: Love
is tough.
Ultimately, we have one choice to make. Either we allow God to fill us with the Holy Spirit, so that our soul
can be aligned with God, or else we will always have a spot that is empty, that
is searching. And when your soul is empty, you're going to want to fill it with passing emotions. Love comes in many
forms. Eros, or romantic love, is fleeting. Agape, which is God's version of
love, is eternal.
----
Let's make a distinction between authenticity and integrity. Authenticity is being true to yourself. Integrity is being in tuned to God.
When I was a youth director I would take my guitar with us
to Mexico.
And during the trip, what started out as a perfectly tuned guitar would get a
little out of tune. Without a tuner, all I could do was tune the guitar to
itself. The chords sounded OK. Every day I'd tune the guitar to itself again,
and we got through worship and praise just fine. But by the time I got home,
the guitar sounded ok, but flat. After I tuned it, I struck a chord again. This
time the sound was pure. It was perfect. It was in tune with it's destiny. The
sound was heavenly.
Getting a guitar in tune is like being filled with the Holy Spirit.
It's having integrity that doesn't come from itself, but aligning itself with a
higher power.
1st Corinthians 13, is talking about aligning itself with
God's Agape.
Patience, kindness, non-resentfulness, truthfulness,
endurance: each of these by itself would be a tall order to fill. Each would
take training and stamina, like that of an athlete or a champion. As far as I
know, there has only been one who has
been able to champion these words, and He is champion of the world.
In Luke 4, Jesus Christ enters his home congregation after
being tempted by the devil. He is now filled with the Holy Spirit.
Which brings us to our Greek word of the day.
You Greek word is pleroo,
it is translated fulfilled/filled.
Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit.
When I talk to young people, I make a distinction between
authenticity and integrity.
Jesus has been preaching and gathering a buzz. He goes to
his hometown and delivers a whopper of a sermon. He sits down, and says,
“today, this has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
After worship, Jesus is going to leave, and the people
wonder why. Jesus tells them that he is called to be with all people.
Have you seen that movie (there are several) where some person discovers something that is
powerful, and instead of sharing it with the world, they keep it to themselves?
That’s what the Nazarenes want Jesus to do. They want to
keep him for themselves. It is as if
they are saying, "If you just stay here Jesus, you can be our preacher.
You can get those people who don't come to worship very often, and maybe they
will believe and come every week" -(This is not a new problem, by the way).
There are problems in Nazareth and Jesus could be a good parish rabbi. But that is not what he is called to. And when he explains that, they are filled with rage.
Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit, and they are filled with rage.
When Jesus refuses to stay, the Nazarenes decide that they
are going to throw him off a cliff because if they can't have him, then they nobody can.
This is what I call "a toddler’s version" of love. A
toddler might say that if you “really” loved me, you’d let me have another
piece of cake. Or if you "really" loved me, you wouldn't go to work
today.
The is operating from the empty place. It's the sort of
thing that Paul is a talking about when he says,
"If I speak with the tongue of angels, and have not
love, I am just a noisy gong or a clanging symbol." or- if I may add- an out-of-tune guitar.
And, similar to a
toddler, when they don’t get what they want, the Nazarenes are full of
rage.
The kind of love Paul writes to the Corinthians 13 about
being patient and kind are about the farthest thing from their mind.
When we think about love in its purest form, we think about
God.
C.S. Lewis writes, “God creates the universe, already seeing
the flies buzzing around the cross, and He does it anyway. God is love. God
creates out of love.”
Our prayers, our ministries, and indeed our lives are in response to God's love for us. God
loved us first.
Once you are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are
given the stability that it takes to be vulnerable to love others.
So whether you are getting married, about to purchase a
valentines card, or thinking of starting a boy-band, consider these words again
from Lewis, “One of the miracles of love is the power to see through love’s
enchantments without becoming disenchanted.”
Tuning your heart to Agape love will help you to walk like
Jesus. And His are big shoes to fill.
-Pastor Daniel Pugh
No comments:
Post a Comment