Stubborn, stubborn love

 

1 Corinthians 13: 1-13
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
February 2, 2025

Photo of a portion of a large oak tree trunk, rough and textured, with a tiny branch growing out of the bark, with four small green leaves. A bright light is shining on the tree from the left side.

Earlier this week the vice president was interviewed on Fox News. In the interview he talked about love, and to most people it probably sounded pretty reasonable. He said, “There’s this old school — and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family and then you love your neighbor and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” He then went on to talk about the concept of America First, which I would hope he knows has its roots in post-WWI White supremacy.



The Christian concept he’s talking about is St. Augustine’s philosophy of ordo amoris or “ordered love” but it doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. Augustine asserted that we are to love God above all else and then align our loves with what God loves. So it’s not ordering our loves in a human hierarchy but an inverted hierarchy, the kin-dom of God. God loves the poor and so the poor come first in the kin-dom of God. God loves the outcast, the oppressed, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, and so we are to love them as God loves them. Unconditional, unmerited, unlimited. Agape. Self-gift.



Many theologians, pastors, and priests took to Twitter over the vice president’s comments. You know the Church isn’t doing well when it’s arguing about what it means to love the way God would have us love. Which is precisely the reason why Paul was writing these words about love to the church in Corinth. We can get a pretty good idea of what love was like in the Corinthian church just by reading the opposite of what Paul wrote.



Love is impatient; love is unkind.
Love IS envious, boastful, arrogant, and rude.
Love insists on its own way; it is irritable and resentful.
Love crows when someone else does wrong and scoffs at the truth.
Loves ditches and runs at the first sign of trouble.



Sometimes I wish Paul had also said something like “Love is hard, love is work. Love is a verb. It is not a guarantee or a check list or a good idea in theory. Love makes claims upon your other loves. Love tells the truth you don’t want to hear. Love is stubborn, as stubborn as a mountain.” But then those Corinthians would have probably chased him out of town like the folks in Nazareth did to Jesus.



Jesus had one mandate. Jesus’ prime directive was LOVE. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemy. Everything else comes from there. Do this in remembrance of me. Forgive not once, not seven times, not seventy times but seven times seventy. This unconditional love isn’t anything goes. Anything goes is power that worships itself and demeans everything else. Nor is this love a doormat. This is a love that does not allow us to make idols out of our fears. This is a love that refuses to give into despair or self-pity. This is a love that does not give up its joy. This is a love that serves all and loves all.



That is why we come to this Table repeatedly. Love is hard, love is work. Love is a verb. That’s why the love at this Table is stubborn, as stubborn forgiving seven time seventy. As stubborn as inviting your closest friends, good people who will betray and desert you. As stubborn as refusing to take up a weapon. As stubborn as forgiving those who put you to death. As stubborn as being raised from the dead and returning to those who abandoned you.



The closer we get to people, the more we see their weaknesses, the more we see them at their worst as well as their best. The closer we let people get to us, the more they see our weaknesses, the more they see us at our worst as well as our best. Hear this wisdom from Nicholas Sparks’ book, The Longest Ride: “The truth is that the more intimately you know someone, the more clearly you’ll see their flaws. That’s just the way it is. This is why marriages fail, why children are abandoned, why friendships don’t last. You might think you love someone until you see the way they act when they’re out of money or under pressure or hungry, for goodness’ sake. Love is something different. Love is choosing to serve someone and be with someone in spite of their filthy heart. Love is patient and kind, love is deliberate. Love is hard. Love is pain and sacrifice; it’s seeing the darkness in another person and defying the impulse to jump ship.”



Love is stubborn, as stubborn as a heavy wooden Table, as stubborn as bread and wine, as stubborn as life disrupted for you. Love that is embodied in you and me and in our life together. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Benediction


Be stubborn in your love.
Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
Be hopeful in the face of despair.
Love those who cannot repay you.
Bind yourself to the fate of the oppressed.
Work for peace. Sing from your belly.
Care for the artists and the truthtellers,
The scientists and the dreamers,
The drum majors for justice.
Be stubborn in your love.