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| A.Kumm-Hanson, Boulder, CO 2010. |
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.
This passage is easily recognizable. It is frequently read
at weddings, a day where we publicly profess love and commitment to one
another. Love is patient and love is kind…sometimes. But even the most perfect human love comes
with impatience and selfishness and carelessness, because that is what it means
to be human. This chapter is not an admonition to “love better.”
As I have mentioned before in this blog, I am witness to
extraordinary examples of love. I see
spouses who eat meals everyday together in memory care units, the husband
tenderly caring for his wife, who has not recognized him in years. I witness adult children caring for their
parents in love, bathing and washing and changing them. I witness parents
loving their dying children until the end, even as every fiber of their being
screams “This is not how it is supposed to be!”
But I also see people who don’t have families to love
them. Who are tucked into care centers
and adult group homes or in the hospital alone.
We refer to them as “unaccompanied patients” or “un-befriended
patients.” This burden of sadness
threatens to swallow me some days as seeing lonely people suffer is the most
difficult part of my job. It is because
of this that I refuse to accept that this passage is only about romantic love
or familial love. This chapter from 1
Corinthians is further illuminated if we look at what comes before it and after
it.
Immediately before the passage, we hear Paul’s exhortation
that the church is one body, with many members and that each has spiritual
gifts to offer to the greater body. After, Paul returns to this topic about how
gifts of prophecy and speaking in tongues can benefit the church. He says
nothing about spouses loving each other or parents loving their children. It is
about being in community and loving one another because we are first loved by a
God who walks among us.
I know God walks in nursing homes and ICUs and in homes with
hospital beds and oxygen tubing snaking about. Because God’s love shows up in
tender nursing assistants and priests who offer communion and comfort to people
they’ve never met because a strange chaplain (that’s me!) asked them to do so
and in recreation therapists who design activities to stimulate slipping minds
and in housekeepers who pause their cleaning to chat with those in the bed.
We are the body of Christ.
We are called to love those who are forgotten. Not just the sick, but the imprisoned, the
refugee, those who are homeless, those who are bound in addiction, and the most
unlovable. Because we are made from love and with love. Because love came down
and walks among us.
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