Sermon for February 2, 2025: Bears All Things based upon 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

1 Cor. 13:1-13 The Gift of Love

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. 

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     Paul Munsky wants to write his crush, preacher’s daughter and painter Aster Flores, a love letter. Paul Munsky also feels utterly incapable of doing so. He’s good at football and at cooking, but, less so at writing. Ellie Chu, on the other hand, is quite capable of writing. In fact, for a little extra cash, six to seven of her classmates regularly hire her to write their essays in school for them. Her keen high school English teacher even knows about it, but, when asked why she never turns Ellie in, the teacher says “And have to read the actual essays they'd write?” Ellie, who doesn’t fit in well in her rural Washington school and whose family needs the money, agrees to write a letter to Aster for Paul. So begins the 2020 film The Half of It, written and directed by Alice Wu.

     One letter becomes a correspondence, where Ellie, in Cyrano-de-Bergerac-fashion is able to have real and good conversations with Aster about music, art, and literature under Paul’s name. It turns out that Ellie is also interested in Aster, but, given Aster father’s homophobic religious stance, has never considered approaching her, especially given that Aster has also been dating a truly terrible popular boy. The film, which is coming of age film about dating, class, religion, living in small towns, and family relationships, unwinds in interesting ways that fit both the size of the town, the complexity of understanding your own identity in relationship to your parents’ hopes and expectations, the religious commitments of the characters, and the emotional weight that decisions made at the end of high school often carry.

     The revelatory moment when Aster realizes that Ellie has been her conversation partner and not Paul is a well-written surprise that I won’t totally spoil. I hope you’ll watch the film. But, I will share a few lines of it, because I imagine that they will be familiar. Aster is right in the middle of a very public, very uncomfortable encounter with her foolish boyfriend. Ellie and Paul both interrupt the encounter. Ellie speaks up from the back of the crowd with these words: “Love isn’t patient and kind and humble... love is... love is.... love is messy and horrible and selfish and... bold.” That’s quite a take on our scripture for the day, isn’t it?

     Ellie didn’t come up with the scripture out of nowhere. Even though she wasn’t a Christian, she played piano in Aster’s father’s church, so she heard sermons every week. And, another character had used this scripture mere moments before Ellie did. In fact, Ellie’s words are a response to how that character was using it. That character was far more interested in using scripture to bolster his reputation in town than actually using it to guide his behavior. In fact, he usually uses scripture to constrain other people’s futures, never his own actions. Ellie, in hopes of helping Aster make a choice about her future that feels authentic to her aspirations, turns the scripture on its head. The results are messy and heartfelt and likely not something the Apostle Paul would have wanted to have much to do with.

     To be fair, Paul the Apostle was much more wary of romantic entanglements than any teenager in this movie. Back in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul states that essentially, he thinks marriage is a distraction from faith in Christ, who is coming back very soon, and wishes everyone could remain celibate, as he was. But, he also says that those who aren’t spiritually strong enough for celibacy can get married without making Jesus sad. He describes marriages among Christians with the word “concession, not command.” It is good to remember that anyone who tells you it’s your Christian duty to get married and have children has probably forgotten this part of 1 Corinthians. Paul had all kinds of things he thought Christians had to do. Being married was not one of them.

     Paul does, however, believe that Christians are required to love. It’s just that Paul isn’t only concerned with romantic love. To be fair, the movie wasn’t either. It is also a wonderful portrait of familial love and love among friends. Paul was trying to help Christians develop an ethical center to guide their actions. The church in Corinth was a church in the midst of intense conflict. In times of conflict, Paul understood that you have to respond not simply out of the whims and passions of the moment. In order to not be buffeted about in rage and mistrust, a Christian must develop a faithful core and respond from that core. For Paul, that core is love.

     While Paul the teenager in the movie isn’t much of a writer, the Apostle Paul took great care in his writings for the various churches that he founded and ministered with. In her commentary on this text, Dr. Shively Smith notes that the discourse on love is set right between two parts of the letter where he talks about the kinds of spiritual gifts people might have within the Body of Christ. She says, “This body boasts many gifts and many stations unified under one banner. Yet, these many giftings and functions are not enough to sustain the community.” You can have all kinds of people who know how to do all kinds of things together. But, they can only survive and thrive as a community if they have an ethical foundation connecting them to each other when they eventually find themselves in conflict.

     The church in Corinth was a pretty diverse community in a vital city in the empire. Smith describes the members of the church in her commentary. Within one congregation, people who were currently married, people who had never married, and people who were widowed worshiped together. People of all genders and ages were part of the community. Most were converted Gentiles, but some people were Jewish and had been leaders in traditional synagogues. Most people were poor and some were enslaved. There were a few rich and powerful Romans in the church, too. These kinds of differences can make a community stronger. That’s what Paul was saying about “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’”

     Having this many people with this many differences in life experiences can bring challenges, too. We know that. The church in Corinth had been having trouble finding usefulness and goodness in their differences. Paul wrote this letter to help them figure out how. First, he affirmed that having a community full of different kinds of people is good and makes a community stronger. Then, he said that they’d need to love each other enough to affirm the ways that they were different. The love would be the connective tissue in their Body of Christ.

     Christians shouldn’t try to get around loving each other by building communities that aren’t diverse, by the way. Christians in our country and around the world have a nasty habit of trying that again and again, usually when we have aligned the church too closely with governmental power. Remember, Paul was not a Roman politician in good standing with the local government. He was an annoyance who got arrested all the time. What carried him through the times when he was targeted by powerful people as well as the times when the people he called friends were fighting fiercely among each other and with him was his ethic of love.

     In a way, he and Ellie are both being quite honest about the messiness of human relationships. In a movie where she and teenager Paul had done a lot of wild and ill-advised things, it is fair to point out that seeking out romantic love does not mean you will never lie to people, act selfishly, or behave in ways that otherwise embarrass you. The impulse to connect with other people is messy. As is clear from the church in Corinth, someone can declare themselves to love Christ and go ahead and behave hatefully. It is not enough to say you love. It is necessary to behave lovingly. I think today’s reading is the Apostle Paul’s attempt to capture a full range of loving behaviors so that the Corinthians have some instructions to lean on when their love of Christ isn’t enough to guide them to treating each other well.

      What does it mean to love? Those who are patient, kind, not envious or rude are loving. Those who are not resentful or vengeful are loving. Those who aren’t delighted by getting away with something they shouldn’t be doing in the first place are loving. The gifts and skills we cultivate will not be enough on their own to keep us together. Love is what will complete our faith, allowing us to be one body. And, yes, we may still be in conflict sometimes. In fact, I guarantee that any group of humans will. But, any of us who call ourselves Christians must look to this ethic of love to guide us. Otherwise, we are noisy gongs. Let us act in the Love that will help us bear all things.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
The Half of It, written and directed by Alice Wu: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9683478/
Shively Smith: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/faith-hope-and-love/commentary-on-1-corinthians-131-13