Sermon: Reunited (And It Feels So Good) 1 Corinthians 13

So many people, in and outside of the church, seem to find their way to Paul’s famous words about love in his first letter to the Corinthians.  

I am sure I must have heard it proclaimed and preached on as a kid, but the first time I truly remember hearing it…the first time the words really made an impression…made a dent…was in the spring of my sophomore year in college, when a senior I knew read them aloud during a presentation.  

The presentation was not at all religious, or in any case, that’s not what I remember about it. 

I was with my best friend, and he remembers it just as vividly as I do.  

He doesn’t recall anything religious about it, either.  

In his case, this was a good thing because that would certainly not have spoken to him then.  

As for me, I remember going back to my room afterwards, finding my copy of the King James Bible (you couldn’t be an English major without one), then marking the passage with a bookmark. 

I can prove it.  

I still have that Bible.  In fact, I still have that bookmark.

In fact, I know I do because it’s been marking that same passage ever since—for thirty-five years this May.

Thirty-five years and counting.   

What’s worth trying to answer is why. 

And the answer to that unfolds in stages, which I hope you’ll follow with me over the next few weeks.   

If it inspires you to find your Bible and to dedicate a permanent bookmark to this particular passage, all I can say is: welcome aboard, fellow traveler. 

May it prove to be your ticket to a wonderful journey.  

Paul will get to that journey in due course.  

But before all that, his point is simply that, without love, no real journey is possible.

You may remember how he begins: “I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I have no love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal” (REB).

(Since his point is about “speaking,” it’s worth noting that by “tongues of men” here, Paul means “human” in general, and not “male,” restrictively. His point is true for anyone who speaks without love.) 

“I may have the gift of prophecy and the knowledge of every hidden truth,” he continues. “I may have faith enough to move mountains; but if I have no love, I am nothing.”

“I may give all I possess to the needy, I may give my body to be burnt, but if I have no love, I gain nothing by it.” 

For Paul, without love, even the most commendable activity ends up being little more than a false start.  

His idea of the sounding gong or the clanging cymbal is a good place to begin unpacking what he means.  

And it’s especially helpful for us, I think, because while our culture seems to speak constantly, and almost obsessively about love, if you listen to a lot of that talk, it seems like many of us have no idea what we’re talking about.  

When it comes to love, we’re practically surrounded by sounding gongs and clanging cymbals.  

Because: who teaches us how to love? 

Our families, sure, though of course, not always. 

Years ago, I knew a couple that had been together for many years.  

They reached an anniversary with a “zero” in it, and to their surprise, a woman from across the street whom they didn’t consider themselves close to knocked on their door with an enormous flower arrangement to celebrate their day.  

“You give me hope,” she explained.  “My parents were never very nice to one another or to any of us. The only happy couples I ever saw were on t.v. But you two make it look like it’s actually possible. Thank you for that.” 

She’s hardly alone.  

When I was a kid, I knew a lot of good role models, including my own parents. 

But when I started imagining the notion of having my own relationships someday, I felt like the songs on the radio gave more direct instructions on how things worked.  

I mean, I didn’t know what a breakup felt like, but I learned early on that when you were reunited it would “feel so good.”^[1]

I learned nothing was perfect, but that at the end of the day, “two out of three ain’t bad,” particularly if the other person was “hopelessly devoted to” me.  

I could go on.  

Not all the advice was bad, of course.  

There were reminders about telling someone you love them “just the way you are,” and warnings the Apostle Paul might have well understood about how “the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip sliding away,” (to quote another Paul).   

Maybe you remember those songs or maybe there were other ones that were especially important for you. 

Either way, the point is: most of those them had a lot more to say about desire than they did about love, right? 

Yet this would not have dissuaded the Apostle Paul, who understood that what’s true about romantic love might well extend to love of any other kind.  

He thought that there was a tremendous challenge in wading through our own misconceptions and through the hollowness of so much received wisdom about love.  

He heard those cymbals clanging constantly.  

In that spirit, one particularly apt reader has understood Paul’s words as a sound engineer might.

They write, “In acoustics or electronics ‘noise’ carries a technical meaning. It denotes the generating of sound or current that accompanies a transmitted signal but is not a part of it, but rather obscures it and partially drowns it out.”^[2]

What is the noise that obscures, or even partially drowns out the signal of love, wherever such a signal might originate? 

Paul would not have understood such a technological metaphor, but he would have understood the question – and he would have been very sure that when it came to a signal, he knew its original source.   

We will pick up his response next week.

But first he invites us to give thought to our own false starts and how we came to make them—each time when we believed we’d found a clear signal, only to discover it was distorted by noise.  

He knows that this happens.  

It had happened to him.  

The wonder was not the abundance of noise – that was inevitable.  

Rather, what amazed him was God’s faithful offer of the signal—that through all the things that love ultimately wasn’t and could never be, it was still possible to discover what love was and is.  

This is why we mark his words and hold them close across all the years.  

For all our missteps that lead us to chase after nothing, Paul wants us to know that there is still the possibility of a love that is not just something, but actually an invitation to everything.  

Thanks be to God.  

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^[1] I am pleased to report that all of the songs I allude to here are from 1978.  Apparently, this was a big year for me.  For the record, I was eight. So it began. 

^[2] Anthony G. Thistleton, 1 Corinthians: A Shorter Exegetical & Pastoral Commentary, 226.