Because Love Is Ridiculous
Rev Dr Mark Porizky
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
A couple came to see a certain
pastor—not me. The man was particularly concerned about his wife's depression.
He had tried all that he knew to help her, but nothing worked. So they came in,
and the pastor couldn't do anything either. The lady was totally unresponsive.
After half an hour getting nowhere at all, the pastor jumped up and
pulled the woman out of her chair. He put his arms around her and kissed her. He
turned to the husband and said, "That's all your wife needs every
day."
The husband said, "Oh dear! I can only bring her here on
Thursdays."
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
To
the
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind— just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you— so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but
that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been
reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my
brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to
Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I
belong to Christ.” Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or
were you baptized in the name of Paul?
We hear so much about love. Almost every song on the radio speaks about
love. The television programs that we watch show us people that are in love. And
the newspapers that you pick up at the check-out line at the grocery store tell
you who's in love with whom this week. We hear so much about love, we just
figure that we know what love is all about. But then we read this 13th chapter
in 1 Corinthians, and we ought to wonder whether we know what love is all about.
For instance, a few years ago Glynn Wolfe passed away at the age of 88. Now maybe his name isn't familiar to you, but according to the Guinness Book of Records, Glynn Wolfe was married more times than any other human being. 29 times he was married. And so that means that 29 times he swore his love to a woman. But as we read here in 1 Corinthians, we have to wonder whether that's the kind of love that the Bible's talking about.
Here in 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul speaks of love as something that
never ends. But the reality today is that many people approach love with a very
different understanding of what those words mean. And so, for example, the state
of
You see, in
But if you're not interested in that kind of a commitment, Louisiana will
give you a no-fault marriage license, which means that any time a couple becomes
unhappy and is separated for at least six months, the marriage can be dissolved
almost automatically. And so in
It's that first kind of love, the kind of love that endures forever, that
Paul speaks about in this chapter in 1 Corinthians. But the reality is that it's
the second kind of love, the kind of love that's temporary, that we're most
familiar with. But instead of just accepting that, Paul encourages us to aim for
that higher love.
A few years ago during Christmas season, I read about how
You see, in
And so Paul tries to help us to see that love is not just some emotion.
Instead, Paul invites us to see what love is made of. For instance, when white
light goes into a prism, the light comes out separated into all the colors of
the rainbow. And that's what Paul does with love. He helps us to see the whole
spectrum of things that are meant by that one word.
And as we look at these familiar words that Paul wrote, an interesting
idea I've seen is for us to put ourselves into those verses and see how our love
measures up. For instance, starting at verse 4, if we substitute the word
"I" for "love", the passage reads like this: "I am
patient; I am kind; I am not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. I do not
insist on my own way; I am not irritable or resentful; I do not rejoice in
wrongdoing, but I rejoice in the truth. I bear all things, believe all things,
hope all things, endure all things. My love never ends."
How true are those sentences for each of us? How well do they match up
with the way that we really are?
What those words show us is that love is something we do. It's not just some feeling. For instance, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus praised a group of people by saying: "I was hungry and you gave me food." Notice that Jesus didn't commend the people by saying: "I was hungry and you felt sorry for me." No, I was hungry and you gave me food. In other words, love means doing what's necessary, what's needed. But really love means even more than that.
One day a father asked his little girl what love meant. And the child
said: "Love is something that you do that is ridiculous." And I think
that's a pretty good definition. Love is something that you do that is
ridiculous. After all, isn't the love that God shows to us a ridiculous kind of
love?
Jeff’s story—this week, kidney tests.
Why because I love him.
Think of the love that God showed in the Old Testament to Abraham and
Sarah. They were the old couple, around 90 years of age or more, and God had
promised to give them children and to make a great nation out of them. But the
Bible says that Abraham and Sarah laughed. They thought that the very idea of
their having children was ridiculous. But God's love found a way, and in time, a
child was born to them.
Or think of the love that Jesus showed in the New Testament. The Gospels
tell us about a time when a man begged Jesus to come quickly to his house,
because the man's little girl was very sick. But by the time Jesus arrived, the
crowd standing outside the house told Jesus that it was pointless, that the girl
was already dead. But Jesus said to them: "Don't worry. The child is not
dead; she's just sleeping." But the Bible says that the people in the crowd
laughed. They thought that what Jesus said was ridiculous. But Jesus went into
the house, touched the girl, and brought her out of the house alive.
Or this last week, I was re-reading the story of the Exodus and how the Hebrews got to the place where they were trapped with the sea on their one side and the on-coming Egyptian chariots on the other side. And so in a panic, the people turned to Moses, wanting to know what to do, and in turn, Moses turned to God. But the answer that God gave must have seemed like a ridiculous answer to the people. Because the people were probably looking for God to give them a battle plan so they could fight against the Egyptians or to tell them how to make rafts so they could escape across the water.
But instead, God did none of these things. Instead,
God told the people that the only thing he wanted them to do was to keep quiet
and to know that God would save them. Again, with the Egyptian chariots getting
closer and closer, that must have seemed like a ridiculous thing for God to say,
for the Hebrews to just sit there and be quiet. But as the people did just that,
God showed his love to them, by parting the waters of the sea so that they could
cross over to the other side on dry land.
In Psalm 46, it says: "Be still, and know that I am God." If we
want to know what God's love is all about, maybe we need to pay more attention
to those words. Be still, and know that I am God. Too often we get this image in
our minds that one day we'll stand before God on the day of judgment, and we
figure that we'll just explain to God why we should be let into heaven. We'll
tell God about all the good things that we've done, and all the people we've
helped, and all the times that we've prayed.
Of course, we'll conveniently leave out all the times that we've done bad
things, and all the people we've hurt in one way or another, and all the other
things that we're not so proud of. But we figure that we're fairly certain that
we could put together a pretty good case for ourselves and argue our way into
heaven. But the truth is that if God were to listen to our speeches, the only
thing that God could do would be to laugh. Because even when we don't want to
admit it, God knows that we're sinners. God knows that we don't deserve to get
into heaven. And so it's only when we hush up about ourselves, that we can hear
what God says to us. It's only then that we hear the amazing and ridiculous news
that God forgives us and welcomes us anyway.
Too often we think of love in terms of: if you do something nice for me,
then I'll do something nice for you. We treat each other based on what we figure
the other person deserves from us. But the good news is that's not the way that
God loves. No, God's love is much more ridiculous than that. Because God loves
us even when we don't deserve it. Even when we give God every reason not to love
us, God still does. And that's the same kind of love that God wants us to have.
A love that extends not just to our friends, but even to our enemies. A love
that's not just temporary, but a love that never ends. Because as Christians, if
we don't have love, then we have nothing at all.
“Did you hear about the teacher who was helping one of her kindergarten
students put on his boots? He asked for help.
With her
pulling and him pushing, the boots still didn’t want to go on.
When the second boot was on, she had worked up a sweat. She almost whimpered
when the little boy said, ‘Teacher, they’re on the wrong feet.’
She looked
and sure enough, they were. It wasn’t any easier pulling the boots off than it
was putting them on. She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get
the boots back on—this time on the right feet.
He then announced, ‘These aren’t my
boots.’ She bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream,
‘Why didn’t you say so?’ like she wanted to.
Once again
she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off. He then said,
‘They’re my brother’s boots. My Mom made me wear them.’
She didn’t know if she should laugh
or cry. She mustered up the grace and courage she had left to wrestle the boots
on his feet again.
She said, ‘Now, where are your
mittens?’
He said, ‘I stuffed them in my boots…’
Love is patient. Love is
kind. Love keeps not record of
wrongs.
Why? Because, sometimes,
maybe in the best of times, love is ridiculous.
Will you pray with me now?
Albert L. Peace was a man in love. His
fiancée was all he had ever wanted in a woman and they planned to soon be
married. Then he encountered a problem that would crush all his plans. He was
going blind. The woman he had loved and hoped to share his life with walked out
of his life forever. She could not stand the possibility of living her life with
a man whom she unquestionably would need to care for the rest of her life.
Albert was shattered. But in the midst
of his tragedy he sought and found the love of One that he knew would not reject
him. Taking pen in hand he composed the words of a long favored Christian hymn:
"O Love That Will Not Let Me Go"
That song will now close our worship
St.
Andrew Presbyterian Church,
Web Site: WWW.SAPC-CT.ORG
Office Email: OFFICE@SAPC-CT.ORG
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