4th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2025c

Old Testament - Jeremiah 1:4-10

New Testament - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

 

“A Newer World”

 

INTRODUCTION: So up in Cleveland, Ohio, there is an organization called The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love - IRUL for short.

 

The idea for the institute was actually hatched in June of 2001 while a small group of people chatted over cups of joe at a coffee house in Cleveland Heights. And after getting a pile of money from the John Templeton Foundation, The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love was soon launched.

 

As you might surmise from the name, the Institute's primary purpose is to study love. Admittedly, a strange idea, right? For how in the world does one study something as ethereal, mysterious, and deeply personal as love?

 

But that’s what the group does. Or as the Institute says on its website, “The purpose of the Institute [is] to achieve cultural transformation through a blend of the highest levels of scientific research, spiritual-philosophical reflection, and effective practice.”

 

Using scientific tools, while also drawing on the numerous religious traditions from all over the world that stress the value of love, the Institute provides all kinds of literature and data on the subject. They publish articles, books, hold conferences, and conduct studies in an effort to understand love and how it has the power to change the world. 

 

Or as another description puts it:  “The mission of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love is to increase awareness of the emotional and health benefits of love, both for those who give it and receive it. 

 

ONE: Of course, the Apostle Paul spent a good bit of time talking about love too, right? 

 

Yep, love, it turns out, was a favorite topic of Paul’s for discussion and study as well. Admittedly, he didn't conduct scientific studies to be submitted for peer review in medical  journeys, but he too thought it was important to explore the topic.                

 

And while we often hear Paul’s words about love recited at weddings, which is certainly okay, it is good to recall their original context. For Paul’s words about love weren’t originally intended for a young couple all goo-goo-eyed on the day of their nuptials. Instead, they were meant for a community of faith torn apart by division and rancor. 

 

As mentioned last week, some folks in the Corinthian church thought they were special because of who had baptized them. Still others tended to see their particular spiritual gifts as far more valuable than others. There was a hierarchy when it came to spiritual gifts, and speaking in tongues was considered the one to have above all others.  

 

And finally, there was communion, which some folks took as an opportunity for revelry, rather than an opportunity to be reflective. Specifically, there were a few folks who apparently had a habit of starting communion before everybody else had arrived for worship services. And once they started nibbling on the bread and sipping on the wine, well, they had a hard time stopping and were soon a bit tipsy!                  

 

So it’s into that mess Paul ends up writing his famous words about love. “You can speak in fancy tongues,” says Paul, “but if you do it without love you might as well be a squawk box with distorted sound.”

 

And the same goes for people with faith as deep as the ocean. What good is it, wonders Paul, if it is done without love?

 

So Paul was his own kind of studier of love. And as far as he was concerned, it was the most important thing in all the world.      

                  

TWO: And did you notice that when Paul gets around to actually describing love, so little of his talk is, well, romantic. 

 

Nope. Paul starts providing a description of love and strangely things like heart palpitations, sweaty palms, nervous chatter, and elevated hormones are nowhere to be found. 

 

We get to thinking about love and it’s only normal for all those romantic sentiments and longing emotions to come to mind. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach…”

 

But Paul? Well, he starts talking about love and the focus is on what love looks like when it actually gets enacted in the world. On one hand, love is patient, kind, enduring, thankful, and hopeful. But likewise, love also avoids certain kinds of behaviors. It isn’t envious, boastful, or rude. It doesn’t insist on its own way, nor is it resentful or irritable. 

 

In Tom Robbins novel Still Life With Woodpecker, one of the main characters says at one point, “The most important thing is love...The bottom line is that loving makes love. Loving makes itself.” Or as another prominent writer says, “Love is a matter of the will. It is something we decide to do.” 

 

Well, Paul, I think, would probably concur with such a notion. For while love is surely an emotion, it is also something that we make and do. 

 

And surely such talk would have been more than just a tad jolting to the Corinthians. For there they were, a congregation seething with resentments, divisions, envy, stubbornness, and pride, only to have Paul pen his words about the nature of love. 

 

Most likely read out loud during a worship service, Paul’s remarks likely led to some nervous glances, fidgeting in the pews, and anxious throat clearing. 

 

For “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 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”  

 

THREE: You see, here is the thing. While it sounds sentimental and even foolishly optimistic, love really does have the power to reorder, heal, and change the world.

 

Like forgiveness, which allows tattered and torn relationships the chance to start again, love also gives relationships that are acrimonious and hostile the chance to reset as well.  

 

Admittedly, that doesn’t mean acts of love immediately transform the world in the blink of an eye. For change of any kind doesn’t come easily, does it? Especially amid deep divisions and hardened battle lines of discord.  

 

How did C.S. Lewis put it? “Do not waste your time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor,” he once wrote, “act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love [them].”

 

Many of you will recall that on May 13, 1981 Pope John Paul II was shot two times by Mehmet Ali Agca while entering St. Peter’s Square. Despite severe blood loss and almost losing his life, the Pope survived.

 

You might also remember that in 1983 the Pope met with Agca in his prison cell in order to forgive him. Or as the Pope said about his amazing gesture, “Thanks to the healing power of love, even the most wounded heart can experience the liberating encounter with forgiveness." 

 

Of course, the Pope didn’t stop there. Years later, Agca, at the Pope’s request, was pardoned by Italy's President and deported back to his home country of Turkey. Given all that, perhaps it’s not all that surprising that Agca eventually converted to Roman Catholicism in 2007.   

 

“Come, my friends, ‘tis not too late to seek a newer world,” Alfred Lloyd Tennyson once wrote. Well, I think that’s what love does. When offered, especially amidst messy and difficult circumstances, love can lead to a better, newer world.      

 

FOUR: Of course, this table is its own loving gesture, isn’t it. 

 

For here at this table we celebrate and remember the love that Christ had for all of God’s children during his life and ministry. Christ, after all, broke bread and fellowshipped with anybody and everyone, didn’t he? 

 

When it came to dining with Christ, no one had to worry about having a fancy embossed invitation or being on an exclusive guest, because there was no guest list since everyone was invited. It didn’t matter what job a person had, who they ran around with, how important they were, where they came from, or even if they had made a total mess of their lives. All anybody needed to do to dine with Christ was simply show up for the meal.        

 

Paul talks about love being kindness, patience, humility, not arrogant, or boastful, or rude, and suddenly it’s easy to see where such thoughts on his part originate. For we gaze at this table and see the very life of love that Paul liked to write about. 

 

In 1920, on the heels of World War I, the Turkish people waged a war for independence against the Republic of Armenia. As the well known minister and author  L. Gregory Jones tells it, one day a Turkish officer with a small band of soldiers raided and looted an Armenian home. 

 

After dispatching with the parents in the house, he took one of the daughters for himself. Eventually escaping, she somehow went on with her life and eventually became a nurse.

 

And at one point, years later, she found herself nursing in a ward for wounded Turkish officers. And who should be a patient in the ward but the very Turkish officer who had treated her and her family so horribly. Gravely ill, he only survived because of the women’s exceptional care.

 

One day, after he had recovered, the doctor stood by the bed with the nurse and said to the officer, "But for her devotion to you, you would be dead." Gazing at her, the officer  said, "We have met before, haven't we?" "Yes," she said, "We have met before." "Why didn't you kill me?" he asked. She replied, "I am a follower of him who said 'Love your enemies.'"

 

CONCLUSION: Well, the woman, to her credit, got it, right?

 

She got that when it comes to the Bible, love is always more than just a familial affair. It’s also something much bigger and wider, and, yes, I ain’t gonna lie, really hard. 

Because that’s what changing the world is. It’s hard work.

 

So thank God for this table - this table where the kind of love God wants for the world is made manifest and available to all. For here, at this table, all are welcomed and all are invited. 

 

There’s no need to present a glossy invitation, nor is there anyone with a clipboard ready to confirm your name is on the list. Because all our names, by the grace of God, are already on it. 

 

So come, my friends, because it’s never too late to seek a newer world.

 

And now to the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.