Popelas/Widrup
Genesis
2:18-24; 1 Corinthians
The first letter
of Paul to the Corinthians is Paul reminding them of what it means to be a
follower of Jesus. People in
However, over
time, something happened. The Corinth
Christians started bickering. Apparently
they started having control issues.
Their conduct with each other became more divisive than unified. They lost their value for who they were:
followers and disciples of Jesus in the love of God. According to Paul’s letter that we read today,
the Corinthian Christians were “nothing” anymore in relation to their being
disciples of Jesus. Paul tells the Corinthian Christians that they sound like
noisy gongs or clanging cymbals, rather than the mellow sounds of unity that God’s
love brought to them through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
So, through this
letter, Paul tells the Corinthian Christians how to get back on track, how to
regain the value of their roots, how to reunite themselves as one in Christ.
Throughout the
letter, Paul tells the Corinthians to rejoin God’s love for them and when they
do, God’s love will be the love that causes them to rejoin their love for one
another. Once the Corinthian Christians
bring the love of God back into their lives then they will find that God’s love
brings back into their lives love for one another. God’s love will bring back into their lives
the mellow sounds of unity: patience, kindness, hope and endurance, as opposed
to noisy and clanging sounds of arrogance, selfishness and resistance.
Obviously, as we
read this scripture, Paul’s instruction is good not just for members of churches,
but for any who are in relationship.
Pastor Santoro and I have both commented that it seems that the 1
Corinthian’s chapter 13 is read more at weddings than any other lesson. I think the first Corinthian reading of
chapter 13 is chosen by the bride and groom because of the bride and groom’s wisdom
about human nature. I can hear any
couple as they read these words of Paul, “Yes, yes, yes, that is what we want,
but we know it’s not always that way, but that’s the way we want to be.”
It is important to
listen to what Paul tells these Corinthians and what he does not tell
them. He does not tell them to shape up,
that they’re better than this, or that they are mature, act like it. Paul tells these new Christians to bring back
into their relationship with each other God’s love, since it is God’s love that
gives them their love for one another.
So, as did the
Corinthians, if Marshal and Nina with each other, ever bicker, or are rude or
arrogant to one another or insist that it is “my” way or no way, Marshal and
Nina know that regardless, they are loved by God through Jesus, but they also
know those behaviors are not the behaviors of the disciples of Jesus, as we
read so clearly in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Marshall and Nina know as the baptized in Christ,
that it is through God’s love for them that they can shed those behaviors that
are not of discipleship and return to the loving relationship that they have
for each other through the love of God.
Regardless of our
behaviors, God’s love never leaves us. And this is what Paul is telling the
Corinthians, Nina and Marshall, and all of us today. When we keep alive in our own lives the love
that God has for us, then we keep alive in our own lives the love that we have
for one another.
Amen,
Pastor Scales