Reflections...

One of the scripture passages we read today is I Corinthians 13. Popularly known as the “love chapter,” it is the most quoted biblical passage, especially during Christian weddings. Read by itself at a wedding ceremony, I Corinthians 13 would sound like a wish or a blessing for true love to keep the couple united in marriage.   

However, when the apostle Paul wrote this poetic passage, he did not have romantic love or marriage in mind. Paul wrote the whole letter of I Corinthians in response to pressing issues that were causing discord and division within the Corinthian church. We can read about these issues throughout the chapters in I Corinthians.

But the 13^th chapter focuses on the competition or rivalry among the members based on their claims of perceived order of importance of spiritual gifts. It seems that they placed much importance on the gifts that Paul specially mentioned: speaking in tongues, prophecy, faith, giving away possessions, and martyrdom. It also seems that they were competing with each other as to which was the better or more superior gift. And consequently, they were competing with each other as to who has the better or more superior spiritual gift. At the outset, Paul did not say that there was anything wrong about these spiritual gifts. All he wrote was this: if these spiritual gifts were done or shared without love, they would amount to nothing. Without love, the spiritual gifts are meaningless, useless and worthless.

For Paul, speaking in tongues, prophecies and knowledge are limited, temporal human achievements which would cease or come to an end. But love, Paul asserts, never ends. One translation puts this as “love never falls.” It could also mean “love never fails.” 

 

Paul’s description of love seems simple, yet challenging:

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…

Most of the words here are adjectives. But they are not static conditions for they imply actions such as showing patience or acting with kindness; and the opposites would be showing arrogance or acting with rudeness. Come to think about it: is it possible to be kind without love?

As many of us know, the super typhoon Rai (Odette) hit parts of the Philippines a week before Christmas 2021. It was like another beating for many Filipino families that were already struggling with the pandemic.

Sending monetary help for some victims while watching from a safe distance, I came to understand what Paul said about sharing one’s gifts with or without love. My attempt at helping was quite small compared to those who actually had to reach out to the typhoon affected communities with all the given risks. One family posted about their “pre-loved” clothes, carefully washed and dried, before bringing them to families who lost their homes and property. Another family opened their home and shared whatever food they had with a homeless family that sought shelter on Christmas Eve. Several others, as individuals or groups, collected plastic bottles, filled them with potable water, and delivered these with bags of rice, canned goods and medicines, to the affected communities – even through unpassable roads. I think what these people did were acts of kindness with love. As a poster puts it, “When someone helps you and they’re struggling too, it’s not help; it’s love.”

All the lines in Paul’s description of love are quite straightforward. But I feel concerned about love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” I am thinking of those situations where the cycle of violence is continuously hurting and abusing others that someone may claim to love. If the cycle of violence continues because the recipient simply bears and endures all things, the situation may end up being harmful to both the victim and the perpetrator of the violence. Without proper intervention, the victim gets harmed and scarred for life, and could end up being another perpetrator of violence. If the perpetrator does not get the needed professional help, they would not have the chance to heal and be set free from the cycle of violence.  

I don’t know who came up with the statement, “You always hurt the one you love.” But I remember my sister wearing a shirt with those words as the uniform of the Silliman University Medical Technology Society. Their reason for wearing the uniform was that they had to prick the fingers, or veins, of patients to get blood samples to help diagnose their health conditions. Hence, as medical technologists, they could not help but hurt those whom they serve and love.

Medical practitioners aside, I think it is not justifiable to hurt others and simply use the saying, “You always hurt the one you love” to get away from the responsibility of inflicting unnecessary and undeserved harm, pain and suffering on another.    

So I Corinthians 13 points to LOVE as the hidden ingredient that makes the sharing of spiritual gifts meaningful, useful, and valuable. When there is love, one cannot boast and be competitive to the point of being arrogant or rude about the spiritual gifts one may claim to have.  

To say that love “does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth” is also quite challenging. Rejoicing in the truth means being able to communicate the truth freely and confront wrongdoing fearlessly. Perhaps this can serve as a correction to the potential abuse when one simply “bears all things (even violence?), believes all things (even lies?), hopes all things (even the impossible?), endures all things (even undeserved suffering?).”

The other scripture passage that we read today (Luke 4:21-30) narrates that what happened to Jesus when he told the truth about God’s love was quite dangerous. We read how Jesus inaugurated his ministry with a reading from Isaiah on the good news for the poor, release for captives, sight for the blind, freedom from oppression, the year of the Lord’s favor and the fulfillment of this prophecy right in their hearing. After hearing that sermon by Jesus, the synagogue crowd in his hometown of Nazareth responded with awe and wonder.

Then Jesus told them that if they were expecting him to do the miracles that he did in Capernaum, he also knew that no prophet is accepted in his own hometown. Somehow, before they could even ask him, Jesus knew that some people in his hometown expected him to show them signs that he was truly a prophet. If he could do it in Capernaum, why could he not do it at home in Nazareth? It is like asking, “Shouldn’t charity begin at home” or that “to see is to believe?”   

Jesus then said that the prophet Elijah was sent to save a widow at Zarephath in Sidon even though there were many widows in Israel. Similarly, he said, the prophet Elisha was sent to heal Naaman, the dreaded Syrian, even though there were many lepers in Israel. After hearing this, the synagogue crowd in Nazareth responded with rage/anger – to the point of driving Jesus out of town, leading him to the brow of the hill, and perhaps threatening to hurl him off the cliff. But he was able to pass through their midst and went on his way.

From awe to rage à that was how the hometown crowd responded to Jesus’ message of God’s inclusive love that would reach out to those beyond the borders of Israel; that would make preferential treatment not of God’s so-called “chosen people”, but of those whom God chooses because they have been deprived, oppressed and suppressed (i.e., the lost, the least, and the last of God’s children).   

Just like what Jesus experienced, telling the truth is a very risky business today. We know of journalists, writers and publishers who get punished for broadcasting the truth which the powers-that-be would rather hide or bury from the people. Somehow the powers-that-be would rather rejoice in wrongdoing, not in the truth.

In many ways, we can identify with the Corinthian church as they struggled with issues of unity, and as they strived to move from discord to concord in the face of great diversity. They were a diverse community in terms of socio-economic status, gender, age, ethnicity, religious and cultural background, and what have you. We know from experience that any of these issues of diversity could easily provoke debates and cause misunderstanding, conflict and even division. I Corinthians 13 reminds us that only love can help us transcend the challenges of our diversity.

According to the late Bishop Krister Stendahl, a Swiss theologian and New Testament scholar, the measure of love is its capacity for tension and disagreement without division (“Preaching from the Pauline Epistles,” Biblical Preaching: An Expositor’s Treasury, 1983).   

In many ways, we can also identify with the hometown crowd in Nazareth, as they held great expectations from Jesus whom they thought was one of them and who should give them preferential treatment. But if we have the mind of Christ, we should be able to see his perspective and not insist on our expectations all the time. As Jesus pointed out, there are many people in need right here in our own community, but God always looks out for those in greater need beyond our community, beyond geographical boundaries, and beyond any kind of boundaries that we try to set up and create.

We pray to God, in the name of Christ, putting our burdens on him, expecting him to always hear us, help us, serve us. What if Jesus is actually expecting us now to participate in his work of proclaiming release to the captives, seeing to the recovery of sight to the blind, setting the oppressed free, and engaging in the moment of the Lord’s favor? Our hearing Christ’s word should result in our doing his work with him so his word can be fulfilled. As Jesus and Paul have taught and demonstrated, those who truly hear the Word of God will always strive to live it. May we do so, in faith, in hope, in love. Amen.