Quinquagesima, 2002
1 Corinthians 13:4-5

For many years Admiral Hyman Rickover was the head of the United States Nuclear Navy. Rickover had a reputation as a stern and demanding admiral. For many years every officer aboard a nuclear submarine was personally interviewed and approved by Rickover. This is how ex-President Jimmy Carter came into contact with him. President Carter describes his interview with Rickover in his book: Why Not the Best?

Carter writes:

"I had applied for the nuclear submarine program, and Admiral Rickover was interviewing me for the job. It was the first time I met Admiral Rickover, and we sat in a large room by ourselves for more than two hours, and he let me choose any subjects I wished to discuss. Very carefully, I chose those about which I knew most at the time ­ current events, seamanship, music, literature, naval tactics, electronics, gunnery ­ and he began to ask me a series of questions of increasing difficulty. In each instance, he soon proved that I knew relatively little about the subject I had chosen.

He always looked right into my eyes, and he never smiled. I was saturated with cold sweat.

Finally, he asked a question and I thought I could redeem myself. He said, 'How did you stand in your class at the Naval Academy?' Since I had completed my sophomore year at Georgia Tech before entering Annapolis as a plebe, I had done very well, and I swelled my chest with pride and answered, 'Sir, I stood fifty-ninth in a class of 820!' I sat back to wait for the congratulations, which never came. Instead, the question: 'Did you do your best?' I started to say, 'Yes, sir,' but I remembered who this was and recalled several of the many times at the Academy when I could have learned more about our allies, our enemies, weapons, strategy, and so forth. I was just human. I finally gulped and said, 'No, sir, I didn't always do my best.' "

He looked at me for a long time, and then turned his chair around to end the interview. He asked one final question, which I have never been able to forget ­ or to answer. He said, 'Why not?' I sat there for a while, shaken, and then slowly left the room."

Young Jimmy Carter started the interview proud of his record at Annapolis and yet the admiral reprimanded him. The situation in the Church of Corinth was similar. The believers there were proud of their wisdom and spectacular gifts and expected praise. Instead St. Paul admonished them.

First Corinthians chapter thirteen has often been used in love letters and at weddings. The passage's lyrical beauty seems to accord it an aura of romance. But was romance the original intent of the Apostle Paul? Hardly. This love chapter is really a reprimand, a rebuke against an unloving parish. In terms of peace and concord, the church at Corinth was a mess. Read Paul's two epistles to the Corinthians and you'll find a church wracked by rivalry, rebellion, and moral turpitude. What was the purpose of chapter thirteen's agape love theme? Does Paul want to charm couples that are courting? Not exactly. Saint Paul sets forth the characteristics of agape , or godly love, as a way of shaming the Corinthians. By setting down these simple guides to Christian behavior, perhaps the Church people would realize just how far they had drifted from the heart and core of Christianity. And as a consequence, maybe they would come to their senses, and start getting along.

On this Quinquagesima Sunday let us look into the things that make for smooth and peaceful relationships. These guidelines of godly love will increase the harmony not only of church relations, but family ties as well. First Corinthians thirteen is pretty dense. We will restrict our study to just a couple verses. At verse four, the Apostle Paul establishes some principles of godly love. Let us examine a few of them now.

Love suffers long

Suffering long has to do with patience, or longsuffering. Longsuffering is based on the reality that we all suffer, and that members of the human race can be vexing. After the Fall, there is no escaping the fact that people are unfair, difficult and annoying. The curse of sin taints all of creation. Is it Murphy's Law that says: "If anything can go wrong, it will"? Irritation is a given. Sin twists the world, and nobody but Jesus ever attained perfect righteousness. So let us not be shocked when people disappoint us and things go badly. The only question is how will we react. Sadly, sin and selfishness make us too often react poorly. Is our first response to bad treatment to love and suffer long? No, normally we suffer short. When annoyed, we either lose our patience, erupt in anger, feel offended, seek revenge, or all the above.

But the Bible tells us that that is wrong. We are called to suffer long and be patient. Christians don't put up with everything, there is a time for righteous anger; but we put up with a lot, because we know how much God puts up with us.

[I am indebted to the following commentators and writers: Calvin, Barclay, Lewis Smeades, A.A.van Ruler, Graham Scroggie, John MacArthur, Spiro Zodhiates, and Jimmy Carter.]

Love is kind

Kindness has to do with gentleness and consideration. The first place to put kindness into practice is the home. "The Christian husband who acts like a Christian is kind to his wife and children. Christian brothers and sisters are kind to each other and to their parents. They have more than kind feelings toward each other; they do kind, helpful things for each other ­ to the point of loving self-sacrifice, when necessary." [MacArthur]

Kindness asks constantly: "What can I do to enhance the life of someone else? How can I cheer him up? How can I encourage her? What do they need?" There are little things and big things: a kind word, a back massage, washing the dishes, cleaning up when not asked. How about visiting the sick, giving a gift, or offering hospitality? Kindness makes the world a better place.

Yet, kindness is risky. Sometimes we do kind things and get burned. Before I was married I helped out an injured and homeless man. He stayed in my home several months for free. One day he moved out to shack up with a woman down the street. When I told him that that was not proper Christian behavior, voila, a friend became an enemy. He became furious, left the church and slandered the people in our parish. Kindness can be risky; we may be wounded, but love causes us to keep up kind acts anyway.

Love does not envy

How does envy work? Envy combines a couple of things: a selfish discontentment mixes with an eagerness to be first among others. Due to sin I make comparisons. I compare myself to another person and become upset if I am not the better and brighter. I don't merely want to keep up with the Joneses, I want to excel the Joneses. Envy causes me to resent the person who is smarter. I come to despise the man who is better looking than me; I become irritated at the person who has more friends, or more money than me.

A clear-cut case of envy can be seen in the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. Do you remember who Laura's arch-enemy is? Nellie Oleson. (Especially in Little Town on the Prairie .) And why are Nellie and Laura such rivals? How do these two pretty girls in a South Dakota town of the 1880s manifest their envy? Nellie lets the other kids in town know that she has rich relatives back East, and therefore her parents have more money than Laura's parents. Nellie wears nicer dresses than Laura does. Nellie has softer skin than Laura. Nellie is more lady-like and refined in her conduct. Nellie keeps up with the latest fashions. All these things make Laura turn green with envy. She hates Nellie. And how does Laura get back? Laura studies extra hard so that in school she may appear smarter than Nellie. Laura wins more friends and becomes more popular than Nellie. Laura plays tricks to make Nellie look stupid. One day Nellie promised to get a sleigh ride with the handsome Almanzo; what a delight when Laura rode in that sleigh before Nellie did.

Laura was in general a good Christian, yet a portion of her young life was dominated by comparisons and rivalry with Nellie Oleson. These girls sometimes acted like witches. Envy is ugly; the Bible says that love does not envy. So we must fight its strong tendency in us. A tonic for envy is contentment with what we have.

Love does not parade itself; it is not puffed up

This line touches on boasting and arrogance. There is nothing wrong with us for enjoying praise. Boasting however is a grab for praise; it often arises from fear and emptiness. We are afraid that we do not deserve the applause of others. Our lives are so shallow and empty that we try extra hard to impress people. We attempt to draw the attention of people with swaggering braggadocio. How do we parade ourselves? We drop names; we exaggerate our goodness, and minimize our badness. We pretend to be more wise and wonderful than we really are. Or we can boast by showing off our toys: cars and clothes, homes and computers. I just read in the newspaper of a Korean War veteran who had been falsifying his war service for fifty years. He asserted that he had been injured in fierce combat, had witnessed a massacre of innocent Koreans, and that he had been a prisoner of war. It turns out that everything was false. He was parading his bravery and puffing up his war service. His story was a lie and a cheap grab for praise. Did you remember the frog in Aesop's fable? He tries to inflate himself to the size of a cow. Boasting is vulgar, and godly love should have nothing to do with it. Agape love asks us rather to counter boasting with humility: to have a low opinion of our own importance, and a high opinion of others. We act humbly and speak humbly.

Love does not behave rudely

This has to do with good manners and etiquette. There is a kind of Christianity that takes a delight in being blunt and almost brutal. Back during the very First Crusade, one of the biggest complaints the Eastern Orthodox had for the Crusaders was their boorish behavior. The Byzantine Emperor invited the Pope to help defeat the Muslims. But when the Westerners finally entered the gates of Constantinople the Byzantines became horrified. The crusading soldiers simply did not know how to behave in a glorious and elegant atmosphere. They were crude and rude, coarse and careless. They behaved like bulls in a china shop, without a thought for the feelings and sensitivities for those around. Part of the problem was cultural. The Crusaders did not understand Byzantine civility, nor were they culturally sensitive.

Love requires us to be gracious in our manners. The etiquette books may take things a bit too far: using one fork for salad and another for desert, how to fold a napkin, the proper way to eat chicken, and so forth. On the other extreme, the sixties generation tried to throw out formality and courtesy altogether. It was thought that social graces were fake and phony. What is the result? American culture has largely forgotten the rules of good manners; disrespect and profanities are ubiquitous: classrooms, restaurants, and sporting events are unpleasant environments. It is time for the Church to recover the practice of courteous living. We should teach our children to use titles ­ Mr. and Mrs., Uncle and Aunt, Bishop, Reverend, and doctor; it is not proper for boys and girls to call adults by their first names. Men should behave like gentlemen and open doors for their wives, and let their wives go first. Women should act like ladies. Ladylike behavior includes modesty and femininity, not lewdness or obscenities. Mothers should teach their children and their husbands to mind their manners. Courtesy is how we love in the little things of life.

Love does not seek its own

What does it mean to seek our own? Does it mean that we should not care about our sustenance or providing for our family? No. Seeking our own has to do with self-love and self-absorption. It is bad. A man who seeks his own is obsessed with himself and the things that are his. What a ridiculous thing selfishness is! It is utterly ridiculous for a person to regard himself as the most important being, or as the center around which the world revolves. All children are born thinking themselves the center of attention. It takes years of arduous effort for parents to reorient their children so they no longer behave like they are the center of the universe. It takes tough love to teach a child that love does not seek its own. Some people grow up yet never shed their narcissistic self-fascination. What is the consequence of selfishness? Such people become blind to the needs of others. They become blind to nature itself. They rarely come to appreciate the reality of God's good and beautiful creation. They live for themselves and they are miserable. The Apostle Paul knew how hard it was to get along with self-centered people. Selfishness had practically destroyed the Church at Corinth, and it is a terrible enemy today. One commentator said: "Cure selfishness and you have just replanted the garden of Eden." In other words, once we root out selfishness we will practically have attained Heaven on earth.

Jesus shows us how to avoid self-love and absorption. He lived His life for others; He never sought His own welfare, but always the welfare of others. What happiness to seek the happiness of others!

Come now to the Eucharist. This is the chief expression of fellowship between Christians. The unity and concord that the Apostle Paul required among believers has a couple of solutions. First, that we learn what godly love entails. First Corinthians chapter thirteem spells that out. Second, that we participate in the sacrament that fosters that unity. Holy Communion grants us the spiritual strength to put love into practice.

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