February
1, 2004 - Fourth
Sunday after Epiphany
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
NRSV
KJV
CEV
Luke 4:21-30
NRSV
KJV
CEV
"Can Love Really Be Tough?"
Wednesday evening Julie and I had the privilege to hear the virtuoso cellist, Yo Yo Ma. It was a stellar performance. Watching his face during the performance one would have thought he was in some sort of ecstasy, a state of transport, and he appeared to be almost at one with his instrument. The music simply flowed out of him as he garnered a huge range of sound and emotion in a performance that appeared almost effortless. However, it wasn’t effortless. Mr. Ma obviously has spent time preparing and continues to spend time – his performance looked effortless precisely because so much effort had been put into it.
Listening and watching Yo Yo Ma set me to thinking. What I witnessed the other evening was a beautiful example of tough love. It has become increasingly clear to me that tough love is more than just a nice phrase giving us an excuse to yell at someone. When we think about the definition of tough – strong or firm in texture but flexible and not brittle, characterized by severity or uncompromising determination, capable of enduring strain, hardship or severe labor, hard to influence, stubborn – it fits. Ma loves music, loves his instrument, loves what he’s doing and is willing to do what it takes to demonstrate that love.
Tough love, to me, is about working at being loving. Tough love is about demonstrating our love in concrete ways. It has been said that “God is in the details,” and it’s true. God is in the details, especially when the detail is love. So can love ever really be tough? Yes. In fact, I would say that all true love is always tough. Let me explain.
The thirteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth is one of the best known and over-used texts of scripture. It seems to crop up at wedding after wedding because its theme is love and it serves as a convenient back-drop to all of the glorious love music people want to hear on their wedding day. Fair enough. However, I’m not so sure that this text of Paul’s is really appropriate for weddings. It’s not about romantic love, eros. It’s not about feelings. Rather, it’s about agape, love that is without condition or boundaries. Paul’s love chapter is on tough love. This “more excellent way” is a way of intentionality – it’s not about feeling, in fact it’s beyond feeling.
Love is the expression in thought and deed of an orientation, an attitude that one develops toward God, others and self. Thus, Paul says that love is consistent, and here’s the tough part, love behaves in the appropriate manner. “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 does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”
Love is the demonstration, the proof, of who we are. As the old saying goes, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So, it would follow, that the proof of the Christian is in the loving, in the way we act and behave toward others. Remember way back to the earliest days of the church, when they were first called Christians in Antioch. What did they say of us? “Behold how they love one another!” Do they say that of us today?
Being a Christian is about loving as God loves. That’s what this church business is all about. It’s not about orthodoxy – whether we have correctness of doctrine or correctness of liturgical practice. Nor is it about control or agenda – though this isn’t always readily apparent in many churches, and at multiple levels. It doesn’t matter if it’s my way, or your way, or his way, or their way. What matters is, is it done in love? That’s what Paul is saying when he tells folks that you can even give your body to be burned – that is offer yourself as a martyr – and it will mean nothing if it wasn’t done for love. As we do anything, say anything we have to ask ourselves the same question that Paul is inviting the Corinthians to ask themselves: am I doing this out of love? Remember, “love does not insist on its own way” – love seeks the good of the other. Do we do it out of love? Being church, doing church is about a living relationship of love to God and to one another.
This is tough. As I’ve said, this is about tough love and, frankly, being a loving person is tough. Jesus confronted this tough situation of what it means to be loving fairly early on in his ministry – that’s what we see in the reading from Luke’s Gospel. Like Jesus, we’re going to have to confront unloving situations. When we do, we’re going to be pushed to the edge of endurance, just as Jesus was. The kind of radical, unconditional love – the truth of the fulfillment Jesus declared in the synagogue – is never easy and it pushes us and pushes those around us. Why? Because it’s tough, it doesn’t fit how we think God should work. Love that seeks the good of others defies our categories and isn’t neat. God’s love is tough – it endures – and it never gives up on us. And we’re called to live and to love in exactly the same way. Welcome to tough love. Welcome to the Good News.
You see, God isn’t bound by our conventions. God is sovereign and God is free to touch, to heal, to restore, and to love just as God desires. Another one of my favorite sayings is, “God writes straight with crooked lines.” I would hasten to add that God also doesn’t necessarily color within the lines, either. The tough love of God is free and there’s the tough part. We find it difficult to wrap our minds around such a concept. And having to try to live it out is hard. God’s tough love takes us to edge, pushes us to the limits of our comfort zones and demands a tough response from us – the kind of work, intention, and action that makes loving look effortless.
So, can love really be tough? Yes and what makes it tough is that it doesn’t give up on us. Love reaches to us, and through us, over and over and over again. “Love never ends.” We get a hint of this enduring love every time we come together as God’s free and gathered people. We gather to break open the Word and then come to the table where what we’ve heard becomes tangible. The bread and the cup we share are physical reminders of God’s care for us. I don’t know about you, but in my house growing up, food was love. We still talk about “comfort food” – especially in weather like we’ve been having – and it reminds us of nurture, of safety, of being loved and cared for. We’re about to receive the ultimate in “comfort food.” And this comfort food, this Lord’s Supper, simple as it is, also reminds us that we are part of something far bigger – just like the grains that came together to make the bread and the grapes that make the wine.
Can love really be tough? Yes – and thank God it is, because love never ends, never gives up on us, and that means being tough. “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Amen.