1 Corinthians 13
submitted by: Vicki Waddington
January 2010
The apostle Paul was a genius about relating the good news of the gospel to the situation, people, culture and traditions of the time. In this most beautiful passage of scripture, there is a place where his reference is almost lost because we tend to hear it as it applies today, and it nearly doesn’t make sense if we don’t know the history behind it.
Mirrors in Paul’s day, in ancient Corinth, were nothing like they are now. In his commentary on the letters to the Corinthians, William Barclay says this about mirrors in the first century BC: “Corinth was famous for its manufacture of mirrors. But the modern mirror as we know it, with its perfect reflection, did not emerge until the thirteenth century. The Corinthian mirror was made of highly polished metal and, even at its best, gave but an imperfect reflection. It has been suggested that what this phrase means is that we see as through a window made with horn. In those days windows were so made and all that could be seen through them was a dim and shadowy outline.”
For now we see through a mirror dimly. Then we shall see face to face.
The Corinthians aren’t the only ones that had trouble seeing God clearly. The church in Corinth was one that I think must have contributed more than a few gray hairs to Paul’s head. There was a whole lot of turmoil in the Corinthian church, and Paul had to deal with it head on or lose all the new Christians he had so carefully nurtured in the faith. There were troublemakers in the church, preaching a gospel that was completely contrary to what Paul taught. In fact, if you read II Corinthians with knowledge of the situation in Corinth, your hair might turn gray, too. Paul was steaming mad about what was going on there, and he scolds and reprimands the Corinthians with all the love and power he can. I cringed when I read passages from II Corinthians the first time. I felt like I was being raked over the coals from two thousand years in the past. Paul surely felt as if the Corinthians, with all their drinking and carousing and their one thousand prostitutes in the temple and all that stuff, were having trouble grasping the concepts of love, grace and obedience. Paul most likely felt as if his new baby Christ-followers in Corinth were not so good as seeing the reflection of God in their lives. Their mirror was pretty cloudy.
We share that same trouble even today. We have the dim and shadowy outline, most of the time. We know the general principles and guidelines of being a good Christian, and we try to follow them as closely as possible. But what exactly is it that we are supposed to do, say, feel, teach, preach and model for others that will make God’s image clear and unmistakably irresistible?
That’s where love comes in. Love is what clears up the fuzziness enough that we can have glimpses of God in our everyday lives, and love is what enables us to show God to other people, too.
Mark forwarded an e-mail to me this week that you may have read yourselves. I hope you don’t mind if I share it anyway. When I read it, I thought, “This is Paul’s message to us today, in contemporary language, coming from the least likely source we might consider for hearing the truth: Our very youngest kids.” Yet here it is, in their words…the language of love.
A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, 'What does love mean?' The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined See what you think:
’When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love.' Rebecca- age 8 (Love is kind)
'When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.' Billy - age 4
'Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.' Chrissy - age 6 (Love does not envy)
'Love is what makes you smile when you're tired.' Terri - age 4
'Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.' Danny - age 7
'Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.' Bobby - age 7 (Wow!)
'If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,' Nikka - age 6 (Love does not keep a record of wrongs_
‘Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.' Tommy - age 6 (Love never ends)
'During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared anymore.' Cindy - age 8 (Love always protects)
'My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.' Clare - age 6
'Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.' Elaine-age 5 (Love is not self-seeking)
'Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.' Mary Ann - age 4
You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.' Jessica - age 8 (Love perseveres)
And the final one…The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, 'Nothing, I just helped him cry'
I would never presume to say that I know better or more than Paul, or that his list was missing something. But if I had two more things to add, I would say that love is wise, and that love has a sense of humor, because I believe God has those characteristics too. By virtue of our being made in God’s image, no matter how foggy our mirror is, we share those same traits with our God of love.
That little four-year-old boy was wiser than I will ever be. To know that what his neighbor needed was someone to sit on his lap and help him cry took wisdom far beyond his four years, or maybe we lose that wisdom as we grow older and think we have more or better answers than we once did. Even my dog is smarter than I am some days. In the numbing fog and pain of the first few weeks after my son’s death in 2000, we ended up with our daughter’s very young dog, who was in danger of being euthanized because she was an out of control puppy who needed constant supervision and training. Of course, we took her in because we couldn’t bear to have her put to sleep at such a young age. That dog – yes, the beloved parsonage puppy that many of you have met, our Jazzmyn, now almost ten years old – nearly drove me crazy. She needed to be taught to stay off the furniture (ha…like that lesson lasted more than a few weeks!), so I would tell her to get down off the couch. She would, but she also would immediately jump up on the loveseat behind me. So I would tell her to get down, and she would – and jump back up on the couch. She needed to go outside. She needed to be let in. She needed to be fed, and walked (now there was an exercise in patience and endurance such as I imagine Paul never had!). She needed constant attention. And I didn’t feel like giving it to her – but I was the one who was home most of the time.
In the midst of all the puppy-induced chaos, I sometimes was able to let go of my grief for a few seconds at a time, and would find myself muttering to myself about misbehaving dogs or kids who didn’t know how to raise pets. Then I would chuckle – although I felt horribly guilty about being able to laugh. But you know what? Jazzmyn’s exploits gave me something else to focus on. I never ever forgot my crushing and inexplicable loss – but I was able to concentrate on something else for a tiny bit of time. Jazzmyn, in her need for love – for that is what it takes to raise a puppy into a parsonage pooch – forced me to make a decision between love and neglect. I could not face the prospect of losing anything else – even a willful, immature canine creature – so I let myself love her. The love was foggy, and more a matter of teaching her how to co-exist with her human family at first than being the spoiled, overindulged, yet fairly well-behaved dog that she is now. But it worked. I’m glad we kept her, even though she still drives me crazy sometimes. I’m sure that I do the same to her. Yet still…she loves me, too.
If I can feel that way about a canine creature. how much more can I feel about the people around whom I live?
Nowhere in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians does he say that love is easy. Nowhere does it say that love is simple, either. In fact, he admits that we don’t have all the answers, and I suspect Paul knew that we don’t even have all the questions. Perhaps the key here is that when we look in the mirror seeking answers, we don’t see ourselves. We see God, reflected in God’s love for all his creation. Are we ready to reflect that love, as complicated and cloudy as it can seem at times, into a world that doesn’t know nearly enough about love?
Here is a quote from Homiletics this week. “In the opening scene of the film Love Actually, Hugh Grant’s character says, “When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge. They were all messages of love.”
Dr. Erin Stevens is a young, bright, enthusiastic OB/GYN in Miles City. She arrived at Holy Rosary Healthcare not long before Mark and I moved here, and Mark got to know her as she did call-ins with KATL, the station Mark worked for. Dr. Stevens was in med school in New York City when the World Trade Center was destroyed. She told Mark that she was in class at the time at the hospital where they expected the casualties from the twin towers to be brought, and that some of the administration people came into the classroom as they were in the middle of class. When the instructor finished, the students were told, “Some of you we need right now. Here are your assignments. The rest of you…go home, and find out where your family is.”
Love in two directions…some were to care for those who were injured. Others were to find those they cared most about and tell them that they loved them…just in case they had forgotten. In the cloudiness brought about by hatred, fear, pain and loss…love was what would bring about clarity, focus, and purpose. Faith, hope, and love…and the greatest of these is love.
I know the mirrors in the days of Corinth and Paul were cloudy, and I’m not just talking about the ones made of metal. It was tough then to know what God expected, and how much people would have to change to be a true reflection of God’s love in the world. It’s hard to feel as if you’re stumbling around in the dark, searching for something you can’t see and might not recognize even if you did find it. I believe our mirrors are equally cloudy today. We have a culture that is complicated, hard to understand, and does its level best to keep us focused on anything other than the kind of true, pure love about which Paul talks. It’s really difficult, too, to not have all the answers. It would be a lot easier if we just knew what God wanted us to do, and if God explained what was happening so we could understand all the tough stuff that life throws at us. But life fogs up our mirrors, and God knows that we don’t have what it takes to comprehend God’s greater plan and God’s greater good, even in the mess we make of living life these days, in these times.
What I cling to…what I need…is the reassurance that my job and my place are to love, not to know, but that someday I will. I need to be able to ask the questions, but now is not the time for God to rub the fog off the mirror for me. Now the best I can do is to love as much as I can, and leave the rest to God. Knowing that God knows me fully now, and that someday I will know fully, is enough for me. In the meantime, if I can look in the mirror and see God’s love for me, in spite of the fog, that’s enough. For now.
Faith, hope, and love. We live by faith, we live with hope, and we live for love. The greatest of these…is love. May God bless our mirrors, and grant us the ability to see God’s love in those mirrors.
And all God’s children say…Amen.