A More Excellent Way to Disagree
1 Corinthians 13:1-8a, 13
If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. …13 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.
Context
This young church was filled with different leaders competing for prominence and authority; there was significant conflict surrounding worship, doctrinal disputes, deciding who is a true Christian, and sexual propriety. It is a very small jump to see these same issues played out in current news cycles. Whose version of Christianity will hold sway in our day—the Pope?, Christian Nationalist? Presbyterians?, what political party should govern, what is sexually permitted? These issues are ancient and current. Living in a community will always include conflict. The trick is to decide how we will navigate our disagreements. Paul has some specific advice on the subject.
Paul’s theology is practical and applied to real life. Paul addressed these issues by contrasting the self defeating natural world and the spiritual world that Jesus offered.
In order to understand we need to see how he developed his argument. This can be dense so hang on.
Paul’s Premise
In two of his other letters (Romans and Galatians), Paul contrasts ‘the way of the flesh’ and ‘the way of the Spirit’. Understanding this contrast is critical
The way of all creatures is to preserve self. Theologically, Paul called such thinking ‘the way of the flesh’. Biologically, we call the same phenomenon “survival of the fittest”. In both, worth and identity are earned and are conditional. This perspective is critical to the evolution of our species but if it is the only perspective we use, our lives are a gerbil wheel existence of competition, polarization and conflict. We may be winners but victory is never absolute. Underdogs, the marginalized (in political parlance, people dismissed as losers) rise up and threaten the ‘winners’. The need to win guarantees a cycle that leads to losing.
It also means relationships and community are based upon agreement. Diversity is a threat to the dominant culture because diversity suggests there are alternate, legitimate ways to live. Anyone outside of that circle is alien and most commonly viewed as a threat.
In contrast, Paul presents ‘the way of the Spirit’. The way of the Spirit is the way out. The way of the Spirit is an alternative way to live. It is super natural. It comes from God and is revealed in Christ Jesus. Jesus saves us from ourselves and to “a more excellent way”.
The foundation of this more excellent way is grounded in the Love of Christ. Jesus loved the person in front of him regardless of the secular definitions of worth. He refused to be bound by secular definitions of importance. Every person is a child of God and God loves every one of us. Jesus’ way is incredibly idealistic but his life, death and resurrection give us the possibility of basing our relationships on regard.
Living in relationships of love requires that we feel safely loved. Without that foundation, we can not sustain the hard work of loving. And that finally brings us to this passage.
1Corinthians 13 is most often read at weddings to help couples navigate the work of relationship. As such, it can be sentimentalized and/or become a measuring stick for the perfect way to Love. Paul’s primary goal, however, was to provide an understanding of God that could provide a foundation for a church in acrimonious conflict.
Rather than a measuring stick for good Christians, it describes Love as Jesus loves. There is nothing humans can do to deserve God’s love. God’s love is a gift. It is very desirable. It is very expensive and it is hard to receive—and hard to offer.
Love is a Gift
How are you at receiving a compliment, gifts, or a dinner invitation? In real life it is difficult for most of us to say thank you without feeling an obligation to reciprocate. But loving out of obligation is a whole lot different than loving because we are grateful. The Good News is we are safely loved. However, that is not how humans love.
We are incredibly capable of turning our best efforts of gift giving into a transaction. A wealthy man wanted to do good. And largely based on his Christian beliefs, wanted to share his wealth with a disadvantaged family at Christmas. He contacted a Family and Children counselling agency, identified a family and spent several hundred dollars for gifts. Once purchased he asked for the opportunity to present his gifts in person to the family. There is nothing wrong with such a request and certainly nothing wrong with the man’s generosity. But was he doing the work of God? That knowledge would require discerning the man’s heart. On the face of it, it is obvious that giving to help others is good. But what would he learn in prayer? Did he give because of his awareness of the inequities of the world and his desire to share his abundance — and/or out of his need to be noticed and thanked? The family would probably benefit in either case, but in the first case, his gift demonstrated his gratitude toward God and his regard for the family. In the second, he runs the risk of exploiting the family’s neediness to have his needs met. In the first case, his giving is a reflection of his trust in God. In the second, the same giving is a way to earn favor and worth. In the second he would discover his insecurity, his need to prove himself and his fundamental distrust in God’s care for him. The ‘will of the Father who is in heaven’ is that we live safe in God’s embrace. Though the man did good works, perhaps in the name of the Lord, the foundation of his action makes all the difference.
When we receive this gift, we must relinquish any concept of human fairness or deserving. That leaves us profoundly vulnerable. We cannot control the gift or the giver. We can only choose to say thank you and live in gratitude or no thank you and live in obligation. To this point, EE Cummings wrote: “Slavery and the only slavery is service without love.” When we turn love into a transaction or an ‘ought to’ we revert to our ‘natural’ creaturely ‘way of the flesh’. We do it all of the time. But it is not the way Jesus loves!
To feel safely loved requires we give up ‘childish things’ to trust God’s promises. The experience of feeling safely loved creates space to have conversations instead of competitions. Relationships can be based upon respect. We can love our neighbor, however different from us, out of the foundational belief that we, and they, have intrinsic God-given worth. We are in position to tolerate a both/and world rather than our human default—an either/or— your or me— world.
A couple I know have very different ways of coping with the world. She is the designated ‘worrier’ and he is the designated ‘avoider’. This is a false dichotomy because each of them do both but for years they have been in competition about what was the ‘right’ way to live.
A major shift occurred when confronted with a series of logistical concerns that easily could have led to indignation and accusation. She said to him: “Thank you for being patient with my worrying” and he said, “Thank you for being patient with my avoidance.” This is what a relationship based upon respect looks like. They each could be accountable and though very different, did not have “to insist on their own way’. (They probably both wished the other was different but it did not mean they could not respect one another). A moment like this cannot be contrived but when it happens new connection is possible in the face of conflict.
Paul was putting into words the nature of a God whose essence is patience and kindness. This is a God who doesn’t keep score, whose love is reliable in every human condition. When we trust such a God, we can disagree. We can advocate our position and remain curious about another. We do not need to prove ourselves or demand that our way is the right way. We can listen without saying “Yes, but…” The knowledge we are safely loved creates space to have conversations instead of competitions.
This is the very practical Faith in Real Life lesson Paul wanted to teach the church in Corinth. Their problems are our problems.
Jesus provides a more excellent way. It transformed me. I believe it can transform you. Let it be so.
