January 28, 2007: Fourth Sunday After Epiphany

The smell was intoxicating as I slaved away on my sermon one Thursday last December. “It's time,” I said to myself, as I called my friend—a friend whom I refer to as “Betty” in this story. Betty answered the phone. Pleased that once again I had rooted a few paper white narcissi for her, and confessed she had her usual Christmas gift for me—a cutting from one of the many plants in her yard.

Like many of you, Betty was fiercely devoted to her church, a congregation where I had served as an intentional interim. Since leaving her congregation, Betty and I had navigated the narrow and complex path from pastor and parishioner to becoming friends. For like many of you, Betty was a godsend to me when I was her pastor—a wise soul who I could count on to steer me straight whether the subject be congregational history, who was related to who, how the congregation might respond to this or that. A sounding board whom I could trust to keep our conversations confidential. Once I asked her the equivalent of —now I know Tommy Hayworth is Carol's husband—but who's the Tommy that's the brother of Helen, Dot and Madeline? And I'll be forever grateful that she didn't fall out of her chair laughing, but simply said oh they're one and the same person.

So the next day I drove to Betty's house to make our annual gift exchange, and as usual, I was not disappointed when Betty filled me in on all the news of her church, --the health concerns of older members, the life transitions of the younger members, the development of things started when I was there, the new seeds the current pastor was planting in the congregational soil I had helped prepare. It's kind of ironic, but oh so true, that the most gratifying part of intentional interim ministry is discovering how well things are going once I've left!

So after Betty caught me up on all the happenings at her church, she asked: “What do you know about Pastor XYZ?” Her question surprised me. “Well,” I responded, “I know he's the pastor at fill in the blank church. We've worked together on a couple of things, but that's about it.

Betty then proceeded to tell me something just as bizarre as if she had said: “You know that Margaret Leinbach? That pastor over in Greensboro ? I heard she brought a whip into their Candle Tea on Friday, and drove all the visitors out. Something about following Jesus' example in temple. The congregation got really upset with her and asked her not to do that again. But the very next day she was right back with that whip at Candle Tea. The Moravians over in Greensboro want her gone.”

I later learned there was some truth to Betty's story. The long and the short of it being, Pastor XYZ took a play out of Jesus' playbook in this morning's gospel lesson. Like Jesus, the pastor felt the power of the Holy Spirit come upon him urging him to speak a prophetic word from the pulpit that while true was not communicated in a spirit of love in a way the congregation knew he cared about them. And like the worshippers in that Nazareth synagogue, they too became enraged and drove the pastor from the church.

It's a shame the pastor in question, and Jesus too for that matter, didn't first take a play from the playbook Paul gives us in today's epistle reading about the importance of a relating to one another in the church with love, about developing bonds of love and care. And why without the presence of that loving bond whatever we say or do in the church is for naught

The rhythmic cadences and simple expressions make Chapter 13 of 1 st Corinthians a favorite for people both in and outside the Christian church. You can buy framed calligraphy of verses 4 to 7 from mail order catalogues. Anna carter Florence , the preaching professor at Columbia Seminary—calls this passage a kind of “love shack of the New Testament,” and that 4 out 5 wedding planners recommend Chapter 13 for those brides and grooms who chose bible verses. And I wonder how many of us this morning upon hearing these verses were transported back to our own wedding or that of another—remembering the love of a man and a woman for one another.

Hearing Chapter 13 as we did this morning—lifted out its context, separated from the concrete reality of the conflicts and competing claims of the folks in the Corinthian church —it is easy to think this passage refers to what the Greeks called eros love, or romantic love.

But Paul wrote these words about the need to love one another to a congregation that had an over abundance of spiritual gifts, particularly the gift of prophecy. It's not enough, Paul says, to speak the prophetic word God gives you. If a bond of love is not present, then God's gifts to you are useless.

This is the reason why, when I preached last October on The Perfect Pastor, I proclaimed: “The single most important expectation you could have of your pastor is that he or she is a red hot lover: a red hot lover of God, a red hot lover of the church, a red hot lover of humanity, and a red hot lover of scripture. Because only when love infuses and permeates the life of a congregation and the relationship a pastor has with every member, will the gifts God has given, and all the ministry we do, achieve their intended purpose.

When we do a close reading of Paul's words this morning, we learn that love is essential for the Christian life. If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers. If I understand all mysteries and all knowledge. If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Or said a less poetic, but more direct, way: if I preach mesmerizing and powerful sermons, if I work 20 hours a day visiting the lonely and the sick, if I am an excellent and wise counselor, if I have strong and true faith, and if I keep the ministries of this congregation humming along efficiently, smoothly, if I do and have all these things, but have not love for each of you, I, the pastor, am nothing.

If you are here every time the church doors are open, if you volunteer every chance you get, if you tithe all your income to the church, bring food every Sunday for the Servant Center, and pray five times a day, but do not have love for the pastor and people in this congregation, you gain nothing.

Only the presence of love makes any of these actions by the pastor or people meaningful—only love makes them something more than deeds of spiritual pride, or competitive one upmanship.

The kind of love, love called agape in Greek, that Paul describes is not an emotion, but an attitude a disposition that infuses our actions with love. Love is being patient. Love is being kind. Love rejoices in the truth, no matter how hard it is to hear. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. We see love most in action during times of stress and conflict. So the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference—the failure to care, or to care enough. If you know that your pastor cares about you. If the pastor knows you care about him or her, this caring concern will go a very long way in smoothing over the rough patches in ministry you will hit together.

New loves begin in climates of openness and trust. If your new pastor comes to you as one who trusts others and finds here a real openness to his or her ministry and gifts, and less criticism about the gifts he or she does not have, then the loving attitude Paul describes this morning can grow. If the new Pastor feels that his or her efforts are appreciated, that will go a long way in replenishing their well of energy so that they are ever-renewed for ministry here.

The secret is taking to heart, Paul's affirmation this morning that love never ends, because God, who is love, will never end. God's love for us and our love for God makes our love to one another possible. We are able to love one another in the ways Paul describes because we are instrument's of God's perfect love. By relating to each other with patience, kindness, respect, keen on discerning the mind of the Chief Elder rather than insisting on our own way, we experience what agape love is. How God becomes real to us is through the enfleshed, embodied Christian community—the body of Christ, and if this love is not present—then all our church activity is for naught.

It does matter how we treat one another, how we love one another. If you really want the next pastor to succeed here, then pray today and every day, “Open my heart, O God, so that I can love the next pastor unconditionally.” I ask that you pray for the new pastor to open his or her heart as well, because if that pastor also loves you, I am sure that together you will follow Our Chief Elder, and journey together into God's great love, equipped as Paul says, “to accomplish far more than we can ask or imagine.” (Eph 3:20).