Paul’s opening sentences in this thirteenth section of his letter to the church in Corinth got me thinking this week: What would the church look like if it didn’t have love? Imagine with me for a minute. A church without love would not have ministries that build others up. Instead, we would have ministries that promote things like more hunger in the world, more abuse, more violence. Or at the very least, we would turn a blind eye to them. We wouldn’t give money to things that promote peace in the world. There would be no fellowship, just common anger and complaint. Evangelism would be solely about keeping people from hell rather than embracing them with God’s love. I actually asked this question on Facebook this week and the responses were interesting. One person said it “would be a very cold, hopeless place.” Another person said, “A church without love is a social club.” I would argue that, without love, the church is even less than a social club. Perhaps it might even be more of an anti-social club. A church without love would look nothing like the church is supposed to look. It would look nothing like Jesus.

Paul writes to the church in Corinth, “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. 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. 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.” So what are we without love? Paul says we are noisy gongs and clanging symbols. We are nothing and we gain nothing. That seems a pretty harsh critique. But we know what Jesus said about love and his followers. Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Love is the calling card of the church. In a sermon by Minister Marvin K. White, he said, “I think about love all of the time. I think about how I want my success to be measured not by the glass ceilings I have broken through but by the love ceilings I have ascended beyond.” As a person of color, Rev. White probably has broken through his share of glass ceilings, but his goal in life is instead to love in remarkable ways. To ascend beyond the love ceilings that keep love boxed in and let love loose. That is really what the church is called to do. To let love loose on the world. Yet so often we have failed in that. We have either held the love for ourselves and hoarded it like a valuable heirloom or we have lost it altogether and found ourselves failing to love even those who are our own. Either way, in failing to love widely and broadly, we are failing to BE the church.

If we look at 1 Corinthians 13 in the context of the church rather than in the context of romantic love or brotherly love, I think we see a pretty strong challenge to much of what we see happening in our world and even within many Christian churches across the country. “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.” We can speak all the brilliant words we want, but if those words are not accompanied by love, then we are just adding more noise to the world. Frederick William Robertson once wrote, “He who seeks truth must be content with a lonely, little-trodden path. If he cannot worship her till she has been canonized by the shouts of the multitude, he must take his place with the members of that wretched crowd who shouted for two long hours, ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians!’ till truth, reason, and calmness were all drowned in noise.” I think that quote really speaks to the heart of the American dilemma right now. Truth, reason, and calmness have all been drowned in noise. Noise from the relentless media. Noise from the shouting of one congressperson at another. Noise from pastors proclaiming the gospel of nationalism. Noise from family members who can’t leave controversial topics out of family gatherings. Noise from social media and television. We are simply drowning in noise. And it makes it really difficult to find truth and reason and calmness…and ultimately to find love.

Paul continues, “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.” What good is faith and knowledge and foresight if it is absent of love? Sometimes our knowledge of others actually leads to us choosing not to love them. “In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, ‘Do not waste your time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.’” Knowledge without love can lead to violence and anger. It can lead to prejudice and hate.

Prophecy without love can lead us to feel like everything is pointless. Margaret Atwood, in her novel The Blind Assassin, wrote, “If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you’d be doomed…You’d be a stone. You’d never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You’d never love anyone, ever again. You’d never dare to.” I think sometimes when we have the ability to see the possibilities with our actions, it can scare us into inaction. But when we have love, it helps us to see the possibilities for goodness. Love can also make the impossible seem possible.

Which leads us to consider faith without love. Faith without love leads to violence. I think about terrorism committed under the banner of religion. The acts may be committed because of faith, but they definitely are not done in love. Often, if someone has faith in something, be it God or whatever, but they do not have love, that is where we often see extremism and terrorism. Having faith without love is believing in power rather than God. Because God is love. If I have faith in God, I might go through the motions and do the rituals and pray the prayers. But without love, I will not act in care for my neighbor. I will not give of myself for others. I will only seek my own welfare. I will only seek power and personal gain.

But Paul writes, “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.” Paul says that we could give everything away, we could empty our pockets and give it all to others, but without love we gain nothing. What it seems he’s really talking about there when you look at the original Greek is that if we were to give away all that we had to feed others (a great thing, right?), we profit nothing if we don’t do it out of love. And that kinda makes sense to me. I mean if I woke up tomorrow and just was sick of having a house to live in and a car to drive and clothes and what not. And so I went out and sold them all and just gave the money away because I didn’t care about it at all. What would I profit from that? There I’d be without anything to my name and though that money I gave away might have meaningfully impacted someone else’s life, if I did it because I didn’t care about it and not because I had love for the people who needed that money, then I’m probably not going to care what impact that money has on the people who receive it. I’m just glad to be rid of it.

In a similar way, if I give up my body for someone else, but I don’t do it out of love, how would it profit me? If I sacrifice my life because I’m simply sick of living and it happens to save someone else, that’s great, but what does it matter to me? Yet if I choose to give up my life for the sake of someone else because of love, then my profit is simple. I gain the knowledge that someone I care about will live.

The church can do the same basic things that the church has done for centuries, but without love, it means nothing. It is simply noise. But if we instead choose to live as we’ve been called to live with agape love for God and our neighbors, then there is truly no limit to what can be accomplished through us. I want to share with you a poem by Karen Campbell entitled Without Love that talks about how empty our life is when we don’t have love in it.

Without Love

Without love, I can live,

But I will not thrive.

I will not reach my full potential.

I will not feel safe,

Or valued,

Or know the security

Of true belonging.

I will not be at ease –

In this place or that –

Or in my own skin.

Without love, I can live,

But restless, wandering –

Where being me is not enough,

And I am coerced to become

Someone else.

But who?

Without love, I can live,

But I cannot just ‘be’;

I cannot fully appreciate nor take

My place

In the give and take

And wonder of life.

Then, I am robbed of myself –

And so is the world.

Without love, I can live,

But how can I know

How to love…

Love life

Love others

Or love myself?

I can live without love.

But what kind of life?

The church is called to love. It is who we are. It is our calling card. The world will know that we follow Jesus Christ if we show love. For God so love the world that Christ died for us all. May we be shining examples of that love to one another, to our neighbors, to our community, and to our world. AMEN!