But I do have things to say. They might be things I'm too nervous to preach in my current situation - volunteer worship leader in an overseas military liturgical congregation. 😮
They might be things I'm too afraid to say because they might require something extra from me - take me out of my comfort zone. 😰 And yet, here I go...
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.
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. 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. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13 NRSV)
I read a lot - history, theology, practical discipleship, cookbooks, crafting books, science fiction... I love it all. When I was 11 years old, I finally qualified for a library card of my own and got to "book-shop" in the adult section of our local library. One of the librarians had also been a junior high school teacher, so she was really good about walking us around and recommending books to get us started. I have carried my love of a good book into adulthood, which is a good thing since my vocation depends on me to keep reading in preparation for preaching, teaching, and conversations with people in many different settings. You never know what someone will ask when you knit with them at a coffee shop or sit by them on a plane.
Ironically, the COVID-19 lockdown reacquainted me with reading for pleasure. I read through all of the novels I had in my bookshelf upstairs, and many of the "professional" books I had used quotes from, but never read cover to cover. I reread Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, my tattered copy was a gift from a seminary friend when I was left at school to work during Spring break when most of my friends were at the beach. I read it alternately with the books and articles I had collected for a big research paper due a few weeks later. That book changed my life.
But my guilty pleasure is reading romance novels. There are some days when you just need a HEA - happily ever after. Yeah, I know, most of them are not great literature. Many are not well written, but I've decided that I'll plow through a lot of mediocre ones on the happy chance that I'll read something that makes a real impression on me and teaches me something new. I'm amazed at the way that romance novelists tackle real-life issues - racism, grief, infertility, domestic violence, politics, parenting challenges, second chances... the list goes on and on...
But reading romance is mostly an escape - and maybe I need that HEA because the world is pretty messed up. I read or listen to the news and it feels like we keep encountering the same problems over and over. Living in Europe highlights issues that many Americans are paying attention to. I am sickened by people who stand on the side of autocracy. As Americans and as Christians, we should be actively assisting people to have freedom everywhere. We watched the Netflix movie Munich: The Edge of War last weekend and I was unsettled, not just by seeing a portrait of a few pivotal days before the beginning of WW2, but because I saw so many of our current mistakes as reflections of ones that were made then. (See also the satirical disaster movie Don't Look Up!)
It's very disturbing when one or more cable news talking heads spout lies to people who don't know any better. It's next level "messed up" when school districts ban books that show a world that they don't want kids to see, often siting violence and profanity as the reason. Really? Have you listened to the radio lately? Played video games? Watched TV or gone to the movies? I don't think "gratuitous" is a strong enough word to use for the amount of violence or profanity that most of us, including children, encounter every day.
So if that's not what's going on, what is it about?
Over the last three years, I have been on a reading adventure with a friend here in Germany. He retired as an Army O-6 many years ago and from government service three years ago. He stayed here as his wife continued her work in the DoDEA school system, and at his retirement party, he asked me to help him discover new Christian authors to fill up his free to and help him expand his theological knowledge as he sought to be a better bible teacher and all-around Christian person.
In the last 2 1/2 years, we have read some really challenging books. Every book choice leads us to something even more challenging. Sometimes our choices are very bible oriented... I will never think of the resurrection and heaven the same way after reading N.T. Wright's Suprised by Hope. I have expanded my pool of authors to include minority voices from the black, Latino, feminist, Roman Catholic, progressive evangelical, and LGTBQ+ communities. Still, the #1 favorite: The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr... get it... read it with a friend. But I digress...
Everybody has an opinion about books. But not allowing kids to read books because they are controversial or deal with difficult topics or because you don't want them to know that these things even happened - that's just stupid. My librarian friend helped me check out Anne Frank's diary the summer before 7th grade, but she made my mom check it out first, and she told me to talk with her about the questions I had. That was where I learned about the World Wars. From there I heard about my grandfather fighting in France in WW1, and my dad serving as an Army Sargeant right out of high school in WW2. I learned about the Holocaust, and I cried real tears when I realized that Anne never made it out alive.
Later in school, we read Billy Budd and Red Badge of Courage and Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird ... very violent, and sometimes sickening to read and discuss. But from those stories, I learned that I didn't want to live in a world like that. And through my life as a Christian, I learned that I could do something about it.
Paul writes to a church in Corinth that is tearing itself apart with is quarrels and disagreements. And he is holding a mirror up to their faces, calling them out for their hypocrisy and un-Christian nature. I imagine from his critique that they are trying to justify their behavior by invoking the name of Jesus. His clear retort - whatever you say, whatever you plan, whatever you do, if it's not done it love it is wasted effort.
And then Paul paints a portrait of love that feels unattainable but is so lovely we can't help but try. I realized when I was reading that second paragraph that Paul's instructions are found as we live out the gifts of the Spirit as taught to the Galatians. And then he goes on to remind us that in this life, we only know part of the fullness of God. In the beginning, we are children in faith, only able to understand in the simplest of terms what it means to be a child of God. As we grow, we let our simple understanding go and learn to embrace the complicated natures of God and Jesus and the Church.
Even so, in this life, we don't know everything about God. Paul says, "We see in a mirror dimly..." For me, that is what it feels like in the morning before I put on my glasses. I can see shapes and colors, but I can't see the walk down the stairs, much less drive a car. The best news is that one day, we will see God face to face, and we will have a big AH HA! All the missing pieces will be filled in, and we will know God fully, even as God has always known us.
Until then, we have to give others the benefit of the doubt. We have to accept that we don't have all the answers. There are more things to learn, and amazingly, we will often change our minds - in fact, we must change our minds.
It is easy to get lured into a sense of comfort in our faith journeys. It's hard and scary to be confronted with differing ideas about who God and Jesus are, and how we are being called to live out our faith.
As much as I don't want people judging my faith journey, I cannot judge theirs. Yes, that makes me uncomfortable. When people come to me with questions, there are few things more uncomfortable than saying, "I don't know," or "I might be wrong." And I'll be honest - when I don't know, or when I think I'm wrong about ideas I had in the past, I often don't willingly share that info because I don't want to be judged or thought of as wishy-washy or falling away from the faith. In fact, the opposite is true.
Many of you know my backstory: I was a blood bank technologist for six years before I felt the call to seminary and full-time ministry. I tried to slow-roll the process as much as possible because it all felt like stepping off a ledge into the vast darkness of space. I made it into Duke Divinity School with 95% of the work being be done by the Holy Spirit. On the Sunday before I left for seminary, an older woman whispered in my ear, "Don't let that place steal your faith." I can only assume she was afraid that getting more knowledge would weaken my faith... she was totally wrong.
My faith journey has taken so many twists and turns, you absolutely could not make this stuff up. There is nothing in the specifics of my journey that I ever imagined for myself and everything I hoped it would be. More knowledge and more experience only make my faith and my hope stronger... and my ability and desire to love, but always with God's help.
In the last verse of this passage, Paul reminds us that faith and hope are important, but if love is not the underpinning of our whole existence, nothing else matters. We are called to do everything in love. All of our interactions with other people - and all of creation - must be grounded in love. All of our thoughts - even our anger - must come from a place of love, which feels impossible, at best. If the Hebrew Bible prophets teach us anything, it's that righteous anger is a gift from God and is sometimes the best motivation to do the really hard work. What does that look like? That's different for everyone.
But it might be something as "simple" as
1 - providing a space where kids can read difficult books and talk about them from a Christian perspective... buying copies of banned books for your church library.
There are 101 ways to end this "not a sermon," but I'll leave you with this:2 - reading a book that others have warned you about to see for yourself what it has to say... you don't have to take everything as gospel truth, but you may find something worth considering, and maybe even incorporating into your own life or theological perspective.
3 - reaching out to people who are different from you. Yes, taking that first step is hard, and may even get us in trouble with those who are most comfortable to us, but brings its own rewards - ones we didn't even know we needed.
Love is a choice. And for us to live truly authentic Christian lives, we have to practice love until it becomes as natural as breathing in the air around us. And because we are not perfect, it will always be something we have to work at - it will never be so automatic that we don't have to ask the question, "Is this choice rooted in what Jesus taught us love is all about?"
I'll leave you with some of my favorite quotes on love, which remind us how different Christian love is from the kind of love the world talks about.
“Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ's sake. Therefore, human love seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a free person but as one whom it binds to itself. It wants to gain, to capture by every means; it uses force. It desires to be irresistible, to rule.” -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community“Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.” -- Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." -- CS Lewis, The Four Loves.
Peace, Deb
(c) Deb Luther Teagan, January 2022
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