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The Rev. Frank Logue The Love That Never
Fails Love never fails. The Apostle Paul wrote this in his First Letter to the Corinthians. Paul crafted some of the most beautiful language found anywhere on love, saying: “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 fails.” The only problem with these beautiful words is that they don’t ring true. “Love never fails.” Didn’t St. Paul have the foresight to know that this reading would become the single most popular scripture reading for a wedding ceremony? Yet, in America today some report that half of all marriages end in divorce. Paul writes that love never fails. Why would it seem that love fails about half the time? A quick look at the Greek text of this passage shows that Paul writes using the word “Agape.” Agape, as most of you know, is one of the three Greek words for love used in the New Testament. There is “eros,” or “erotic love” and “phileo,” or “brotherly love.” Finally “agape,” a “self-giving love” routinely shown to be the love God has for us. It is this agape which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all thing. It is this self-giving agape love of God which never fails. Paul calls agape love a “still more excellent way.” To set love in an extreme example, Paul writes that if he understands all mysteries and has faith so as to move mountains, but has not love, he is nothing. If he were to give away everything he owns and hands over even his very life, but has not agape love then he is nothing. So what is the difference between this godly love that never fails and the kind of love that can have half of all marriages end in divorce? The difference is that love that starts with you or me and goes out to another person is usually conditional. I love you as I think you are. Or I love you as you are now. Or worse yet, I love you as I wish you were and hope to change you to be like the ideal of you that I love. All of these are examples of love that starts with me. Yet, if I change and you change, this feeling of love will likely go away. I’ll wake up and realize that the feeling I had has gone away and may never return. At that point, I can either give up on love and stick with a loveless marriage, or I can give up on you and seek love elsewhere. Neither of these options are suggested by scripture. Paul tells us of a still more excellent way. We can infuse our lives with agape, the love that is God’s love for us. Agape love starts with God, and God’s love for us. With this love of God and God’s love for me, I can then begin to see other people as God sees them. From this experience, I reach out in love to others with the love that begins in the very life and nature of God. The love that is within the Trinity is not merely a feeling or emotion. And so, God’s love for your husband or wife, is not dependent on their likes and dislikes, their job, their mood or anything else so changeable. God’s love for your brother or sister does not depend on whether he or she just got on your nerves. God’s love for your co-workers does not depend on their lovability. God’s love for your friends does not depend on whether or not they let you down. God’s love for everyone else is a lot like God’s love for you. This love is a lot more dependable than you or I, even on our best days. At this point a detour is needed to clear up one possible point of confusion. This is not to say that someone who is suffering abuse needs to stay in the abusive situation. The Trinity’s love for creation is not an excuse for tolerating an abusive relationship. Staying in a home where never know if tonight will be a good night or one of the night’s where your spouse hits you or the kids is not love. In physically and emotionally abusive situations, true love for a spouse will mean you remove yourself from harm. Love your spouse enough not to allow the situation to continue. Real love can also mean not becoming co-dependent and supporting someone in their abuse of their own bodies with drugs legal or illegal. Real love can mean setting clear boundaries. Love more concerned for the other can be lived into in many ways that involve standing up to abuse and not letting it continue. The love that wants something better than abuse and acts to make changes to end such needless suffering is a part of the love God has for all creation. The love of God that was in the Trinity before creation overflowed into this world of ours and that loves continues even though we are fallen and not deserving of it. This love that was in the very life of God before creation is the love that never fails. This is the love Jesus had that as he died on the cross he could look out at those who killed him, as they mocked him and say, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Forgiving those who killed him was the most precarious thing an all-powerful God could do. And in these words of forgiveness from the cross, we see that God’s love is more concerned about the other than your own self. Love that is more concerned about others than yourself is not about self-loathing, or being abused. Agape love is also more than a feeling. It takes a decision to give yourself away. Agape love is a decision, an act of the will. Decide to see others as God sees them. Act on this decision rather than just whether you feel the emotions of love. Do you want to experience that sort of godly love for your friends, your family, your spouse? Then the love you have for them cannot start with you and go out to them. The love you have for others must start with God. Ask God to give you this gift. Pray for God to reveal to you the way God sees these other people in your life, especially the difficult people you deal with. Seeing another person as God sees them is not always easy, but when we get it right, this love will never fail. This agape love is a gift from God, which is the still more excellent way. The good news is that the love that never fails, is the love of God. If I count on the love of others, I will be disappointed. But if I count on the love of God, I will always find love. The only problem is, I can’t see God. John wrote of this in the letter we call First John saying, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (I John 4:12) and “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen” (I John 4:21). The real test is whether you love the people around you. Do you treat them with that same self-giving love God calls you to share? With this love in mind, let’s go back to our reading from First Corinthians. This time, I am going to read the paraphrase found in the version of the Bible called The Message. This is pastor Eugene Petterson’s take on putting Paul’s language about agape love into straight talk: “If I give everything I
own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I
don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe,
and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares
more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love
doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of
the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the
flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks
for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end. Love never
dies.” If I take this passage as a self-test, I can discover whether I am living into the agape love God calls me to or am just acting like my own selfish, unredeemed self.
For example, I read, “Doesn’t keep score of the sins of other” or as Paul put it, love “does not rejoice in wrongdoing.” If I find that I am keeping track of the ways I have been wronged, I am not living into agape love. Similarly, if I lose my temper, get a big head and think myself better than others, or find myself not willing to trust God with a difficult circumstance, I am not being who Christ calls me to be. Am I forcing myself on someone? Or always putting myself first? Am I looking for the worst, rather than looking for the best in someone? If so, I have missed the mark that God sets for me with this self-giving love. The good news is that changing course will not rely on your feelings or emotions. Giving yourself to others is something you do, not merely feel. Agape love is an act of will, a decision, a choice. You can choose this kind of love and then act on it. Use agape as the test for your actions. Trying to decide what to do? Put agape into the equation. Should you forgive? Should you pick up the phone and make a call? Should you write a letter? Should you make a visit? Setting aside people who have a pattern of abuse that you must avoid, in the many garden-variety painful relationships in your life, the answer is love. The decision to forgive, or call, or write, or visit or whatever it is that will make this love concrete should not depend alone on whether you have been hurt or could be hurt. The answer should depend on answering the question, “What would love do?” This is how the ideal of loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself is made real. As I have preached, perhaps you have thought of someone who has hurt you, someone with whom you have lost contact, or broken off your relationship. You have thought that what I am saying might apply and have decided why it doesn’t count in this case because of something or another that has happened that is too much to take. If this applies to you, then love is speaking to your heart—the love of God calling you to act on agape love. This love I am talking about is a choice, a decision, an act of the will and it belongs in the heart of your marriage, your relationship with your spouse, your children, your parents, your siblings, your friends, your co-workers. Have the courage to not simply talk of love, but to put love into action. After all, the love God has for you is patient and kind and will never fail. Choose to share that same amazing love with the people in your life. Amen.
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