In more than 3 decades of ministry, I’ve officiated a great many weddings. Often, the couple chooses part of I Cor. 13 for me to read. It’s known as the “love chapter”. Imagine that these words are 2,000 years old, yet as apropos today as they were to ancient people halfway around the world – a different culture, time, and people. When the apostle Paul wrote these words, he was not writing about weddings or marriages, although the advice is great for the marital relationship. Paul wrote about love so eloquently because he was upset. He wrote these words to the people at Corinth, a church community he had founded, and he heard some rumblings about. He understood that some of the members there were not following the teachings of Jesus as he had taught them and were tearing each other apart with their actions. They were fighting amongst themselves. They were splitting into factions, even taking each other to court. Some were sleeping with other people’s spouses. Some were demanding that they could take communion first when they were together. Others, when they had communion, got drunk on the communion wine. Furthermore, they were bickering about who was the best Christian!

When Paul writes about arrogance, rudeness, insisting on one’s own way, being irritable, being resentful, and rejoicing in wrongdoing, he is not speaking of modern Washington DC. He is talking about an ancient church in Corinth. And he is writing about the mistakes humans make in relationships… in our business relationships; our church relationships; our family relationships; our marriages; and even when we are working on loving ourselves.

Listen again to Paul’s description of how to treat others with this in mind:

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. I Cor. 13: 1-7

What Paul is describing here is not sentimental or emotional. This kind of love is something fierce and active. Friends, our community, nation and world are struggling to enact this kind of fierce and active love in ways many of us have never had to do in our lives before.

This scripture writing is magnificently written. In vs. 4-7, love’s credentials are laid out both positively, with regard for what love does and how it operates, and negatively, with regard to what it avoids and does not do. Because love is never held alone in one’s own self – love always, always, always involves another. Love always links oneself to another. Love is a two-way street that provides a context of mutually, understanding, and relatedness between each person and others, between God and believers, and between believers and other believers. And that is the context in which love enables us, with the support of the others who are linked in love, to bear, to endure whatever comes along. The Holy Spirit brings this kind of love into our lives, our congregations, and everywhere we go.

I want to share the story of Silas: Silas was 82. Every Monday evening Silas wheeled his green trash bin down to the edge of his driveway. His wife, Clara had been gone for three years. Last autumn, something strange started happening. After the garbage truck rumbled away, Silas found something left at the bottom of his empty bin. It wasn’t trash: it was transformation.

First, it was a ceramic bowl he had accidentally shattered – one Clara brought back from a trip. When he opened the lid of the trash bin, the bowl was back. It had been meticulously pieced together – the cracks filled with a shimmering silver resin. Then came a wool sweater of his that moths had ruined. It returned with the holes transformed into lovely embroidered stars.

Silas started paying closer attention. He realized he wasn’t the only one. A neighbor’s cracked garden gnome was suddenly whole; another’s torn porch flag was neatly hemmed. One morning, Silas woke up early and sat by the window and that was when he saw his neighbor Mrs. Gable from the house at the end of the cul-de-sac. She is 88, tiny, and frail, but she moved with a quiet, determined grace. She was leaning over his bin, carefully placed a mended wooden birdhouse inside.

Silas stepped out onto the porch. “Mrs. Gable?” She startled, then a gentle, knowing smile spread across her face. “Hello Silas,” she answered. “I hope you don’t mind. When Clara passed… I missed her… I realized that if I couldn’t talk to her, I could take care of what she loved.”

Clara invited Silas to her garage. It was a sanctuary of glue, thread, sandpaper, and oil. There were items from every house in the area – a broken umbrella, a chipped picture frame, a dull kitchen knife.

The next week, Silas set an old, heavy table on his porch. The top was stained, and one of the legs had given way. He left a sign: I can’t fix this alone. The next afternoon, three of the men from the neighborhood were on the porch working to make the table like new. They said, “Fixing things is just how we say ‘I care’ when we don’t have words”.

Now, Tuesdays in the neighborhood look different. Everyone still puts out the trash, but the porches are filled with “mending”. The teenager across the street repairs bikes for the local shelter. The accountant next door sharpens tools for the community garden.

Kindness isn’t a loud, expensive gesture. It’s the quiet, calloused hand that reaches into the trash of your life, picks up the shattered pieces, and makes them shine again.

Let me tell you! God’s Spirit, or the Holy Spirit – whichever language you prefer - has the possibility to rework us in times like this! A time of war; a time of unrest; anytime! is the perfect time for the Spirit of God to change things up. Sometimes we get stuck in our ways. Something like a metaphorical earthquake must come along and shake us up for us to find a new way to do things. And while the shake up may be difficult, or even painful, in the end, it can be freeing! God’s Spirit can bring new things from old ways when we are open to her.

You were probably all taught about – or have heard about that elusive third member of the Trinity – the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God is the giver of gifts – the surprising and adventurous part of God that interacts with our daily life and invites us to join in God’s daily Holy adventure. The Spirit of God is represented in the Bible by breath, tongues of fire, a dove, and “sighs too deep for words”. When she was only 3, my daughter said the “Spirit was like her tummy – when she good, her tummy felt good and when she wasn’t good, her tummy was upset”. Some people liken the Holy Spirit to their conscience.” In scripture, the Holy Spirit is often depicted as a woman.

The Spirit reminds us of what the world could be if we enacted God’s peace and justice – God’s love and shalom – in our personal and corporate lives. I like this description from Bruce Epperly, “Revelation is not confined to creed, church, shaman or priest; revelation gently emerges in the laughter of a baby, the strange words of an immigrant, the cry of a baby seal, or the hymns of humpback whales.”

When the world is turned upside down, the Spirit will have her way with us, and we will be remade. As a giver of gifts, she will move through each of us, inviting us while we are shut out from the world, to find beauty in our lives, and to be co-creators with God. All this alone time has given us the opportunity to do some soul searching, some reading and some reflecting.

Every encounter we have with someone is an opportunity to be remade by God’s Spirit. We can be open to new experiences, new relationships, new ways of doing things, and a new world! We can strive for patience, kindness, and all the elements Paul mentions in I Corinthians 13. We can be remade by the Holy Spirit – listening and reflecting as we go.

In 2016, Tyler Boone, age 10, and his friend Gabby Ruiz, age 12, met in a mall in Georgia. They met because Gabby had been diagnosed with a hair loss disorder and Tyler decided he wanted to grow out his hair and donate it for a wig for her. In the two years it took for Tyler’s hair to grow long enough, he had been mistaken for a girl too many times to count. But he just wanted to make Gabby happy. Gabby is shy but has bright eyes and the best accessories from a scarf for her head to perfect painted fingernails. For nearly an hour, the two giggled and laughed during a photo shoot highlighting how long Tyler’s hair grew – 12 inches! Gabby personally got to cut Tyler’s hair. Tyler donated it to Children with Hair Loss, just to make a wig for Gabby. Following the photo shoot, the two walked over to the salon inside the mall, where Tyler got treated to a new hair style of his choice. After 45 minutes, Tyler revealed his new buzz-cut, almost unrecognizable, and Gabby said, “It’s cool!” One never knows how the Spirit of God will work to bring hope into the world again and again!


Resources Used:

Abcactionnews.com “Heartwarming: Boy donates hair after 2 years of growing it to friend from Riverview with Alopecia”. Dec. 29, 2016.

 

Curry, Michael Bishop. “Love is the Way; Holding onto Hope in Troubling Times.” New York: Avery. 2020.