Sermon for Epiphany 30 January 2022
1 Corinthians 13, John 4:19-29a
Words from the choir’s communion anthem, ‘Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Where charity and love are, there God is.’ In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
In his sermon at the royal wedding in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle in 2018, Bishop Michael Curry said, “if it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” It was a great sermon, and I’m sure it ruffled some feathers in the Royal family and their guests, but it wasn’t actually that radical because St Paul got there two thousand years before him! If you’ve paid attention in my sermons over the years – and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, you may have already realised that I’m not a huge fan of St Paul’s. Some of his writings have been misinterpreted and used to marginalise groups in society, especially women and anyone who is not heteronormative. But in this passage from Corinthians, he gets it absolutely right.
The scholar John Barclay describes this passage as a “pen portrait of love”, and it is often used at church weddings. It is prose, yet the most poetic of prose. It talks about love at its best, which at the wedding stage of a relationship, those are the aspirations. But a few years down the line, it is harder to keep to such high expectations. It is only human for envy, rudeness, infallibility, irritation, and resentment to appear in any relationships, but reading that passage may not necessarily serve as a helpful reminder and yardstick, but rather be an uncomfortable reminder of when and how we fall short. This is when I think the advert should ask “Have you been mis sold 1 Corinthians 13?” I think many people have, but without even realising it.
The love that Paul is talking about is not the loves we are more familiar: those of eros, erotic love, storge, family love, or philia, the love of friendship. Those loves have terms and conditions of commitment and care for people you already know and are in some form relationship with.
Paul is talking about a different type of love, a better love, the M&S love, agape, which means unconditional, self-sacrificial love, pity, compassion, a love that isn’t necessarily a nice and cosy love, and one that could very well make you feel uncomfortable. This is a uniquely Christian concept. It is the love that Jesus spoke about in the parable of the good Samaritan, when it was the Samaritan who stopped to help the man who had been left for dead, even though Jews and Samaritans were enemies. The Samaritan showed pity, compassion, unconditional love; it was called unconditional because there weren’t any existing conditions between the two men.
Jesus’ radical agape love broke the boundaries of tradition and practice. He associates with women – and it is women who are the first to witness to the resurrection – and here we have a Samaritan woman, no less. That is a double whammy there! In a scene before this morning’s gospel reading, we hear Jesus saying that all are welcome at the well that gives the water of life: “Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’”
He has come to Samaria to do God’s work, to preach the good news, even though Jews had nothing to do with Samaritans. Why was this? Because they were half-Jew, half-Gentile. The race developed after the Assyrian captivity of the northern kingdom of Israel. Those who remained, intermarried with the Assyrians, thus producing Samaritans. Like any examples of mixed race, they were criticised for being only half Hebrew or half Assyrian, not fully Hebrew or fully Assyrian. They had their own copy of the Torah, their own practices, and their own Temple.
One of the reasons why the Jews didn’t like Samaritans was this intermarriage, and frequent remarriage, especially for women. The woman at the well had been married several times and is living with her 6th partner, unmarried. Jesus knows this but invites her to join him. It is because of her testimony that other Samaritans come to believe in him.
What Jesus brings will supplant Jewish and Samaritan practice. She recognises Jesus as the expected prophet, but also as the Jews’ messiah. Then Jesus does something unexpected: he reveals his nature to her. Whilst he is quite smoke and mirrors with his disciples, he is remarkably open with this woman, “Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’”
Agape love forms the basis of an ethical theory called Situation ethics, developed by Joseph Fletcher in the 1960s. Fletcher said you should ask this question in each moral dilemma, “how is agape love best served?”; he said that agape love is the only law Christians should follow, that it wills our neighbours good even if we don’t like them, that agape love is justice in action. Sadly, Fletcher turned his back on Christianity and his theory hasn’t really stood the test of time in the way that Aquinas and other theories have. Situation ethics tried to establish that agape love is the best way to make moral decisions and he has a point. Based on today’s Epistle, and I’m sure he wouldn’t like to admit it if he were here now, I think even St Paul might agree with him.
St Paul says that faith and hope are great, but love, agape love, is the only thing that is already present in its final and complete form. All the others are imperfect, temporary, and provisional. That’s why he says, “Love never ends.” Prophecy and knowledge are mighty fine, and if you have the gift of them, that is wonderful, but they are incomplete, they are partial.
And here comes one of my favourite lines in the Bible: “for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face….” You can see the influence of the Greek philosopher Plato in his writing, because Plato thought that what we observed around us was an illusion - “for now we see in a mirror dimly” - that reality existed in another dimension, the world of forms - “but then we will see face to face…”. It reminds me of one of those fancy windows or mirrors where you can flick a switch and it goes from opaque to clear, or a circus hall of mirrors, where you see things distorted by the various mirrors, then walking out the end, slightly bewildered and confused and looking at things clearly. I think that agape love gives us the clearest glimpse of heaven that we can get on earth, and we see it in agape, with the hope of meeting God face to face after we die. Listening to the reading from Ezekiel I had a wry chuckle because being very clumsy, when I meet my maker, I wouldn’t be surprised if I fell on the floor in his presence!
Our actions, however noble, are empty without agape love. Paul says that “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.” By talking about a “noisy gong” he is referring to the bronze products for which Corinth was famous. This is a clever way of relating the faith to people’s experiences. What is really challenging to them and us is that even acts of charity are meaningless if you do not do it with agape love.
Seeing the world through the lens of agape love transforms us and the world around us, and it should do this each and every day, and if it doesn’t then we aren’t doing it right. “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Amen.