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Love is Kind
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Sermon 1-28-07
The word today from Corinthians is especially beautiful. Like many people, I used that reading at my wedding. But when Paul wrote his words of advice on love, his target audience was not a newly wedded couple. He was speaking to the church at Corinth a newly formed group of Christians who were learning to live together and learning to love one another.
Out of many aspects of love which Paul talked in the letter to the people in Corinth, this morning I would like to focus on a few aspects of love, which are patience and kindness, “love is patient and love is kind.” Those two qualities spoke to me a great deal. I am craving for kindness……and I am very impatient. Patience is a hard quality to achieve…how about you? Patience is one of the hardest virtues to achieve….
I bet Paul said love is patient because he noticed various impatient behavior and impatient words from his congregation, so that the people got hurt from one another. The Corinthians might have been people who speak without thinking and get mad at the drop of a hat ….So to them, Paul is teaching the basic virtues of Christian people.
The gospel reading today tells that as the people in a church heard the word from Jesus, people were amazed at his gracious word. But next minute, they said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” That’s not a kind expression. They were rude. How people can betray themselves after a minute? I said themselves, because, it was them, the people gathered in the church, who were amazed at the word of Jesus, which thy thought gracious, kind. But then next minute, they said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” Isn’t it betraying themselves? How can the son of the carpenter, the low status and demeaning group of people would say such a gracious word. I must have heard wrong. Doubting their ears. Spitting on themselves. It was at the church.
It’s as though the word fell on the rock. It may have sprouted out of joy, But the soil did not have enough depth to grow. Or the bird choked on it. Too much doubt from myself, and from others hinders the growth. That was what the church of Corinth 2000 years ago was about. (And the people in a church in Jesus’ time as well. How are we now 2000years later?)
Love is kind….Many people are kind to me. Mom, Hyunji, Tanja, Amanda? Moua, Stein? Amy Roundtree, umma, Jeongshim..children at school, Carol, unni, …..I bet Paul might have been initially in anguish as hear the all the dissension and conflicts going on the church which he founded and ministry to . But with God’s grace he was overcome those anguish and a feelings of turmoil, he started to write a letter and able to finish this beautiful letter.. He might have thought of all the people who have touched his life…and the strength came out. Love is patient and love is kind…. Let us briefly take a moment and reflect on all the kind faces we have encountered…as those faces and hands and name come out at you, how do you feel, notice how your facial expression changes. You all know the power of kindness, you experienced that a lot? So then be kind as the people who have been kind to you and one another, be kind, remember how the kindness affected your life …. Most of all Paul must have thought of Jesus who was kind to him, very kind to him, despite the evil acts he did to innocent followers of Jesus before his conversion….
Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant…love is being happy when others are happy, when blessings come upon to others, rejoices with them; love is not boastful of what I know, what I did, what I can and do; love is not arrogant, looking at others with respect, with understanding, treating others better than me, not measuring other with my own stick….or rude…
Does not insist on its own way—This command is particularly powerful when one sees it not only on an interpersonal level, but on a community level, one race does not insist on it’s own way…one gender does not insist on its own way. Think about the implications of this on the level of sexual orientation …profound isn’t it?
Love is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrong doing , but rejoices in the truth….It bears all things, (very difficult, isn’t it?), believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things..
Love never ends. 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.
I believe this is where process comes… When I am in conflict with another, I tend to hold resentment to myself. But after I talked to that person with whom I had different opinion, as I feel that person, some understanding and compassion comes…It is not always easy and I may not always see eye to eye with those with whom I am in conflict, but love is kind.
Jesus was kind, particularly to outsiders….In the gospel for today, Jesus said, “In the time of Eliajah, there were famine over all the land. But Elijah was sent only to the widow at Zarephath in Sidon”…a despised outsider, who believed in God…
What if Jesus came and said that to us…suppose there was a famine here….or lots of arguments, a spiritual famine….and what if Jesus said, God won’t send God’s angel not to you, but to the one whom you, we despise, yet truly repenting and hanging unto God, truly kind and patient? They are the one in fact God would save
In a similar vein Jesus says, “There were many lepers in the time of Elisha, but only Naman was healed.” Here again God reaches out to the general of other country, who made a long trip and said yes and obey to the word from God’s prophet.
Whether we are Christian or not is no longer the criteria for being saved. Moslems can be saved if they listen to God’s word. Being a church of peace and justice, or progressive church wouldn’t guarantee us to be saved. God might prefer to save the evangelical conservatives, whom we despise rather than us if we refuse to listen to God.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, if I have prophetic powers, great visions, and answers to save the church, if I know all about world politics, and economics …biblical knowledge and computer skills and have all faith to save this world, but have not love, which is kind, we are noisy gong, clanging cymbal…..If I give away all my possessions, times and energies, and If I Hand over my body so that I may boast , but have not love, am not doing it kind manner, I gain nothing…..I am not a peace maker….neither justice maker….
In the word from Jeremiah today, God said to the young boy to speak to the people…he sent him because he has a full knowledge on the boy….. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born I consecrated you: I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Often when we hear this sort of things we feel as though we need to have a big agenda, commission, to do and say, thinking too great project…..but that is not necessarily so….
Yes, when God call us to be a prophet, it is like the boy in the emperor’s new clothes who simply tells things the way he or she see it. While others were saying a lie, “You oh my your highness, you are clothed with the worlds’ best cloth…..hey the emperor is naked…
And here Jeremiah’s response, I am only a boy. we always think of God’s command as something big….. and in fact it is big, but it can be small and also huge at the same time
And see what God said, I am with you to deliver you….deliver you……saying what seems to be a trivial is the way we are being deliver ed by God….. (pause)
The last but not the least one……as you hear God’s word, “Today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant……..
Please don’t hear this as overthrowing the world, country, your community or church…hear it please, at least this moment, this short and eternal, precious moment, as something about you, us …let’s not get too much charged
I don’t have a vision for this particular church, not a grandiose vision….I am grateful for the space to worship each Sunday, a place to have fellowship, seeing the ones I saw last week…..you…and the gentler relationship which I sense now with the churches who shared this buildings…..let’s accept what we have, see the grace given to us…relationship progressed (some people may not agreed over the years..) faces and bodies we see each week and good food and the works each persons are providing to the larger community…….
and let’s be kind , kind to one another…..and we are blessed and will be blessed…God formed you and knew you before you were formed and born, and I am appointing you to deliver you. Amen…
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University United Methodist Church
608-256-2353
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