A Far Better Way John M. Buchanan
I Corinthians 12:31°13:13 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
Januzry 3u, 1977 Columbus, Chis

St, Paul suffers from a bad press sometimes. I don't suppose any reader of
the Bible has not agonized over the intricacies of his thought and wondered whether
all this complexity, all this tedium, is really necessary or even important, [I was
delighted te find a paragraph in a new book on Paul's Epistles which confirmed my
suspleieas, ~ Lin Morris, a charming Englishman, writes;

"Paul had for me a Lack of fascination all his own, The seemingly
endless passages of clo.ely reasoned argument concerned with issues
such as circumcision ‘! ich are without relevance to our time; the
apparent egotism; the censoriousness, relieved only by odd prose poems _
of gruat lyrical beauty sparkling like diamonds in a mountain of sludge -
Paul's Epistles just weren't for me,,,I was a Jesus man, straight down
the line, And I possibly bore a subconscious grudge against Paul who
seems to have been the Galilean carpenter's fanatical stage manager -
transforming a way of life so unfettered as a soaring bird into an
ordered, organized and juiceless religion. JI wonder if the old Jewish
tentmaker will ever forgive me?” (Epistles to the Apostie , pal).

Tf you've ever struggled with Paul on Law in Romans, for instance, you know
exactly what that means, There is another side to Paul, however, In the thirteenth
chapter of his First Letter to the Church at Corinth we catch a glimpse of the heart
of the Apostle - in a piece of literature which itself soars like majestic poetry,
Better to start here with Paul, rather than with the intricate arguments about
grace and iaw and freedom,

In any event, IL Corinthians 13 is, by itself, magnificent literature, Its
subject is love: not love in the abstract: not the particular kind of love husbands
and wives have for each other; not the love of good friends, or brothers, sisters,
parents. Paul chose the Greek word agape - divine love, which the older translators
rendered "charity". What Paul did was to take a very good Greek word and pour into
that word the new experience of God's love which was available in Jesus Christ, The
subject of this chapter is the love which God revealed in Christ - the love which
now is the foundation for the new life te be Lived by those who believe,

The chapter divides naturally into three sections, In the first, verses
1 through 3, Paul defines the essential character of love, The most eloquent gift
of speech sounds like the harsh clang of a cymbal without love, The most profound
prophecy, the deepest faith is worthless if it is not seasoned by this love, Even
generous philanthropy and commendable self-sacrifice are meaningless, if they are
not colored by this agape love,

The second section describes love in words which are unforgettable, This love,
Paul says, is pe ient, kind, envying no one: it doesn't boast, isn't conceited or
rude, it doesn't nave a thin skin, taking offense at every slight and minor insult,
This love doesn't enioy the moral lapses of others, looking down its pious nose in
arrogant self-righteousness, In fact, this is a love that cheers when truth and
goodness and mercy prevail,.

The third section announces the permanence of this love, It endures: it wiil
stand when all else has fallen, "The older I get, the more E understand that," Paul
said, As a child, love was a feeling for me, an emotion, But now I see it as God's
basic attitude toward us and the one reality that rises above all else, I see it

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now, partially, and one day I'm going to sce it clearly, face tc face, There are
three eternal realities which never change from age to age: faith, hope and love.
"But the greatest of them all is love,"

It is a remarkable piece of literature - one that wears extremely well,

But even more remarkable to me is the fact that it was written to address a
basic problem with religious people - pride which finds in piety a rich new reservoir
of possibilities. Sometimes it seems as if religion is the greatest gift we can give
to a swollen ego, Paul must have despaired of it, Under the old way it was the
legalistic approach of Judaism, A person's goodness could be measured on the basis
of how many laws were obeyed and how many pious acts performed, The system invited
comparison with others and as soon as a person uses other people as a moral yardstick -
he or she will find someone to be better than - thus a reason to feel good - then
smug - then arrogant, But that was the old way, In Jesus Christ all that was gone:
God's love for all had been demonstrated and the Christian life became the way to
live in grateful freedom without worrying about all that, That's where Paul was, But
here came the Corinthians, sounding as if nothing had really changed, arguing the
same issues, but with a new vocabulary, They were enthusiastic Christians, as new
converts always seem to be, The teachers among them thought that they had the inside
track, Those who prophesied thought that the Kingdom depended on them, Some appeared
to have a gift for healing and were convinced that it warranted first place among
their peers, Out on the fringe of their fellowship some were speaking in tongues and
then claiming that they were the real Christians and all the rest were second class.
And if you know anything at all about the Church - and Church people - you know how
contemporary that is, Tiere is something about religion that brings out not only the
best, but also the worst in us, And we Christians are least attractive when we are
so positive of the right.uess of our cause, our position, that we - in effect -
excommunicate everyone elise, Paul must have despaired of it,

Gently, artistically, he explained that the intent of Jesus Christ was to
stimulate a new kind of human community in which each person would be valued and in
which there would be parity among those who had different gifts, Taking his time to
go into sometimes very earthy detail, he told them that they were like a body - a
body with all its interdependent parts, Each depends on all the others, No one part
is worth anything by itself, When one suffers, all suffer. If one flourishes, all
enjoy it, That is what Jesus Christ intended for His people in their experience -
but also as a shining cxample to the rest of the world of the.ny God ‘arts human life
to be lived. That's in the prior chapter - and it is that argument which is the |
preface to Paul's Hymn of Love, "And now," he wrote, "I will show you the best way
of all,"

The late Reinrold Niebuhr once wrote, "Basically, love means that life has no
meaning except in terms of responsibility: responsibility toward our family, toward
our nation, towa-d our civilization and, now, by the pressures of history, toward the
universe of manitand which includes our enemics." (Justice and Mercy, p.35).

Niebuhr, one of the great Christian thinkers of our age, insisted on applying
love to the whole of life including those complex areas such as justice and peace,
Love, for the Christian, is not an emotion, not a good feeling, Rather it is a way
of living life in all its ambiguity, "When we talk about love," Niebuhr used to
teach, "we must be mature to avoid being sentimental,"' And he proposed it ~ as Paul
did - as a better way to live life - real life - life fully in the world, beginning
with the most immediate and intimate context,

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We do a lot of unkind and hurtful things to one another in marriage - within
our family circles, Sometimes we do them in the name of love, “lin Morris, the
Englishman I quoted carlier, has written a little volume called Evistles to the
Apostle, in which he proposes some of the letters early Christians might have written
to Paul, The one on our text for this morning is particularly good. iet me share it
with you,

"My dear Paul: J owas in church the other week when you gave us your
exposition of the nature of true love - the love of Christ, Frankly,
it hit me dead-center,

"J really thought I 1 -sad someone very dee,ly before you exposed my
feelings for what they really were - sheer egotism and selfishness,

I have been unwilling, or, more likely, afraid to allow the one I love
to be herself for fear she would desert me, Far from being good-
mannered and forbearing, cur relationship has been one never-ending
brawl with displays of temper, jealousy, and moodiness on my part, I
thought that my bouts of fury were proof of the intensity of my love,
but in fact I now see that they were devices to bind her to me, I

was prepared to make any sacrifice for her except the one which really
mattered, willingness to tru.2 myself to her without any guarantees or
safeguards, I was alvays wanting reactions to prove that my love was
returned, I constantly put her to the test, I just didn't see that
What J was demanding could only be given to me freely or not at all, In
the name of my so-called love I have committed all kinds of sins: pride,
envy, ill-temper, suspicion, and lust, Eventually, she could take no
more and has zone ~ where, I have no idea."

Love, a far better way, is the oniyv magic that will hold a marriage ~ a family
together: love as Paul, not Hollywood, certainly not Hugh Heffner, defines it: love
that by its mature is patient, kind, not possessive, not touchy,..Families could do
worse than read Paul on love every day!

Niebuhr proposed that love means rasponsibility toward our nation, our civili-
zatio: and to the whole universe of humanity, I'm never sure that we take that at all
seriously, Under the guise of keeping religion and politics separate, I suppose, we
refuse even to consider that the way of Jesus Christ might have something to say about
life in society, life even among nations. I can't remember the quote exactly but I
think it was Clemenceau who derided Woodrow Wilson after World War I for "sounding
Like Jesus Christ", That is to say, Christianity, in the opinion of the hard~headed
realist, has nothing to do with the harsh realities of life, like establishing the
peace at the end of a war, Wilson, it was thought, was too soft, too idealistic, too
naive, too trustinn too Yyareiving, which, by innuendo, is how Christianity might be
described, Germany should be punished; its people made to pay; that's life; you don't
forgive a natior tnuat started a war, The succeeding two decades of history indicate

the terrible wre. ness of what politicians and diplomats called realism.

Christianity suffers frem too much individualism, People seem willing enourh
to accept, at least in theory, the morality of Jesus as somewhat of a standard for
individual life, But real resistance sets in when someone proposes that it might be
evially valid for a whole nation - or even between nations, Even the theologians
aren't sure about that,

Back in 1967 the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church adopted a
new Confession of Faith which included the following phrase: "The Church, in its own

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life, is called to practice the forgiveness of enemies and to commend to the nations
as practical politics the search for cooperation and peace, This requires the pur-
suit of fresh and responsible relations across every line of conflict, even at risk to
national security, to reduce areas of strife and to bronadan international understand-
ing." Well, no one who was a Presbyterian minister will forget what it was like for
several weeks after that hit the papers, You would have thought the General Assembly
had canonized Marx and elected Brezhnev Moderator, All that happened was that the
Church had proposed seriously that there might be a better way to achieve peace ~ that
the Gospel of Jesus Christ has some relevance between nations, But people reacted
strenuously and said, in effect, that Christianity was too soft, too naive, too
utopian to be taken seriously -:.°. chat level,

Last weck, Dr, Roger Shin, Professor of Social Ethics at Union Tehological
Seminary, addressed the Ohio Pastors' Conference at Veterans’ Memorial, His topic had
to do with the changing life styles which are emerging - and in some instances being
forced on us by scarcity, It was an unhappy coincidence that Ohio was in the middle
of an energy disaster, even as he spoke, although it did give him an immediate and
dramatic illustration, He recited all the data which is familiar by now to all of us;
the fact that we are running out of natural gas and petroleum, and that the crisis
will be with us even after we weather this particular emergency: the fact that in
tropical, non-technological cultures the investment of one caloric of energy in
agriculture produces twenty calories in food stuffs, but that in our culture - with
tractors and combines and corn fed beef and packaging and precooking and freezing it
takes an investment of nine calories of energy in agriculture to produce just one
calorie in the form of food; and by anybody's mathematics, even mine, it's apparent _
that that can't so on foxever, And he recited the statistics of terror about who has
the bomb and ho. many and who's likely to get it next - a not terribly comforting
prospect,

And then he called our attention to a fact that I found intensely interesting:
three American economists, in three separate recent books, have argued that the one
and only hope for the future of the human race - is not another economic theory, not
another political system - but implementation in the public sphere of the principles
contained in - of all things - Jcsus' Sermon on the Mount, Now these are not soft-
headed theologians; they are not sheltered, pampered and therefore naive preachers,
These men deal with production, profit and loss, GNP, Balance of Payments: and they
have concluded that the way of love is the only way left, One of them, Kenneth
Boulding, observes that when all is said and done we have no alternative but to love
our enemies, Perhaps that is what it will take: perhaps the truth of the Gospel will
be heard and seen as a far better way when the economists point us to it, But how
sad - we should have known it all alonz,

This has been un i:ortant week, There are many of us - perhaps most of us -
who were raised on the milk of American invincibility. Other countries might stumble
and fall, but nc: ours, Other cultures might be cold and hungry and dark but not here,
We have somethin, called abundance - and tliere is no end to it, Well, this week
changed all that and brought me, at least, to a realization which I should have con-
fronted long ago; namely, that there is a limit - perhaps even an end to abundance,

We'll weather this crisis, And I trust that we'll weather it with a maximum of
good will because we know a little bit about love, But beyond the immediacy of the
energy crisis the ultimate survivability of our culture - or at least the abundant way
of life - appears now in a new light, Governor Rhodes has asked for our prayers that
our State might endure this emergency, I endorse that, But my deeper prayer is that
the way of Jesus Christ - the way of love - might be taken seriously across our land,
And that it might begin here among ug,

St. Paul said it was the best way of all, It may be the only way, Amen,