At this point in my career, I have forgotten more weddings than I can remember. I am not one of those pastors who dislikes doing weddings, I enjoy them. At a wedding, I have the best seat in the house. I get to see the look in the groom’s eyes when he sees his bride coming down the aisle for the first time. I witness the small, nervous exchanges between the couple as they take each other’s hands and repeat their vows. I take it as a great honor to be there, to serve in a moment when love and all of its ramifications are so clearly on display. I have done weddings in church sanctuaries, in parks, and in beautiful venues with quaint little houses and vineyards in the background. I have even done one on an outcropping of rocks in the middle of a forest. When I meet with the couple ahead of time and talk through the service, there is always this interesting question about what text is to be read. My favorite ones are from the creation story in Genesis or Saint Paul’s use of marriage as an image of the Church and her Lord in Ephesians. Yet, those are never the ones they want. More often than not, they want Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 13.

Of course, this makes perfect sense. I mean, this whole section is all about love. It is about the grounding reality of love, the actions of love, and the enduring character of love. And who does not want to hear that as they look into their love’s eyes and commit their life to them? For many, it can function as a guidebook for how they love the one in front of them. Still, while that may be true, the issue I have with using this text is it can miss the point of what Paul is arguing for here. Paul is in the midst of a more extensive description of the life of the Church. He has spoken about the varied gifts of the Spirit, which are a blessing to the people of God, and all these people are called together and assembled by their God into one body, the very body of Christ. This body is to live in unity with each other, and the solution for how to do that, the prescription for our life together as the people of God is love.

However, love is tricky. We use that little word in so many different ways. Each use carries with it its own flavor and nuance. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” I say, “I love you,” to my wife, to my children, and to you, but each of those is different in what it means. Case in point, I love Tri-Tip and a good Manhattan, but that, again, is quite different. What Paul calls our attention to in 1 Corinthians is the necessity of love in the life of the body of Christ. “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” In other words, Paul is saying, no matter how great our gifts are, how well developed or profound, if they are carried out without love, they are emptied of any real meaning.

In our English translation of Paul’s instructions, the character of love is described using a list of adjectives: Love is patient and kind, love does not envy or boast, love is not arrogant or rude, etc. And while that is a fine way of understanding it, it misses a bit of the force of this list. In the Greek, these are all active verbs. Love is an action. Love acts patiently and with kindness. It is something which is on display, lived out. Here, love is far more than an emotion of the human heart.

Many years ago, while serving in Georgia, I had an interesting conversation with an older pastor who shared a story about his practice when performing a graveside committal. He said that when the service was complete, he would stay there until the family had left. In fact, he would remain until the grave was filled with dirt, even if it was just him and the grounds crew left. He said he had been taught to do that by a pastor he met when he was starting out. At that time, he was serving a small congregation in the Midwest which still had a graveyard on the property. He told me that in one particular committal, they laid to rest the body of a woman whose stoic husband of forty years stood by with his children and grandchildren as the casket was lowered. They slowly made their way to their cars and back to his home, but the pastor remained. He was awakened a little past midnight with a pounding on his front door. When he opened it, he was shocked to see this same man with tears in his eyes, breathing heavy, soaked with sweat, and he had dirt on his hands. He had awoken late and was unsure if she had been buried. He was consumed with grief and had been out in the graveyard to make sure she was properly taken care of. His job was to protect, provide for, and love her. He believed he had failed her in the end. He was not there. That is love, love in the midst of the storm, love turned utterly out to the other. And the pastor could also love, for he was there. He could assure him in his pain that she was indeed at rest awaiting the day of the resurrection.

The crescendo of Paul’s hymn of love is when he says, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” We hear this and perhaps think “love is blind,” that it engages in its actions despite what is in front of it, but it is far more than that. Love is without bounds. Love is limitless. There is no cap on it, no draining of the cup. Prophecies will pass away, tongues will cease, and knowledge will fade, but not love. Love remains. Love, then, is how the body of Christ, how the Church on Earth will endure.

Paul concludes with what has been called the theological virtues: Faith, hope, and love. He says, “So now faith, hope, and love abides, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Your faith has brought you here to the gifts of Christ. Your faith is what situates you as a member of the body of Christ. And together, we live in the hope of Christ’s return, the hope of eternal life, the hope of a more glorious day to come. Yet, faith and hope are the characteristics of a people longing for the full revelation of God’s Kingdom. They define us as we struggle to see through a mirror dimly, but when we see face-to-face when our Lord returns, what will remain is love.

Paul challenges us to live in the promise of Jesus’ Kingdom now, to live out the powerful and life-changing blessing of love… and I wish I could convince you to do that. I wish it were as easy as giving you a list of things to do to care for, support, and build up one another. Now, I could give you a laundry list of things that are not love, an inventory of our failures to love one another, but I cannot make you change. Such love, this enduring, longsuffering, kind, and rejoicing love happens only through the work and gifts of Christ. Our Lord is love, and He lives out that love for you. It is love which moves Him to Calvary’s cross, love for sinners who could not love Him. Love remains and endures here and now. His is a love which proclaims, “It is finished! Salvation is yours.”

And such love comes to you. It comes here, around this table. It comes in, with, and under the bread and wine. This is not an emotion or an abstract concept, it is the presence of eternal love for you to eat and drink for the forgiveness of all your failures to love. His is a forgiveness which is true and sure, forgiveness echoing from this sanctuary to the heavenly throne room of the Father. This is love in the midst of your storm, love that turns you again from yourselves to care and compassion for the body of Christ all around you. Let His love have its way with you, so your love will not run dry. And together, we will endure. This, as Paul says, is the still more excellent way.