My wife loves the music of Richard Wagner, but–here’s the thing–she does not love Wagner. She will say herself that he wrote gorgeous music but he was a terrible man. Even as he was writing his last great opera Parsifal, which was filled with Christian imagery and ideas, including the hope of resurrection, Wagner was consumed by interest in racist, anti-semitic ideas. Thus Hitler was a great admirer of Wagner’s music and often used it at Nazi events, sometimes to the chagrin of the Nazi hierarchy who resented sitting through lengthy Wagnerian concerts.
The upshot is that Wagner is a pretty good picture of what Paul was getting at in the first three verses of I Corinthians 13, our text for this Sunday. Paul mentions various human accomplishments, all demonstrating an aspect of truly spiritual life and practice. Speaking in tongues, prophecy, understanding and knowledge, miracle-working faith, and incredibly selfless generosity and self-sacrifice. All of these, Paul says, are worthless, “nothing,” without love. The same might be said for incredibly beautiful music by a man who failed both in love for those around him (a life of sordid affairs) and in love for God’s chosen people. Though many, many people like my wife still play his music and are deeply moved, Wagner’s lack of genuine love and its true fruits suggests that whatever artistic gifts he exercised were pointless and worthless in regard to his own soul, his own salvation. Jesus asked, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?”
As I sometimes point out to young couples who wish this text to be read at their wedding, Paul wrote it to a squabbling, conflicted church. Part of the conflict was that some, at least, of the congregation was enjoying a fair amount of spiritual success. There were evidently talented, spiritually gifted leaders who taught well, worked miracles, and spoke in tongues. As the second letter to Corinth shows, there were also some extremely generous believers there. Yet they were fighting with each other. They had divided into parties and were arguing about who was more spiritual.
Paul wrote chapter 12, our texts for the last two weeks, to address some aspects of the division and to give the Corinthians (and us) a vivid image of how followers of Jesus are to live in organic unity with each other, like the parts of a single human body live and function together. Now, though, in a “still more excellent way” (12:31), he goes to the heart of the matter and holds up love as the highest of the cardinal Christian virtues. Without it, all the other virtues and gifts, including faith as in verse 2, are diminished to worthlessness.
Verses 4 to 7 offer both positive and negative characterizations of loving behavior in a personification of love as a agent doing or refraining from various attitudes or actions. These descriptions help us discern whether we might be in that dangerous situation of being without love.
In the next section love is again contrasted with a few spiritual attainments or virtues: prophecy; tongues; knowledge. The contrast this time is in regard to endurance. Love is what lasts, and in verses 9 to 12, love is in some way more complete than the cognitive spiritual virtues of prophecy and knowledge.
So that it does not remain mere wedding poetry, these thoughts on love need to take concrete form in actual human relationships, particularly in situations where we find it challenging to offer love. In our Gospel lesson from Luke 4: 21-30, Jesus is initially honored in His hometown of Nazareth until he begins to talk about God’s love toward people whom the Jewish people regarded as outside the boundaries of their own love, a pagan widow aided by Elijah and a pagan military leader healed by Elisha. Their admiration for Jesus is clearly not love as they try to throw Him off a cliff.
Likewise, we need to discern for ourselves if our admiration for Jesus includes genuine love for those we might tend to regard as outsiders, whether people of other races, political convictions, etc. If we harbor resentment and animosity and impatience toward others, especially those who are different from us, then even otherwise brilliant Christian performance will be worthless. And we may end up trying to throw the real Jesus off the cliff even while we pretend to be His disciples.