We’re used to hearing certain scriptures in certain settings. If you’ve attended many weddings, it’s not unusual to hear what has come to be known as “The Love Chapter” read at some point in the ceremony. It just seems to be fitting to include it as a … a primer of sorts, for the couple who are entering into their marriage vows … And for those in attendance who may have already made that commitment to each other, it serves as a reminder … a model for the relationship that may over time lose it’s focus.
It is NOT, in my experience, a passage that is commonly brought out in a funeral service. The 23rd Psalm, definitely. John 14, of course. But 1st Corinthians 13?
When Bill asked me to draw from that particular text, it only caught me off guard for a second. I realized that what better text to summarize the life of a woman who lived her life by it?
I would invite you to listen to these familiar words and in your minds, compare them to the life that Janet lived:
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. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
The Gospels are peppered with Jesus’ parables that are trying to explain – to give an image of what the love of God is like when it comes to how God chases after us. The parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, the treasure that is found in the field, they all give us a picture of a God who will go to incredible lengths to seek us out – to gather us in, to wrap arms around us so that we will FINALLY begin to understand just how much we are loved.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a multilayered story. On the top layer, Jesus is telling the young lawyer who was trying to test him exactly who his neighbor was – and he did it by placing the man himself as the victim in the story, and his ‘true’ neighbor a man from the tribe that the lawyer would have otherwise despised as a matter of course, just as a part of his daily routine. On another layer, just below, Jesus is telling this know-it-all lawyer as well as anyone else who will listen to not be too surprised when you are faced with the love of God and it comes from the place – or the person – you least expected. God is good – really good – at surprising us in profound, perspective-altering ways.
From what I knew of Janet, and from what has been reiterated to me over these last couple of years as the family has wrestled with watching her health deteriorate and her body rebel against her spirit, it is safe, I think, to say that she got it. She understood that part of the Gospel that spoke of a sacrificial, self-giving love, that put others first, that reached out to the stranger and the friend alike and offered a helping hand, and a kind, beautiful smile that communicated that love and that acceptance in a way that few words could.
On those occasions when we were able to visit, there was never a time when she didn’t envelope me in the warmth of her smile and a hug – whether physical or emotional, it felt just as true and as genuine and as caring.
Sometimes, to jog us out of the routine, I like to read a familiar passage from the version of scriptures entitled ‘The Message’ – a paraphrase by Eugene Petersen. What Petersen has done is that he has done a ‘thought for thought’ translation of the Scriptures – He stepped back from the traditional ‘word for word’ translation that is the norm when it comes to Biblical Variations, and has aimed to try to make reading the texts FEEL like what it would have felt like to the folks who first read these stories and letters. Hear again the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians:
1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. 3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
8-10Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
11When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
12We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
I love the way Petersen puts that next to the last phrase: Love extravagantly.
Loving extravagantly is something that was best exemplified in Christ, but which we are sometimes given a glimpse of at odd moments as we move through life. There are certain people who shine brightly with that exemplary love. Janet was one of those people.
We are all early into a new journey today that began on Sunday morning. We are stepping into this new reality that is life, on this plane of existence, without her physical presence among us. While we may be deeply relieved to know that she is no longer suffering, that absence is going to hurt, and it is going to leave an empty space in our lives that will take a long time to heal – if ever. Some of us will never fully recover – and we’re not supposed to. We’re not supposed to go back to being how we were before, because life will never be what it was before, when she was with us.
What we will begin to realize is that, in having shared our lives together, she left some of herself with each of us. In some cases, it will be a look, a gesture or an expression. In other cases, it will be a word, a conversation, a deftly spoken word that conveyed just how much we meant to her, and the knowledge that we were loved by her made it just a little bit clearer to us how much God loves us.
Sunday morning Janet stepped into a newness of life that we can only imagine here and now. And the newness of life that WE are stepping into is not what we may have wanted, but it is what we have been handed. Janet faced her mortality with grace and with courage. She was handed this experience and responded in a way that really was a continuation of the life she lived. She never stopped loving and she never stopped caring. But it became her turn to be on the receiving end of that love and that care that she had based her life on giving rather than receiving. As Bill and Katie and the rest of the family surrounded her with that love and care, they were taking on the responsibility that we are each tasked with if we call ourselves followers of Christ – to trust steadily, to hope unswervingly, and to love extravagantly.
Let’s pray.
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