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| Beverly...the sun is back... |
The deep freeze seems to be breaking up. There's sun...and warmth on the air today as I walk up Beverly towards church...Today we're talking about love....
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In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life
How about love?
How about love?
How about love?
Measure in love
Seasons of love
Seasons of love
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.
Che
All you need is love. Beatles
Seems like everybody's got something to say about love. . Just like the Christmas decorations go up the day after Halloween, the Valentine's Day hearts and cupids start going up right after Christmas. And we're now 3 days into February, the month of love...
Paul said some hard things, some confusing things and (forgive me) some just out and out things that just don't make sense. But if one time he got things right, it was First Corinthians 13. One of the all time greatest hits. Just like almost every funeral I do, people request the 23rd Psalm, almost every wedding requests 1 Corinthians 13.
(Although for awhile in the 70's, I got this from Tom Robbins: “Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet.”)
You could just about read 1 Corinthians 13 and drop the mic, no further words required. But I made the trip all the way out here, so I should say a few more things.
1If 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.
Paul begins by describing how even the most poetic words ring hollow and untrue without love. Even seemingly righteous religious acts without love are meaningless.
Listen to these next again...
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.
These are not necessarily easy. Patience, especially. And insisting on your own way. That not rejoicing in wrong doing covers a wide area. Like revenge. Or checking our happiness when we see another's sadness. Rejoicing in truth? How we need to hear that these days. And for all the competing claims about truth, remember this, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life...if you're struggling to know what's true, one question is does it sound like it's of Jesus? And there's your answer...that informs all that follows as well...
Three looks...first interpersonal. Times like Valentine's day can be hard for those of us who don't have a current partner. It can be as painful as mother's day is for some. At one point in my single years, I had finally come to a moment of peace when I considered that friends can get you through tines of no lovers better than lovers through times of no friends. Every relationship with love is a gift of God never to be taken for granted and to be received as a grace.
As far as our corporate life goes, that's pretty simple. We sing this song: "...and they'll know we are Christians by our love..." So you always have to ask the question do they? If you pull back the camera a bit, what do you see? Here?
One of my biggest learnings I had in seminary came through my urban ministry core group. There were 12 of us, We would meet every Monday for 3-4 hours. Part of that time was prayer. We had to pray for each other. Let me be honest...there were people at the beginning of that class that I just plain did't like. That I found annoying, irritating. At the end of the term, there were still some I didn't like, but after a semester of praying for them, I had come to love them.
We live in difficult times. I remind myself daily that there are still children in cages in the desert. Old prejudices and nemeses have been unleashed.
I can only say this, our only answer is love. And it will take strong love to turn back the hate that has been loosed.
One who understood this was Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr. And as I said on his birthday, we must resist any efforts to tame Dr.King.
Listen to these words..
What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
and this was the basis of his beloved community, a dream still unfulfilled.
What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
.King
At the end of the day, Just love is the only thing that is going to get us through this tough place of black and white. Just meaning simple and only. But also just, as in justice.
Michael Eric Dyson's new book, What Truth Sounds Like, tells the story of how Bobby Kennedy changed from seeing the reality of black people as a political problem to be finessed and began to understand it as a personal moral imperative. (Much like Lincoln and slavery before him...) It began by allowing himself to listen.
So it's Valentine's month. And also black history month. Can we make LOVE part of black history month?
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.
Let those with ears to hear, hear....and love.
Amen
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We share our prayers.Break bread together. Then go downstairs for a shared meal. Outside, the sun feels good...
"Seasons of Love"
I Corinthians 1: 1-13
1If 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.
"Seasons of Love"
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets
In midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles
In laughter, in strife
In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life
How about love?
How about love?
How about love?
Measure in love
Seasons of love
Seasons of love
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Journeys to plan
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure the life
Of a woman or a man?
In truths that she learned
Or in times that he cried
In bridges he burned
Or the way that she died
It's time now to sing out
Tho' the story never ends
Let's celebrate
Remember a year in the life of friends
Remember the love
Remember the love
Remember the love
Measure in love
Measure, measure your life in love
Seasons of love
Seasons of love
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