Sunday before Lent ---the practice of love I Corinthians 13

 Sunday before Lent.  Quinqagesima .  I Corinthians 13; John 15

"GEORGE MACDONALD

A heart has to be taught to love, and its first lesson, however well learnt, no more makes it perfect in love, than the A B C makes a savant. The man who loves most will love best. The man who thoroughly loves God and his neighbour is the only man who will love a woman ideally – who can love her with the love God thought of between them when he made man male and female. The man, I repeat, who loves God with his very life, and his neighbour as Christ loves him, is the man who alone is capable of grand, perfect, glorious love to any woman."

" There are people who are filled with knowledge, but empty of mercy and love." Jonathan Edwards

Does following the way of love mean actually doing it, with the concluding vs in 14:1?  " Follow after love..."  the word follow there is strong in the original .  In other words we understand we should practice love , but seem to fail more than be successful.

(diṓkō – properly, aggressively chase, like a hunter pursuing a catch (prize). 1377 (diṓkō) is used positively ("earnestly pursue") and negatively ("zealously persecute, hunt down"). In each case, 1377 (diṓkō) means pursue with all haste ("chasing" after), earnestly desiring to overtake (apprehend).) 

1. Look at our love map.  Take inventory of where we have gone off the road.   It starts with understanding that we love ourselves.... Take care of ourselves?  How can we love God and others if we don't take care of ourselves?  (Love your neighbor as you love yourself)

I have forgotten many things about my grandfather, but I will never forget what he did one time when I broke a window to my negligence.....He said that window upstairs in the 3rd floor of the manse was not needed anyway.  I can't remember many of his sermons, but I can remember how he treated me.

Here is an illustration about that as a man had a practice that he followed as he went walking, " Every evening I walk three miles as part of my losing campaign against high blood pressure and my imperialistic waist line. I generally don't wear an iPod, because I prefer to take my exercise without anesthesia. (I enjoy the sounds of nature, and I want to be able to hear the cars honk before they run me over.) Sometimes I devote the time to prayer, and I have found that the Lord's Prayer makes a good outline. Here's how I do it:

I address God as my Father by adoption through the grace of Jesus Christ and give thanks for His salvation.

I pledge to keep His name holy in all my conduct. I remind Him of ways I have done this in the past, and ask Him forgiveness for all the ways I have failed to do so as well.

I ask that His will be done, here on earth through me, as efficiently as it is done by His angels in heaven. I give examples of how I think I could do that; I ask His guidance and pledge my obedience.

I ask for my material needs for the day, itemizing and discussing them. I give thanks for specific instances of His providence in the past.

I ask forgiveness, but only to the degree I am willing to forgive others. If I have a problem, I discuss it in detail.

If I am facing any particular temptations, I discuss them and ask God to help me resist them. If I have recently survived any tough tests, I discuss them and thank God that He gave me the power to overcome them.

I tell God about the evil things that frighten me, and ask Him to deliver me from them. I also give thanks for past rescues.

You get the idea. When you pray like this, it's amazing how time flies!

Kenneth W. Collins, Praying"

2.  Love is indispensable....( Charles Erdman outline ) Understand that following God and His will for our lives is not always easy.  Forgiving others and letting things go is the key.  Why do we think we are always right?  We could be ( and most of us think we are right usually 99% or higher of the time), but as I saw somewhere , "isn't the relationship more important than being right?"  Say we are sorry, and try and forgive, and let go of the hurts.  This is the practice of agape love that the Apostle talks about in  chapter 13 of I Cor.

The Corinthian Church was full of divisions and a lack of love.  I Cor 6:7 the Apostle says that they should not go to the law courts .  Instead work it out with the saints, vs 1.  " Why not rather take wrong?"  In other words if you and I have been wronged we should take it patiently, and not (go to the law courts)"sue" someone in the Church.  

" Love may be difficult to define; it is not difficult to discern."  Charles Erdman

The gifts were important in the church, but without love the Apostle says they were meaningless. 

3.  Love Made Manifest vs 4-7

I suppose Ash Wed is a day of Valentine,  and I never saw it before but the word lent is in the word Valentine.  They ask, " What are you doing on Valentine's Day?"  Ans. " Rubbing dirt on people's faces and telling them they are going to die"  We say, " Remember Dust Thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return"

13:5---love does not keep a record of wrongs.

love is kind (crestos----useful, gentle)

13:4 patient- makros and thumos--long distant anger in other words longsuffering is not a bad translation.

"Recharging Your Batteries (from sermons.com)

An Italian newspaper recently carried a story about a young couple in Milan who seemed particularly devoted in their worship. The priest at a cathedral there reported that the pair spent an hour or more on a regular basis sitting before a statue of the Virgin Mary. Naturally, he assumed they were prayin

Turns out, this young couple was recharging their cell phone. They had noticed a stray electric cable sticking out of the wall behind the statue of the Virgin Mary. Whenever their phone's power supply dwindled, the young couple came to the church and re-charged it from the cable behind the Virgin Mary. The priest states that the young couple is welcome to use his church for this purpose"

Practice love and its parts--suffering long, (patience), kindness, not vaunting ourselves, not envying, not returning evil for evil.

One time I flew into CA to see my Dad and I got to San Francisco instead of Monterey because of the fog .  I called Dad after seeing I was stuck.  He drove over and got me.  He was older and did not have to...but I guess he heard the desperation in my voice. Where should I stay the night?  He practiced kindness and love.

We note in conclusion that hope is temporal and faith is temporal , but love is eternal .  And we talked about taking inventory of our spiritual, personal and community lives in the beginning.  This quote from Nouwen below may be helpful as we begin that journey and assessment.  At least I thought it so.  It is definitely counter-cultural: " 

By slowly converting our loneliness into a deep solitude, we create that precious space where we can discover the voice telling us about our inner necessity—that is, our vocation. Unless our questions, problems, and concerns are tested and matured in solitude, it is not realistic to expect answers that are really our own…. This is a very difficult task, because in our world we are constantly pulled away from our innermost self and encouraged to look for answers instead of listening to the questions. A lonely person has no inner time or inner rest to wait and listen. He wants answers and wants them here and now. But in solitude we can pay attention to the inner self. This has nothing to do with egocentrism or unhealthy introspection because in the words of [Rainer Maria] Rilke, “what is going on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love.” In solitude we can become present to ourselves…. There we also can become present to others by reaching out to them, not greedy for attention and affection but offering our own selves to help build a community of love. Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible."

In the Name of the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.