A Sermon Preached at the First Congregational Church in Wellfleet, MA on September 17, 2023
Not many know this, but Linda and I attended the royal wedding. I even officiated, actually. Oh, I’m not talking about the one in London a few years back with Meghan and Harry, No, this was my niece’s wedding a few weeks ago in California.
It was quite the affair, a four-day extravaganza involving multiple hotel gatherings on consecutive nights as well as, naturally enough, the coup de grâce: the glorious pageant – I mean, the actual wedding ceremony itself.
The outdoor venue, high above the Pacific, offered a bird’s eye view of the Los Angeles coastline, facing north toward Malibu and the Hollywood Hills in the distance. Naturally, everyone was dressed to the nines. Except for me. I stuck out like a skunk at a picnic, wearing my black robe amidst women with slinky, low-cut dresses and men with aviator sunglasses and penny loafers without socks. What can I say? It was very L.A.
I have to tell you, you don’t know what awkward is until you’ve worn a clerical robe in the midst of a gaggle of young wedding-goers. You might as well be from Mars. They just don’t know what to do with you. Trust me.
In any event, for the ceremony my niece and her betrothed chose the familiar reading from I Corinthians 13, the so-called love psalm that, among other things, famously says, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…Love never ends.”
Virtually every couple whose wedding I’ve performed has chosen this reading. And for good reason. The words are beautiful, thoughtful, wistful even. And the words have to do with love. And love is the whole point of a wedding, right?
On closer inspection, however, one discovers there are no less than eight different words for “love” in Greek, the language of the New Testament.
We are all familiar with “philia,” the Greek word for the kind of love that refers to affectionate regard or friendship. Philadelphia, as a case in point, means “the city of brotherly love.” Then there’s “eros,” or erotic or intimate love.
But out of the eight, Paul here chooses the word “agape” which, as I say, the NRSV translates simply as “love.” As I suspect most of you know, agape love is generally defined as selfless love, though it also has been described as “disinterested love,” which sounds like an oxymoron and seemingly the exact opposite of love.
That’s because we mostly think of the word “love” as it is used in I Corinthians, especially at weddings: a warm and fuzzy sort of love. It’s an emotional word, a feeling, if you will. But agape love is really not that. Instead, it involves making a choice (as with Christian forgiveness). It’s a decision. And it’s not based on how we feel.
Rather, it seeks “holy” love, love as God would have us love. This requires us to spiritually discern God’s will, and muster the discipline to carry it out regardless, as I say, of how we may feel at any given moment.
At the time Paul wrote this letter, the church in Corinth was in the midst of intense conflict. Everybody was at each other’s throats, figuratively speaking. Paul understood that the kind of love such a situation called for was not the warm and fuzzy kind. Tough love was more the order of the day.
Complicating this task was the fact that Corinth was the “sin city” of its day. It was a bustling seaport with all that that implies, a place where money, power, and vice cut an unholy alliance, its streets filled with people from all over the known world drawn by the lure of commerce and adventure. Think sailors on leave.
More often than not, we tend to romanticize the early church. But Corinth puts this theory to the test. Here were battles over leadership, deep divisions over religion and culture, as well as widespread immorality, including but not limited to casual attitudes towards “sacred prostitution” at the nearby Temple of Aphrodite! This was not an environment for the faint of heart. And the reports Paul received from Corinth troubled him deeply.
Agape love, again, assumes that momentary thoughts and feelings can mislead us. Thus, for Paul, the key is not for us to follow our instincts but to seek God’s guidance and, in the process, obey his will.
Only with agape love could the Corinthians find the comity and peace promised by the Gospel. Following their own emotions and passions had brought disaster. Only by seeking objectively the holy good, as God would have it, was genuine love possible. Only by acting in accordance with God’s will could they hope to grow in love.
Though it might be awkward at first, the idea was that by pursuing the right course, the day might come when a genuine, heartfelt love might develop towards those they were at odds with presently. But it would involve hard work and steadfast intentionality.
In today’s readings from Genesis and Matthew, the theme of forgiveness is emphasized. Like agape love, forgiveness also involves a decision and a choice, not a feeling. Here too we are encouraged to actively discern God’s will and then obey its charge, regardless of any lingering anger, resentment, or hatred even.
Take Joseph’s situation in Genesis. Here we encounter a family struggle, something most all of us know something about. After all, those we are closest to, those we love the most, are frequently the source of life’s deepest emotional scars.
Joseph was the firstborn son of Jacob and Rachel, and clearly their favorite. And it showed. Needless to say, his siblings weren’t too thrilled about this. Adding fuel to the fire, Jacob at one point gives Joseph a splendid tunic or coat “of many colors.” His siblings? Nothing.
For this and a variety of other reasons, his brothers decide they’re going to kill Joseph. But before they can execute their plan, Reuben talks his brothers out of it. Instead, they decide to sell him into slavery. After having done so, they shred his bloodied coat and show it to their father, Jacob, telling him that his beloved son, Joseph, has been killed by wild beasts. Talk about family dysfunction!
To make a long story short, Joseph eventually becomes a high official to the Egyptian Pharoah. Some years later, when his siblings leave drought-stricken Canaan hoping to buy food in Egypt, Joseph reveals himself to his distraught siblings.
In fear and trembling, they plead with him for forgiveness. Jospeh’s response? “Do not be afraid!” he tells them, implausibly, “Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.” How many of us would respond the same way?
Here is a remarkable example of godly forgiveness: Joseph acts not on legitimate resentment, but forgives his brothers the same way God, we are assured, forgives us. If ever anyone had a reason not to forgive, it would be Joseph.
As we age, at least for me, it seems natural to look back on our lives and reassess them with more mature eyes. We remember not only those moments that bring us joy but also those moments where we wish we had acted differently or said things differently, especially as it relates to our relationships.
One of the great blessings afforded us Christians is the assurance that not only does God grant us forgiveness for past sins, but that we have the freedom, the choice, to forgive others who’ve sinned against us.
To forgive is to experience grace, a biblical, theological word that refers not, as our secular world would have it, to charm or refinement or effortless movement, but to the state of being forgiven. This is in truth what we all strive for, whether we know it or not. To be relieved of the punishing weight of regret or guilt or fear, to be forgiven is to know genuine inward peace, and an enduring godly love.
In Matthew, Jesus tells Peter that he should forgive not seven times, but seventy–seven times. The number seven, by the way, in biblical language, is considered a whole number symbolizing completeness or unlimitedness. Thus, Jesus exaggerates this idea, telling Peter there is absolutely no limit to how many times he must forgive!
These words coupled with those in I Corinthians 13 and Genesis (as with much of the Bible) roll easily off the tongue. They comfort us in the hearing. But their underlying meaning is often lost. Maybe we’ve heard them so many times their familiarity cancels out their deeper meaning, as if they were but white noise, something we hear but don’t really pay much attention to.
We often gloss over the seriousness of these words and in so doing miss out on just how important they are for daily living. For if we listen to them carefully, we will properly understand them as a call to action, one that promises to bequeath to us, quite simply, a freer and happier life.
The words of I Corinthians at a wedding may soothe the soul, until we realize how difficult it is to apply them to our lives and our relationships. The same can be said for forgiveness.
The choice, then, is up to us: to live under the weight of conflict and resentment or by the fearless freedom born of godly grace. Amen.