LOVE NEVER FAILS

It's been a tough week. A really tough week. The kind of week that even moments of historic joy are tainted by the specter of dissention and deep seated discontent.

After 10 years of bloody war in Iraq, that at-best fragile democracy is again marching toward sectarian war. The civilian death toll is rising, and the violence threatens to spill over Iraq's borders. We see reports of more deaths in Afghanistan. In eastern Ukraine, the uneasy truce between government troops and pro-Russian separatists is fractured by renewed fighting.

Here in the United States our conflicted nature plays out in the courtroom. The Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts law mandating a buffer zone around abortion clinics passed after two were killed and five others wounded at clinics in 1994. The ruling again brings to the surface the anguish that surrounds all touched by abortion.

Even the joy brought to so many this week by a federal judge's ruling that banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional is somehow tempered by looming legal battles challenging the decision. In the United Methodist denomination there is serious talk of a split in the church over the matter.

And here in our own congregation, how often do we let divisiveness rule our hearts over budgets, buildings, service schedules, musical style, and on and on.

So, where does that leave us? Where does that leave God's people? We disagree. We fight. We hurt each other. We're a mess. Where's the good news in that? I struggle mightily with that question as I seek to make sense of this week. And, this week is a lot like other weeks, isn't it?

It might be cold comfort to know that there is, unfortunately, good historic precedent for our current brokenness. In fact, if we turn to the world Paul faces in 1 Corinthians we find some similarities to Bloomington, Indiana. You see Corinth was at a strategic crossroads between East and West and located at the convergence of several significant trade routes. It was known for its intellectual and material prosperity. I think the entry to Corinth was even marked by a pair of Sample Gates (you'll have to read Paul's writings to verify that). Paul finds the church he started in Corinth deeply divided. God's people were split into factions, each thinking themselves more worthy than the others. Some proclaimed allegiance to Paul, others to Apollo, still others felt only they were worthy servants of Christ himself.

They disagreed. They fought. They hurt each other. They were a mess. It was hard to see the good news.

As Paul sees this discord ripping apart the church at Corinth, he writes to them in part to assert that they should embrace their diversity rather than let it destroy them. They were in fact different parts of the same body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 Paul writes, "Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body-whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free-and we were all given the one Spirit to drink."

And then, perhaps understanding that a people so bitterly divided would not find a self-evident way to act as a unified body of Christ, Paul shows them the way. He writes in 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 that "Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears."

Christ's love never fails.

Despite our deep, important, painful differences, Jesus gives us the gift of a love that never fails. His love makes complete that which is broken. His love transcends our differences and gives us a unity of purpose that is so strong it can never be overcome.

It's been a tough week. We know tough weeks will always be with us. But, as we struggle to make sense of our world, consider this. What would it be like if we replaced our preferred part with the completeness of Christ's unfailing love? If we did, what would our lives look like? Our church? Our community? Our nation? Our world?

In Christ and for Christ,

Jonathan