Somebody recently asked me why my sermons so often end with a reflection on our Christian obligation to love our fellow men. I replied that it is the subject of the most frightening passage in the whole of the Bible: The 13th Chapter of the First Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians.
Some might find it somewhat peculiar to contend that this passage—the Epistle appointed for Quinquagesima Sunday and found upon Page 122 of the BCP—should strike terror into our hearts.
It begins with the words: ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal …’ And it expresses such beautiful thoughts about the centrality of love to the Christian message and the importance of love in the human experience that many people take it as a comfort rather than the contrary.
In fact it is such a favourite that, in modern translation—‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love’—it has become a favourite scripture reading at weddings. Probably the best explanation for our failure to recognise the frightening nature of the message encapsulated in I Corinthians 13 is our modern inability to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest what we read.
We skim everything we read—the Bible included—as casually as we skim the back of a cornflakes box at the breakfast table. If ever we bother to pause and ponder, the things that we read can frequently take on quite a different meaning.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in I Corinthians 13. To be sure, St Paul is talking about the importance of Christian love—‘charity’ as the King James Bible translates it. But his message is by no means an anodyne First Century version of the Beatles’ song ‘Love is all you need’. What Paul concentrates on expounding are the consequences of not loving one’s fellow men in a Christian manner.
Bereft of this quality of charitable love, all of our other Christian virtues are absolutely worthless. It does not matter, for example, how hard we work to spread the Gospel: if we are not acting in a spirit of love for our fellow men, our endeavours are useless. It doesn’t matter how great we are as preachers, teachers, singers, and church builders: if we do not have love towards our fellowmen, our are talents are valueless.
In other words, if there is one ability we need above all to cultivate, it is the ability to love our fellow men, no matter how unlovely they might appear. This is not an option. It is an obligation. Nothing else we have to offer can make up for its lack. It is a thought that should rightly terrify us whenever we find ourselves griping about other people, even horrible ones. GPH✠
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