Eternal love

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

          This is perhaps the quintessential Christian scripture passage. For anyone to try and make a bold new statement or grand new interpretation, now that might be a challenge for the best scripture scholars. Since I am called upon to this task by way of the rotational daily readings, I feel at ease as I am probably the least pretentious and far less scholarly than most. I am setting the bar low.

          The over arching theme here is obviously love because that does in fact say it all.  Love tempers even the law and it is the focal point of the two great commandments , arguably our sole guide to life.

          When I was an older teenager, I used to read the passages about the "disciple whom Jesus loved." As a teenager struggling with feeling for other boys, it really stuck in my head. I mean, that statement isn't used in all the gospels, just the Gospel of John. You know John, the young lad who rested his head on Jesus' chest?  I seemed so tortured by the images. Fast forward decades later but before I put all the pieces together (that I am gay) and I had a slightly different take. After countless courses, 20 solid years of Catholic eduction and additional scripture study, I had new insights. One insight was that the writer of the passage who wrote "the disciple whom Jesus loved" would certainly say that. He felt he was loved more than all the other apostles, he knew  that Jesus loved him and his writings reflected that. It didn't have to be some 'gay thing'. 

           Now I have come perhaps full circle. Not that I feel Jesus was gay even though he may have been. But I am not a totally uneducated scripture scholar even f I do play down my credentials.  The new knowledge and wisdom I have received over the decades now help me realize the beauty and depth of the scriptures.

            As today's passage says, our knowledge is incomplete, we think as children, we see dimly and prophecies will come to an end. So much of what we swear by and rely on is transient. What we do not understand today, we may fully understand 2 years from now. What we have trouble grasping today may become second nature at some point down the road.

           What is constant and what never fails and never dies is love.  We focus on the material world for comfort and as if it is the meaning of life and our salvation but love is what truly matters and never ends. We use this world as a guide and as a frame of reference for our journey but love in the end is all that matters and is all that remains.

           Recently a coworker lost the love of her life, a cat that she claims was more than a pet and I know that is true. This was her first pet and one that lived alongside her for many, many years. Now the cat has passed on. That frame of reference, that object of love, that sharer of love, that giver of pure love is gone but what remains in my coworkers heart is the love. 

           WE may grow, we may learn, we may change our minds and we may actually begin to understand things but in the end love is all that will ever matter, the love that we live and the love that we give.   

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And 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. If 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.

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. 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. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When 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. For 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. ¹And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.