The Primacy of Love

Sermon

“Lying, thinking/Last night/How to find my soul a home/Where water is not thirsty And bread loaf is not stone/I came up with one thing/And I don’t believe I’m wrong/ That nobody, But nobody/Can make it out here alone.” (Maya Angelou)

So last week, I ended my sermon with these words: “Love will not cure this virus, but love is the only way we will get through this pandemic.” Not the best line I’ve ever written and said, but not the worst either. But that line must have been traveling a bit through my subconscious this week, because this week I’ve been thinking about love.

Tuesday morning I woke up with a headache and wasn’t moving at my usual pace. I was sitting in the living room, doing absolutely nothing, and that last line from First Corinthians jumped out at me: “now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” And it was, in the midst of a headache, doing nothing, still in my pajamas, that I had one of those a-ha moments.

It is possible that you or I or anyone we know will lose their faith because of this pandemic. It is possible that you or I or anyone we know will lose all sense of hope because of this pandemic. And if those things happen, that is okay. It really is. God does not exist because we believe in God; God exists, and we choose to believe that or not. And really, there are things other than hope that will help us weather the storm of COVID-19. There are other people, who have hope when we do not. For some – I’m thinking of healthcare workers and grocery store clerks and truckers – there is more than enough work that for them, the days are a blur. There is also the relentless march forward, the decision a person makes every day to get out of bed, put one foot forward and then another until the day is done and then you start over again the next day. It’s a determination to go on, though the destination and arrival time are unknown.

But can we get through this time without love?

In one sense, obviously we can. But if we desire to get through this intact, get through this so that we’re still in relationship with others, get through this with a sense that we are part of the human community, we are going to need love.

I remind couples getting married about that – that when Paul wrote these words in his letter to the Corinthians, he wasn’t writing to a couple, but to a community, and for that matter, a community that had experienced its fair share of infighting and one-up-manship. So Paul wrote these words and my oh my, they have endured. It’s possible you roll your eyes when you hear them; but have you really listened to them?

Love is patient.

Love is kind.

Love seeks not its own way.

If you have ever truly loved someone, if you have ever truly been loved by someone, you know the power of those words. You know how hard and worth it it is to be patient. You know how hard and worth it it is to be kind. You know how hard it is and worth it it is not to seek your own way.

Paul wants us to know that communities love in that way too. Most of us are part of many communities – the community of the world; the communities of city, town, county, state, and nation. We have communities from school and church, communities of neighbors and book clubs and family. Those communities are at their best when love is a given, when the community works hard to be patient with each other, and kind, and to hear what others have to say.

Behind me is a collage I made two years ago out of the sympathy cards our family received after my father died. We didn’t know what to do with cards – to stick them in a box didn’t feel right, nor did recycling them. I wanted to honor the love and friendship expressed in the cards, so I made this and two others like it. For me, the collage represents the love that so many of my dad’s communities had for him – the community of his family and of my mom’s family, the community of his places of work, his hunting and fishing friends, neighbors, church members.

So I invite you to consider how you have loved in these last six weeks, and how you have been loved in these last six weeks. That’s a choice we have, you know – to love, to accept love. Some feel that we have had some freedoms taken away for this time – we can’t just come and go as we please, sit at our favorite restaurant, spend time at the Saturday farmers’ market at PSU, go dancing. We can’t. But we can choose to love, to act in a loving way, to receive love and say thank you to the giver of that love.

I find I only have shorter sermons in me these days, so that’s almost all I have to say. But since we began with words from Maya Angelou, I thought I’d leave you with words of hers now as well. She once wrote,

“I am grateful to have been loved and to be loved now and to be able to love, because that liberates. Love liberates. It doesn’t just hold—that’s ego. Love liberates. It doesn’t bind. Love says, ‘I love you. I love you if you’re in China. I love you if you’re across town. I love you if you’re in Harlem. I love you. I would like to be near you. I’d like to have your arms around me. I’d like to hear your voice in my ear. But that’s not possible now, so I love you.’”

To the glory of God.