February 12, 1982

We have problems with well-known passages like I Corinthians 13. We are so familiar with them that we stop listening to them. So we miss all they have to tell us. This is one of the reasons I used love spelled backwards to let the words of Paul get our fresh attention.

There was a big stink in the church at Corinth, Greece. The bitter squabble in Corinth, a city located on the thin neck of land connecting northern Greece with southern Greece, happened almost 2,000 years ago, give or take a year or two around 55 AD. But the problem was a familiar and abidingly contemporary onc. People were having trouble getting along with each other. Some of the church members felt they were more on God's inside track than others. Because some experienced speaking in mysterious unknown tongues, they felt superior to those who did not. And so both groups were letting the other side have it.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians to give them some advice regarding their problems. This matter is dealt with in the 12th, 13th, and 14th chapters of the letter. In short, he told them that it did not matter if they were spiritual hot shots, business successes, or beauty queens, because it all meant nothing if they lacked one special and crucial ability in their lives. That's where the beautiful 13th chapter of I Corinthians comes in, right in tne middle of the mess of human conflicts.

In trying to get over what he meant, Paul had an advantage over us. He wrote in Greek. And and in Greek there are three different words for what we in English have only one word: Love. If he wanted to talk about romantic, sexual, and questing love, then he would have used the word EROS. (Our English word "erotic" comes from this word.) If he wanted to talk about the good solid affection that happens among friends - brotherly and sisterly love, then he would have used the word PHILIA. (Philadelphia city of brotherly love.) But if he wanted to talk about the ultimate love of which eros and philia are certainly a part but not nearly all of, if he wanted to talk about real, abiding, durable love that lasts when the sweet has all but been chewed out of a relationship, if he wanted to talk about God's love for us and the kind of love God wants for us to have for each other, then he would have used another word. And that is exactly what he did: AGAPE. Agape is the kind of love that holds on and does not let go even when all good sense says God or we should.

We who speak English have more problems in understanding what this love means than the Corinthians who definitely had their share. The confusion has to do with the fact that our one word LOVE has been used for so many things that it almost means nothing now. We love hot fudge sundaes, we love to see the bad guy get it in the movies, we love our children, we love our spouses, we love to go barefooted, we love Jesus, and we love to be a little bit bad every once in a while. 

Indeed, it seems what Paul says about love is almost a total turn around of what we so often mean by love with our sentimentalizing and "sugaring" of it. Thus, perhaps, you understand why I have been talking about EVOL today: the turn around spelling of love. We almost need a new word for real love in our language. Evol love was needed in the Corinthian church hassles. It is needed in our international relations. But today, I want to apply it to our personal relationships which for most of us have to do with our spouses, children, parents, lovers and other such tough- to-love characters.

FIRST, EVOL, OR LOVE, OR AGAPE IS HARD TO DO. Before you tune me out for saying the obvious, hear me out. In our actual love relationships with spouses or family members, it really at times comes as a shock and surprise to us that to love those folks is a tough proposition. When you marry, you get not only your blushing bride or your personal prince charming, you also get a person who has bad breath in the morning and who has some moods you cannot control. You get a person who brings you into the web of their family relations. Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are in-laws. I am myself a son and brother-in-law, but the point is that married love often gets you into problems that you did not create but must, if not solve, at least live with.

Last year our family got one of those torrential 24-hour viruses that picks off one or two family members at a time, and can therefore spend the better part of a week at your house. It started with our then two year old. The upchuck process started in the night. At first it wasn't so bad. Dianne didn't disturb me very much as she got up and down with him several times. The next evening, he was better, but Diane came in from work with it. Still, not too bad, I thought. Just a matter of watching the kids and bringing saltines and 7UP to Dianne in bed. It wasn't until later in night that my stomach began to rumble. Simultaneously, one of our other children got it with a vengeance. So, get the picture. My wife can't raise her head, I can still go, although a little dizzily, and we have another child who almost makes it to the bathroom about three times that night. After the second cleanup, I remember thinking: married life and parenthood were never like this on the "Brady Bunch" and "Ozzie and Harriet". Parenting and husbanding get tough in ways too numerous to mention. 

What I am trying to say is something that the Corinthian church situation, the teachings of Paul and Jesus, and our own experiences confirm and affirm. It is hard for humans to love each other. It is difficult for us to forgo keeping score with each other, taking cheap shots, and looking for ways out of sticking with each other. The point is that if you are experiencing difficulty in loving and being loved in the deep way God loves us and wants us to love each other, then chances are that nothing is wrong with you and fate has not singled you out for a zap. That's just the way it is. That we love at all is a sign to me that God works in ways that are never quite clear to us – the mirror dimly as Paul said it – is at work mysteriously in us and between us, enabling us to do for each other what we never could pull off alone. If you find evolving or loving hard to do, then chances are you are on the right track.

SECOND, LOVE, THE REAL EVOL-AGAPE KIND, IS NOT SO MUCH A FEELING AS IT IS A DECISION. Let's face it, as much as I feel warm and excited about my loved ones at times – my wife on special occasions, our beautiful children when they look like little angels as they sleep, or even you when you are complimentary – there are times when those feelings are just not around. You, they, and/or I are cranky, out of sorts, or angry, and thus if caring acts and responses depend on warm feelings, then they will never happen. Real loving depends on our tough decision to stick with each other even when we feel like doing anything but. 

In preparation for this sermon, I read The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love... and Spiritual Growth by a psychiatrist named Scott Peck. Dr. Peck writes at length to distinguish romantic, falling-in-love feelings that come and go so easily from true, deep, and durable love which requires a decision. While romance, thank God for it, may get you into love, it will take something more lasting to keep you loving. It will take more than romance to keep someone loving you! In regard to husband-wife relationships, he says something that may at first sound shocking but I think can bring relief: 

"In a constructive marriage...the partners must regularly, routinely, and predictably, attend to each other and their relationship no matter how they feel. ...couples sooner or later fall out of love, and it is at (that)...moment... that the opportunity for genuine love begins. It is when the spouses no longer feel like being in each other's company always, when they would rather be elsewhere some of the time, that their love begins to be tested and will be found to be present or absent. 

Paul says it beautifully: "Love bears all things... endures all things." Real loving, in other words, means that we have to put up with a lot from each other. And when you think about it, that someone is willing to put up with us even when they don't feel like it, is really something to get excited and even romantic about. Oh, to be sure, as Paul says, the ability to love this way is THE gift of God's Spirit rumbling in and among us. 

THIRD, ALTHOUGH REAL AND DEEP LOVING IS WHAT MAKES LIFE WORTH THE EFFORT, IT CAN AND PROBABLY WILL GET YOU HURT. Sometimes, in our romantic confusion about love, we get the notion if I can just find someone to love me the way I want to be loved and who will let me love them the way I want to love someone, then all my problems will be solved, loneliness, no more insecurity, no more self-doubt, no more uncertainty. And loving relationships do ever so much help. But they are not without the power to hurt us, too. 

In an autobiographical lecture at Columbia Seminary, writer and minister Frederick Beuechner spoke about the inevitable two sides to each person we love. There is, of course, that side of them that loves us back. But there is also that other side of them that hurts us and can, as he said, "sting us like a wasp.” Cutting remarks from a loved one go so much deeper than those from people who don't mean that much to us. If others are insensitive or let us down, it is not pleasant, yet what you can expect. But when those close special ones let us down, leave us out, or simply do not pick up on our particular need of them at a particular time, the pain can be unwordifyable.

The chief problem I find as a pastor in marriages and other close relationships is that one or both partners will not really let go to be loved or love. They fear being hurt; they almost instinctively know that to love deeply opens you to be hurt deeply. So, opt for a more or less "blah-no-feeling-much-existence" to protect themselves. 

About this holding back lifestyle, Dr. Peck writes: "Love anything that lives - a person, - a pet, a plant – and it will die. Trust anybody and you may be hurt; depend on anyone and that one may let you down. If someone is determined not to risk pain, then such a person must do without many things: having children, getting married, the ecstasy of sex, the hope of ambition, friendship – all that makes life alive, meaningful, and significant. Move out or grow in any dimension and pain as well as joy will be your reward. A full life will be full of pain. But the only alternative is not to live fully or not to live at all." 

Jesus has shown us that really loving people can be crucifying. But without the crucifixions there can be no resurrections in our relationships. 

The current movie “On Golden Pond" is a story about the relationship of a longtime married older couple Norman and Ethel, played as many of you know by Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn. In an early scene, Norman who is almost 80 goes out to pick strawberries in the woods around their summer home. Apparently, he has some temporary memory lapse. Not far from the house in woods that have been familiar for years, he gets lost. For a few minutes, he can't remember where he is. It terrifies him. After he makes his way back to the house, the usually crusty Norman, almost in tears, tells his wife about what happened. Then he says, "I came rushing back to see your face, to feel safe.”

I don't have to give you examples of all the ways that life can get us so confused, scared, and lost at times. Health problems, money problems, people problems, faith problems, on and on. I believe deeply that God gives us the face of Jesus most often in the face of others to be that safety and support which nudges and nourishes us on out to do what we have to do and to be what we have to be with our lives. We need so much that other face through whom God shows his face to keep us safe enough to take the risk of life. The greatest of these is evol...agage... love. Because in a world where so little is sure, love bears all things...endures all things...love never ends.