FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE
As a pastor I have often thought that the best ethical texts are wasted on weddings. After all, at Lutheran weddings at least, we often use such readings as John 15:9-13, Ephesians 4:30-5:2, and Colossians 3:1-11. None of these great Biblical texts have marriage or weddings as the context for their writing. But it is a fourth great biblical text without marriage as a context, 1 Corinthians 12:31b-13:13, that is probably most often read at weddings. What a great ethical text it is!
The apostle Paul uses this chapter to respond to the "tongue speakers" who think their gift is the greatest in the community of faith. In fact, they don't hold a candle to "agape" love. For these gifts are often self-centered, trumpeting a person's own value, and not community-centered, giving to all.
True agape love is doing things for the good of the community. Of course, in a wedding homily we make the community the couple, but in reality the whole community is involved in the partnership of a married couple. There does need to be self-sacrifice in the parents, as well as in the couple getting married. The parents must surrender their son/daughter to the new primary union of marriage. Certainly the attitubes of patience, kindness, respect, and humility need to be practiced in the whole community in relationship to a married couple or the church.
Paul emphasizes that this agape love is reflective of maturity. We can affirm that being willing to put any other person in front of ourselves is a sign of Christian maturity. It is also a sign of trusting in a God who is the Giver of all of these gifts.
The passage comes to a crescendo, which probably makes it also attractive for weddings, with the triad of "faith, hope and love." Certainly faith or trust (pistis) is a virtue that aids anyone in a relationship. If a person doesn't trust another human being, this will often result in being afraid of the other person, not being at home in the community. But if there is the same trust in another human being as there is in God, then any relationship will bear fruit.
Hope is a necessary ingredient in the Christian community, because hope is that "never-give-up" quality which sustains us when we cannot see the way through to our end in God. Hope is looking into the "dim mirror" and seeing the times where God has been with us, and knowing that God is still with us. As a virtue, hope is the opposite of despair, that "stinking thinking" which cannot see beyond the present. Hope is that which "floats to the top" in a community as a renewed sense of mission and ministry when all signs point otherwise.
The greatest of all gifts for the community is self-sacrificing love. This is the greatest gift because it is God's love in us. Left to ourselves we will sometimes doubt, sometimes despair, and may even selfishly cling to what is best for us. But the presence of love is the guarantee that God is present in the community, enabling us to give and give and give some more.
There are many virtues lifted up in the Christian church, such as faith and hope, and we should practice them all. But the greatest virtue of all is to let God's love into our hearts and lives, into our marriages and into our communities.
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