Love Is...

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." -1 Corinthians 13:4-8a

"Love laid down to bring to life all that's lost inside." -Love Laid Down, Green River Ordinance

If you've ever been to a wedding, chances are you've heard 1 Corinthians 13. At least some of it.

You know the section though. It begins, "Love is patient. Love is kind..." and so on and so forth. It's a lovely and pithy few statements from one of Paul's letters to the people of Corinth. We've probably heard it so often that we've lost how incredibly profound it all is.

A couple of weeks ago I was meeting up with a few high school students to talk about a sermon on love and marriage when this particular passage came up. Don't get me wrong, I'm intimately familiar with these few verses. If I've heard them once, I've heard them one hundred and one times. They're not exactly earth-shattering nowadays.

But the other night, something about it felt fresh.

Love is hard. It's really hard. But so often we sell it short. We're surrounded by Disney princess stories and Nicholas Sparks fairy tales of romance and excitement that we've reduced love to an emotion with butterflies in our stomach and an emoji with hearts for eyes.

We've substituted an emotion for what was meant to be a verb.

I've got to confess that I am not all of the things that Paul professes love to be. I'm not always patient and I'm fairly proud. I can get really jealous and be really rude. But as I sat there with those high school guys, I started to think maybe that wasn't the point.

I started to think that maybe all of those attributes that Paul mentioned were ways of practicing love. Follow me for a second. Perhaps it's the case that as we practice being patient and not envious, we will be more about love. Perhaps it's the case that as we practice holding our tongue and putting others first, we will fall more in love. Perhaps it's the case that as we practice not bragging and telling the truth we'll experience a deeper taste of love than we ever have and that our relationships will richer and deeper than we've ever shared.

I think there's something to this, that if love really is all of these things, then as we practice living them out we will experience more and more love. I think if we're willing to practice the hard and sacrificial things that love is, our experience of love will be all the greater. We'll stop settling for some second-rate emotion because we'll have redefined that love could be.

But I think there's another side to this passage to. It doesn't just exist in a vacuum as a nice saying. It's part of a bigger letter. And right before Paul writes this, he has some other things to say about love. "If I speak in tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal," he writes. "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."

There's another layer to what Paul is saying about love. Paul could do all of the right things, but if love wasn't there, they would mean nothing. Love is deeper than simple actions, no matter how kind and sincere they might be.

Let me offer a modern translation: "If I tell you the sweetest things and tell you how beautiful you are every day, but don't have love, my words are nothing more than Rebecca Black lyrics. If I leave roses on your doorstep, but don't have love, they might as well be dried up and dead. If I buy you nice things and always open the door, but don't have love, I'm not really worth your time."

Those are all nice things, don't get me wrong. I try to do most of them, in fact. But they are not love. Don't let them be confused. Love is not being sweet and doing romantic things. Love is much deeper.

When you love someone or are loved by someone, you should become more patient. They should brag a little less and not hold things over your head. You should become less jealous and they should be less proud. You should be honest and they should be slower to anger.

These traits become a litmus test for love. The more we practice the hard work of love well, the more we should experience these traits. The more we should embody these traits. Love should bring them out in us, and we should see them in brighter colors in the ones we are with.

Let me add one final note. Most of us have been surrounded by messages about what love is since the day we were born. Some of us have lived through unhealthy and abusive relationships, and we've trained ourselves to believe that that is what love looks like. We've bought into the lie that that is all we can faithfully expect. We've convinced ourselves that the love Paul talks about might be nice, but we should settle.

Love looks a lot of different ways. It wears many clothes and comes in many shapes and sizes. But it should always bear the fruit Paul describes.

So may we stop settling for half-hearted expressions of love, believing the lie that romance and sentiment and love are the same. May we allow love to transform us, drawing us towards more kindness and honesty and patience. May we learn to embody love in all of its shapes when its heart is rooted in the love that Paul describes. And may we lean into relationships that teach us more and more what love looks like.

forever unfinished...