Richard Lischer - "Finding a Place for Love" (January 29, 1995)

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-	Let us pray together the prayer for illumination.	0:07
	Open our hearts and minds, oh God,	0:13
	by the power of your Holy Spirit	0:16
	so that as the word is read and proclaimed,	0:18
	we may hear your word with joy this day, amen.	0:22
	The Gospel lesson is found in Luke,	0:28
	the fourth chapter, beginning with verse 21.	0:30
	Then he began to say to them,	0:39
	"Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."	0:41
	All spoke well of him and were amazed	0:45
	at the gracious words that came from his mouth.	0:47
	They said, "Is not this Joseph's son?"	0:50
	And he said to them, "Doubtless you will quote	0:54
	to me this proverb, doctor, cure yourself.	0:56
	"And you will say do here also	1:00
	"in your hometown the things	1:02
	"that we have heard you did at Capernaum."	1:04
	And he said, "Truly I tell you,	1:07
	"no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown.	1:10
	"But the truth is there were many widows	1:13
	"in Israel in the time of Elijah	1:16
	"when the heaven was shut up three years and six months,	1:18
	"and there was a severe famine over all the land.	1:21
	"Yet Elijah was sent to none of them	1:25
	except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.	1:27
	"There were also many lepers in Israel	1:31
	"in the time of prophet Elijah,	1:34
	"and none of them were cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."	1:36
	And when they heard this,	1:40
	all in the synagogue were filled with rage.	1:42
	They got up, drove him out of the town,	1:45
	and led him to the brow of the hill	1:48
	on which their town was built	1:49
	so that they might hurl him off the cliff.	1:51
	But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.	1:54
	This is the word of the Lord.	1:58
	Thanks be to God.	2:00
	The epistle lesson is from the First Book of Corinthians,	2:06
	chapter 13, verses one through 13.	2:10
	If I speak in the tongues of mortals	2:19
	and of angels but do not have love,	2:21
	I am noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.	2:25
	And if I have prophetic powers	2:28
	and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,	2:30
	and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains	2:33
	but do not have love, I am nothing.	2:36
	If I give away all my possessions,	2:39
	and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,	2:41
	but do not have love, I gain nothing.	2:44
	Love is patient.	2:47
	Love is kind.	2:49
	Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.	2:50
	It does not insist on its own way.	2:54
	It is not irritable or resentful.	2:57
	It does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.	2:59
	It bears all things, believes all things,	3:03
	hopes all things, endures all things.	3:05
	Love never ends.	3:09
	But as for prophecies, they will come to an end.	3:11
	As for tongues, they will cease.	3:14
	As for knowledge, it will come to an end,	3:16
	for we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part.	3:19
	But when the complete comes,	3:23
	the partial will come to an end.	3:25
	When I was a child, I spoke like a child.	3:28
	I thought like a child.	3:31
	I reasoned like a child.	3:32
	When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways,	3:34
	for now we see in a mirror dimly,	3:38
	but then we will see face to face.	3:40
	Now I know only in part.	3:43
	Then I will know fully even as I have been fully known.	3:45
	And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three,	3:50
	and the greatest of these is love.	3:54
	This is the word of the Lord.	3:57
	Thanks be to God.	3:58
-	In the musical, "Fiddler on the Roof,"	4:14
	the husband Tevye surprises his wife when he asks,	4:18
	"Do you love me?"	4:23
	She replies, "Do I what?"	4:27
	"Do you love me?"	4:33
	"For 25 years, I've washed your clothes,	4:37
	"cooked your meals, cleaned your house,	4:39
	"given you children, milked the cow.	4:41
	"After 25 years,	4:44
	"why talk of love right now?"	4:49
	Love is something you do she seems to be saying,	4:53
	not talk about or preach about.	4:57
	Ask the parents of a severely handicapped child	5:04
	why they have devoted their lives to caring for their child,	5:07
	and chances are they will say something like	5:13
	our child has special needs,	5:15
	or that is just what we do.	5:19
	But probably not, because we love her.	5:23
	Even preachers know that to talk about 1 Corinthians 13	5:30
	can be dangerous to speak of this great love chapter.	5:36
	And the danger is sounding superficial.	5:41
	With all the work we have to do,	5:45
	why talk of love right now?	5:50
	What's more, it's not even controversial	5:55
	to come out in favor of love.	5:57
	I can see the headline in the Chronicle,	5:59
	divinity prof, love good.	6:01
	(congregation laughs)
	That's not going to rock your world.	6:07
	The jury is no longer out on love.	6:11
	We know that it's indispensable to the Christian message	6:14
	and indispensable to our identity as Christians.	6:17
	In the Gospel, Jesus summarizes everything	6:23
	that had come before him with two simple sentences,	6:25
	you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart	6:30
	and all your soul and all your mind,	6:32
	and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.	6:36
	And this is a preface to a little story He tells about love,	6:40
	which has come to be known	6:45
	as the parable of the good Samaritan.	6:47
	But it's the Biblical writer John	6:51
	who makes the ultimate equation in one of his letters,	6:53
	for he says not only love is of God,	6:57
	but he says God is love.	7:00
	More than that, the message not only of our culture	7:07
	but of all cultures since time began	7:09
	seems to support our high view of love.	7:12
	Although in culture, the equation is reversed, isn't it?	7:17
	Not God is love, but love is God.	7:21
	But nevermind, from Sappho to Shakespeare to Barry Manilow,	7:26
	that's to let you know I'm hip,	7:33
	(congregation laughs)	7:35
	our culture says love is great.	7:39
	But there are some serious problems that remain	7:44
	with the way Paul talks about love.	7:48
	Years ago, we took our children	7:53
	to the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.	7:54
	I still remember standing in front of that Apollo capsule,	7:58
	somewhat awed, without a group of people	8:02
	and overhearing a little boy ask his dad	8:04
	the quintessential American questions.	8:07
	Is it real?	8:10
	Will it work?	8:14
	Not bad questions to put to this text,	8:18
	which was originally intended to serve a limited purpose,	8:20
	to solve a specific problem in a troubled congregation,	8:24
	but which is not exhibited as the universal ideal	8:29
	against which all definitions of love must be measured.	8:33
	This text has been painted on plates.	8:39
	This text has been embroidered	8:42
	and framed and hung in parlors.	8:44
	But what happens when you take the ideal out of the frame	8:48
	and put it into a context that might not be receptive to it?	8:53
	Will it work?	9:00
	Oh, it's fine when it's hanging in the parlor.	9:03
	But read it, say, at a faculty meeting,	9:07
	and it begins to fade.	9:12
	Or try reading it in the dorm to your roommate,	9:15
	love does not insist on its own way,	9:19
	and it begins to sound a little unreal.	9:24
	Read it at a city council meeting	9:26
	or in the United States House of Representatives,	9:27
	love is kind,	9:30
	and it begins to sound positively unreal,	9:34
	which is why theologians from Luther	9:39
	to Calvin to Reinhold Neibuhr	9:41
	have barred considerations of love	9:44
	from professional, social, and political contexts	9:47
	and relegate it to the realm of interpersonal relationships.	9:51
	They seem to be saying this is fine.	9:57
	This is a very good definition of love,	9:59
	but there are certain messy contexts in which it won't work.	10:02
	And from a practical point of view, I agree with that.	10:09
	From a theological and religious point of view,	10:12
	I have some questions.	10:14
	When we have so thoroughly identified love with God,	10:17
	God is love, and then turn around and say,	10:20
	but there are an awful lot of situations	10:23
	in which this has no place,	10:25
	it would be inappropriate.	10:30
	Well, those of you have read 1 Corinthians	10:35
	know that this thing comes with its own messy context.	10:37
	If chapter 13 is Paul's cathedral of love,	10:41
	the rest of the book is a weed patch.	10:45
	Paul was the pastor of what we might call	10:48
	a Pentecostal congregation that had gone haywire.	10:50
	His members believed that because they had the spirit,	10:54
	they could treat one another as they pleased.	10:56
	They believed that because they had the spirit,	11:00
	that they could use their bodies	11:02
	and other people's bodies as they pleased.	11:03
	Thus, 1 Corinthians reads like "Days of Our Lives."	11:06
	There are divisions over an attractive minister	11:11
	in chapter one, a case of incest in chapter five,	11:13
	lawsuits between members of the church in chapter six,	11:17
	and more, divorce, idolatry,	11:21
	false doctrine, denials of the resurrection,	11:23
	drunkenness at the Lord's Table in chapter 11,	11:26
	and worship services that often got out of hand.	11:30
	Everyone had the spirit in Corinth in this little church.	11:36
	And apparently many were speaking in ecstatic tongues,	11:40
	which means that their worship services	11:44
	were probably more interesting than ours	11:46
	but also more chaotic.	11:50
	Now it's important for me to say	11:54
	that the problem in Corinth was not the spirit.	11:56
	Paul was a man of the spirit.	12:02
	Paul lived in the spirit.	12:04
	Paul himself had visions.	12:06
	In another letter to this church,	12:09
	and it seemed that they required many letters,	12:10
	Paul wrote I knew a man who was caught	12:14
	into the third heaven in the spirit.	12:16
	And most scholars think he was talking about himself.	12:19
	Paul himself spoke ecstatically.	12:23
	He said it's like the language of the angels,	12:27
	and he bragged about it.	12:29
	In his important new book entitled "Fire From Heaven,"	12:34
	theologian Harvey Cox reminds us	12:39
	that in the 21st century there will be more spirit-baptized,	12:41
	fire-breathing Pentecostalists	12:47
	than all the Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians,	12:50
	Baptists, and Methodists put together.	12:53
	Now some of us receive this as troubling news	12:57
	as though the church were just about to veer off course	13:01
	from its original, cool, rationalistic style.	13:04
	You couldn't prove that from 1 Corinthians.	13:09
	Once again, the problem in Corinth was not the spirit.	13:13
	Without the Holy Spirit moving through people,	13:18
	you have a dead religion.	13:20
	The problem was that everybody had gifts,	13:23
	intellectual gifts, spiritual gifts.	13:27
	But they had forgotten how to love.	13:32
	That context remains.	13:37
	That's the original context,	13:39
	and in a strange way, it is our context as well.	13:41
	It's an interesting time to be a Christian in America today.	13:50
	There are contradictory spirits blowing through the land.	13:55
	If you believe what you read,	13:58
	America is once again in a religious revival,	14:00
	and we're all seeking a higher spiritual meaning	14:03
	for our lives.	14:06
	In the last fading glow of the second millennium,	14:09
	standing on the brink of an unimagined age of information,	14:12
	it turns out what we're hungry for is knowledge	14:18
	of the spirit.	14:21
	Newsweek magazine reports	14:25
	that 20% of Americans say that they've had a revelation	14:26
	from God in the past year.	14:30
	13% have sensed the presence of an angel in the past year.	14:33
	If Paul could come back to earth	14:40
	and read all these dozens of books about angels,	14:42
	which are everywhere,	14:45
	not only in bookstores but boutiques,	14:46
	or could pop in on one of our prayer breakfasts	14:50
	or listen and really hear the deep	14:53
	and genuine dissatisfaction	14:55
	with the materialist bent of our lives,	14:59
	I think he'd say to us what he said to the Athenians	15:03
	who had erected a statue of an unknown god.	15:07
	He'd say you are very religious people.	15:11
	But it's also,	15:19
	it's also a mean time in America, isn't it?	15:20
	Americans may be searching for some higher spirituality,	15:26
	but we're also hunkering down behind the old barricades	15:30
	of privilege, race,	15:34
	place, hate, guns.	15:37
	Now it seems like it's never enough	15:43
	just to disagree with an opponent.	15:45
	We have to smear them with hate and humiliate them.	15:47
	And a fantastic networks of communications	15:51
	has made it possible for us to do this very efficiently.	15:53
	Just a few weeks ago,	15:59
	one of these radio talk show hosts suggested	16:00
	on his program that the gun control advocate Sarah Brady	16:02
	really oughta be quote put down	16:06
	the way you put an animal out of its misery.	16:11
	And there was a kind of primal yeah	16:17
	that one could hear across the land.	16:22
	After 2,000 years	16:26
	of talking, talking, and talking about love,	16:29
	where does all this hate come from?	16:36
	What is it that's festering behind the masks	16:40
	of our higher selves?	16:42
	What are all these angels covering for?	16:46
	I will show you a more excellent way Paul says.	16:53
	Love is not God.	17:00
	Love is not God.	17:01
	God is God,	17:04
	and Jesus Christ is the revelation of God's love.	17:06
	Christian love or any kind of love is not just a matter	17:11
	of doing what comes naturally.	17:15
	No natural instinct ever indicated the kind of love	17:19
	that Jesus demonstrated on the cross.	17:23
	No natural instinct ever dictated this sentence,	17:25
	I will always do what is best for you.	17:30
	For that more excellent love,	17:38
	we have to turn to the more excellent One,	17:40
	who although He understood all mysteries	17:44
	and possessed all prophetic powers,	17:46
	was often found touching the dead skin of lepers' faces	17:49
	or mending withered limbs	17:54
	or comforting the poor and the afflicted.	17:57
	He did not insist on His own way	18:01
	but chose the way of the cross as a more excellent way.	18:04
	There He bore all things because He believed all things.	18:08
	Hoping in His Father above all things,	18:12
	He endured all things on our behalf.	18:15
	We can talk about His love for a long time,	18:21
	but to be formed by it and to be changed by it,	18:25
	we have to follow Him.	18:31
	The love of Jesus Christ can't be boxed up in the heart.	18:35
	The godless symbol of love is the heart.	18:39
	The Christian symbol of love is the cross.	18:42
	The heart is private with its secrets.	18:45
	The cross is as public as the cry of a dying man.	18:48
	He bore all things, endured all things	18:55
	that we might love.	19:01
	Is such love real?	19:07
	Will it work?	19:11
	May I add another question?	19:14
	What will it cost?	19:15
	It will work.	19:19
	It will work just about as well for each	19:22
	and every one of us as it worked for Him,	19:25
	as it worked for all those	19:31
	who have followed His more excellent way.	19:33
	30 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr.	19:39
	introduced a strange phrase into our theological	19:43
	and national vocabulary.	19:45
	He spoke of the weapon of love.	19:47
	And for those of us who thought love was a feeling	19:51
	or an instinct, or an intention,	19:55
	this phrase came as a shock, the weapon of love?	19:58
	Like Paul, King defined love as an action.	20:02
	It rejoices.	20:05
	It bears.	20:05
	It endures.	20:06
	Such a love we may say was never intended	20:09
	to work, really work, in our kind of world,	20:11
	and King was roundly criticized for his teaching on love,	20:14
	not only by militants	20:18
	but by theologians.	20:21
	The theologians were willing to admit	20:25
	that love can be an impulse of good will	20:27
	from one person of one race toward another of another race.	20:30
	But the very idea that love could take	20:34
	to the streets en masse as it were	20:36
	and saunter into a restaurant and order a hamburger	20:38
	or that love could march into a courthouse and cast a vote,	20:43
	well now, that seemed like a context mistake.	20:47
	King was always giving speeches	20:55
	about love in all the wrong places,	20:57
	on highways, in tenements,	21:01
	sometimes in the smoldering ruins of firebombed churches,	21:04
	places where he should have been talking about revenge,	21:10
	where the H word, hate, would not have been inappropriate.	21:14
	But instead he spoke of love and forgiveness.	21:21
	When you listen to those old tapes,	21:27
	all crackly now with the years,	21:29
	his words about love always sound a little out of place.	21:34
	But that's the challenge,	21:40
	to find a place for love,	21:43
	a place where love does not belong,	21:47
	to help love find a new context,	21:50
	perhaps one that you long ago relegated to realism,	21:53
	as in let's be realistic.	21:57
	That won't work.	21:59
	Think of where the love of Jesus Christ does not belong	22:02
	and help it set up shop there.	22:08
	A few months ago, a young teacher	22:14
	in the Durham County Youth Home	22:17
	and a recent Duke graduate, I think perhaps '92 or '93,	22:20
	was named Teacher of the Year for 1994,	22:25
	a huge honor for the university and for this man.	22:29
	Maybe you saw the story in the Herald Sun.	22:33
	In the article, a detention counselor	22:37
	recalls what happened one day	22:39
	when one of the youths in the home erupted in frustration	22:43
	and began throwing furniture and cursing everybody in sight.	22:47
	When the young teacher approached him, he cursed him too.	22:53
	The teacher responded, "You can curse me all you want,	23:00
	"but I still love you."	23:07
	At that, the youth broke down in tears and embraced him,	23:11
	and said, "Nobody's ever said that to me.	23:18
	"Nobody."	23:22
	So I leave it to you.	23:26
	Was this just another context mistake made	23:28
	by your typical idealistic recent grad?	23:31
	Or had our man found a creative place for love?	23:36
	It's not enough to be creative though.	23:44
	It's not enough to be inventive	23:45
	in finding new contexts for love.	23:47
	You don't say to somebody coming at you	23:49
	with a chair, I love you	23:50
	unless you've been grasped, thoroughly washed,	23:56
	and made whole by the love of God in Jesus Christ.	23:59
	Paul says it's the love that will make us whole.	24:06
	That's all.	24:08
	Everything else is fragmentary.	24:10
	This is nowhere truer than in a university	24:14
	where it seems that each of us has a little piece	24:16
	of knowledge, but nobody has the whole.	24:18
	And it's true of all of us.	24:23
	We know our lives in part.	24:25
	We know what's real about life in part.	24:27
	We know the future in part.	24:29
	And when we want to know more,	24:32
	it's as if we've set up a mirror in front of us,	24:34
	and we say now I'll find out the truth.	24:36
	And we look in it, and we see partialness,	24:38
	projections of our own fears,	24:42
	our best guesses about the future.	24:44
	Paul would say oh,	24:48
	if you only knew who stands through the looking glass,	24:49
	as it were, on the other side beholding you and loving you,	24:54
	then you would know the perfect,	25:01
	and that should be translated the totality	25:04
	that will make you whole.	25:09
	This passage, 1 Corinthians 13,	25:14
	is the greatest definition of love ever given.	25:18
	But if God is love,	25:23
	it's also a statement about the God who beholds us.	25:26
	Just listen.	25:31
	God is patient and kind.	25:34
	God is not irritable or resentful.	25:37
	God does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the right.	25:41
	God bears all things, believes all things,	25:46
	hopes all things, endures all things.	25:49
	God never ends.	25:54
	So faith, love, hope abide, these three,	25:58
	but the greatest of all is God.	26:04
	Amen.	26:10

Item Info

Title:

Richard Lischer - "Finding a Place for Love" (January 29, 1995)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 4:12. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 26:13.
Based on the "love" chapter in 1 Corinthians, this sermon wonders if there are places in our world too messy for this kind of love, and concludes that it is in fact our calling as followers of Jesus to love in unexpected places; the sermon calls those who hear to receive the gift of belovedness from God and be transformed into those who can bring love into new spaces. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4901zw4d

Date:

January 29, 1995

Speaker:

Lischer, Richard

Liturgical Calendar:

Epiphany

Biblical Book:

1 Corinthians

Chapter and Verse:

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0739
ref9536_q27
uachapelsermaud
duke:320638
dcrau001453
ark:/87924/r4901zw4d
93c6235f-55f7-40b8-9b3c-1e94ac38690b

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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English

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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Richard Lischer - "Finding a Place for Love" (January 29, 1995)

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