Epiphany - 5 - Celebrating Relationships

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13

1 Corinthians 13 NIV

1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 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. 3 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. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

2/2/2025

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Communion

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 1: Communion

Kerri singing for Communion?

Opening Prayer:

O God of all the prophets, you knew us and chose us before you formed us in the womb. Fill us with faith that speaks your word, hope that does not disappoint, and love that bears all things for your sake, until that day when we shall know you fully, even as we are known by you. Amen.

Celebrating Relationships

Limits

It’s hard to figure out where you’re going if you don’t know where you are now.

We learn where we are and who we are first by learning our limits. Recognizing your limits is not a fun lesson to learn. As children, we turn it into games, racing each other or seeing how quickly we can complete simple tasks. We have contests at school, like spelling bees, to test the boundaries of our knowledge. However, as we grow older, we realize those limits are not just lines drawn in the sand that we can push against or rebel against; they are solid brick walls that hurt when we run into them. Those are not enjoyable lessons to learn.

So, instead of discussing limits, we usually focus on our strengths. You may recall from Chapter 12 that Paul didn’t write to the Corinthians about their limits. He wrote to them about their strengths and spiritual gifts. Even 2000 years ago, they were putting a positive spin on things.

Understanding our limits is crucial for living a faithful life with God. I’m sure you can recall when you faced an opportunity that was too big, not the right fit, or just beyond your ability to handle, and it didn’t turn out well. You may have prayed for God to rescue you from that situation, and knowing God, he likely did. You might have transformed that experience of learning your limits into a testimony of God‘s faithfulness. We’re good at putting a positive spin on things. However, chances are, you learned your lesson about your limits and won’t repeat that mistake. God is always with us and faithfully supports us daily, but we are not faithful when we fail to acknowledge the limitations that lead us into difficult situations.

In our passage today, Paul uses the concept of limits to reframe all we do around Jesus’s core teaching. He shows us that the power of the Holy Spirit in the Church finds its true strength and identity when it is based on scripture and modeled after Jesus. Paul shows us that all we hope to accomplish comes to pass as we are called into relationships of love for God and each other.

Humble Love

We all have limits, but that is not bad news. It is good news because God works through us best when we serve and love humbly. Sometimes, figuring out how to preach or prophesy humbly is hard. It can be challenging to figure out how to speak in tongues and do miracles, teach with godly wisdom, or give sacrificially and do all these things humbly. But Paul tells us the secret right here in this passage. If you want to do anything with love, do it humbly.

Don’t use the world’s definition of love. If you haven’t noticed, sometimes what the world considers love is slightly off. Instead, use God‘s definition of love and Jesus’ example.

Love is patient, love is kind,… Something, something, and we forget the words about here. But we’re pretty sure Love is patient and kind. And honestly, that’s plenty for us to work with, right there. I’ve read many books and heard talks about practicing personal habits to get into better physical, mental, and spiritual shape. There are hundreds of activities and disciplines that we can practice to try to make ourselves better. However, it is not often that I hear people tell me about the goal of practicing the discipline of patience each day in their lives. Kindness, maybe. But patience is usually something that just seems to happen to us or not.

We often get stuck on the first descriptor of love and find it hard to remember the rest. So, I’ve learned to group them in categories to help me remember the shape of love.

It is humble. The very next lines are that it does not envy or boast, and it is not proud. So, the love we receive, learn, and share from God is humble. You probably experienced Love that was not humble. It feels different. Often, it makes us feel like someone wants something from us, and we may or may not know what that is.

Paul says this humble love does not put others down nor try to lift itself up. Humble love just is and just does. It never has to compare itself to anyone or anything else as being better or worse than. I shared last week about God creating things good in that drawing us all together was very good, or better than just good. When we receive and share that humble love from God, we are dealing with the best, and there’s no need to compare anymore.

Humble love is not easily angered. God gets angry sometimes. Jesus got angry sometimes. And even when living in that flow of his humble love, we can still feel anger. But we don’t have to let it push us back into comparing or being impatient and unkind. What we do with that anger is our choice. And then he says it keeps no record of wrongs. Humble love clears the way for us to see one another as God sees us and does not allow anger, sin, or anything else to come in and permanently mark our perspective in damaging ways. I know if someone makes me angry enough, it will blind my eyes to see anything good come from them. But humble love heals our eyes and helps us see the truth clearly again.

Powerful Love

When we plant our understanding of love, both what we received from God, as well as what God asks us to bear and share a spiritual fruit, and we let its roots stick deep into that concept of humility – nurturing and guiding that love, we begin to see the real power of it, blossoming forth and bearing fruit. God‘s love is always humble, but it is not weak. It’s the most powerful force in the world.

This love is never bent or shaped by evil. The rest of creation can be tempted by power and money. Knowledge can be twisted and corrupted, misused and abused. Charity can be turned into a weapon, raising up one person at the expense of another. Even the scripture and the prophecies about Jesus have been used to instill fear in people and cause them to run away from the god who loves them so much.

But God‘s love, when we encounter it and when we share it, cannot be touched by evil. It always has a way of shining forth in the darkness and lifting up the truth. It always protects. Time again, when people came to Jesus with suffering and sin and asked him whose fault it was, Jesus, in his humble and powerful love, pointed out to them that we do not suffer because of the extent of our sin. Not the full extent, anyway. God‘s love reaches out to us while we are still actively sending against him And offers us the chance to repent, which we never deserved in the first place. Nobody ever gets what they deserve, and our weak and pride-infested discussions trying to figure out whose fault it is bear no fruit.

Humble and powerful love upholds the truth and always trusts in it. It may not see clearly through the darkness, but it always has enough light to see the next step in front of it, the next handle to hold onto to guide the steps. In the bleakest of times, it always hopes. It does that because it’s never alone. Jesus summed up what it means to be faithful in two commandments: to love God and everyone else. There is no way that you can or ever should be alone. We always have God and each other, and that’s how he designed it. So there is always hope.

Love never quits. It always perseveres. It may fall down and get bruised up, bent out of shape, make some mistakes… But we’ve got eternity to get this right, and since the power and wisdom of this love comes from God, the most important thing we do is show up and choose to be faithful with what we have and know. The only way we fail is when we give up altogether. And even then, God‘s love doesn’t fail. It’s just waiting for us to let him help us again and get back in the flow.

Love Without Limits

God made each of us good, even on the days we don’t feel like it. And bringing us together as his family, his body, he makes us even better. You and I have our limits. And even as we join together, we still have our limits. But God‘s love does not. Paul tells us that in the end, we can take all our gifts, talents, possessions, and power and leave them in the trash bin because none of them are needed where we are going. In the presence of God, brought together in his love, as Jesus, finally and forever, defeats sin and death and every weed that grows out of it, Paul says there is only Faith, Hope, and Love. And the best of all is Love.

Brothers and sisters, do you want to hear the good news? The good news is that God loves you with an unstoppable love, and there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s what unstoppable means. You can hate him, curse his name, and do terrible things, hoping it will reflect badly upon him. But he will still love you, and the distance back into his arms will always be whatever it takes for you to repent and turn around and see him right there with you. That’s the good news.

But there’s better news. That same unstoppable love that God has for us is meant to be planted into our hearts and lives and bear the same fruit 10 times, 30 times, 100 times as much as we receive it through us into the lives of those around us. Not a hint of that is possible in our power. But it is entirely dependent upon your willingness. If you let the raindrops of God‘s love soak into you, he will turn you into a fountain of grace. He will turn all of us together into a fountain of fountains of grace. And those around us won’t even see us. Because it is God‘s love, they will see him. That is the better news.

And here is the best news of all. We don’t have to wait. All this talk of love sounds so much like heaven. But we are not there yet. There’s a lot of awful stuff in this world. There’s a lot of awful stuff bringing us down in our lives. We are wounded and distracted and tempted and pulled apart. Everywhere we go. But while we face that strong opposition on every side, our strength comes from God, and nothing can stop Him, even today in our broken world.

I had some grand plans for the start of the year to get all our teams together in one place and have a big meeting. I wanted to cast some vision and set some goals together so that we could discern as a body what God was doing in us and what part each of us played in following him faithfully. Grand plans. And then we got a week or two behind in the planning, and life began happening in many of our lives. There was not enough groundwork laid to stand on. And then it snowed. And the grand plan went in the trash bin.

Sometime during those weeks when we all struggled to get outside our doors, and I was making phone calls to check in with everyone, I realized, as I shared last week, that if we really got the whole body together, we wouldn’t all fit. Setting goals and planning is essential, and it’s godly. God does it in our lives and calls us to be faithful and follow him. But it doesn’t all happen in one meeting. It doesn’t all happen on a Sunday morning or a Monday night. It happens every day of our lives, with everyone that God sends us to and everyone he brings to us. God’s goals are not limited by what we can plan and accomplish ourselves.

That doesn’t mean we don’t get together and plan and set goals. That means we take the more difficult path of getting together and planning and setting appropriate goals in all of our teams and gatherings of our church family. We appropriately communicate those across all our teams, recognizing that one team’s work often affects the work of other teams. As we set those goals, we ensure we are honest about who we are and where we are — aware of our limitations. And then, and this might be the most important part, we pray that God would give us the wisdom to see the steps to meet those goals and the strength so that he would accomplish them through us. We set those goals under God‘s authority based on what he hopes and desires from us, not just the minimum of what we think we can do ourselves.

In the coming weeks, as we begin to do that work, to set and live into those goals, following God faithfully, we need to remember this scripture: 1 Corinthians 13. If we start to plan or move toward things that step outside of that flow of God’s humble and powerful love, we may need to pause and go back to the drawing board to find where we got off track and get back on it.

Today, it doesn’t matter how close we are to the track. Today is the day that you and I can choose to take our first steps onto it and trust that God will lead us with his love every step of the way.

Do you know that humble love of God, and do you receive it every day? Once is not enough. If not, is something pulling you away from him that you need to repent from, turn around, and climb back into his arms?

Are you sharing that love of God with others? Or are there things that are hindering the flow to and through you? Is your fountain stopped up or frosted over? Do you need to clear things out so that God’s love can flow through you again?

Closing Prayer

Lord, thank you for your humble and unstoppable love that saves, restores, redeems, and transforms us from broken individuals into a family. Today, we pray that your will is done here on earth, in our community, in our homes, and in our lives, just as it is in heaven. In Jesus’ name. Amen.