Excerpts from Spring ICF Teaching Notes: Part Three

“Three things remain faith, hope and Love but the greatest of these is Love” (I Corinthians 13;13) – why? Paul Apostle to the Gentiles penned these words to believers in the city of Corinth in southeastern Europe about 57 C E. And they are holographic – meaning the whole is contained in the part. The big problem in Corinth can be detected in one little word in this verse. This word is ‘greatest’. The Corinth believers were enamored with greatness and commenced to splinter into competitive enclaves separated one from the other over what constituted  greatness in a leader. Some were in absolute awe about leaders who possessed great knowledge. Paul writes that at best our knowledge is partial (I Corinthians 13:9) and ‘if anyone thinks he knows anything he knows nothing as he ought to know it’ (I Corinthians 8:2). Others were enamored with oratory and homiletic skills. Others believed that great faith, the kind of faith that moves mountains, was the true mark of a great leader. To these claims Paul asserted that the spiritual gift to preach with the tongues like an angel or the gift to move mountains by great faith in and of themselves were vain. Even faith is a vain empty thing unless its mixed with a far superior spiritual ingredient he asserted.

Still others were bedazzled by prophetic powers and to these Paul reminds that Prophecies often fail. There is a novelty and openness about the future that defies the predictions of even the most Spirit filled prophet. ‘Now’, he writes ‘we see through a darkened glass’ (window) that is smudged and blurred by our anxieties, pride and simply for the fact that our feet are mired in mortal clay despite whatever spiritual giftedness we may lay claim to (real or imagined).  To this litany Paul’s adds an indictment against measuring greatness by heroic acts of piety. Some of the believers were no doubt insisting that greatness is to be found where the rubber meets the road – namely in heroic actions like bodily deprivations and sacrifices. ‘What is a man unless he puts his body on the line?’  But Paul argues, heroic acts of piety, no matter how costly to one’s body, are not in and of themselves truly great. Often behind such acts hides, not a humble self truly acting in courage for another’s good to the glory of God, but a soul desperate for applause thus venturing beyond himself and beyond the sanctuary of God’s blessing and protection.

Over against all these ways and means to greatness Paul asserts only three things really count – faith, hope and love and of these three love is the greatest. In a word Paul challenges the Corinthian believers yardstick of greatness asserting that they had it all wrong. Their measuring stick for greatness was not slightly flawed but dead wrong and needed to be trashed. Love alone is truly great and all measurements of greatness must be judged by the presence or absence of love. But while we hasten to agree ought we not to pause and question ‘why Paul is love the greatest?’

In this teaching I went in search of the greatness of love. I wanted not merely to accept Paul’s assertion that love is the greatest but feel after it and dis cover it. In this teaching I set out on a contemplative and “rational – existential” search to discover the greatness of love and seven reasons (evidences) emerged into the open. Here follows one of these.

Ground Hogs, Pig Weed, Quack Grass, Morning Glory and Black Locust Trees: Reasoning from Nature to Spirit and from Spirit to Love.

In another lifetime, in bygone days I owned ten acres in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. We had a spacious yard, a large garden, a three-acre meadow and four acres of beautiful mature Sugar Maple trees with a mix of wild Cherry trees great in stature, Beech, Pig Nut Hickory along with a smattering of scrubby ‘Iron Wood’ mixed in. It was not heaven but with my four kids, two goats and tractors I was determined to subdue this favored trek of land and suborn it to my aesthetic and practical desires and needs. But very quickly I discovered that there were enemies that were in place, rooted, ready and poised to subvert my determination. Not shy to name them openly, if only in detest I could even now twenty-five years later cast a shadow of shame upon them I list them here in the order of their ignominy. Let their infamy be published far and wide – Pig Weed (proper name Amaranth) Quack Grass, Morning Glory and Black Locust Trees. Add to these horticultural enemies the infamous northeastern United State Ground Hog that grew to the size of a small lumpy swine.

When I first moved to this wind swept hill I was merely mused by their presence along with many other natural wonders like the Baltimore Oriole that came every spring, the Weasel that lived at the edge of the flower garden, the wild currents and shallots near the boundary of the yard and meadow and the Elder Berry Trees near the entrance to the woods. But within two seasons I realized they were not like the other rhymes and rhythms of nature. They were plotting a take over. Inbred in each of these was an inordinate self-interest, a grotesque over reach exceeding all other life forms that shared my stretch of land. Case in point. I set twenty long rows of kale plants in my meadow and commenced to cultivate them with my F 12 geared so low its driver could take a short nap by the time it reached the end of the row or listen to an inning of baseball on the radio. One day I came home and went out to the meadow to inspect my Kale project and spotted a Ground Hog at the far end of the field finishing off row eight. He and his wife had completely and systematically devoured eight complete rows of Kale the length of a football field.

Pig Weed

In the garden I labored to achieve a fine pure tilt of top soil and then having achieved my seed bed I planted my entire garden only to realize that the Pig Weed was lying in wait. As soon as my seeds broke free and commenced their green career toward maturity the Pig Weed pounced. Everywhere I turned the Pig Weed was growing and growing ten times as fast as any of my plants gobbling up all the space, nutrition, sunlight and moisture.

Morning Glory

The Morning Glory got their start on an edge of the meadow that I rarely visited. At first I paid little attention delighted by their happy light blue bell blossoms but soon I realized how aggressive these creepers were. They set about to abscond the land around them in ten foot leaps and bounds. And once they had it in their grip is was no easy task to reclaim it.

The black Locust Tree was sort of like Cassius Clay after he decided he was Mohammed Ali. To all other life forms on my land they boldly said, “we are the greatest”. A meadow left fallow for five years would literally disappear under the their avarice. Each year they would throw shoots out into the meadow 12 feet from the hedgerow and in one year they would grow two maybe three feet up and that far down. Here follows my point and one clue that reveals the greatness of love. The Quack Grass I will leave for another discussion. Here it is sufficient to state that its tactic was to look innocent above ground but underneath the surface spread like a malignant cancer in all directions so that it could not be uprooted.

Black Locust

There is a sturdy self-interest in all life forms in nature including of course human beings and here I am interested in human beings and employing nature to make my point. All to easily this self-interest heats up and becomes too great, too strong, captive to a destructive overreach. Sin as it is depicted in the Judeo-Christian tradition is not self-regard, or, properly understood, self-love, it is inordinate self-concern, inordinate exaggerated self-love. It is self-interest inflamed and expanded beyond its proper boundary such that it takes up too much social, spiritual and psychological space. Sin, as Martin Luther wrote, is self curved in, focused on itself (verses turned out to God and others). Sin is the opposite of love because as Paul writes in this letter to the Corinthians (chapter 13:5) ‘love seeks not her own’.

Here in this ‘does not seeks it’s own’ ( I Corinthians 13:5 KJV) lies the greatness of love. The way of love is great because love means to transcend the clamor of one’s anxieties, desires, needs and wants and turn out to the needs of one’s neighbor and the common good. To myopically focus one’s passion and energy on taking care of oneself, securing one’s place, one’s happiness and security not merely at the material level but at the social level is the opposite of love and the meaning of ‘sin’.

To focus on securing things (material) and one’s standing among others (the social realm of life) where honor, position, prestige, reputation, privilege and esteem have to do – is small and not great, no matter how successful one excels at this pursuit. And to relate to God purely on the level of one’s need and desire (the spiritual realm) is small. And this smallness is born not only from nature and the survival – security – anxiety instinct but driven by spirit, spirit that heats up and expands like the Pig Weed, Quack grass, Black Locust, Morning Glory, like the voracious Ground Hog whose appetite can never be satiated.

Quack Grass

The destiny of Homo sapiens is different. Homo sapiens are called to venture humanness that involves being reshaped and remade beyond nature into the image of God. God and a higher destiny, higher than nature, are calling homo sapiens to break free from their slavish captivity to self interest, to tame, even transcend this propensity and venture humanness in God’s image by turning out to the uplift and needs of others, like God himself in the Christ turned out to lift up humanity.

“Love seeks not her own” here in this seeking not its own is to be discovered the greatness of love and this greatness the Christian Scripture asserts is the greatness of God. ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8) and this assertion made by John the beloved is not merely an assertion of love as a pure seamless idea but the history of God; that God in time and place divests Godself of all divine power and prerogative and shows up on the human scene as a suffering servant to lift us up and set us free no matter the cost to God’s self.