Sermon - Quinquagesima 2022 - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

The Healing of Blind Bartimaeus, Fernando Gallego, 1480-1488

What is love? No, I’m not quoting a song from the 90’s, because this is a legitimate and important question. What does it mean to love? Typically love is said to be a feeling, a sympathy and affection for another. But that doesn’t actually help define love, it actually makes it harder to define. If love were simply a feeling, then love would be entirely subjective, dependent on each individual and dependent on their emotional state at any given time. Love would be defined by the heart.

But what’s so wrong with that, you may ask. Well, Jesus said what comes out of the heart: “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” The heart is not exactly the prettiest place, contrary to popular opinion. When we define love based upon what we feel in our hearts, then love is defined as evil.

To illustrate, we’ve legally (at least by the courts) defined love as a feeling and marriage as consent. This results in no-fault divorce, because if love is only a feeling and marriage is simply a matter of consent, then why would I consent to be married to someone I no longer feel love towards? This results further in homosexual marriage; if I feel love towards another of my own sex, and we both consent, then we should get married. It only gets worse: polyamory, if multiple people feel love toward each other and consent, then they can have a marriage (already some municipalities around the country are legalizing marriage with multiple spouses). Or what about pedophila, this is gaining traction in some places, if both feel love towards each other and consent, then why not! Or maybe a different illustration: if love is simply how I feel towards another, but I don’t feel love towards my unborn baby in my womb, then why let this baby live in my body? I might as well abort it because I don’t feel love toward it. 

Hopefully you see the problems with defining love subjectively as a feeling. So, if love isn’t just a feeling, then what is it? St. Paul wrote: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Elsewhere St. Paul wrote a little more succinctly: “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” Love is the selfless actions and desires to serve God and neighbor.

Love is not just a subjective feeling, rather love consists of objectively good actions. We know from God’s law what types of actions and behaviors constitute love. When I say God’s law, I don’t just mean law like the ten commandments, but more broadly speaking, everything which God says to us is His law and teaches us about love. All of the scriptures are about love!

However love is more than knowing God’s law, love is the fulfillment of God’s law. Like St. Paul said: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

Here we see that it’s not just enough to know what love is and talk about love, but we’re called to love each other with actions. Like St. John said: “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” So for example, one who talks about how we need to help all of the poor starving people around the world, and yet has family or parish members on food stamps and welfare, is not actually showing love, they’re just a noisy gong. Or, one who votes against abortion, but despises God’s gift of children, is not actually showing love.

To help clarify this even more, St. Paul writes: “As we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” While we are commanded to love all people, just as God loves all people, we’re particularly commanded to love those in the household of faith, namely, the christians within our parish right in front of us. I suppose it’s easy to throw money at a charity and then feel like we’ve fulfilled our obligation and are good loving people. But what God commands in particular is that we first love those within our own household, not just by throwing money at them, but knowing them well enough to be able to love them according to their particular needs and circumstances.

Now, just to be clear about all of this, words do matter too. We must speak rightly and know what it means to love. However, those words and that knowledge must flow forth in action. On top of that, those actions have to be directed by love. Because even if we give away all we have and deliver up our bodies to be burned, but it’s just about making ourselves look good and has nothing to do with loving our neighbor, then it’s still not love.

To give a contemporary example to all of this, consider the way that we speak about others, particularly those of the household of faith. It’s a common habit, and a dreadful sin, for us to sit around and gossip and spread rumors about others. I’m not talking about informing one another when someone is sick or something along those lines, that’s fine. But when we constantly complain about others, with lies and half-truths, in order to tear them down, that’s evil. It makes us look good when we point out their faults, it makes us look loving and christian, but it’s evil. It’s especially insidious and satanic when we Christians do that to those of our own parish. St. Paul writes: “love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.”

Now that we’ve established what love is, let us finally turn to the perfect paragon of love: our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. “Taking the twelve, he said to them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.”

Jesus isn’t just a wise man who sat around saying some cool things, but He is the love of God made manifest for us. He journeyed to Jerusalem in order to fulfill the law (love) on our behalf. He was mocked, spit upon, flogged, and killed in order to fulfill the law and love you. He rose from the grave in order to raise us from our graves, fulfilling the law of love. 

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down His life for His friends.” Holy Week and Easter are the central focus of the Christian life because there upon the cross the love of God was most clearly revealed through the sacrifice of Jesus. Septuagesima, sexagesima, and quinquagesima, are all directing our attention to the resurrection because they’re counting down the days! Today, quinquagesima, simply means that there are exactly 50 days until Easter! Lent is a long penitential season, but the goal is the resurrection of our Lord! Good Friday and Easter are the heart and soul of Christianity because they reveal the heart and soul, the love, of God for us!

The picture of blind Bartimaeus stuck sitting next to the road begging is a picture of us: spiritually blind and incapable of doing much at all. Yet along comes Jesus, the Son of David, one who is a hero like David fighting our Goliath of sin and blindness. With love overflowing from His pierced wounds, He defeats our sin on the cross, opens our eyes, and through faith in Him He saves us. Immediately we cast off the works of darkness, rise from our gloomy blindness caused by sin, and we follow Him, glorifying God. God’s love has the power to save us and bring us to our feet. Because He loves us, we love Him, and we therefore love one another. We walk in His ways and follow His footsteps, loving one another, until we reach the heavenly Jerusalem above where our weak love will be made perfect through His strong love for us.