“A CLANGING
CYMBAL”
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A sermon preached Readings: 1
Cor 13:1-13, Luke 4:16-24 |
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“If I speak in the
tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,
I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor
13:1)
Listen first to these words of an Indian medical student:
If I have language ever so
perfectly and speak like a pundit,
but have not the knack of love that grips the heart,
I am nothing.
If I have decorations and diplomas,
and am proficient in up-to-date methods,
but have not the touch of understanding love,
I am nothing.
If I am able to worst my opponents in arguments so
as to make fools of them,
but have not the wooing note,
I am nothing.
If I have all faith and great ideals and magnificent
plans and wonderful visions,
but have not the love that sweats and bleeds and weeps and prays and pleads,
I am nothing….
…If I can heal all manner of sickness and disease,
but wound hearts and hurt feeling for want of love that is kind,
I am nothing.
If I can write books and publish articles that set
the world agog,
but fail to transcribe the word of the Cross in the language of love,
I am nothing.
[quoted in Leslie Griffiths,
Worship and our Diverse World, Stainer and Bell,
1998]
Or
here is something similar, this time from Amy Clarkson aged 8:
….If I don’t have love, what good is it?
I might be able to talk like birds and ducks,
but I don’t want to live without love.
If I don’t have love for people,
the way I talk is just like a crash of drums and a bang of buildings.
I may know all the secret codes and passwords,
but if I don’t have love, I am like an empty shell.
Even
if I am the richest person in the world,
and most organised person ever,
but still I have no love,
I am like a pencil without lead.
If I had the faith to knock down every building,
but have no love,
I am like a window with no glass.”
[“Magnet” no. 55 (Autumn 2001), p.14]
There
is truth here, for every age and for every generation –
But
lets go back for a minute to the young Church at
Corinth.
It
seems that the Corinthian Church had the charismatic gift of speaking with
tongues –
it sounds like they were very pleased about this
and looked down on those who only spoke in ordinary language.
So
Paul has to remind them,
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but
have not love,
I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal”
Notice
that the Corinthian Christians are not
doing and saying overtly wicked things –
they aspire to faith and sacrifice and wisdom and spiritual utterance-
but they have perverted all these potentially good things
through a loveless arrogance and harshness.
Maybe
they even paraded their gifts in competition with each other –
·
“Look I can speak in tongues much more fluently than you”
·
“Watch carefully when they pass round the plate –
see I put in more than you do”
·
“Listen to my contribution at the next Bible Study -
I have so much more wisdom and insight
But
Paul says:
you are priding themselves on things which are transient,
which will pass away.
All that really matters is love.
It
is so good to share this service between
our English and Korean congregations here at the Mint –
Paul says to us all,
it doesn’t matter whether you speak English or Korean –
what matters is that you speak in the language of love –
Not
speaking at or down to people, but speaking with them,
listening to their story and responding to their need.
The
same is true of faith.
We have all met folk with faith which is very powerful in their lives,
but which has become rigid and careless of others –
such faith we call fanaticism – faith without love which is nothing.
And
also charity -
We can give to the poor –
and yet if we do so in order to seek praise, or assuage guilt,
or – heaven forbid - get them off our backs –
Then
we give without love, and it is as nothing.
We
can even make the ultimate sacrifice
and give our bodies to be burned,
but even this, without love, is of no worth.
Last week, Liberal Democrat MP Jenny Tongue
got into terrible trouble for saying that if she had been born in Palestine
she might have been a suicide bomber.
Well, many Church folk continue to campaign
against the abuses suffered by the Palestinian people,
but that doesn’t mean we support suicide bombers in Palestine,
any more than in Iraq or New York.
Here, archetypally, men and women give their bodies
to be burned,
not it seems in love,
but do so in order to kill innocent bystanders.
We need to be careful here, however.
For we have to remember that our taxes
have often paid for bombs and shells targeted on civilians –
whether we think of Dresden or the Korean war or
Afghanistan or Iraq.
When servicemen die in conflict,
we talk of them making the ultimate sacrifice -
This
is difficult territory –
all I can give here is food for thought, not glib answers -
but Paul clearly says that all our actions, however sacrificial,
are valuable only insofar as they are undertaken in a spirit of love.
And
the criteria against which we judge the suicide bomber
must be the same criteria against which we judge all armed conflict.
Unless
the pain and suffering of battle and conflict
is borne of love not hate, sorrow not anger,
only then can sacrifice be valuable in God’s eyes.
One of the characters in Joyce’s Ulysses recalls
how Cromwell killed the inhabitants of Drogheda
with a canon bearing the inscription “God is love”.
Is
it ever OK to speak of love whilst killing in this way?
Our answer will depend on whether or not we are pacifists –
what is clear is this:
If
we are ashamed to write words of love on our weapons,
we should not be using them in the first place.
For
even “though I give my body to burned, but have not love, I gain nothing”
So
we are called in an uncompromising way to a life of love.
And
perhaps this week we could mentally audit our lives –
each action, each word, against the yardstick of love.
To live a life of love can of course be a real challenge.
Here are some eight year old boys discussing love
–
for whom it is perhaps not surprisingly, rather
daunting territory:
·
“If falling in love is anything like learning to spell,
I don’t want to do it – it takes too long”
·
“Love will find you, even if you are trying to hide from it.
I been trying to hide from it since I was five,
but the girls keep finding me”
·
“I think you are supposed to get shot with an arrow or something,
but the rest of it isn’t supposed to be so painful”
Well,
as those young men will find out,
you may or may not fall in love,
but in the broader sense, learning to love does take a long time,
a lifetime, it can be a painful process sometimes,
but it offers rich rewards.
For three months in 1917 Mahatma Gandhi set himself
to read and read over again 1 Corinthians 13.
When he saw his supporters drifting towards violence
he would often advise them to read Paul on love.
For a new year’s gift, he sent his nephew Maganlal Gandhi
a handwritten copy of the chapter.
In an accompanying letter,
he spoke of his own ongoing struggle to become truly loving, -
He describes love as a dagger and says
“If we could get hold of this dagger [of love]
and get also the strength to stab ourselves with it,
we could shake the world.”
[See William W. Emilson, “Gandhi and the Greatest Thing in the World”
in Expository Times, vol 113 no. 4 (Jan 2002) pp.
118-9]
Sometimes
of course love seems to die.
And we want to rail against the universe ––
You remember Auden’s poem in the funeral scene
of “Four Weddings and a Funeral”-
…I thought that love would last forever, but I
was wrong,
Pour away the ocean and
sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”
The
anguish of one for whom love has died.
But
now hear the Gospel:
“Where there are prophecies, they will cease;
where there are tongues, they
will be stilled;
where there is knowledge, it will
pass away….”
(1 Cor 13:8)
But
love?
“Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5 It is not rude, 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 dies.”
(1 Cor 13:4-8)
And
if this is a challenge to us regarding our Christian living,
It
is also a promise from the cross – God love for us never fails.
God
sees us like a boy hiding from the girls behind a tree
or the prodigal shamefacedly returning from the far country
and says -
”Come my child,
surely you did you think you could escape my love?
No – other things may cease,
but my love endures forever.”
A final story – from the Jewish rabbis.
The old master told this story to his young
disciple,
who was also his son.
Once my great grandfather,
in order to rid his village of the sickness,
went with his son into the forest.
There he performed the ritual,
he made the gestures,
he spoke the sacred words,
and then in fatherly love embraced his son.
And the sickness fled.
Then, a generation later, my grandfather,
to save his people from their enemies,
went into the forest with his son.
He had forgotten the sacred words,
but he still performed the ritual,
he made the gestures,
and then in fatherly love embraced his son.
And the enemy passed by.
And
then, a generation later, my father,
to save our people from oppression,
took me with him into the forest.
He did not know the sacred words
and he had forgotten the gestures,
but still he performed the sacred ritual
and then in fatherly love embraced me.
And the oppression was eased.
Now my son, a generation later again,
you and I are in the forest,
seeking to remove the yoke laid upon our people.
I do not know the sacred words
I do not know the gestures,
and I have forgotten the ritual.
All I know is the embrace of love.
Then they embraced,
and it was enough.
Always the embrace of love is enough –
for really there is nothing
else.
[Traditional Jewish story,
adapted by Derek H Webster,
in Geoffrey Duncan, “Wisdom is calling”, Canterbury Press 1999].
So
God loves us.
So may we love each other.