Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:37-39 NIV)
I’ve been working my way through the book of 1 Corinthians this week. This morning I arrived at that very famous “love chapter” that is often read at weddings:
And yet I will show you the most excellent way.
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. 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. 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.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
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. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 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. 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. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13 NIV)
This “most excellent way” of love, creates a framework for how the people of Jesus’s Church interact with each other and with those not-yet-believers outside the church. Today, let us pray this over the Church:
God of Love,
Today we pray that, in all things and in all ways, your Church would be an example of your Love in the world. May that love be patient and kind, not envious but generous, not boastful or proud but humble. May that love hold in honor each precious person you have created, never seeking adoration for an individual or a church, but always for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray your Church would be a body that is not easily angered or remembering wrongdoing, but always protecting, trusting, hoping, and persevering in your Kingdom purposes. We pray each local body of your Church universal would be a place completely purified from evil, and always rejoicing in and teaching your Truth.
God, may all the gifts you give us – speaking in tongues, prophecy, wisdom, knowledge, faith, generosity, care for fellow humans and so much more – be rooted so deeply in your Love that our actions honor you. May your Church be continually growing in faith and the expressions of faith so that the world around us knows us for our faith, our hope and our love, but especially for LOVE. We ask this in Jesus’s name, AMEN.