Epiphany 4, Year C | I Corinthians 13:1-13
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
January 30, 2022
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
“Love, love changes everything,
hands and faces, earth and sky;
Love, love changes everything,
how you live and how you die;
Love can make the summer fly
or a night seem like a lifetime;
Yes love, love changes everything—
now I tremble at your name!
Nothing in the world will ever be the same.”[1]
Back in high school, my sister and I were pretty into musicals. My favorite was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, but my sister was more enamored with his Aspects of Love. I didn’t particularly like it. I can’t give you the plot or sing you any of the other songs, but that one, from the opening track, has stayed in my memory for nearly thirty years now. It isn’t one of those things that constantly plays in my head or generally influences my daily life. I rarely think about—or even remember it exists. However, it nearly always leaps up from wherever it’s been hiding and rushes to the front of my mind whenever I hear today’s passage from I Corinthians.
Love has been a major force around the world and throughout the ages. It’s been the cause of wars and—with some luck—can lead to their resolutions. It’s been the power behind massive societal movements and changes throughout the centuries. And it’s the core of many religions, especially Christianity. We in the Church frequently proclaim that “God is love,”[2] and in our own Episcopal tradition, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s “Way of Love” has been an influential guide for roughly half a decade.
In English, the word “love” carries a variety of meanings. I love pizza. I love Shannon. And I love it when a TV show turns out better than I had expected. But those aren’t all the same “love.” We understand the differences through context and our own experience. But some languages have more than one word for what we categorize as “love.” For example, the Ancient Greek that Jesus and Paul spoke actually had four distinct terms: ἔρως (eros), στοργή (storge), φίλος (philos), and ἀγάπη (agape).
Eros is what we normally think of first when we hear the word “love.” It covers the more physical, hormonal aspects of love, everything from elementary school twitterpation to the passionate desire one lover has for another. Storge is more of a familial bond, a natural loyalty. It falls along the lines of the gentle, persistent kind of love we think of between a parent and child. To my knowledge, neither of those appear anywhere in the New Testament. The Bible is more concerned with philos and agape.
Outside the Bible, philos is often translated as “brotherly love.” It’s the root behind the name of Philadelphia, the “city of brotherly love,” or our modern word “philanthropy.” I think of it along the lines of “friendship”—not like Facebook “friends” but people you actually know and love and enjoy spending time with. It’s the sort of comradery and trust that comes from deep familiarity with another person. This is the “love” you find about one-third of the time in the New Testament.
The final word, agape, is the most common New Testament word for “love.” But it’s extremely rare outside of the Bible, which makes it difficult to define. Most preachers I’ve heard describe it as “unconditional love”—the kind of love that persists whether or not the subject or recipient deserves it. Though not untrue, that doesn’t fully capture the idea. The term appears to come from the root word ἀγαθός (agathos), which we often translate as “good” in a moral sense. But agathos is also tied to our idea of useful, and that aspect of it helps us better understand agape. Agape isn’t a static sense of love—the other “love” words cover that. Agape is different. It’s a love that’s useful—love not simply as an emotion but love embodied in the physical world. A few years ago a life insurance commercial called it “love as action,”[3] which is one of the simplest and best definitions I’ve found.
Agape is the kind of love Christ commands and that Paul is talking about in our Epistle today. It’s the love God has for people—love that moves beyond thought or emotion into activity in everyday, practical reality. God’s love creates stars and planets. God’s love gives and sustains life. God’s love provides food and protection. It offers comfort and support. God’s love is always active. In fact, you could argue that without “love as action,” God doesn’t—or possibly even can’t—exist, because God is agape.
We can have emotional love. We can have fondness and affection. We can have loyalty and comradery. Those are all good things and important aspects of our lives. But God isn’t found in any of them. They may point us toward God, but they’re not where God exists—where God becomes real.
If God is “love as action,” then without action, it’s impossible to know God. God’s full reality can’t be found in contemplation alone. It won’t be found through well-wishing[4] or a hope for peace or wholeness. Technically, God isn’t even found in the words of the Bible. Any or all of those things may point to God. They might even guide us close to God. But God isn’t in them. If God is “love as action,” then if you want to seek God’s kingdom, if you want to stand in God’s presence, you can’t spend your whole life sitting still. You have to move. You have to act. Acts of love don’t simply draw us closer to God but actually create God’s presence because God is “love as action.” God exists as and in and through that embodiment of love!
No wonder Paul has such strong words about love! No wonder he brings his discussion of “spiritual gifts” and the body of Christ to its greatest height with this hymn to love!
Last week we talked about how easily we misread what Paul is saying in the greater context of this passage, how we’re always trying to figure out what ways we as individuals are special, where we are in the body of Christ and what we might be able to get out of our “spiritual gifts.” It’s natural. We all hope for some sort of flashy skill that’ll bring us recognition. We all want some kind of supernatural empowerment or experience, something that will prove to us and others that God exists. But God isn’t in the dramatic. God isn’t in the prophecy or the linguistic gifts or healing skills or positions of leadership and authority. God is present—God is real—only once we begin to use those gifts for the good of others and to build up the community: when we feed and clothe and comfort, when we give and when we receive, when we make real and practical change in the lives of those around us. We find God not only at those moments but in those actions because God is agape. God is useful, common, everyday “love as action,” and that “love as action” is what truly brings us into God’s presence and ultimately makes God real.
God is agape. And that is the truth of why
“love, love changes everything—
live or perish in its flame!
Love will never, never let you be the same.”
[1] From Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Aspects of Love: https://genius.com/Andrew-lloyd-webber-love-changes-everything-lyrics
[2] I John 4:8b & 16b
[3] https://youtu.be/2oagN4tXfoA
[4] aka “thoughts and prayers”