Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30
Two difficulties always present
themselves to anyone who seeks honestly to come to grips with the meanings of
Scripture, and by extension the place of Scripture in the life of the
Church. One is context, the other is
translation. These issues are
particularly relevant when it comes to well-known Scriptural passages like
Paul’s hymn to love directed to the Church in Corinth. In large part, this is on account of the fact
that our very familiarity with well-known passages can keep us from really
getting to the heart of what the biblical writers are trying to convey. We read or hear a word like “love” and we
immediately colonise it with our own context heedless to its varied shades of
meaning in the writer’s own. In
Scripture study, context and translation are everything. In approaching the thirteenth chapter of the
first letter to the Corinthians we have at least two levels of context, both of
which are mired in issues of translation.
We have the context of the Church in Corinth herself, but also the wider
context of the Greek-speaking world in which the early Church found
herself. These beg questions like, “What
did people 2,000 years ago mean by the word love?” “What influence did the dominant culture have
on the very tiny sub-culture that was the Church.” “While respecting the contexts of these
writings (so different as they are from our own), can we continue to affirm
that in their pages, God is still speaking to us and still revealing something
of God’s self?” They are questions not
easily answered, and yet approaching them will keep from simplistic readings of
Scripture and facile bibliolatry.
Firstly, in the ancient world “love”
is not just love – as we think we know it, anyway. The Greek language of the time had no less
than four different words for love, each with a significant nuance. There was eros. From it we get the English word “erotic”;
but it can be best understood not merely as sensual, physical love, but as the
love of beauty in all its forms, including the intellectual. It is the kind of love elicited by attraction,
whatever the attraction may be. There
was storge which is best translated
not as love at all, but as “(natural) affection”. It is the love of kin, the love between
brothers and sisters, parents and children; most probably also between husbands
and wives. Certainly, storge is affection, but can also have
the sense of duty. It is the love we owe our parents, for example. Philia,
the third form, can be best rendered as brotherly love, not in the sense of
one’s kin, but in the sense of fellowship. It is the love expressed in all those
relationships which simply require us to get along with each other. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle cites philia
as potentially describing the love between lifelong friends, cities with
one another, political or business contacts, fellow-voyagers and
fellow-soldiers, members of the same tribe, a craftsperson and the person who
buys from her, and (most importantly for us) members of the same religious
society. Interestingly, Aristotle
suggests that philia is always
mutual. Consequentially, when that
mutuality or the mutual endeavour from which it stems ceases, then so does the
relationship of philia. The last of the four, and the one Paul refers
to consistently throughout the thirteenth chapter of the first letter to the
Corinthians is agape. Agape
can be most succinctly rendered as “voluntary” or “dis-interested” love. That is, love prompted not by a social
relationship – whether a relative or a business associate – and neither
elicited by some sort of attraction, physical or otherwise. It is love that does not seek its own
interest. In earlier centuries, agape was translated into English as
“charity”. Agape is an unconditional love for the other; love for the other
not on account of who they are to us or what they are to us; indeed agape is
not about us at all. It is love for the
other because they are, as they are.
The
earliest Christians, apparently Paul among them, had begun to understand agape as describing the love of God for
humanity, a love incarnationally revealed to humanity in the person of Jesus
Christ. If you recall from last week’s
epistle reading, in responding to wrangling over roles, position and authority,
Paul was trying to show the Corinthians that everyone had a role in the life of
the Church, and that everyone’s role had value.
One member should not be honored or valued more than another simply
because their gifts and ministry were felt to be of greater worth or more
effective. Here he is calling the
Corinthians to philia – the kind of
love needed in relationships when what is required is simply getting along. He is calling the Corinthians to respect each
other and get along for their mutual well-being. However, he concludes his appeal with an invitation for them to shift
their focus and contemplate a deeper dimension of fellowship than one which
just allows them to get along. He tries
to get them out of the hamster wheel of relationship based on roles, duties and
responsibilities, and says to them, “I will show you a still more excellent way”. (1
Corinthians 31b). It is then that he
writes that all too familiar hymn to love.
Now,
it is the consensus of biblical scholars that this paean to love is not of
Paul’s composition, however it is still noteworthy that in choosing it to
describe the “more excellent way” he sidesteps
philia – the love expected among members of a religious
society – altogether and speaks instead of agape,
forcing the Corinthians to think about themselves, and their relationship to
each other and the world in a radically different way. I have sometimes described conversion (for
Christians, at least) as seeing the world the way God sees it. Well, Paul is calling the Corinthians to just
that – conversion: in this case to love each other as God loves them with all
the indiscriminate patience, kindness and humility God shows to us in Jesus. What Paul is doing is transforming the
ordinary activities and categories of the world, and placing them within the
context of the new life he and his fellow Christians have found in Jesus. It is clear that for Paul the Church is not
just another religious society. It is
the presence of God in the world, enfleshed in human beings. The love Christians must have for each other
and must demonstrate in the world has to be something more than merely philia – the love of social convention,
dependant on mutuality, but rather agape
– the kind of unconditional love God has for each one of us and for the whole
world.
Yes,
when it comes to Scripture study context and translation are virtually
everything. I hope you can see how when
we open ourselves to genuine examination of both we glean meanings for our own contexts
which go beneath the surface and beyond the superficial; also which challenge
comfortable, inculturated interpretations.
For example, our limited vocabulary for love can often leave us in a
quandary as to what we really wish to express.
And a good question for us to examine is the extent to which our own
talk of love among Christians and among the churches is really just about
getting along, that is philia; in
other words, keeping the wheels efficiently turning. Not that getting along isn’t good or
important, even necessary, but as we can see for Christians it is not the whole
story, it is not enough. There is “a
more excellent way”, a way of love that is about much, much more than simply
“getting along”. Take a look around, and
ask yourself if we here at the Church of the Saviour are merely a religious
society; merely bound together by the kind of love that allows us to “get
along”? Or are we actually, in our own
context of Hanford and the 21st century striving for that “more
excellent way”, the way of agape – agapethat love which is utterly
voluntary and, in the best sense of the word, dis-interested – considering
solely the good of the other; that love which never insists on its own way,
never bears a grudge and always, always, always, always rejoices in the
truth? After all, it is this love which
is the eternal context, the deepest and everlasting context in which we live
and move and have our being, the love of God.
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