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The mirror of love: Listening to 1 Corinthians 13

Love is patient, love is kind

The minister begins the reading from her leather-bound Bible, and the famous love ode in 1 Corinthians filled the sanctuary. The young couple standing before her are not listening at all. This bride and groom are lost in each other’s eyes.

The scripture does reach the ears of the couple seated three rows back, causing one partner’s hand to reach for the other, their fingers entwining just as they have done for 52 years for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health. The minister continues:

Love is not envious or boastful

Three attendants continue to beam brightly, but one blushes as pink as the bridesmaids’ dresses, remembering how earlier today she had glared at her baby sister dressed in white. And a groomsman studies the sanctuary floor, remembering how he bragged about his sexual conquests in college, cheap sex that was anything but making love.

Love is not arrogant or rude

In the far back corner, two teenagers are on their phones. As the scripture fills the air, one pops his head up like a groundhog from its hole.

Love does not insist on its own way

As the teenager dives back into the depths of his phone, his father mulls over last night’s shouting match concerning the kid’s plans for college. It is bad enough that he wants to be an English major, but, for the love of God, he wants to study poetry! How does he hope to make a living at that?

Love is not irritable or resentful

There’s a couple seated underneath the stained-glass window depicting Jesus healing the man born blind. These two men, like all lovers at some point in the relationship, have been snippy and argumentative toward each other for weeks. One has been worried about his dying mother, the other desperate to revive his career. They only came to this wedding out of obligation to a niece. But, now, these words about love begin to melt the ice between them like the first breath of spring.

Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth

Another woman sits alone. First Corinthians was read at her wedding, a marriage that ended with her husband’s affair three years ago. Until today, she had not been back to church because she cannot abide the stares from the people in the pews. She knows they don’t know what to say.

In the narthex, a man sits down heavily on the floor, leaning back against the wall. He had thought the food pantry was today, not yesterday. He, too, avoided the looks from churchgoers. But he had walked almost four miles from his tent in the woods. Resting for a moment, he listens to the scripture:

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things

Sometimes when this minister reads Scripture, especially the most familiar passages, she will slip into a kind of autopilot, and her mind will float above her body, considering all these people gathered for this ceremony, who, like all people, carry baggage and brokenness, fears both real and imagined, as well as cheap graces and mean hopes for their hearts are riven with pain. Yet love is patient, love is kind, and:

Love never ends.

A 12-year-old balls her small hands into fists. That’s notwhat she heard in herchurch! Love never failsthat’swhat she’d memorized in youth group. This preacher must be wrong. She continues to listen:

But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end …

Things come to an end alright. Like Mom and Dad’s marriage. And, now, she had just lost her dog, a spaniel named Corky, sometimes called The Corkster, who was full of joy and life and so well-loved, although, not so well-trained. The roaring truck never even slowed down. She had watched from the window, helplessly. So much comes to an end. Why is that? Why such pain?

For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end …

The bride and groom are still lost in each other’s eyes.

But a widow listens intently, her mind on last year’s ceremony of a much different sort. All too soon, she and her wife had parted in death. They had no scripture at their civil union. Just a cold-eyed justice of the peace. It had been her wife’s wish to have 1 Corinthians, 13 read at her funeral. She thought the passage best suited a funeral, for “love never ends.”

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways …

Directly in front of this widow, a newborn suckles under his mother’s shawl, which has been flung over the baby like a tent. Often while nursing, this mother recalls a few lines from the poet Ruth Moose: “Yes,” a word that opens its mouth and closes its eyes. I wonder who said it first, and whether for love or hunger.

And beside them is Big Brother, just turned three, who has recently discovered that, if he presses his lips together and blows out, he can make potty sounds. Of course, this delights him to no end!

Seeing how his mother has her hands full, the widow leans forward and taps the child on the shoulder. As the boy turns, she reaches into her sports coat and pulls out a shiny, gold pocket watch. The child’s eyes grow as large as the watch’s round face as she hands the treasure over the pew in his small nest of hands. Her wife would have lovedthat. Maybe, somewhere, somehow, she does.

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face …

Personally, I like “through a glass, darkly” for the poetic ring of it (as well as the Ingrid Bergman film). But the New Revised Standard Version makes it clear that the metaphor involves a mirror.Love should cause us to take a long, deep look at ourselves, examining our actions, motivations and relationships.

Back at the wedding, the 3-year-old boy is now completely silent. The nursing mother mouths “thank you” to the widow, yet her look of relief was thanks enough. As the young boy is now utterly transfixed by the pocket watch in his hands, I wonder:

How will we use the time we have been given?

Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known …

The minister closes her Bible with an audible thump. Only now do the bride and groom look at her. The minister smiles. She knows the last verse by heart:

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

 

ANDREW TAYLOR-TROUTMAN serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church, a congregation in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Later this year, his newest book will be published, “Go Gently Between the Words,” a collection of essays and poems about growing up as a pastor’s kid, and now being a pastor with kids.

 

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