Love is the Subject, not "I".

 This morning I awoke in a minor key.  Last night we learned that the daughter of a lifelong friend gave birth to her first son three months prematurely, and we fell asleep feeling sad and helpless.  In the past week I had learned of two more homeless acquaintances who died tragically, lengthening the string of beads that I powerlessly pass through my fingers.

I was feeling the failure of my ability to love.

In verse 1 of chapter 13 of his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul begins with “I” as the subject.  “If I should speak of tongues of angels….”  The next two verses, similarly, begin “if I…, If I….” And they end in failure.  Starting with verse 4, “I” am not the subject.  Love is the subject.  Love does the action, and not me.  And it is love that is patient, and kind, and so on.  It is love that never fails, and not me.

Love as a verb: good luck!

Perhaps because Paul begins with himself as the subject of the first three verses, I have always thought of this chapter on love as a call to perfect my love, a call to love perfectly.  Of course, when it comes to perfection, not only do I stink at it, but I keep aiming at it.  Icarus, moth-to-flame, red herring, I am drawn and distracted.  It’s all about me, and discouragement inevitably follows.

Love as a noun: a call to witness.

But the subject of this message is love.  Love is the actor.  We are present to the act of love, witnessing it as we do the sunrise.  We do not make the sun rise, and we do not love.  We would be foolish to try to raise the sun, and equally foolish to try to love. 

In an act of love, love emerges from our presence with (not to, because it is mutual) the one who is the object of God’s love. If we are not in a place to see the sunrise, we will not be moved by it.  If we are not in a place to see the other, we will not witness love’s unfailing unfolding.

Some years ago, I crafted a wedding candle for a couple of former students, who had chosen 1 Corinthians 13 as a reading for their wedding.  I pray that they are also discovering love as something to witness responsively, and not merely to attempt.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.