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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, looking at the epistle reading today, the second lesson from Saint Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Please be seated. Now, even though it’s probably the least favorite musical of Texas Longhorn fans, I have to quote today from the Broadway musical Oklahoma. It features a young couple named Will and Ado Annie, who discuss their intentions concerning the future of their relationship. And since it’s a musical, this happens in a song called “With Me It’s All or Nothing.”
Okay, I’m not going to sing it, but part of it sounds like this: “‘With me it’s all or nothing. Is it all or nothing with you? It can’t be in between. It can’t be now and then. No half-and-half romance will do.'” Many couples, when they’re getting married, at their wedding, they want to express similar intentions by having 1 Corinthians 12 read at their weddings. This chapter is often called the love chapter of the Bible. And at weddings, they especially emphasize verses 4 through 8, and I’ll reread those here. They’re familiar; you’ve probably heard it. Maybe they were at your wedding.
Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoings, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
When a couple gets married, they want their love to be like that—patient and kind, no envy or boasting, and on and on. They want an enduring, protecting, trusting, hoping love that never ends. And the couple is saying to each other that with my love it’s all or nothing, and everybody at the wedding goes, “Oh, isn’t that nice?” It’s well-intentioned and even kind of sentimentally cute, but let’s face it, the all part of all or nothing doesn’t always work out.
Ah, but let’s not look just at wedding couples. This applies to all of us. We all may be so determined to live with an all-or-nothing kind of love and even make commitments to it—with our marriages, our friendships, and even to God. But as well-intentioned and even sentimentally cute as our all-or-nothing pledge may be, the all part doesn’t always work out, does it? And this is a pretty tall order. I got to get it right here. This list is pretty difficult. I mean, who can do all of this? I get tired just reading it, much less trying to do it, and it may even seem like a setup for failure for anyone, especially a couple getting married, to expect to do this.
Really, why have this read at a wedding? When I counsel premarital couples getting married, if they choose this, we talk about that, but I ask them, why are you choosing this? You want to set yourself up for failure? And no, it’s all good; don’t worry about it. Don’t think I’m that weird.
I mean, why bother trying for an all kind of love when you might end up with nothing sometimes? If we look at these verses, if we look at the love chapter only in the light of our love, well, it is a setup for failure. For there are certainly times when we fall off on some points or all the points of this list. You’re not always patient and kind. It’s easy to be envious and boastful, or arrogant or rude, or angry. Boy, there’s some good ones, huh? You’ve been in traffic lately?
And who isn’t self-insistent? You got to look out for number one, right? If you don’t, who will? Irritable or resentful, and rejoicing at wrongs? But that’s easy to do, isn’t it? Don’t we like to see our enemies kind of get theirs? We like to see somebody do wrong and get punished for it. Well, rejoicing at wrongs is easier than keeping this list. I’ll tell you that we don’t always have this kind of love. It’s not always all with us. Oftentimes, we end up with nothing.
Oh, and then there’s the topper at the end. Did you see that one? Love never ends. Never. Right? Again, that’s if we look at the love chapter in light of our own love. And if we look at the love chapter in light of our own love, it brings frustration. Because what the list does in part is show our failure to love with an all-or-nothing kind of love. It shows us that it’s not our love for each other as married couples or relatives or friends. It’s not that love that can justify or save us. Our love doesn’t forgive our sins. Our love doesn’t forgive our failure to love or to be patient or to be kind, and all the way down the list.
That’s the bad news of the love chapter. The good news is the love chapter isn’t all about our love for each other; it points us to God’s love for us because only God’s love is an all kind of love. Because despite how sinful we are, despite how much our all love fails, despite not being able to keep this list, God still loves us with an all kind of love. A friend once said to me, you know, people sometimes do really stupid things, but I still love them. I said, that’s great, but you know what? That could be a quote from God: my people sometimes do stupid things, but I still love them.
Because again, despite our sinfulness, God still loves us so much that he sent his son Jesus as a human into our world to suffer and die for us. Romans chapter 5 verse 8, I love this verse, says, God demonstrated his love for us in this, that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Not while we were good, not while we were keeping the list, not while we had an all kind of love, but while we were sinners, Christ died for us. That’s an all kind of love that God has for us—that Christ would die for us.
And then that love extends even to Jesus because he rose from the dead. He got up out of the grave and went from death to life again. That is unending love—love that doesn’t stop with the grave, love that goes on into eternity. That’s what God’s love is; it never ends. It doesn’t stop; it’s eternal; it’s everlasting.
Even the Prophet Jeremiah said that God says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” And I know that we humans can’t really fathom everlasting. We can’t understand or even begin to comprehend eternal, but we know it’s much bigger than us, and it’s something wonderful. And that’s how God loves us—with a love that never ends. Even when love is difficult, God never stops loving. When you stop being patient, God doesn’t. When you stop being kind, God doesn’t. And so on, down the list.
His love never ends because His love is all. God’s love is all because it continues to give the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection by loving and forgiving you, even when your sins don’t stop. Jesus is the only one who can do this list. He’s the only one that can perfectly do this all-or-nothing kind of love. In fact, if you just replace the word love in the love chapter here, you have what this chapter is really about; it’s about Jesus.
Jesus is patient and kind. Jesus doesn’t envy or boast. Jesus isn’t arrogant or rude. He doesn’t insist on his own way. He is not irritable or resentful. Jesus does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Jesus bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Jesus never ends. That is God’s all love for you. Jesus is the only one that can do that.
And unlike Annie and Will in the musical, God doesn’t have to say or sing that his love is all or nothing. God’s love is always all. There’s nothing with God’s love in Christ. God freely and completely loves us—loves you—because no matter what you’ve done, no matter how bad you think your sins have been, or no matter how bad they really are, no matter what, God still loves you. While you’re a sinner, Christ died for you. There’s no nothing there; it’s all complete. That’s the kind of love that God has.
It’s all. It’s complete. And when you confess your sin, God forgives it all because of Jesus. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is all for you. Jesus is the all of God’s love for you. And with that love then, with that all love that God has given to us, we can strive for that all kind of love. As married couples, to our relatives, to our friends—to whoever, you know, we can’t keep the list, but we can try to; we strive to. We don’t always get it wrong; we always need to be serving and loving. That’s what we still need to strive to do.
So it’s good to actually make those commitments. You can make those kind of vows at your wedding or whatever, but it’s good to realize your failure too and be committed to God’s love for you in Christ as well.
See, because the question that’s asked with Will and Annie, the question that’s asked kind of remains here. In the song it says, “With me it’s all or nothing,” okay? And that’s God saying. God says, “With me it’s all or nothing.” And then the question is, is it all or nothing with you? Now, I don’t mean in doing all the kind of love in the list; we already know we can’t do that all. So when the question is asked, is it all or nothing with you? It means, is it all with you in receiving Christ’s love for you? Is it all or nothing in receiving the forgiveness of your sins in Christ? Because that’s what God wants for you. He’s got all of this love, and it’s for you.
He’s all in. What about you? Receiving what God wants to give you—that’s the all or nothing for us. We receive it all or nothing. I love the first part of the reading today when it talks about, “If I don’t have this love, if I don’t have this, you know, then I have nothing.” You see that? If we have all of our own loving things and we’re gonna fail, we really have nothing, but if we have God’s love and receive that, we have everything. We have it all.
It can’t be in between; it can’t be now and then. No half and half romance will do with God. He loves you 100% completely and wants you to take it all. Let Jesus have all of your sin, and you take all of his love. Again, Jesus is all in with his love for you. How is it with you? You can have it. God’s love always gives all. It never gives nothing. Christ’s love always gives all; it never gives nothing.
And may that love, may God’s love, his never-ending all love with Jesus be with you always. Amen. Now may the grace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
