Sermon February 2 2025 ~ The Heart of the Matter (I Cor13)    Rev. Betsy Hogan

So, you know that feeling of being so excited, when you’re waiting for someone special to arrive, that you keep sort of checking at the window, or opening the door, even though you know that it’s way too soon, and they’re definitely not here yet, but you just can’t wait so you keep hopping up and checking again because just in case?

Turns out there’s a word for that. In Inuk, the language of the Inuit people. It’s ik/tsuar/pok.

In English, whether we’re waiting for the kettle to boil or we’re waiting for Grandma to arrive, we’re just waiting. But for the Inuit, waiting for Grandma gets a whole different word, filled up with excitement and anticipation and way too much energy. Ik/tsuar/pok.

Here’s another. In English, on a sunny day, whether we’re standing in the middle of a parking lot or in the middle of the forest, we call the light sunlight. 

But for the Japanese, sunlight shining through a canopy of trees, casting dancing shadows on the ground around us on a sunny day, it gets its own special word: ko/mo/re/bi. And the word holds not just the description of the play of sunlight through the branches and leaves, but also the feeling of being held within it, in the forest.

There really is a weighty specificity to so many words in other languages, where trying to translate them into English sort of needs a whole paragraph. Because the most straight-forward English word in translation just doesn’t quite hold all the content. 

It’s objectively quite fascinating, this difference in languages. There are whole areas of scholarship dedicated to how languages like English developed, pulling strains and influences from so many different sources, and also to how languages as they develop both reflect and shape the cultures that use them. 

Which is interesting to contemplate in relation to our reading this morning. One of the most well known passages of Christian scripture. This most glorious testament to the ideal of the Christian life, written by the Apostle Paul to his church in Corinth. That we often call the hymn to love. But why? Because that’s all we have to call it. 

We just have the one word – love. We use it for our intimate partners, for those most precious to us. We use it to express kinship and friendship and adoration and how we feel about chocolate. We use it to express the divine call to love our neighbour, to love the stranger, to love our enemy, to love ourselves. We just have the one word, in English.

And it’s hard not to wonder how that’s shaped us. How that’s shaped us culturally, and how that’s shaped our faithfulness. Because the passage that Gayle read for us this morning is one of the most well known passages of Christian scripture almost completely because it’s so often used at weddings. Or at least, because it’s so often used at weddings… now.

Because until the more modern translations of the Bible emerged in the early twentieth century, the primary English Bible was the King James Version of the early seventeenth century. In which 1 Corinthians chapter 13 wasn’t about ‘love’, but about ‘charity’.

“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three, “ the King James Version went, “but the greatest of these is charity.” 

I doubt very much it featured at weddings. The King James Version used ‘charity’ instead of ‘love’ because it was itself a translation from the first Latin translation, from the fourth century, in which the word used in First Corinthian was ‘caritas’.

In English, the Latin source for caring, for kindness, for charity.

But of course that Latin was itself a translation by St. Jerome from the original Greek. Who really did the best he could, in veering off to caritas, to caring, to the charity where it first landed in English in the King James version –

Because the actual word in the original Greek that’s used in First Corinthians is the very same word that Jesus uses in its verb form in teaching the disciples – agape.

And agape is so much more specific – it carries so much more specific content – than that only one word we have access to in English: love.

Our word ‘love’ covers such a spectrum of feelings and ways in relationship with each other, that it can at once fill its appearance in our Bible passages with masses of content that may or may not be meant in that context – and can also, as a result, cause us to sideline some passages as clearly impossible and relegate others to the margins.

We associate First Corinthians 13 with weddings because that depth of commitment of two people to share a life together is all we can imagine it speaks to. Because of the immensity of what we hear when we hear the word ‘love’. 

Just as in the same way, we falter in imagining how we can possibly ‘love’ a neighbour who’s manifestly dangerous or hateful. And even the lovely so-called wedding reading about ‘love’ makes us cringe, when we KNOW the possible dangers of “bears all things and endures all things” in relationships that are supposed to be about love, when they keep people from escaping hurt and harm and even death in their own homes.

Just ‘love’ is too big a word, but it’s the only word we have. It’s hard not to wonder how that’s shaped us. How that’s shaped us culturally, and how that’s shaped our faithfulness. Because it’s such a big word, it covers such a spectrum of feelings and ways in relationship with each other, that it’s easy to kind of let it… let us off the hook. Because it makes the words of scripture feel impossible. 

But agape is not impossible. What we’re called to by Jesus that’s echoed here by Paul, is meant to be a gift.

Agape is not eros in Greek – the intimate love between intimate partners. It’s not the eros in Greek that requires enough deep informed trust to fall asleep beside someone. It’s not the eros in Greek that literally bares itself, that has no secrets, that willingly accepts vulnerability.

And agape is not storge in Greek – the intense bond with our closest kin, with children, with parents, with our family. It’s not the storge in Greek that’s grounded in unbreakable ties of kinship, familiarity, shared history. It’s not the storge in Greek of a demanding connectedness that doesn’t care if we’re being hurt. 

And agape’s also not philia in Greek – what’s often called brotherly love, friendship love. It’s not the philia in Greek that arises out of common interests and shared experiences. It’s not the philia in Greek of warm feelings and friendly embrace and hospitable welcome.

Agape is its own self. Agape is the love that arises out of simple recognition of shared humanness. It’s the love that’s grounded in nothing more than the simple fact of common humanity, and it pours out in knowing there’s an automatic responsibility for others’ well-being because of it.

It’s agape that Jesus calls us into, and Paul echoes in First Corinthians. 

It’s just the love of locating ourselves in the human family, connected together in the humanness we share. 

It’s the love of looking at the world from that perspective. Of seeing in one another’s faces our own humanness reflected. Of understanding ourselves to be fundamentally intertwined, fundamentally interdependent, fundamentally on the hook for each other –

In ways that have nothing at all to do with levels of trust, or blood ties and kinship bonds, or warm feelings and common cause. 

Because agape is simply the love of caring about, and feeling responsible for, others’ well-being. Just because we’re all human. Do they have food, do they have water, do they have shelter, do they have safety, do they have well-being – because we’re all human and so that matters to me. And if they don’t, how can I help and what can I do and what needs to change. 

It really IS as specific as that. When Jesus commands us to love our neighbour – the word he uses is agape. The love he wants us to pour out is simply the love of no one should be hungry, or thirsty, or unsheltered, or afraid, or in despair – and if they are, then how can I help, and what can I do, and what needs to change?

It’s big, yes. But it’s not impossible. It’s not ‘mustering up warm feelings’ for someone who’s awful. It’s not ‘cheering on’ their awfulness like it’s our child’s first attempt to write their name. It’s not pretending friendship that isn’t real, or a warm embrace like their actions don’t matter, or forcing ourselves to trust them when they don’t deserve it. 

It’s just remembering that they’re human. It’s wanting for them, wanting for the whole human family, food, water, shelter, safety. Well-being. 

And if that feels surprisingly limited, in some ways it is. But in other ways it really isn’t. For Jesus and for Paul who echoes him, it’s about fostering a new way of looking at the world and other people. That erases the lines we draw around whose well-being we have to care about, and whose we don’t.

Agape means I don’t get to not care about the level of minimum wage or the cost of rent in Halifax, even though my children don’t live here. It means we don’t get to not care about racialized pockets of multi-generational poverty in this city. It means when someone’s hungry, thirsty, unsheltered, unsafe -- how can I help, and what can I do, and what needs to change.

But here’s the secret that Paul knew. Agape changes US. When it becomes how we see other people – when what we see in everyone else is just humanness and human need no different from our own – when we open ourselves to letting that matter to us, making that our primary focus, it changes us. 

It makes us more patient, more kind with one another. We’re all just human. We’re not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, we’re thinking about them. And sure, we might first insist on our own way or get irritable or resentful, but if we really take on board that they’re just as human as we are, we might get better at listening. Not, here’s how I’m helping, but truly – how can I help. 

And agape can’t rejoice in greed or avarice or selfishness, it can only rejoice when the hungry are fed, when everyone has shelter and safety, when everyone has well-being. And it can’t fail, it hopes and it endures, because it knows that what God wants for all God’s people is that well-being. Food, water, shelter, safety. 

God’s love for US is agape. God wants for us well-being. God wants us to feel it shining down like sunlight playing through the leaves: komorebi. God wants us to chase it and embrace it with thrilled excited anticipation like it’s a long-awaited gift: ik/tsuar/pok.

God wants us to breathe them in and hold them: faith, hope, and love, these three. But the greatest of these is love. Amen.