1 Corinthians 13:1-13 · Love

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Outgrowing the Truth Fairy
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Sermon
by Leonard Sweet
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When we were children, the Scriptures tell us, we thought, spoke, and felt as a child. But when we grow up in our faith, we must "put an end to childish ways." What are the childish ways of thinking, feeling and speaking that we must put away today?

This is a chance for you as preacher to be a "scop." Pronounced "shop," scop is the medieval term for the spy-poet, the person who crosses boundaries, even goes "behind enemy lines" to be with his or her people. Walter Wangerin has recently resurrected this phrase, and used it to argue for a contemporary role of the pastor as analogous to the medieval scop. Scops were people who followed the folk, attended the crowd, entered with the people into their daily lives and then, in the evening, in the mead hall, retold the stories and struggles of t…

ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., Collected Works, by Leonard Sweet