El burro sabe mas que tu: Prophetic Allusions and Recognizing God

28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’” 32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.” 35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. 37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: 38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”[a] “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” 39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” 40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” 41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” ~ Luke 19:28-44 

[a] Psalm 118:26

Do you recognize allusions?

 An allusion, of course, is a symbolic action or literary device designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly. It’s often an indirect or passing reference that aims to help us see deeper, to make more profound connections, to say something powerful by playfully saying less (I know that’s ironic coming from me – saying less is not something I often do.) “It’s often when a little bit of one story joins onto an idea from another, and hey presto, . . . not old tales but new ones” (Salman Rushdie). Not surprisingly, its etymology comes from two latin words which literally mean “play with us.”

Some allusions we know

“In the war over eating right, the donut with sprinkles was his Achilles' heel.”

 Some we have forgotten

“We all have collectively decided to boycott this new scheme started by our local government.”
 

Boycott is an allusion to an 1880 Irish political controversy between Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott and his community, which shunned him.

Some are funny

In a Simpsons’ episode called “Genesis Tub,” Bart’s sister Lisa tries to dissolve a tooth in soda only to create a group of little people (hey, it’s a cartoon). At one point, Lisa declares, “Wait, one of them is nailing something to the door of the cathedral,” she gasps, “I’ve created Lutherans!” This is a historical reference to Martin Luther nailing his “95 Theses” to the door of the Church. If you don’t know the historical allusion, you miss the joke.

In our story today, the prophetic allusion is not about donuts or Lutherans but all about a donkey (hence our title for today’s sermon, which translates: "The donkey knows more than you!"). Notice that we aren’t given any specifics about the two disciples – who they are, are they part of the twelve? – nor or we told which village they are sent to – Bethphage? Bethany? or another?. All of this contrasts with a detailed description of a colt or donkey. 

          1.     The colt is tied and must be untied (mentioned 5 times in our passage)

Vs. 30 “you will find tied there a colt”

Vs. 30 “untie it and bring it here”

Vs. 31 “If anyone asks you, “Why are you untying it?”

Vs. 33 “As they were untying the colt”

Vs. 33 “Why are you untying the colt?”

The allusion was a reference to Jacob’s blessing to Judah in which a ruler over all the nations was to come (Genesis 49:10-11). ¹⁰ The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs shall come and the obedience of the nations shall be his.¹¹ He will tie his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch; he will wash his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.

          2.     But there’s more. The colt Jesus rides has also “never been ridden.”

According to Zechariah, a messiah, a king, would come to Jerusalem “humble and riding on a colt, the foal of a donkey (9:9). A foal, in other words, would of course be unridden.  

          3.     They spread their garments on the road and quote Scripture.

The cloaks spread out on the ground signal their understanding that Jesus is a king, the messiah, the promised one of God who would bring God’s reign (2 Kings 9:12b-13) and then they shout a royal psalm, Psalm 118, which details God’s steadfast love and his emissary who would bring “salvation.” They quote vs. 26, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

          4.     Jesus enters through the gates of the city.

This is also a symbolic action. Jesus’ chosen route on a donkey over the Mount of Olives, across Kidron, and up to the Temple Mount spoke more powerfully than words could have of a royal claim. The geography was unmistakably messianic. In fact, it was made even stronger by the allusion to Zechariah 14:4, in which God himself, it was said, would come and first stand on the Mount of Olives before he brought victory. Moreover, entering into a city was the sign of an already achieved victory.

          5.     Finally, the ending of Jesus’ ride has Jesus weeping over Jerusalem

In numerous biblical citations, such as Jeremiah 9:1 (see also Lamentations, Psalms, etc.) prophets wept over cities that failed to listen to and obey God, though Luke is the only one to include this. 

So why should we care if we get the allusions? All of these allusions have everything to do with “recognizing . . . God’s coming” and because Jesus’ warning speaks of real consequences, if we miss it. So how do we go about recognizing God?

          1.     Recognizing God is all about reading Scripture. And the Scripture points to Jesus.

So what Jesus does is prophesied. It’s God’s plan. And yet, would you have caught the prophetic references, his acting out of Scripture? Have you read carefully enough? Would you have recognized the visitation from God? The allusion is plain, and I would argue, intentional on the part of Jesus. This ride, his story, his coming to Jerusalem and what he will face is what the Bible is truly about – from the prophecy in Genesis, the first book, almost to its end (Zechariah is the second to last book of the OT). Do you have plan for reading Scripture?

Jesus regularly quotes, infers and acts out Scripture. If you don’t know it – you won’t recognize him. (56 Club and Jesus’ statement, “I am.”). Scripture, in other words, was Jesus’ field to play in. This means that Scripture is not an end, in and of itself. It’s not some divine theory on everything but it’s chief task is to point to Jesus, to help us recognize him. Scripture is Jesus’ “Wanted Poster”.

So the Bible is not really a “how to” book that answers all our nagging questions or make us successful in all our endeavors.  It’s not a “How to” book but a “Here is the One who” book. First and foremost it tells everyone: Here is who Jesus Christ is and therefore here is who you are and need to become in relation to him. The world is awash with “how to” books on every topic. The bible is not simply another one of them, or even the original one that is divinely inspired. It is the written revelation of God that points us to the true word, our salvation (John 5:39-40). C.S. Lewis wrote, “It is Christ Himself, not the Bible who is the true Word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit, and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to him.” The Bible doesn’t ride in on the donkey, it doesn’t receive the praise of One who comes in the name of the Lord, it is not our object of worship, but it does help us recognize him. And he will help us read it, sort out what matters, what should continue and what shouldn’t. But that can only happen if we look to him.

          2.     Biblically literate people can still reject God. They can still make God weep.

I believe that the people saw most, if not all, of Jesus’ royal allusions. Yet, some of them they just couldn’t accept. They had to know about the peaceable kingdom of Zechariah’s donkey rider but they simply couldn’t believe it. They didn’t want to recognize what kind of king Zechariah says will come:

“He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations (9:10).

This king, it was prophesied, wouldn’t so much make war as end it. This king would destroy defense spending not enemies. And Psalm 118, which the crowd uses to praise Jesus? Jesus had to know that that same Psalm declared, “They surrounded me like bees; they blazed like a fire of thorns . . . I was pushed hard, so that I was falling.” “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” What is the rejection? They don’t reject Jesus as king as long as he rules the way they wish him to by destroying the Romans and returning Israel to her former glory. And truthfully there were many texts that suggested just that. So reading “the Bible alone” is simply not good enough. You also have to read it with Jesus in mind – to listen to him carefully, to watch him observantly, to read it as a book about him. If they had they would have realized that Jesus was a king who would subvert their national narrative. He would not make Israel great again. He would reveal God to be great by rejecting their militarism, their blood lust and by bringing peace between all peoples (Jew and Gentile, Male and Female, Slave and Free, Immigrant and Citizen). Jesus saw their rejection coming a mile away before that lonely march toward Jerusalem. Earlier, in Luke 19:14 he will tell a story to his disciples about a “nobleman” “hated” by the citizens of his own country who say, ‘We do not want this man to rule over us.’”

So Holy Week begins every year with this odd, beautiful, painful dissonance that the one we praise is the one we so often reject. The one we need is not the one we want. The one we worship is the one that we still don’t understand. “Save us,” we say, “but don’t rule over us.” I want to end the sermon by pointing out one last allusion – actually, the omission of one. 

Did you notice that for Luke this is NOT “Palm” Sunday? The laying down of palm branches is the one thing he leaves out.  Why? Luke omits them, scholars theorize, because palm branches were the most poignant political symbol of the day having marked the coins of former Israel. So maybe he omits them because they hearken back to national narrative of favoritism, which said, “God loves us and will destroy all our enemies – that is, all non-Jews.” Remember, Luke, tradition tells us, was a gentile and the presence of palm branches would have reflected his own rejection by Jesus’ followers. Or maybe it’s simply because they get this part so incredibly wrong - Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. This wasn’t meant as a spiritual vs. material distinction but as a violence vs. peace one – Jesus’ kingdom will not be about violence, political machinations and national triumph. Maybe, Luke as he wrote this wept himself.

Palm Sunday reveals something often true about me. And this story couldn’t come at a more auspicious time. For it reveals that there is both violence and nonviolence in me, even though I don’t believe in both. I love Jesus, praise him but maintain horrible inconsistencies. I don’t want Jesus to ride anything like a donkey – I’d secretly like a tank. I don’t want a cross I’d often prefer a smart bomb. I don’t want enemies forgiven or loved, I want them wiped off the face of the earth. I don’t want salvation, I want shock and awe. I don’t want a savior to save me from my sins, I want a politician to save me from taxes, Isis, immigrants – basically everything else. And Jesus warns me that rejecting his peace, his shalom – peace with God, peace with each other, peace with the natural world, and peace with ourselves, by wanting a political savior will only and always mean a horrific defeat.

Palm Sunday reminds us that all too often we worship and praise rightly, read about and pray to correctly, a God that we simply just don’t get or even want to. It exposes the myth that if we could see God crystal clear we would do everything he says, want everything that he wants. And maybe that acknowledgement: the laying down of our political illusions, confessing our inconsistencies, our blind-spots, simply weeping, means that we finally can recognize him, if only through a veil of tears.

Gary Ben Lemmond: A Tribute (November 6, 1943 - February 4, 2016)

God created Dad because God loves stories. And my Dad didn’t just tell stories – he lived them. Ones that often felt bigger than life. Unfortunately, one will have to suffice. I was in eighth grade and the school district just announced a new rule that it would no longer accept hunting or fishing trips as “acceptable absences” – only trips to the doctor or dentist. My dad was livid because he simply couldn’t abide being told what to do and because a group of dads took us kids every Spring on a dove hunting trip to Cotulla, TX, which meant that they had to pull us out of school early on a Friday. Now, I’m a rule follower by nature and I remember telling my dad that we would have to go later because I didn’t want an unaccepted absence on my record. He told me, “Don’t worry about it.” Well, Friday came and just before noon an office aide arrived in my class informing me that my father was waiting on me in the office. I distinctly remember that something was odd because the person had a strange look on her face. When I arrived  - there Dad was in all his glory, clothed from head to foot in camo – and not the nice stuff but ones that had seen some action and a bit of blood. And as I walked through the door I heard him tell the attendance worker, “He’s going to the dentist.”

Stories and laughter were Dad’s weapons, his armor, his spiritual gifts and means of telling the truth. Dad considered the world a funny place and God a masterful jokester. Even in his last days when things were hard you could hear him cracking a few jokes. The family hopes that you tell his stories today. And friends, I firmly believe that as we tell them God will say, “Go on, tell’em again."

But Dad was more than a story teller. He also loved stories. In John 8, one of Dad’s favorites, Jesus encounters the Pharisees who bring to him a woman caught in adultery and they wanted to stone her. Jesus responds, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And the story goes on tell us that “When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.”  In this life, Dad learned to give up being a stone thrower. He came to dislike self-righteous condemners and those who pretended not to be sinners. With Jesus’ help, he believed, anyone could change. He had seen it. He saw his father turn from alcoholism to become a beloved grandfather because of God’s love and power. Along with the Gospels, Dad knew all too well that it was religious people who were actually in danger of missing God and dangerous to others. They were always the ones who opposed Jesus and his work. Dad believed that anyone who has not been tempted couldn’t enter the kingdom of heaven. Without temptation, one can’t be saved. I’d like to think that Dad at the end of his life very much embodied the words of the Apostle Paul, who toward the end of his, in 1 Timothy, said “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst.” Before he died, Dad noticed that I was in altercation with a number of other pastors on Facebook about a blog that I had written about “welcoming” all people into the church. On this issue he couldn’t help but weigh in. He wrote, “Jon, as you are well aware I am not a religion scholar but I don't think Jesus saw the woman as a prostitute but as a sinner just like the rest of us! Keep on doing God's work!” For Dad, welcoming sinners was always God’s work and our own. And Dad, Dad always wanted to be first in line.

The reason my Dad loved this text is because it spoke to Dad’s weakness. Dad had regrets. When he talked about his life he told me that he sometimes had let anger get the best of him – stones had wound up in his hands.  And for this he was sorry. And if he were here he would urge us all to let such anger and stone throwing go. And if he had ever turned that anger on anyone present. He would want me to tell you for him, “I’m sorry.”  I’m glad to say that, in the end, my Dad’s fate resembled that of the woman caught in adultery – standing before Jesus who says, “Neither do I condemn you.”

The final thing I would say about Dad is that he thought awe was the most appropriate response to God and all that God has made. Dad had no time for any theology or sermons that explained God in neat and tidy ways. He always used to say to me, “Jon, any God that I can totally understand isn’t too bright and not a God worth knowing.” He loved the outdoors and all that God has made. He loved fishing and hunting. One time, I called him on the phone and he picked up immediately and began to whisper. I asked him, “What are you doing?” He responded, “I’m in a deer blind.” “O,” I asked, “you’re hunting?” “No,” he said, “I’m not hunting. I’m just looking.” That’s why Dad liked the Psalms so much – He loved to look– to truly see new things, to explore diverse landscapes with mom, to see the glory of God not as some mere spiritual thing but as heaven on earth. Like King David, Dad was a “taste and see that the Lord is good” kind-of-guy. Like David, Dad’s invitation to us would be, “let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.” I think this is also why my Dad loved music so much at church – music, much like the wild deer he loved to watch, was imaginative, inspiring, and lovely. He loved sermons that led him through wonderful, picturesque places and which presented truth and God never simply as facts but also as something beautiful, something awesome.  

Toward the end – when Dad’s illness was bad he prayed a prayer every night from the Bible that would allow him to express his deep pain and abiding faith, Psalm 23. You can find it in your order of service. And to honor him and the Lord whom he loved, will you say this prayer with me.

I would like to leave you with two benedictions.

Benediction number one comes from me: May the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ go with you wherever he may send you. May he guide you through the wilderness and protect you from the storm. May he bring you home rejoicing at the wonders he will show you. May he bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.

Benediction number two is from Dad who when he was ready to go would always smack his hands together and say, “We’re out of here!”

Four Jerks, a Wedding and a Funeral: What's love got to do with it? ~ 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

¹If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.⁴ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷ It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.⁸ Love never ends. 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. ⁹ For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰ but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹ 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. ¹² For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³ And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. ~ 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

1.     In vss. 1-3 Paul warns us, “Don’t be a gifted jerk.”

In Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth, he acknowledges that the Corinthians are a gifted bunch “not lacking in any spiritual gift,” he says in 1:7. In 1 Corinthians 13, however, he makes a more astonishing claim that real spiritual power and success can be had by unloving people. That gifts for ministry, powerful ones no less, can be wielded by the immature, the broken, and therefore aren’t proof of good Christian character. Heavenly speakers can be blowhards, super prophets or teachers or miracle workers/ forgettable, and even radical activists who give away all their possessions / of no account. I struggled with this truth this week. I want spiritual gifts and power to be evidence of love and good behavior. Paul, however, says, “Nope. These people can be real jerks.”

But then I realized that Paul’s remarks actually made sense of my lived experience in the church. How many of us can resonate with this reality of observing gifted people with weak characters? We’ve all seen great gifts given by people who remain untouched by the true needs of the world or their own needs, incapable of sharing themselves. I’ve seen great power for good offered by people who believe that they need nothing so they receive nothing but their own smug self-satisfaction or self-righteousness. I’ve watched powerful people, gifted by God, actually helping others, yet stuck in their own misery, incapable of breaking chains of greed, anger, or lust. I’ve observed people perform good works that don’t benefit their souls. And what would be the benefit? Patience, kindness, contentment, humility, etc. In their lack of love – they get nothing in return.

In the movie The Doctor, starring William Hurt, Dr. Jack MacKee is a successful surgeon at a leading hospital. His skills are without question – regularly saving people’s lives. Yet his bedside manner with his patients, many who are seriously ill, is appalling. The decorum in the operating theater is very casual, filled with loud music and rude banter between him and other doctors about patients who are being operated on. In one painful scene, a patient sadly shares that her husband is not close to her anymore after her double mastectomy, Jack responds that she should tell him that she is just like a “Playboy centerfold, because she has the staple marks to prove it.” The point of the matter is that Jack has great gifts, can even save lives, but those gifts yield nothing in return. He may help others, but he in no way finds any help for himself. He is not transformed and has no peace. He has all the trappings of success, yet his family life is a mess – his son hates him and he remains emotionally distant from his wife on the brink of divorce.

Yet more than simply Paul’s words or our own experience, Jesus would also agree that one can wield great power without a deep relationship with God. In Matthew 7, he speaks of  those who prophesy, cast out demons, and do many deeds of power and yet says, “I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you.”  Friends, don’t be gifted and not be known by love, by others who sit on your right and left, or by Jesus. Don’t be a jerk.

But I also have good news this morning. Paul, echoing Jesus, is also saying something else, “You can be gifted, jerk.” You could also read Paul in another direction and, at the very least, thankfully declare that God uses people – sometimes even miraculously – who aren’t loving at the time. How many of us could stand and claim that we have been helped by just such a person, a person truly gifted by God but broken, messed up, lacking in true love? How many of us could stand and claim that we’ve helped others yet felt nothing at the time, may be even resented it? It’s a reminder that we need not always be perfectly sincere folks to be instruments of God’s grace and healing. God’s bigger than that.  So you need not read Paul as necessarily speaking about intent but might also read him talking about effect. Does your service produce love? Sometimes you have to act yourself into a feeling and sometimes the love comes later. But make no mistake – it has to come.

The point is this – if your gift-giving doesn’t produce love, if it doesn’t draw you closer to others and to God – then even if it yields things for others it will yield nothing for you. And guess what, Paul and Jesus are saying, “You matter, your heart matters, your life, apart from what you give, matters!”

2.     From vss. 4-8 I want to encourage us, “We are married.”

Many commentators bemoan the simple fact that these words of Paul – poetically powerful – are continually unmoored from their immediate context of spiritual gifts and the church – often being used for romantic promises in marriage ceremonies. How many of you heard these words read at your wedding or someone else’s?

But I think that there is a worthwhile comparison here to make. Now, what if that marriage context of love and oath making – “in sickness and in health, in poverty and in wealth, for as long as you both shall live” – helped remind us what it means to be the church? What if you were married to the people you sit with today? What if your understanding of love and spiritual gifts were grounded – through these words – in that context of committed, married love? Paul reminds us here that love is not an abstract quality, but actions. And yet I believe that many of us don’t have a problem with the actions per se but the social context. We feel much more comfortable associating this kind of love with a spouse rather than the church. So marriage can serve as a prophetic image –even for the unmarried among us – of love within the church and all it demands: work, romance, pain, and joy. Love  “that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Look at this list – does this reflect your commitment and actions to this group of people?

 

 Paul is saying, “Love is acting out these things toward those people you are sitting with today.”

I feel like many of us love the church but would rather just date and see other people. "O the church is fun," we insist, "but why commit when I can play the field?" Or if marriage is talked about so is a pre-nuptial agreement. Why else would we want to read this passages in a wedding and not as a passage describing what our life as a church should truly look like? It would expose most of our complaints, conflicts, and lack of commitment as simply petty, if not outright harmful or sinful.  

Friends, I don’t believe that the church has a cultural problem, a lack of money problem, or an attendance problem, though all of these things may be true. I believe that myself, you, we, us – have a love problem. Notice I didn’t say a “conflict problem.” There will always be conflict but how do we act lovingly in the midst of it. Do you truly love this group of people and its individual members? Some of you may be rightly frustrated with the church. You see the need for change and that’s good. But the question remains, “Do you love us? All of us?” If you want to test yourself, to check your love meter, perhaps the point of Paul could best be captured by putting your own name in place of the noun “love,” and not neglecting to find a proper place for repentance and forgiveness. In other words, can I say in front of all of you, “Jon is patient; Jon is kind; Jon is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Jon does not insist on his own way; is not irritable or resentful”?

Jesus said, “³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35

A story from the early church might illustrate Jesus’ and Paul’s understanding of love in the church. In the third century church in Rome, a pagan actor became a Christian, but he realized he had to change his employment because most Roman plays encouraged immorality and unchristian behavior, often involving pagan ceremonies. Since this newly-converted actor had no other job skills, he considered establishing an acting school to teach drama to non-Christian students. However, he first submitted his idea to the leaders of his church for their counsel. 

The leaders told him that if acting was an immoral profession then it would be wrong to train others in it. Nevertheless, since this was a rather novel question, they wrote to Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, for his thoughts. Cyprian agreed that a profession unfit for a Christian to practice was also unfit for him to teach, even if this was his sole means of support. Makes sense, right?

But that isn't the end of the story. Cyprian also told this neighboring church that they should be willing to support the actor financially if he had no other means of earning a living—just as they supported orphans, widows, and other needy persons. Going further, he wrote, “If your church is financially unable to support him, he may move over to us and here receive whatever he needs for food and clothing.” Cyprian and his church didn't even know this actor, yet they were willing to support him because he was a fellow believer. As one Christian told the Romans, “We love one another with a mutual love because we do not know how to hate.” Friends, that’s committed love in action. That’s love that “never ends.” That love will have our gifts, talents, and service flowing in the right way, doing what they are supposed to be doing.

3.     Vss. 9-13 suggests that for love to grow we need to acknowledge what we don’t know.

This last point is a bit of an out-of-the-box sort of reading. Paul’s point is that the Corinthians need to focus on love because their precious gifts of knowledge and prophecy are not eternal, they won’t last or be a part of the kingdom come. However, Paul’s words also hold a different warning - it’s dangerous for our love to imagine we know more than we do.  I have to confess that I am not always sure what to do amidst the ever-changing political, social, cultural landscapes of our world but I do know this – our current climate of certitude, our failure to acknowledge our partial ability to see, is not helping the church, it’s hurting it and our witness of love. Paul knows, he remembers how religious certainty led him to kill Christians because he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, they were not of God. Yet, this side of heaven in order to truly love we need to die to the idea that we can always completely know – that’s what’s meant by the funeral in the sermon’s title.

And Paul isn’t the only one who feels this way. Take our companion text from the Gospel which is also a part of today’s lectionary reading, Luke 4:21-30. It’s the story of Jesus teaching in the synagogue about God’s love for the outsider to those who clearly believed they knew God and what God wanted. And what was their response to Jesus’ message? Verse 29 says, “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.” It’s a sobering reminder of what can happen when religious people, fueled by anger, are more certain than loving, more interested in being right than caring. Those who build their town on hills of certainty have little use for humility and no time for love. The Gospel’s point is pretty straightforward. What do those who refuse to acknowledge that they only “know in part” do with love? They try and hurl it off a cliff.

Acknowledging Paul’s words in verse 13, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t strive for correct doctrine – right belief – proper faith. It will abide. Nor would I in anyway wish to say that we should give up our confident belief in what the future holds – our assured hope. It will abide. But friends, the greatest of these, the greatest of these, is love. So Paul ends with a clear, and important teaching for how we can be transformed, we must acknowledge what we don’t know. My wife is always quick to chide me when I speak to strongly about a person who I believe is acting irresponsibly, or irritating me. She always reminds me to ask, “What don’t I know?” Without this question, without the presumption of my own ignorance, it’s hard to love people. Without that question, I can imagine that what I see dimly in a mirror is all there is to see. 

But there is good news even in this warning. We may not know all there is, we may not see face-to-face at this time, but God does. For what our future holds may be somewhat mysterious to us but Paul states that one day this fog will lift from our eyes and that each of us will know even as each of us “have been fully known” (vs. 12). God knows you already. You are already “fully known.” He knows what you need, he is faithful and loving.

So here is the promise you can know – God is love, 1 John says, so I invite you to return to our text one last time and substitute “God” for each verse with “love” in it. God is patient, God is kind, God is not envious, or boastful, or arrogant, or rude. God does not seek his own advantage, is not irritable nor resentful but rejoices in the truth. God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things – God never fails. Can you hear that today? This whole love project called "church" demands much of you but is not fundamentally dependent upon you because God never fails.

I would like to end our time with a prayer by Thomas More:  

O Lord, give us a mind that is humble, quiet, peaceable, patient and charitable, and a taste of your Holy Spirit in all our thoughts, words and deeds. O Lord, give us a lively faith, a firm hope, a fervent charity, a love of You. Take from us all lukewarmness in meditation and all dullness in prayer. Give us fervor and delight in thinking of You, your grace, and your tender compassion toward us. Give us, good Lord, the grace to work for the things we pray for. Amen. ~ Thomas More