Sermon Notes — February 2, 2025
1 Corinthians 13
The Greatest Gift
February 2, 2025
Dr. Craig Goff
As I look back over the years, one of the highlights of my ministry was that I was able to hear Eugene Peterson read excerpts from The Message, his contemporary translation of the Bible just before it came into print. I know that might not sound exciting to everybody, but it was to me. He told us a little bit about his translation process. It was pretty cool. It was basically part of an adult Sunday School Class he led while he served as the pastor of a Presbyterian church. We were at a small Catholic College in Wichita, Kansas, even then we knew it was going to be huge, and it is. It has sold more than 20 million copies over the past 25 years.
I especially love his translation of our passage today. Let’s take a look:
We do not see things clearly. We are squinting in a fog, peering through the mist, but it will not be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright. We will see it all then, see as clearly as God sees us, knowing God as directly as God knows us. But for right now, until that completeness comes, we have three things to do. Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly.
Those are beautiful words in any translation, but they are also filled with meaning and mystery. Paul begins that chapter with the words.
If I speak with the tongues of mortals and angels, but have not love, I am but a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal (as a drummer, I don’t know why they have to illustrate that with percussion instruments).
He goes on to say as he ends the section/chapter
When I was a child, I spoke as a child; but when I became an adult, I put away childish ways, for now, we see in a glass darkly, but then we will see face to face. And now faith, hope and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.
You have probably heard those words read at a wedding. I have personally read them at more than a few weddings, and those are helpful words for a bride and groom to hear.
Love is for grown-ups and we don’t understand everything now. The smartest among us don’t even come close to understanding everything.
In a marriage or in any relationship what might seem really bad, might ultimately lead to something really good.
Baptist preacher turned Episcopal priest, John Claypool, once told a story from ancient China that illustrates our inability to know what is best, which is actually a good thing because it can keep us from being too discouraged when things don’t turn out how we would like for them to turn out.
It is a story about a farmer who only owned one horse.
He depended on the horse for everything; to pull the plow, to draw the wagon, to ride into town. One day a bee stung the horse, and in fright the horse ran away into the mountains. The farmer searched and searched for him but couldn’t find him. His neighbors said, “We are so sorry about your bad luck in losing your horse.” But the old farmer shrugged his shoulders and said, “Bad luck, good luck — who is to say?”
A week later his horse came back, accompanied by twelve wild horses, which he had apparently been running around with up in the mountains. The old farmer was able to corral all those fine strong animals. News spread throughout the village, and his neighbors came and said, “Congratulations on this sudden fortune from out of nowhere.” To which again the old man shrugged and said, “good luck, bad luck — who is to say?”
The only son of the farmer decided to make the best of this windfall and started breaking the horses so they could be sold and put to work in the fields. But as he attempted to do so, he got thrown from one of the horses and his leg was broken in three places. When word of his accident spread through the village, again the neighbors came saying, “We are sorry about the bad luck of your son getting hurt.” The old man just shrugged and said, “Bad luck, good luck — who is to say?”
Two weeks later a war broke about among the provinces in China. The Army came through conscripting every able-bodied man under fifty. Because the farmer’s son was injured he did not have to go and it turned out to save his life, for everyone in the village who was drafted was killed in the battle.
There is always more going on in any situation than we can see.
Remember the story of Joseph and his brothers?
Joseph was his father Jacob’s favorite son, he gave him a fancy coat. His brothers were very jealous of him and sold him into slavery.
Again, “good luck, bad luck,” who is to say, ultimately their selling him into slavery resulted in him being able to rule over Egypt and save his people from starvation. Think about this, if his brothers had not sold Joseph into slavery, the Hebrew people might have perished.
We can all probably think of things in our lives that did not turn out the way we would like for them to turn out. A job you lost, a marriage engagement that was broken, a college application that was rejected.
So …. this is easier said than done, maybe instead of pouring all our energy into making things go the way we want them to go, we should pour our energy into discovering how God always loves us and can use even the worse things that happen to us for good. Because the greatest of all gifts Is God’s Love. (as we gather at this table we are reminded of God’s love)….