Love Moves (1 Corinthians 13:1-7)

Our passage this morning is one you’ve probably heard before, likely at a wedding. But Paul didn’t write these words for a wedding, rather, to a church that was in danger of falling apart. Paul says that they’ve championed some gifts over others, some people over others. He says that giving everything to the poor and similar other-oriented actions, though good, can be done with selfish motives for the approval of an audience. And if what we’re doing is performative, then we don’t have love. And if we don’t have love, Paul says we have nothing. We are nothing. And we’ve gained nothing. Real love is a verb. It does something to us and then it invites us to move outward toward another human being not for the sake of being seen but because that is the nature of love.