Exploring My Strange Bible - Love Is Not A Black Hole

Episode Date: April 23, 2018

These are famous love poems where Paul talks about nature and love in a Christian vocabulary. A lot of love poems from weddings begin right here in this teaching. Paul didn’t write for people getting married, but he actually wrote it to bring local community members together who were riddled with moral compromise. He wanted to give us an idea of what human existence and love was all about, and it manifested into this poem.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right, well, this is a standalone teaching episode. It represents a contribution that I made to a short series at Door of Hope when I was a pastor there a number of years ago. Just the

short series on 1 Corinthians 13, which is known as the famous love chapter among the Apostle Paul's letters. He goes on this beautiful poem where he describes the nature and concept of Christian love, what the word love means in a Christian's vocabulary. And this teaching in particular was on the central part of 1 Corinthians 13. It's the famous love poems. And if you've ever heard a really beautiful, touching, biblical something about love at a wedding that's read aloud, odds are it was from this very chapter right here. It begins, love is patient, love is kind. Of course, Paul didn't write this poem for people getting married. He wrote it to a local church community in Corinth that

was really divided, lots of people angry at each other and riddled with moral compromise. And to them, he wanted to give a vision of what human existence and love is all about. And he gave us this beautiful poem that's worth memorizing, reading, and much more pondering and meditation today. So there you go. Hope this is helpful for you. It was a really meaningful teaching and text for me, and I've carried it with me ever since. I hope the same could be true for you. So there you go. Let's dive in. In Jesus' teachings in Matthew, we focused on a few themes, and we just saw it everywhere. You know, what you would hear Jesus talking about on any

given day is the kingdom of God. That God is taking back his rule and reign of the world and that Jesus is here to bring it all together. And so what's the appropriate response to the fact that Jesus is king of heaven and earth? And here it comes into what he boiled down as the basics of what it means to follow him. And he said it was a conversation that he had about what's the greatest of all of God's commands. And he boiled it down to the great command that had two parts. Do you remember it? What's the first one? Love God, love people. So the kingdom of God is here. Jesus is king over heaven and earth. What should I do about that as his follower? Here's my true north as a disciple of Jesus.

Love God. Love people. Growing in my capacity to love others well is order number one of a follower of Jesus. And so we thought before we dive into another book of the Bible, which we're going to do week after next, we're going to jump into a couple of months exploring the book of Daniel in the Old Testament together. Oh yes. But before we do that, we thought, no, let's just take Jesus at his word. Like he wants us to obey what he taught us, thought, no, let's just take Jesus at his word. He wants us to obey what he taught us,

to love God and to love people. So we just wanted to take a few weeks and just camp out on that, on what it means for us to truly follow King Jesus and grow in our capacity to love. And so we're being guided in our reflections on what it means to love by one of the most beautiful expositions of what love is for a Christian anywhere in the whole Bible. It's in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13. So I invite you to open a Bible or turn on a Bible, whichever one you do, to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. chapter 13, to these sublime words. So beautiful. Paul wrote this letter to a church community.

It's actually now, by this point, a network of house churches that he had started in the bustling city of Corinth. And he knew all these people because he helped start the church and he was around when all of them became followers of Jesus. And the reason he's writing this letter, he heard a report that things were not going well at Corinth. This is a chapter, 1 Corinthians 13. Maybe you know this chapter, maybe you don't. It sometimes gets read at weddings because it's about love. But of course, Paul didn't write

this for married people. He wrote this as a part of his critique and challenge of a church community that he thought was just betraying Jesus at every turn. There were a bunch of Christians in this church community suing each other, really angry, all these broken relationships. There was a guy sleeping with his mother-in-law in the church community. Their Sunday gatherings were a wreck. How they took communion was really screwed up. And then specifically in the section he's talking about here,

there were a number of people who were having really profound experiences of worship in their Sunday gathering, which was not that many people. They would gather in a house and it would be more like an interactive Bible study with a time of worship in their Sunday gathering, which was not that many people. They would gather in a house, and it would be more like an interactive Bible study with a time of worship. And some of them had adopted and taken on a prayer practice

that Paul himself practiced, of praying and speaking in unknown languages. But the way they were doing it was not the way Paul did it. They were just burst out in the gathering and just speaking something nobody could comprehend. And Paul, he's like, yeah, that's lame. Stop it. Because it's weirding all these people out, as he talks about in chapter 14.

And he's like, listen, that's a totally appropriate way to pray. Don't freak people out when they come into the gathering. Find a more appropriate way to do it. It's also the case that people would have a prophecy or something that they felt like the whole community needed to hear from Jesus. And so they would open the scriptures. But then people were interrupting each other and being like, nope, can I please start talking now?

And they would like talk over each other. And Paul's just like, time out. Your Sunday gathering is actually having the opposite purpose of what Sunday gathering should be about, which is celebrating good news and reminding us all that we're a community of love because of Jesus' love for us. And so into that chaos of a church community, he writes this sublime chapter. It's just beautiful. We're going to read it in whole. It's pretty short. Let're going to read it in whole. It's pretty short.

Let's read the last sentence of chapter 12, which is the lead-in. He says, And yet I will show you the most excellent way. See, if I speak in the tongues of humans or of angels, but I don't have love, I'm only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. humans or of angels, but I don't have love, I'm only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 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 I don't have love, I'm nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and go over my body to hardship so that I might have something to boast about but don't have love, I gain nothing. See, love is patient. Love is kind.

Love does not envy and it doesn't boast it's not proud love does not dishonor other people it's not self-seeking it's not easily angered and it keeps no record of wrongs love does not delight in evil

but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there's prophecies, they're going to cease. And where people are praying in tongues, they'll be stilled. Where people have knowledge, it will pass away. For we only know in part.

We only prophesy in part. But when completeness comes, what is only in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. But when I grew up, I was a child, I talked like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. But when I grew up, I became a man and I put childish ways behind me. For now in the present, we see only a reflection, like in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now in the present I only know in part,

but then I will know fully, even as I am fully known. And so now these three remain. Faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Did. And love. But the greatest of these is love. Dude. Right? That's just a masterpiece right there.

I don't care if you're religious or not. There's a reason why people who aren't religious quote from this. Are you with me? That's a sublime short essay on the nature of love. Holy cow. I mean, I feel bad saying anything else. Like, who can top that? Paul's, he had just the right amount of coffee that morning.

His brain is on all cylinders because that's a thing of beauty. So, to rip it out of context, you could do a lot of things with something like that. But when you read this in context, it's written to a community of followers of Jesus who are not doing this. So he has to show what love actually is. He has to show what love actually is. Now, love is one of those, you know, it's one of those really fuzzy, I think, unhelpful words in our language.

Last week, Josh explored this first paragraph just to get on the table for us just that. That what a follower of Jesus should mean when they use the word love is very, very different than how people in our culture might use the word or define it. I mean, my goodness, some of you have heard me say this before. I love pizza, and it's true. I also love ramen. I love ramen.

And there's a growing number of great ramen places here in the city. It's such a great place to be right now if you love ramen. is here in the city. It's such a great place to be right now if you love ramen. And so, right? But then I'll use the same English word, love, to describe my family, right? I love my wife and I love my children.

And I love Star Wars. And you saw the new trailer for Rogue One, you know, this last week. And it's like, yes, another one. It's hopefully going to be awesome. So I love that too. And so, but if the word love means the same thing in each of those scenarios, I have issues.

You know what I'm saying? I have issues. And I have issues anyway. But what an unhelpful word. Because it refers to something that I have preference for, something that I've given a lifelong commitment to, and then just something that anchors me in nostalgia and good storytelling. And so I say, what a useless word.

I love all of those things. Why don't I just use different words? I like this. I've given a wholehearted commitment to this, and I really am whatever. Are you with me? It's the same word. And so in most other languages,

they have multiple different kinds of words for these things, but we just use the clunky word love. And so the problem that it raises then is when you become a follower of Jesus, and there's all this talk about love, we just import into that word that we read in the Bible or in the teachings of Jesus what we think we already know what it means. And of course, what we think it means is just by a lifetime of training in our culture about what that word means. So what you have to do is just dismantle it, start over again. So what does Paul mean when he uses this word? And this is where it's a great help that we have 13 of his letters in the

New Testament because we can think, get a whole range of his thought over a decade and a half of how he used words and thought about Jesus and the good news. And so here's what Paul means, at least, when he uses the word love. And it's anchored in the teachings of Jesus. It refers, not primarily as it does in our culture, to a feeling that happens to you. There is feeling involved, as we'll see, There is feeling involved, as we'll see, but primarily the word love refers to action or behavior. Love is something you do.

Watch Jesus use the word love. Watch Paul use the word love. It's something you do to people. It's not something you first and foremost feel. And that's significant because, you know, our feelings about people change and shift over time. But love, according to Jesus and Paul, is something very, very different. It's about this settled purpose to behave and choose to act in this way. Sometimes you feel like it. Sometimes you do not. You do it anyway. That's love, according to Jesus and Paul.

Look at how Paul uses the word love. This is just almost at a random sampling of three different places. But where does Paul get his definition of the meaning of the word love? Do you remember the Greek word, Paul? Josh brought it up last week. Greek word? The noun for it? Agape. Yeah, agape. So what does agape mean for Paul if we're supposed to be all about this as followers of Jesus? Here's a few examples. So as he says in his letter to the church in Galatia, he says,

I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me. Jesus feels great about me today. No, that's not what he means. He says, the Son of God who loved me, how do I know? Well, look at what he did. He gave himself for me. His letter to the Ephesians. Hey, followers of Jesus, follow God's example. As dearly loved children, and you yourselves walk in the way of love. Well, what does that mean? Well, here God's example. As dearly loved children and you yourselves walk in the way of

love. Well, what does that mean? Well, here's an example. It's just like Christ loved us, he feels great about you today. Well, I think that's true, but it's way more concrete than that. How do you know that he loves you? Well, he gave himself up for us. I can point to Jesus' behavior and actions that took place in real time in history. Like, that's how I know. And that's Jesus' love. Romans chapter 5, he says, God demonstrates his love for us in this.

While we were all hapless sinners, Christ died for us. Now, here he's not talking about Jesus' love. He's talking about God's love. How do you know that God loves you? I mean, we can throw it up on billboards, on I-5, for goodness sakes. But of course, everybody's going to read into that word whatever they think the word love means. What does it mean to say to somebody, God loves you? For a Christian, What does that even mean to say to somebody, God loves you? For a Christian, it means to say, Jesus gave himself for you.

He died for you. That is God's love for you. So I barely got out of high school, so it gives me great joy to give a pop quiz in the room where I graduated high school. So when it comes to the use of the word love, do you see it here? Whose life and teachings define what the word love means if I'm a follower of Jesus? Who? Jesus.

You passed. You passed. I mean, it's crystal clear, isn't it? This happens in all kinds of ways in becoming a follower of Jesus. There's religious vocabulary that I thought I knew or that grandma talked about or whatever that I heard on billboards or bad Christian art or something. And so you introduce all this vocabulary, faith and love and so on. But in following Jesus, you build it all from the ground up. And love, especially.

What does love mean? Well, the love that we encounter growing up in school and so on, it's not this. It's very different. It's Jesus. It's about a settled purpose to act in a way

that brings about the well-being of another person regardless of how they respond. That's love for a Christian. It's about a choice that I make. It's motivated by love, but you don't always feel that motivation. And so it comes down to a purpose to seek the well-being of another

person regardless of how they respond to me. And that motivation and the action is what's referred to by agape. And it's not abstract. Paul just says, look at how Jesus did things. That's what I'm talking about. That's how he knows that he's loved. And so what we're going to do today is very practical. Paul's not going to let this remain theoretical in this letter that he writes. We're going to focus in on just the small middle paragraph, verses 4 through the beginning of verse 8. And Paul gives 16 short, like two or three words each, definitions of love. So if you were curious about what the word love means for a Christian, you have those examples.

It refers to action and something Jesus did that defines it. But now Paul's going to give this full orb, like 16 facets, like a diamond with 16 facets in. And it's one thing, but all these different ways to see it and what it is and what it does. But before we do that, I want to get a word picture in our minds that emerged as I was reflecting and thinking about how to talk about this as a community. And also because it's the room where I graduated high school, I declare it to be Science Sunday for the next five minutes. room where I graduated high school, I declare it to be science Sunday for the next five minutes.

You'll see two images appear here. And one of them on the upper left, what's that thing out in space? Yeah, that's a black hole. It's a black hole. And then on the lower right, you see two, it's a computer generated image, but all the same. What are those little guys? Those are cells. Do you feel like you're in biology right now? No, you don't. You don't feel that way. But those are little cells, one that just multiplied. Okay, all right, let's start with the upper left.

I really didn't do great in school. I barely graduated. But I now wish that I would have paid attention in biology or something. And if I had a second life to live, and if I were halfway decent at math, which I'm not, I would want to go into astronomy or physics. But then I have some friends who actually did go into those studies, and they just do math all day.

That's just all it is. But all the same. So black holes. You guys, what's a black hole? A black hole reminds us that the universe we inhabit is true. It's stranger than the land of Oz. Are you with me? Black holes are a what? Okay. So here's you and I. Just think of your own body, right? Your own body takes up space in the universe. And what we know is that any object that takes up space, has density in the universe, has this effect on things around it called a gravitational pull. Now, you and I aren't very big.

We're actually really, really tiny. And so, you know, you can't feel that you're drawing the person sitting next to you, closer to you, unless you're in love or something like that. But, you know, it's true. It's real. It's just such a weak gravitational force that it's not perceptible. But, you know, we look at the moon at night, right? We see that thing. What keeps that thing right there as opposed to flying away? Well, it's this planet that we're on that's hurling through space and rotating at this really fast speed. Even though we don't fly off of it, how do you not fly off the thing? Well, it's just exerting this pull on us.

And it also keeps the moon around it too. And then, you know, we sometimes stare at this bright object in the sky called the sun. We sometimes see it here in Portland. And we're, of course, rotating around that thing, right? And what keeps us from like not, it's pulling us into. What's happening? And what on earth is a black hole?

This is the only way I've ever heard that has to make sense to me that doesn't require complex equations that I want to run away from. So let's say you have a really soft mattress and you get a really soft mattress, and you get a handful of marbles, and you throw a bunch of marbles on the soft mattress. What do they do? Well, they just kind of, you know? And if it's a soft mattress, if you look really close,

there'll be a little indentation, right, of where it is, but it just kind of sits there. Then let's say you go get your grandpa's bowling ball, a big 13-pounder or something like that. Then let's say you hurl that right into the middle of the bed. What happens? It sinks down. Then, of course, what happens to the marbles? The marbles just all...

There you go. It's a black hole. No hole no actually that's not true that's the sun that's the sun is the bowling ball so the black hole would be something that you don't know but it's this bottomless pit in your mattress and anything any marbles you throw in they're just they just. And it's like, where does it go? It goes beyond my floor. Yeah? That's a black hole. Black holes, there's something. This is how the math works.

There's something in a black hole that must be something to 4 billion times the density of our sun. And it's there. Is it big? Is it large? I mean, it's impossible that we will ever know. Because the gravitational pull of this thing is so intense

that not even light particles or waves can escape its gravitational force. It just sucks everything. It's called the event horizon into it and is just pure oblivion. And what's even more interesting about black holes that we really have only been in our imagination for the last 75 years is that thing

when the pole is so strong of whatever the singularity is, this dense thing at the center of it, the pole is so strong it actually dismantles the molecules of anything that gets sucked into the hole. And so it unmakes everything that it sucks into itself. It's just pure oblivion. There's lots of them in our universe. Where are we? You know what I'm saying? This is so bizarre.

Now there are many objects that could be the exact opposite of a black hole. Here is one of them on the lower right. So a little single cell. This is pretty simple. Actually, they're incredibly complex little things, but they're very simple in terms of the

rest of the complexity of the universe. And of course, this is one of the most simple little building blocks of biological life here on planet Earth. And so algae, you know, starts with these, and grass and flowers and kangaroos and you are all made of these too. And what makes these things is they're just endlessly generating,

constantly reproducing themselves. And they've got the DNA orders and information and that all does all that thing. But here's what's remarkable. A black hole is all about this singularity at the center. And it sucks everything into itself. And it actually destroys everything that it steers into its orbit.

But a cell is the exact opposite. It's a very simple, tiny little thing, but its marching orders of existence are to give all of its energy to make another one. But what's remarkable about cells is it's not a zero-sum game. It's not like cell number one is like, oh, I made another one. Now I have no more. You know, like suffering. No, it's like the cell actually becomes more itself as it gives all of

its energy away to another, and then there's more. And there's like, well, let's just keep doing this. This is awesome. And then they go, are you with me? Like cell number one doesn't lose, it actually becomes itself as it gives itself away. And life is generated out of it. Precisely as it pushes out of itself, the exact opposite of a black hole. Now I don't know why these two images came into my mind as I was reading and reflecting on 1 Corinthians 13, but there you go.

That's how my brain works, apparently. But to me, I can't think of two more vivid images of these alternate definitions of love. Right? So you have a love in our culture that's primarily about desire and affection. And of course, if I desire and have affection for you, you're going to benefit from that.

But if its ultimate source is self-regard and how what you have to bring or offer is what satisfies and brings meaning and purpose to my life, well, odds are that's not going to last very long. And then all of a sudden, you and I become these relational black holes, constantly drawing each other into our own character flaws and our own search for meaning

and purpose and love and affirmation. And so not only do I end up as this bottomless pit of needing affection and affirmation, but odds are you're going to be pretty miserable as you get drawn into my black hole. Relational black holes. That's what humans are. But the way of Jesus is different.

It's like this commitment that's driven out of this inner life source of perpetual others focus. And the word that Jesus and Paul use to describe that is agape. It's perpetually outward oriented. And the paradox of love is that the more that I give out of myself to others, the more I become truly human and discover myself. That's the vision that Paul is describing here. So get those two fixed in your mind. And let's turn to these, the 16-part definition, the 16-facet definition of agape.

And it's very powerful, and there's nothing for it, but to just think through it. This is the kind of thing that you might read through and be like, that's inspiring and cool, but I want us to slow down, and I just want us to ponder. So pretend you have a cup of tea,

some of you have a cup of coffee. Are you with me? Verse 4. Oh, yeah, there it is, right there. Yeah, I forgot. Okay, that's good. We're just going to leave that up there too so you all can see it.

So the first two things that Paul turns to is that love, Jesus-style love, is patient and it's kind. It's patient and it's kind. Think about this in terms of images. So, love is something

that gives time. Like a cell. It has time to give. And you flip it over then, of course. So impatience is this inability to give people the time that they need or want. But that's what you're giving.

It's time. So love has this discernment about the other that I might even know what's time. So love has this discernment about the other that I might even know what's good for someone, but if I don't do it in the right time, it's not love. So I have time to give, time to be patient. Do you see?

This is about a focus on the other and what they might need or what they might require. And all about a focus on the other and what they might need or what they might require. And all of a sudden you realize, yeah, that's what impatience is. It's like I have a timeline for how the next hour is going to work and showing up at one of the many Portland coffee shops where it's like eight minutes to get your cup of coffee. And you go in there and you dilly dollied at home and you're late and now you're late to work or whatever and then all of a sudden the eight-minute coffee,

which is the normal experience here in Portland and it's quite delightful when you're expecting it. You guys know what I'm talking about? The slow coffee experience. Do you guys live here? What's wrong? You guys know what I'm talking about? It's wonderful, isn't it?

Unless you have been wasting your time or unless, well, I'm not going to say you're not a loving person, but Paul's the one who said it. Paul's the one who said it. So if I'm not willing to give time, right? If I come in and my expectation is everybody works on my timeline. It's not love. It's inability to give time.

And then Paul pairs it, first off, with these two statements here. Love's patient, has time to give, and then it's kind. And it's connected to a word that, in his language, means sweetness or pleasantness. So let's think about the black hole, you know, or the orbit, the space example. So kindness is about the kind of atmosphere that surrounds me. Or in Portland words you might say the energy around you.

So you enter a room or somebody enters your personal space. What do they feel? Do they sense welcome? Do they sense hospitality? Do they sense that they're cared for or paid attention to? Kindness. It's love. It's about this attention to how the other person perceives entering my space.

I want to make this a great 30 seconds that they have in my personal space. And so you make that the forefront, the priority. It's time to give and accommodating and hospitable. That's where Paul starts. Now, of course, he's not writing this in the abstract. He's got specific people, very specific situations in his mind. But he's writing this to a church community who's exhibiting an inability

to give time and a lack of welcome in how they treat each other in the Sunday gathering. That's why he wrote this in the first place. From here, you can see, he starts with those two, and I've tried to group them together because it's not just an endless string. Like, some of them, because it's not just an endless string. Some of them, they go together. They flow together into little sections here. So from here he goes into eight statements about what love is not. So sometimes something so beautiful and profound,

you can only talk about what it is by defining what it's not. And that's what he's doing right here. Eight things that love is not that will give you an insight into what love actually is, Jesus style. And the first one is jealous. Not jealous. There's some of your translations that have not envious. And so the black hole is perfect here. So what do I mean when I say I'm envious or I'm jealous? So I come into contact with another person and they've got something great going on in their story. You know, whatever. Something great just happened in their life.

And love is able, for the sake of that person, to just, that's so awesome. Love will experience joy at the good fortune of another person because they're a human being and they're awesome and I'm so excited that that's what's happening for them. But see, what love is not is the black hole. So what the black hole interprets it as, it just sucks everything into its own orbit. And so it's this inability to rejoice in the good fortune of another person. Because all I'm thinking about, when they talk about the good things in their lives, all it does for me is highlight the lack

of those things in my own life. Right? And so it's like the world is just torture for somebody who's a black hole. Because anything good that happens to your friends just highlights all of the good things that are not happening to you. And of course, none of you have felt this before. Right? You guys know what I'm talking about, don't you? This is not theory.

This is like yesterday. With the people that live in your house. Like, yeah. Yeah. So love is this capacity to be happy and to experience joy at the good fortune

of another, even though that's not what's happening in my black hole. It's profound. And that connects to the next three that are all connected here. Doesn't brag. It's not arrogant. It's not arrogant. It's not rude.

So bragging, we get, it's about words. So words, people are constantly talking about themselves and their accomplishments or whatever. So why does a person do that? Well, that can be rooted in a couple mindsets. The one that he highlights here is arrogance. And the word he uses is really clever. It's a metaphor.

And some of you have it in your translations of puffed up. It's like, think of a balloon. You blow up a balloon. That's the word he uses. Inflated. Self-inflated. So somebody who constantly talks about themselves,

their favorite topic of conversation is themselves, so what's the mindset? What motivates that kind of behavior? It's somebody who's self-inflated. Somebody who genuinely thinks that they're more important than everybody else around them. And then, of course, if they're constantly talking about themselves,

because they really believe that they're more important than everyone else, then that's going to result not just in words, that mindset's going to result in behavior that he calls rude or dishonorable. Do you see the connection here? And so, like, I'm probably not just going to talk about myself. Like, I'm not going to pay attention to what's going on with you. I'm going to act in ways that violate your dignity as a

human being. And so it's this little triad, right? It's this inability to think about other people and what's happening with them. And that's because I'm focused on the thing at the bottom of my abyss of a black hole of a heart and mind. And then what that does is it means that I only draw attention to myself. And then I behave in ways that means that I only draw attention to myself, and then I behave in ways that actually hurt and damage other people when they get sucked into my little dark universe. There's four things that love is not. Sheesh, how you guys doing? It gets better or worse, depending on your opinion.

Look at this little triad here. Love doesn't seek its own. It's not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. So it doesn't seek its own. You have to qualify that, of course, because there are some things you really ought to do for your well-being, and they're your responsibility.

You've got to brush your teeth. And if you need to prioritize brushing your teeth over having a conversation with a friend, then you should probably do that. So let's not obviously know what he's talking about. So he's talking about prioritizing my interests, my agendas, my time, my to-do list, so consistently over that of other people

that it generates all of these other casualties. Like, somebody who perpetually prioritizes their interests over another person and what they value over what other people value. This is somebody that at work you would call touchy. Touchy. That's the person you have to walk on eggshells around. And you discover what this person values the most,

of course, when they get angry at you. Did you know this co-worker? Maybe you're this co-worker. Right? Right? And what's anger? Right? The psychologists tell us anger is one of these things you could call a derivative emotion. It's not a root issue. Anger is this emotional fight or flight mode that we get into when

something even deeper gets triggered. There's something even more important to us that we value or that is significant to us. And anger is what's generated this emotional energy inside of us when that's violated or threatened or put in jeopardy. And you find out what you value by what makes you angry. It's like a curse. Because you're like, dang it, I think that's what makes me angry. That's so petty. That's so stupid.

I mean, when's the last time you got angry? And not that you blew up and yelled at somebody, but you know the deal inside of you, the raised temperature thing. You know that. Like, when did that happen to you last? And odds are, that's a good indicator as to what you think is most important. And what's so complex about it is that half the time it's good. It's really good things. Or it's things that you might need. Living with toddlers. Oh my gosh. Right? So

you know, there's no, absolutely no personal space. I was having dinner last night. And I mean, what I think of is when I watch nature shows and it's the baby monkeys crawling all over the adult monkeys. And it's like, that's my life. I'm trying to eat. I'm just one bite of food. And it's the baby monkeys crawling all over the adult monkeys and it's like that's my life i'm trying to eat i'm just one bite of food and it's like they're on the arm and this and like it's like what do you you know there's no personal space no personal time and so that's for sure my it just comes up inside of me this violation of my personal space and time just all of the time. And I'm blowing it up. It's mostly enjoyable, but there are moments.

There are moments. That's what, it's that. It's that. And so somebody who really believes their deal is more important than another's, they're constantly going to be in this provocative, agitated state of being. And then when you exist in that state of being, then the people who cross you and agitate you

and violate what you think is most important, you never forget it. You never forget it, right? You remember the people who crossed you and who don't value what you value. It's a black hole, dude. It's this way of existing in the universe that everybody has to get sucked into here and they are unmade in the process and so am I.

And so he rounds out the eight negative definitions with this. Love does not delight in wrongdoing, but celebrates with the truth. Love does not delight in wrongdoing. And as you read that out loud, you go, there's one I got. I got this one. I'm doing pretty good on this one. Whenever there's a tragedy or an earthquake or something, I don't celebrate. I don't delight in, or I don't delight in hearing about people doing horrible things to each other. But that's the,

Paul, he got you. If you think you're doing good here, you just got whatever. I don't know. What's the, oh, it's a show. It's a thing. Punked. There you go. Thank you. You just got punked. So think, if you were to watch someone, you know, at a restaurant, you know, blow up and get agitated and yell at another person, what do you think to yourself? Oh, oh, so inappropriate, you know? And then you hear that one of your friends is like gossiping about another. You hear another Christian friend is gossiping, but it's the prayer meeting. Hey, did you hear about so-and-so? Let's pray. You should really be praying for them, right? And you hear about that,

and you're like, oh, that's such a wrong way to treat people, of course. And right, you could go down the list, right? Like thinking you're more important, being easily angered, and being resentful of what other people did to you three years ago. And of course, when other people do those things, it's just like, oh, oh, Jesus, so horrible. I wish they would just follow Jesus, right? And then of course, but love doesn't delight in wrongdoing. But the fact is, is that I choose these behaviors all of the time. I choose them. choose these behaviors all of the time. I choose them. Clearly I like behaving this way because I keep doing it.

And so what love is able to do, it's able to name that and to no longer see pleasure or benefit from these ways of existing as a human, but can celebrate truth.

Celebrate truth. So truth is what's happening when you work through something like this and all of us in the room are just getting nailed. It is like, dang it. I am not a great person. And that's worth celebrating, apparently. Truth.

The truth about who we are. Love celebrates truth. And there's a paradox of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. There's something about how Jesus lives and talks and treats people as you read about him. And at the same time, it's noble and inspiring. It's true. You go, there's a truly human one.

But at the same time, it exposes all of the wrongdoing inside of me. And if I'm a follower of Jesus, apparently that's worth celebrating. It's worth celebrating. There's something about following Jesus that's perpetually inconvenient.

The moment that Jesus becomes simply somebody who underwrites my value system that I already think and know and believe, you know you're not following Jesus anymore. Right? There's something that's existing in this perpetual state of vulnerability and second-guessing your motivations and yourself, knowing that there's all this wrongdoing that I delight in. And so what I celebrate is having the spotlight shown on all of my flaws and failures. And it's not because we love self-loathing around here or hate ourselves. It's actually just the opposite. It's because love is creative. And it's Jesus' love that

actually begins, it's like a cell. Jesus gives of himself, and he's not less himself. We are actually more ourselves because of it. And then we exist together as a family. Look how he rounds it out here. He shifts out of the negatives. Actually, here, let's pause real quick here.

And this is a good exercise. Let's try and turn each of those negatives inside out. So that's what love is not. So underneath that is what love is. Well, love is patient, it's kind. Love is genuinely able to celebrate good stuff in the life of other people. Good fortune.

Love loves to talk about the good things in other people more than itself. Love actually thinks that other people are more important. And so love will treat people in a way that accommodates them so they aren't easily offended unnecessarily. Love genuinely seeks what's best for other people. And it takes a lot to make love angry.

And then when you do make love angry, it quickly forgives. Love laments the tragedy of the human condition, but it celebrates the truth. Love is always supportive, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Some of your English translations have here, instead of always, the phrase all things. Some of your English translations have here instead of always the phrase all things. Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. But of course, Paul doesn't mean that literally, like you believe all things.

I, you know, I believe four plus four is nine. Okay, it's not noble, that's stupid to believe that. So what he means all things is in all circumstances, in all situations, consistently, always. What he means is always. And so that's why I think our English translations that go this route help us get more of what he's saying. So love is always supportive. If love is truly others-focused,

then it knows that life is hard, and so I'm going to be a source of stable support in the lives of the people around me. And that's because it always trusts. Love always has a belief that there is, it's what Luke, it's what Luke Skywalker says to his father, in the last life, there's still some good in you. I sense it, right, kind of thing good in you I sense it it's like that

so it's a trust that I'm in this relationship this is difficult this person's made in the image of God and they're acting like a black hole right now but I trust that Jesus is doing something

and can do something in this person to turn them into the very opposite of what they are right now. And so love will always hope, it will always hope for the best for this person, even if somebody hurt me. It doesn't mean I need to spend all my time around them anymore, but it does mean I reach a place where,

where is this person, the person that hurt me? What happened to them? What's all the screwed up stuff that they've experienced that makes the behavior they did to me seem fine to them? And so love is able to hope and say, man, I hope they catch a break. And I hope they figure out how much Jesus loves them and that they can find a better way forward.

Love always trusts and always hopes. And so love always perseveres and knows that there will always, for any meaningful relationship, to grow and be healthy, there will be setbacks and there will be challenges. Because love never fails. How you doing? Sixteen ways that I failed in the last seven days. Yeah? How are you feeling?

Sheesh. What do you do with this love celebrates the truth so there's there's something to acknowledging the spotlight like where did paul even get this idea of how to exist as a human. Who can live like this, right? Where did Paul get his definition of love? Whose life defines love for Paul? Geez, all right, so let's start there. So there's one human, and he's a remarkable human. He's even more than a human, but he's not less than a human. He's a human. And he's the human that you and I are made to be but perpetually fail to be. And that's the point. Like, love is able to look at the spotlight on all my wrongdoing and all my flaws and failures. And the paradox of being a Christian and receiving Jesus' love is that this exposure

of what's inside of me, it drives me neither to denial but also neither to despair. Right? Because denial just says, this is being way too self-analytical. It's like, well, no, it's not. The fact that we behave this way is why the world is the way that it is. Or why we don't behave this way.

It's not being overly analytical, it's being honest. And so there's no reason denying how we actually behave and think about each other. We're a whole planet of relational little black holes colliding into each other, sucking each other into our own oblivion. And if you think that's way too bleak of an estimate of human history, did you graduate high school?

Are you familiar with human history? My goodness. Look at what we're doing to each other. And so there's no reason denying that. But the paradox of the good news is it's precisely through that acknowledgement that I find my avoidance of despair. Because who Jesus is

and his victory over our sin and over our death, what's happening on the cross? The cross is precisely where Jesus allowed himself to get sucked into the oblivion of our selfishness and sin. He allowed it to destroy him. But our core confession is that God's love for us in the person of Jesus is more powerful

than our oblivion and our sin and our death. And that's what we celebrated on Resurrection Sunday. It's what we celebrate every Sunday as we gather on the first day of the week, which is the day of the week that Jesus broke the power of death and sin.

And so we don't go the path of despair either because we believe that Jesus is real and that the person who is this, the person who embodies all of this, of agape love, that he's alive and that he's in our midst, that his actual life presence is working on us, messing with us

and pushing us, growing our capacity through each other, through the scriptures, through all of the classic ways that people connect with Jesus and embody that through service to each other. And we celebrated a dozen people last week getting baptized that Jesus is messing with, and he's turning them into these kinds of people.

And it's neither denial nor despair. It's not being triumphant. It's just this humility that we sit in. Because what's valuable and true about me is that the Son of God loves me and he gave himself for me. Amen? That's what's true about me.

I know what kind of person I am, left to my own devices, but I'm not left to my own devices. That's the whole point. Amen? Amen. So here's what I'd like to do. I don't want this to remain theoretical. I want to close by just reading it through one last time,

but I'm going to read it through in a way that I'm purposefully going to draw to mind people in your life. Who's in your life? A spouse or roommates? People you work by? People in your family? People that you live next to? And as we read through it,

let just one, two, but probably not two, just one person, just let Jesus bring one person clear. Get their face right here as we read through it again. And just hold that relationship with that person

in your attention and prayers. And as we worship and pray as you come forward to take the bread and the cup, pray about the kind of human being that you are towards that person. And confess what you need to confess and dream and pray about what you could become for that person in your life. In the name of Jesus. In the last seven days,

who did you lose your patience with? Who were you unkind to in the last week? Whose good fortune were you just unable to celebrate because you were so self-focused? Who did you talk about yourself way too much when you were with this week? Who do you think you're way better than and so you treat them in ways that violate their dignity

who did you ignore their priorities so that you could prioritize your own and therefore you lost your temper with them when they didn't think your thing was more important than their thing. And now you're bitter and resentful about it. In what ways does your behavior show that you actually choose to live this way?

What would it look like to celebrate the truth of who you really are, left to your own devices and in light of the love of Jesus? Who did you back out on this week? Who have you given up believing in and hoping for? Who were you not around for when they needed you? Who did you fail?

Lord Jesus, we... We want to be honest and truthful about the patterns of our behavior, the patterns of our behavior, the patterns of our thinking, the way we regard ourselves, the way we treat other people. And it's not beautiful, Jesus. But we believe you are beautiful and who you are to us

and the way you spoke and treated people. You are love, Jesus. And we know that you love us despite the fact that we do not deserve it or respond to your love in a way that's appropriate. And so, Jesus, we need to be changed by you. Jesus, we celebrate the truth that even in light of our deepest flaws

and failures, you remain utterly committed to us. You are kind and you're patient. You're not easily angered by us. You stay eternally committed to us and you love us. And Jesus, we need your love to create new life and new realities and new capacities to love within us. So we come to the bread and the cup, Jesus. We participate and retell the story of your life-giving death that was for us. We need the power of your resurrection life and presence to make us new.

Thank you for your love for us, Jesus, and we pray in your name. Amen? Amen. As we do every week, feel free to get up during this time and take the bread and the cup. There's stations up front, in the back,

and then in the corners up here for you guys upstairs. If Jesus is messing with you, that's normal. He does that kind of thing. And if you would like to just pray with somebody, or maybe there's somebody on your mind or heart that you'd like to pray for,

you'll see our prayer team in position in the room. Our prayer team are always the folks that are going to be here in this little, whatever you call that, walkway right there, or somebody who's standing up at the back wall upstairs. And they're just there to pray with you or for you when you need here on Sundays. And of course, the giving boxes are also there where the bread and the cup is. This is the way we celebrate the generous love of Jesus. This Jesus is worthy of our worship and our allegiance. Amen? Yeah, let's give it to him.

All right, you guys. Thank you for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible podcast. We are going to be beginning a new series starting in the next episode. It's going to go for a while, and you'll find out what it is when we get there. So cheers. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.