Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:4-7; Matthew 18:23-35; Galatians 3:28; Matthew 18:21-22 Series: 2021
Second in an Easter series on the ‘works of love’ (1 Corinthians 13), this sermon takes up ‘love believes all things.’ Opening with a poker memory and the adage that you don’t want to be the sucker, Wilson contrasts worldly fear of deception with Pauline love. He distinguishes love from the naif, the wicked, the yes-man, the troll, and the mistrustful, arguing that the truly loving person who believes all things cannot really be deceived—because to deceive one full of love is only to deceive oneself. The Avett Brothers’ ‘Ballad of Love and Hate’ models love waiting undeceived for the repentant. Refusing the role of ‘heavenly HR department,’ he reads 1 Corinthians 13 as a portrait of Jesus (Jesus believes in you) rather than an ethical guideline, and pairs Jesus’ seventy-times-seven forgiveness with the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18). The call: stop judging others’ worthiness, receive mercy and pass it on, and live this out as members of Christ’s body in the church.
Illustrations: poker-with-grandfather-john-huebel, poker-sucker-at-the-table, dr-pepper-10-2-4-commercial, online-discourse-pr-talking-points, avett-brothers-ballad-of-love-and-hate, heavenly-hr-department-metaphor
Love Believes All
April 18
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:7
The first person I ever played poker with was my grandfather, John Huebel. He loved wildcards and hated betting real money, at least with the grand kids. He had poker chips and we’d play with poker chips, and he might’ve bet with his friends, but with his grandkids, it was all pretend. Or it was like penny, nickel, dime. We usually played seven card stud or five card draw with wild cards, whatever the rotating dealer would pick when he would deal. My grandfather would often pick five card draw Dr. Pepper, which was tens, twos, and fours are wild. Thanks to the old Dr. Pepper commercial, where you should have a Dr. Pepper at 10, two and four, which just seems like a lot of sugar in a person’s body. It was fun to play with granddad.
But there’s an adage in poker: if you sit down at a table and you can’t point out the sucker, then you are the sucker. Poker is a game where you don’t want to be deceived. You want to be the deceiver in order to win. What does that have to do with love? My brothers and sisters. We are continuing our series on the works of love, responding to God in this season of Easter. On how we can put into practice the reality of Christ’s resurrection. We’re looking at a few different verses in first Corinthians. Last week, we talked about how love builds up, how love is not an addition to our lives, but is the foundation. This week, we’re talking about how love believes all things. The whole of chapter 13 is one of history’s great poetic masterpieces in Greek or in English or in any language. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 ESV
There’s a reason why this chapter is read at so many weddings. Love is patient. When you love someone you’re patient with them. Love is kind. When you love someone, you’re kind to them. Love does not boast, Et cetera. But then it’s as if Paul crescendos with this next part: love believes all things. All things, Paul? I mean, if you believe all things, doesn’t that make you a sucker? There’s a lot of people out there selling things. The internet is full of people who want to give you the deal of a lifetime. Deals that are too good to be true, over and over again. Like with most of the Bible, we have a chance to take Paul’s words seriously or unseriously. Unseriously is to take them to mean, ‘Oh, it’s a nice sentiment. But we live in a real world, Paul, you wouldn’t understand what I have to go through, Paul, you don’t get it, Paul. There’s a lot of snakes out there, Paul.’ To take it seriously, though, is to look at the world in a different way.
In order to take Paul seriously, I want us to think of a few ways that we can respond to the world.
The Naif believes everything that is said, just because it is said. This is different from love. We don’t want to be naive. Love believes not out of ignorance but because love is centered on the absolute truth of God and not the proximate risks in front of us. The wicked one believes everything said that is evil because they are wicked. The yes-man believes whatever the boss says, the troll believes whatever will bother the people they don’t like. A lot of these responses you can really see in online discourse. I mean, if you’re not online, God bless you. But there are certain key words and groupings and ways of making sure that you have the proper response and policing other people’s response to different news of the day. There’s almost a sense that when news items come out, everybody is being given a public relations line. And what public relations teaches, for instance, in an interview, never answer the question asked, but the one you wish was asked, it’s a sure way to not talk to people. Is the point dialogue and communication, or is the point getting your message across? Is it just about your message?
The mistrustful one believes nothing. They do the opposite of what love does. Mistrust sees other people, as competition, as threats. It sees the world as threats, Mistrust divides the world into us and them, they are after it, they are trying to get it. We’ve got to protect ourselves from them. Yet in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. He says there is neither Jew nor Greek. There’s neither slave nor free. There is no man and woman, all are one in Christ Jesus To believe all things is to be unafraid of losing, to be unafraid of being called a sucker. To not want to look like the smartest in the room, like the cleverest in the room. Love, though, believes all things.
Okay. So all of those are ways of responding to the words of others. How do we understand ‘believes all things’? Does love believe all things on the internet? I mean, Paul didn’t have internet at this time. Paul isn’t talking about people far away but people in our lives. But the key here for Paul is to realize that what Paul is saying is that if your heart is full of love, you’re willing to be deceived. Being the sucker is not the worst thing that could happen to you. In fact, the truly loving one who believes all things cannot be deceived, because to try and deceive him is to deceive oneself. If I try and to deceive someone who loves me, I am only deceiving myself. If my child lies to me and my love is full, my love is not going to change.
And good example of this is the Avett Brothers song the Ballad of Love and Hate
Love writes a letter and sends it to Hate My vacation’s ending, I’m coming home late The weather was fine and the ocean was great And I can’t wait to see you again”
Hate reads the letter and throws it away “No one here cares if you go or you stay I barely even noticed that you were away I’ll see you or I won’t, whatever”
And there a lot of verses, but then it ends in this beautiful moment of reconciliation.
Love has been waiting patient and kind Just wanting a phone call or some kind of sign That the one that she cares for who’s out of his mind Will make it back safe to her arms
Hate stumbles forward and leans in the door Weary head hung down, eyes to the floor He says, “Love, I’m sorry, ” and she says, “What for? I’m yours and that’s it, whatever I should not have been gone for so long I’m yours and that’s it, forever Your mine and that’s it, forever”
Love is not deceived here in this song. Hate deceives himself and love is there on the other side of the epiphany.
So what does this mean practically, pastor? I mean, it’s a nice song and sentiment and it is good to be patient, but there is a limit, right? We’ve got to be responsible.
Good question.
Many of you have really important jobs and you’ve been in really important positions of authority in your career and in your life. And you’ve had to make decisions about hiring and firing people, about responding to situations of making critical decisions for the life of your company, for the life of your nonprofit or state. All of you have had to make critical decisions for the life of your family and this is good and important, but we have to be weary of falling into this trap of putting ourselves into the position of a heavenly HR department or c-suite or heavenly parent where we are the ones making the judgment on the worthiness of others. Jesus didn’t come to die on a cross to show us the best practices for running a business, but to offer us life eternal beyond the scarcity of this world. Let us not think about ‘Love believing all things’ from a position of righteousness, but from the opposite one. Paul isn’t giving us an ethical guideline with 1 Corinthians 13. Paul doesn’t say, ’be patient. Be kind.’ Paul instead shows us how Jesus acts and how Jesus loves. We can easily replace the word love here with the word Jesus: Jesus is patient, Jesus is kind, Jesus believes all things, Jesus believes in you. Jesus is not a sucker for believing in you. Even when you have strayed, even when your brother has strayed, even when the people in your life have strayed. Jesus believes in you. Even when it doesn’t make any more sense, Jesus believes in you. Even when you have burned every bridge and yet refuse to admit that you are at rock bottom, Jesus believes in you.
So we should trust others, even when they’re not worthy of that trust. In the gospels, when Jesus is asked how often should someone forgive a brother who wrongs then? So it’s not seven times, but seven times seven times or seven times 77 times. Jesus doesn’t mean that you should forgive 49 times or 539 and then stop forgiving. You should forgive again and again. This is the parable Jesus says to explain himself.
Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle accounts, they brought to him a servant who owed him ten thousand bags of gold. Because the servant didn’t have enough to pay it back, the master ordered that he should be sold, along with his wife and children and everything he had, and that the proceeds should be used as payment. But the servant fell down, kneeled before him, and said, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’ The master had compassion on that servant, released him, and forgave the loan. “When that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred coins. He grabbed him around the throat and said, ‘Pay me back what you owe me.’ “Then his fellow servant fell down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he threw him into prison until he paid back his debt. “When his fellow servants saw what happened, they were deeply offended. They came and told their master all that happened. His master called the first servant and said, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you appealed to me. Shouldn’t you also have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’” Matthew 18:23-35 CEB
It is so easy to fall into this trap of receiving mercy and then refusing to give it. It is an act of faith to stop putting ourselves in the position of judgment. It has to all start with God. Let us stop putting ourselves in positions of spiritual authority. Let us come humbly to the table and receive the mercy that we have been given. Let us not receive mercy and then turn around and spit on our brothers and sisters. Let us turn around and share that mercy.
Jesus believes in you. Jesus forgives you. This is what it means to believe all things and not be deceived. It’s hard to be willing to be a sucker for Jesus. You need other people. You need the Holy spirit to stand with you and remind you that God is the center. We need each other to remind us how to show love. To remind us of our past. To remind us of our future with God. This is what it means to be a part of a church. To join a church is to join a club of the perfect put together but, as our mission has it, a community where imperfect people are transformed by the perfect love of God and change the world together. We are not members of a club but members of a body: hands and feet and eyes and ears and shoulders, a place where we can admit and proclaim to each other that God believes in you. Where we can hold each other to account when we are not sharing the mercy we have received. And where we can keep all of our focus on the miraculous beauty of God’s overriding love for us.
In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.