The Purpose of a Church - Epiphany 5

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Every congregation, from the one in Corinth almost 2,000 years ago to those just starting out today, wants to know what God’s purpose is for it. We have an idea that God wants us to do something with our life together, and so congregations spend time doing 360 degree evaluations, doing listening circles, and developing vision statements. We come up with five-year mission plans, and when we’re done, we go through the list of things we were supposed to do, and the criteria for success, and we check off what was achieved and what wasn’t, and then we do the whole thing again. Because we want to fulfill God’s purpose for our congregation. I know––this is one of the first things I did in my first congregation.

But when it comes to figuring out what God’s purpose for a church is, sometimes we end up confusing the means for fulfilling God’s purpose for us with the end, or the actual purpose. And by ‘we’ I mean Christians in general. Congregations get confused into thinking that our programs and our filled pews and our overflowing bank accounts are the purpose of the church. Congregations can spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on church programs, and church consultants, and growth initiatives that are meant to bring people in the door. The purpose of the church becomes one of self-growth and of sustaining the congregation. And then, over time, we start thinking that God’s purpose for our life as a congregation is to keep the momentum going. We start celebrating anniversaries like 50 years, or 75 years, or even 100 years. And then, over time, as resources dwindle, we start thinking that God’s purpose for congregations––for Christian communities––is that we simply exist. That merely surviving is fulfilling God’s purpose for us. That managing to meet the budget every year is fulfilling. That simply gathering to worship on Sundays is fulfilling God’s purpose for us. Advent isn’t there yet, but one day, it will be.

But these programs and budgets and Sunday School and youth groups are all meant to be tools to help the church to fulfill its actual purpose, which is clearly laid out for us in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. The purpose of the Christian community is to love. As Paul says, “If I do not have love, I am nothing.” If we do not have love, we are nothing. We may have flashy programs and filled pews, and balanced budgets, and we maybe be able to carry on for the next fifty years, but if we do not have love, we have nothing.

Now “love” is a pretty loaded word. It’s a shame that in English we only have one word for love, because there are lots of different kinds. The love you have for your spouse is different than the love you have for your children, which is different than the love you have for your country, or the love you have for chocolate, and definitely different than the love you have for God. So which kind of love is Paul talking about in this passage? Which kind of love is it that fulfills us and gives purpose to our lives?

Well, we’re lucky that Greek has different words for love. There’s philos, which means a brotherly or sisterly kind of love––the love you have between equals––your siblings or cousins or very close friends. There’s eros, which we often use to describe erotic love, but we can also use it to describe the kind of love that borders on covetousness. When you love someone or something so much it consumes your life and you, in turn, try to consume it. Like, if you’ve ever seen a tiny baby and said, “Oh, I just want to eat you up!”, that’s an example of eros love. Eros is more than what we describe as erotic love––it’s any love that is possessive––where we want to grab the object of our love and just hold it tight. If we love the idea of our church so much that we want to grab it and make it ours and keep it that way forever, that’s eros. If you love chocolate so much that you can’t stop eating it if it’s in front of you, that’s eros. When you fall in love, that starts as eros. It’s not a bad kind of love––the Song of Solomon is full of this love, toddlers and small children have this kind of love for their parents when they demand, “Hug me, kiss me, play with me!”––It’s not bad, but it can certainly become very unhealthy, destructive even, because, in the end, it is love for the sake of the one who is loving, and not for the sake of the one who is loved. 

Then, of course, there’s agape love. Agape is entirely centered on the one that we love. It is, in a way, the opposite of eros. While eros is a love where the lover wants to consume the object of love, agape is a love where the lover gives her- or himself up completely for the sake of the loved. In agape, we give up everything––our selves, our time, and our possessions, we might say––for the sake of the one we love. Agape is the love parents have for their children when they encourage them to leave so they can grow and mature and have their own lives, even if it breaks our own hearts. Agape is the love that says, “I’m going to walk to the store instead of driving because it’s better for the environment.” (Although maybe not this morning.) Agape is the love that says, “I will let the other person take credit for that job because they need it more.” Agape, as Paul says in our reading, “does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. Agape is patient; agape is kind; Agape is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.” That is actually what it says. The “love” in 1 Corinthians is agape love, not eros love. It is a love that puts aside all thought of what I or we want, in order to make room for the other, as hard as that is. It is a completely selfless love, and it is the most difficult and painful love of all, because it runs completely contrary to our evolutionary self-preservation instincts.

And yet it is the love that God calls us to, and the love God has made us for. As Paul says so clearly, if we do not have agape, we are nothing. It’s so strange––agape is a love that calls us to give up everything we are, and yet if we do not love that way, if we hold on to everything we are, then we are nothing. God, in this funny, paradoxical twist, has made us so that we are most fulfilled, we most have life, when we live contrary to our biological imperative for self-preservation. God has made humans so that our supreme purpose in life, our moment of ultimate fulfillment comes not from securing our own life, or ensuring our own survival, but from ensuring it for those outside of ourselves. Our greatest purpose in life, our greatest meaning, comes from love––from  agape.

So what does this mean for the congregation of Advent? Well, the same thing that it means for every congregation, actually. Paul’s words, you see, are to the congregation in Corinth. They weren’t written to an individual, even though they’re often used that way. The original audience of Paul’s words about agape were to a church community––his words are meant first for congregations. And so Paul is saying that if the community does not have agape, it is nothing. If the community or congregation designs programs meant to bring others into itself, and focuses on budgets that support only itself, and plans worship to bring people in only for itself, then the love the congregation has for the world is an eros love––a love that wants to bring others in and consume them for its own sake. The congregation does not have agape. The congregation is nothing. No matter how great the programs, how attractive the worship service, how packed the Sunday School rooms are, if it is all for itself, it is nothing. It may be a great place to be, and lively, and a wonderful social support, but it is not fulfilling its purpose as the body of Christ––it is not church. It’s not bad, it’s just not church.

Church is different because church is agape. God’s purpose for every church is that it live for the sake of others. And you know, as an interesting aside, this has implications for interfaith relations. This week happens to be the United Nations Week for Interfaith Harmony, and one of the statements that was passed at the ELCIC’s National Convention a few years ago was the adoption of the United Nation’s “Welcoming the Stranger” Statement. [https://www.lutheranworld.org/content/resource-welcoming-stranger and http://elcic.ca/Documents/documents/EncounteringPeopleOfOtherFaiths-InterfaithGuidelines.pdf] And one of the profound things in this statement is that it says, specifically: “I will respect the right of the stranger to practice his or her own faith freely. I will seek to create space where he or she can freely worship.”

Isn’t that amazing? That we, as people of the Christian faith, are called to create space where strangers of a different faith can freely worship? “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Above our hope in Christ, above our faith in the God of Israel through Christ, the greatest thing we are called to is to love the way Christ does, which is agape love, which serves others, regardless of their faith and their hopes.

For Christians, agape is embodied most fully for us in Christ. And this is how we find our purpose and our fulfillment both because God made us to be this way and because this is how God loves us. We love because God first loves us. God does not love us with an eros love, hoping to consume us. God loves us with an agape love, giving up God’s honour and power and glory in order to take on a human body and then giving that body up for death. God emptied God’s self for us, God gave us everything, God gave us God’s own self in Jesus Christ for our sake. That is agape. Living for the sake of others. Dying for the sake of others. So that we might experience the blessing and fulfillment of living in agape. So that we, too, might have the joy and satisfaction of giving ourselves, in turn, for others.

So. What is God’s purpose for Advent? It is the same purpose given to every congregation, from the beginning of the Christian church under Paul until the very last day. To love. Not to survive, not even to thrive, but to love. Surviving is nothing. Thriving is nothing. All that there is is love. “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” For the agape God has for us, and in which we find our true purpose, we say, Thanks be to God. Amen.