Christ Lutheran Church
Cleveland, Ohio
February 14, 2010
by: Rev. Dean Kavouras
Quinquagesima
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of
these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13
In today's Gospel Jesus invites us to follow Him to Jerusalem. He is
well aware of the difficulties that lie ahead and warns us to expect
hard times; put away the vices of the flesh; and to learn those
virtues which He perfectly embodied for us. He is our Righteousness,
but also our standard. Without His virtue ours means nothing, and
without a standard no one would know how he is progressing. The
Commandments are some help but they’re mostly expressed in the
negative. But the best blueprint for Christian virtue is First
Corinthians chapter thirteen where the true pen of St. Paul (Jer. 8:8)
teaches us what Real Love is.
We are God's children, God in His love made us so. We have been born
again of water and the Spirit, by faith we have renounced the devil
with all his wicked works and wicked ways, and so we don’t want to
sin. Yes we have temptations, even the Holy Son of God had those, but
when we fail it is because of weakness, not because we don't care.
During Lent Mother Church gathers us to herself and helps us to grow
stronger. She teaches us to confess our sins, and to believe the
words of absolution which Jesus gained on the cross, and commanded His
church to pronounce. She further ministers to us with Christian
education, training in righteousness, and instills the three eternal
virtues of faith, hope and love, within us.
Do not think of these virtues as works, but rather as dispositions of
the soul! They might be admired, and even be thinly imitated by the
“natural man” (1 Cor. 2:14), but they can only be given a man by
Divine Revelation. You might have the body of an athlete, the mental
breadth of Aristotle and the perspective of Leonardo da Vinci. But
without the love of Christ all that excellence serves the Prince of
this World who consumes you and leaving nothing but bitterness.
Has that been happening to you? Do you have the idea that all of your
talents and virtues are being wasted? Flesh gets in the way, but
don’t be discouraged because we can never exhaust the store of
remission and healing that the blood of Christ secured for us. Our
love falters but His is constant, on this you can rely.
There are other virtues, natural ones that serve us only in this life,
such as wisdom, moderation, courage and honesty. But the three
virtues Paul wrote about come from the Holy Spirit and are the sole
possession of the Baptized. Faith needs good promises to believe.
Hope needs the revelation of heaven as its resting place, and love can
only be born of love received. The Holy Spirit alone can give us the
“new and contrite hearts” we will pray for in the Collect on Ash
Wednesday, and genuine love requires a new heart. Other virtues are
temporary, but these three abide, and by God’s grace they all work
together for our good.
By faith we mean far more than just saying the Creed, the devil knows
the Creed. Faith means confidence that Jesus came to seek and save
the lost; and that the divine blood He shed on the cross was for us
men and for our salvation. He didn’t die to be a martyr for a vague
cause, but to be the eternal sacrifice for the sins of all men, and
that includes us. But the Gospel is not an ideology. Faith
necessarily includes seeking Christ where He wants to be found. Not
in nature, mysticism, stoicism, vain philosophies, altar calls or at
Starbucks on Sunday mornings, but in the Living Word as it is received
in baptism, absolution and the Holy Sacrament. This is our standard
for faith.
By hope we do not mean wishing but rather the earnest expectation that
God will bring our lives to their proper fulfillment. He loves you
and will do this for you. Wherever you find yourself today, please
remember that: God will bring your life to the proper fulfillment. We
do not hope for what we see, but for God Himself, for His gifts, His
fellowship, His presence in our lives, and being with Him in
“everlasting Righteousness, Innocence and Blessedness.” That is the
standard for hope.
Then there is love, which is always active and not reducible to words.
There is erotic love which, within the bounds of marriage, is part of
God's Providence; there is the love of a friend, based on common
interests, which is also a blessing. But these are still short of
what St. Paul is describing. He is calling us to that supernatural
and divine love which the Bible calls agape. It is this love that led
the Father to give His Son, and the Son to lay down His life for us.
This love sacrifices for others. It is the kind of love that Ayn
Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged, could never understand. It desires to
bless others regardless of their worthiness or the cost to one's self.
It is not a feeling, nor an emotion, but neither is it an act of the
human will; because no one can choose to exert agape except he has
first received it from God in Christ. This kind of love hates evil but
loves all creatures great and small. It abhors the smothering and
destructive “love” of societal saviors with which our world is awash!
It doesn’t patronize people, or consider itself better than others,
but goes to work wherever it can without command and mostly without
appreciation, recognition or reward. By that standard we need to
examine our love.
The highest good is the Cross of Jesus, without which there can be
neither faith, hope nor love. There will always be a temptation to
set ourselves up as the highest good, that is a sin against the First
Commandment, having yourself as your god. The flesh doesn't want to
hear this, but doesn't it come up all too often? Shall I perform my
God-given vocations today, or shall I tickle myself? Shall I give my
first fruits to the Church, or shall I buy myself another toy? Pride
must always be overcome and genuine love grows. It comes hard at
first, but it gets easier as we recognize the great debt that has been
forgiven us. May our annual Lenten journey to Calvary help us to
adorn our new and contrite hearts with spiritual virtues, the greatest
of which is love. Amen.
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