Welcome to our service today. You can watch the service live at 10 am on Sunday - or anytime afterwards- by following this link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxBzxjBb3xU8ra2NHwvD_9A (remember to click on the 'live' tab) The Reading and Reflection are outlined below:  Reading 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. Reflection - Enduring Love There is a song that came out by a band called 'The Searchers' in 1963: I took my troubles down to Madame Rue You know that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth She's got a pad down on Thirty-Fourth and Vine Selling little bottles of Love Potion Number Nine I told her that I was a flop with chics I've been this way since 1956 She looked at my palm and she made a magic sign She said "What you need is Love Potion Number Nine" There are endless songs about wanting someone to love me, needing someone to love me. That girl, what was her name? Jill? Barbara? I would have liked her to have even liked me a little bit. But she just used me to get to the 6th Form ball. She needed a partner and we arrived and that was the last I saw of her. I’ve never gotten over it. Love stories are enormously important to many of us. Some of us have personal love stories, some of us don’t, some of us wish we had, and some perhaps wish we hadn’t. I fell in love with the right person. Or maybe you fell in love with the wrong person. But think of us together. This small part of God’s church. In the worship, the song the hymns the prayers. Telling again and again the greatest love story. A story that is in a way always partial. A story we tell always aware of our own limitations, our own shortcomings our own sins. We look through a glass dimly, but we still have a sense that this love is the most important thing, the most important story ever. And it's more than an emotional sense because we are told a story of love in the Bible that tells us what God’s love is all about. In Greek, there are a number of words we translate as love. Love potion number 9 would probably be Eros – the notion of physical or sexual love. I want someone to love me, which might be the word Phileo. That sense of love that we have in friendship. But the word for love in our reading today is that special sacred word. Agape. Love is not the love potion, but the love we know from God and when God’s love is manifest. Unconditional love. Love that is not part of a transaction. God loves simply because that is what God does. ‘God is love’ as read in John's letter. I’m guessing, but I think if there was one chapter in the Bible that people were most familiar with, it might be this chapter. And for Paul, who wrote these verses, it is his most enduring and most wonderful piece of poetic scripture. But the interesting thing here, and I certainly do not want to burst the bubble in terms of the beauty of this passage – but, the really startling thing about these verses, 1 Corinthians 13, Is that they were not written by Paul for people in love with each other. They were not written for people who were getting along, or people who wanted to be simply told “all you need is love.” These verses were written first for people facing division and real conflict. They were written not for people getting married, but the reverse. A church heading toward division. And Paul is saying, in the midst of the conflicts the things that are driving you apart, in this midst of all this upset; you have forgotten the bottom line. You have forgotten the foundation of our faith. You have forgotten the very source of our identity. That, as John tells us, "God so loves the world."  These verses on agape, on love, not when things are going well, but when things are falling apart. The Corinthian Church was not a place where everyone was the same.  This was not a comfortable gathering of like-minded people. We often like to say or believe that diversity enriches a community, but by the time Paul was writing to them, there was discord, rivalry, people dividing into different groups taking sides following one leader rather than another. So, a main point for Paul: Diversity is non-negotiable. God has called this community from an extraordinary range of backgrounds into the special fellowship called 'Koinonia.' United by their commitment to love, as Jesus loves. We talked at the Men’s Group on Wednesday about the challenges of speaking about love. On one hand, pretty well everyone agrees it is a good thing. In extreme examples, the worst dictator in the world might sit here today and agree. “Yes, comrade we need more love!” So how do we get from that to the difficult honest self-reflection that Paul wants us to make? We might say all the right words and seem to do the right thing, but without love, Paul tells us, you’re just a clanging symbol and noisy gong. The other really important point in this scripture is that it is not only about the present but also about the future. We make mistakes. We don’t love as we should. We have a sense that there is something more, even when we are not sure what that is. We live in a state of incompleteness. There is something about this love which is bigger and greater than our plans, or organisations or theories. Something greater even than our sense of helplessness or fear when confronted with the stories that diminish or silence us. Paul says: 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. Even when we realise our limitations, even when we see the challenges and problems about us,  - when we strive to love,  we also discover our purpose - that there will be a time when things are complete. God’s intention is for the restoration of all humanity. "Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known." The thing that tells us most about the time of fully knowing, is when we see actions motivated by love. There is a checklist here for those who want to take Paul’s message to heart. He’s asking wealthy and poor, he’s asking from those from the majority group and those from the minority, he’s asking people who have different gifts and skills, he’s asking men and women.He’s asking you and me about what it means to love in this way. So, here are the questions to ask someone who will be honest with you: Am I patient?  (In Greek, the word means long-tempered, or long-suffering. It’s the opposite of instant gratification. Opposite to drive in fast food. Are you prepared to wait for another? Even if waiting comes at a price?) Am I kind; Do I treat others with respect and compassion? Am I envious? Am I proud? Do I insist on getting my own way? Am I easily provoked? Do I bear all things? Do I believe all things; that Jesus teaches? Am I hopeful? Do I have endurance or grit? Sometimes we might find it all too easy to identify these shortcomings in others. That person over there. People look around this small 1st century church in Corinth and it is clear that they’re all too aware of these differences and failings in others. But Paul is saying to us that God isn’t offering here to change all those others that need to change. God offers to change us. We are, I am, called on to become a loving person. And that changes me. And it changes them, and deepens our relationship with God. Paul is telling us that if you really want another person to change, nothing works so well as relating to that person in love. For those Corinthians, and for us, this is the number one challenge.  To become patient and kind.  Not to be envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. To not insist on your own way. Not to be irritable or resentful. To love those close to you. The people in your life. In our work, in our church. Now we see through a glass dimly. But when we love in this way, we catch a glimpse of eternity. Part of God’s unfinished love story. A small picture of heaven. An incomplete vision, but still a vision of God’s Kingdom.  AMEN

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