The LOVE Chapter - Jeremy Duncan

Confidence to be ourselves. Together.

We forget how diverse the first Christian communities were. Maybe it’s because we’re from a long line of “if you don’t agree, go somewhere else.” Or we’re used to finding people like us at church, not people different from us. Or we think similarity is what the healthy body of Christ looks like. The groups of people in churches like the one Paul started in Corinth would have found each other strange. Paul gets that, and still, in the face of conflict he keeps saying, “Draw closer. Draw closer to each other. It’s your difference that makes you beautiful.” Series text: second half of 1 Corinthians.

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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.

Jeremy Duncan: 00:06

Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. We are in 1st Corinthians right now, and we did a series last year called Make good choices, where we looked at some of the themes in the first half of the letter.

Jeremy Duncan: 00:32

This year we started in chapter 12 and we're making our way toward the end of the letter, and that means that last week we encountered one of Paul's most famous metaphors, the church as the body. And there was fun stuff that we got to look at there. In particular, some images of the Asclepion or the temple of Asclepius. That was that image of all of those different body parts, pastor casts of legs and arms and hands and ears. The idea was that in Corinth, if you were injured and you needed healing, you would bring a cast of your injured body part to the temple, and hire a priest to pray over it to Asclepius, the God of healing and medicine.

Jeremy Duncan: 01:17

That's Asclepius on the wall behind me right now, by the way. And that particular background in Corinth really I think helps to bring some context to Paul's language in chapter 12. It's not random that Paul talks about bodies in this letter to this community. This is a uniquely Corinthian metaphor. And that alone is worth paying attention to.

Jeremy Duncan: 01:41

Paul's writings were never intended originally to be written down and copied and passed around for centuries, millennia. They were intended for specific communities in particular contexts. Now, that doesn't mean we can't learn from them. Of course we can. That's what we're doing right now.

Jeremy Duncan: 01:59

But it does mean it takes work to excavate Paul's intent. For example, in chapter 12, Paul starts by talking about our gifts. What it is that we uniquely bring to community. And he says, I don't want you to be uninformed about this. You have something special that only you can bring that someone near you needs.

Jeremy Duncan: 02:23

But, even before he gets to his big metaphor, he's already subtly shifting the focus. He says, one God can create all of these wildly different creative, yet equally necessary gifts, and one God can welcome all of these wildly different creative yet equally necessary experiences. It's Paul that links together the value of gifts like prophecy and wisdom and healing with the significance of our lived experience, things like ethnicity and economic location. The implication being that all of it is gift when it is brought with an open hand into community and welcomed. However, his big move comes at the end when Paul says things like, an eye can't say to the hand, I don't need you, and the head can't say to the feet, I don't need you.

Jeremy Duncan: 03:20

And this is what I think he's really getting at in this section. When we come together, not just parts, but a body, when we bring our full selves and we welcome our full neighbor, we can start the work of healing ourselves. Unlike those disembodied parts in the Asklepion with professional priests crying out to silent gods, when Christ's community shows up and musters the courage to welcome all of us into itself, We actually start the work of healing ourselves and maybe eventually even the world. So, that was chapter 12 or all of it at least except the last verse. So we'll start there today, but first let's pray.

Jeremy Duncan: 04:09

Christ who calls this body beautiful, not because of what we are now, but because of all the potential that you see in us. To bring our full selves in strength, to welcome our neighbor with courage, to embody a presence in your world confident that we are beloved, and that we can therefore love well in return. Right? Our anxiety about our difference slowly be swallowed up in excitement over what we might learn from those near us, believing that our perspective on you is limited by design, and made whole only in shared story. For those questions that we wrestle with alone, or those doubts we sometimes harbor silently, might we give voice and space and welcome to the one beside us to answer, To enter in and offer correction, to provide a new way forward, or simply to listen in quiet acceptance of our story.

Jeremy Duncan: 05:15

By that shared journey, illuminate the path that you have laid ahead of us. And slowly might that path lead us over time to steps that contribute to your kingdom come in small moments here on earth, In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Last week, we read all of chapter 12, except as I said, the final verse, and that means today we have verse 31 to launch us into chapter 13. And today we're going to talk about Gen Z and greater gifts, the love chapter, and what to do with it all.

Jeremy Duncan: 05:56

First though, 1st Corinthians 13. That may twig a bit of a memory for you. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast.

Jeremy Duncan: 06:06

Love protects, always trusts, always always hopes, always perseveres. If you're anything like me and you've been at a wedding or 2, these are words that you may have heard before. Now, full disclosure here. We are almost 10 years into Commons Church and I have done 100 upon 100 and 100 of sermons in that time. I have officiated close to a 100 weddings in this church at that time.

Jeremy Duncan: 06:30

And I have never, as far as I can tell, because I looked through my notes, read those words from this stage in that time ever. It just hasn't happened yet. Now, some of that is in my control. I have some say in how our teaching outlines unfold each year. But generally in a wedding, I take my, cues from the couple.

Jeremy Duncan: 06:51

And I will work with whatever verses you want me to read and yet none of you have ever asked me to read those words at your wedding. I think I have a theory for why. I think that sometimes passages are so legitimately beautiful that they become so ubiquitous that they slowly start to lose any sense of meaning. Right? And I think that's at least part of what's happened here to this quote unquote love chapter in 1st Corinthians.

Jeremy Duncan: 07:19

I mean this stuff is solid. It's just like it's too common for our own good. And to be fair, we are constantly falling into this trap of fighting our way back out of familiarity and continually finding new ways to say old things. I'm sure I've told you this before, I think, but my son used the word sus at the dinner table a while ago. And that did not pass the vibe check with my wife who was low key gonna put him on blast till I was like, ayo, chill baby girl.

Jeremy Duncan: 07:50

That doesn't warrant the side eye. By the way, gen z translations of anything are hilarious. Take the beatitudes from Matthew 5, another sometimes all too familiar passage. I read this this week. JC began to go off saying, w to those who aren't thirsty for this midlife, for they will have it eternal.

Jeremy Duncan: 08:10

And, w, to those who take l's from this life, for they will receive an everlasting, w. W, to those who don't throw hands, for they will secure the eternal bag. W to those who want help passing God's vibe check, for he will say bet. W to those who don't cancel others, for they will not be canceled by the top g. W to those whose spiritual fit is immaculate, for their hearts will be cuffed by God.

Jeremy Duncan: 08:35

W to those who turn ops into bros, for they will be called CEOs of peace. W to those who catch hands for being valid, for they will not be left on read by God. And finally, w to you, when the ops be cappin' so very hard and they do you so very dirty because you are my fam. Trust. You have crushed it and have secured the eternal w.

Jeremy Duncan: 08:57

Now, if you if you have no idea what any of that means, then go and read Matthew 5 verses 3 to 10. It's actually a pretty solid translation. No cap. But this is legit part of our problem here in 1st Corinthians, I think. Not so much uncovering some deep context like last week, but certainly digging through some of our own bias and properly seeing what we have skimmed over probably one too many times before.

Jeremy Duncan: 09:29

And so here we go, after 10 years and hundreds of weddings, it's finally Paul on love. But as I said, we actually need to start by pulling back to one verse from the last chapter. Because Paul does his run on gifts, and he ties them into our lived experiences, human beings. He says that everything you bring with you into community, what is unique about you, including your personal story. All of that is necessary here because rank is an outdated concept in Christ.

Jeremy Duncan: 10:04

But, then he says this, now eagerly desire the greater gifts, and yet I will show you the most excellent way. And this is a verse that commentators have struggled with for a very long time. Like, what does that mean in the context of a chapter where Paul has just systematically broken down all our attempts to enforce hierarchy within Christian community? That he now switches to talking about the quote unquote greater gifts. It seems just a little bit out of place.

Jeremy Duncan: 10:38

And there's a number of different ways that scholars have wrestled with this. And the first is to take this translation at face value. Paul is telling them slash us to desire the greater gifts, which sort of then immediately shifts the conversation to determining what the greater gifts are. And there's 2 very general approaches here. Both assume that the list preceding this in verses 27 to 30 gives us an answer.

Jeremy Duncan: 11:07

Approach A says the list is ascending. Therefore, the greatest gifts are at the end. Therefore, tongues being last is the greatest gift. Desire that. And some Pentecostal groups take this approach and they argue that well, speaking in tongues is available to everyone and that is precisely what makes it the greater gift we all experience together.

Jeremy Duncan: 11:30

The other approach is to assume that the list is descending. So, the greater gifts are the first ones making the gifts of prophetic and apostleship the ones we should be hoping for the most. And I think of this as sort of a leadership approach. Everyone is essential, but those who are leading and guiding should be honored special. I'm going to be honest here.

Jeremy Duncan: 11:53

That seems like way too simplistic, a way to think about this and honestly entirely out of sync with everything Paul has been saying. Besides, you are basically just left deciding which ones you want to be the greater gift. Ascending, descending, front or back, first to last, you're not really understanding Paul's intent any deeper. Now granted, Paul does say this, that those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts we think of as less honorable should be treated with special honor. So it's not necessarily completely out of the realm of possibility that he has some internal ranking in mind here.

Jeremy Duncan: 12:33

I just I don't think that's totally in line with the larger intent of the chapter. So, strategy B. This one sees all of chapter 13 as a parenthetical or a side note. Essentially, this approach reads the last verse of chapter 12, eagerly desire the greater gifts and I will show you the most excellent way, And then skips directly to chapter 14 verse 1 for the answer which reads, follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy. So, there's your answer.

Jeremy Duncan: 13:11

The greater gift is prophecy. And chapter 13 13 then is read as either written independently and accidentally inserted between these 2 verses by someone, or maybe as just Paul riffing on an idea before he comes back to his main point. Now remember, Paul's letters were dictated. Somebody was writing them out as he talked. So it's not entirely unreasonable to think that Paul might have just wandered off into a new thought before he got back to his main train.

Jeremy Duncan: 13:44

The conclusion though is that Paul is talking about prophecy here at the end of chapter 12. That is the greater gift and the one we should eagerly desire. Now, spoiler, I think there's a better way to approach this. We'll get there in a minute, but I do want to pause here and I want to talk about prophecy just for a second, because often when people use this term in church what they're really talking about is fortune telling. And when I say it like that you probably have the same kind of uncomfy feelings that I do and you probably should.

Jeremy Duncan: 14:18

Fortune telling is not our bag in church, and neither is it in scripture. In Fact, I wrote about this in Upside Down Apocalypse because it's very important in reading Revelation to understand that biblically the prophetic is not about telling the future, it's about telling the truth. Now, truth telling can be focused on consequence. Right? So you will often get the prophets of the Hebrew scripture saying things like, look, I know what you're doing and if you don't change your ways it will end in ruin for you.

Jeremy Duncan: 14:54

That speaks to the future. It's predictive in a sense, but the whole point in saying that, in speaking that truth is precisely so that future can be avoided. So the point of prophecy is not predictive, it's corrective. Well, at least in that example, prophecy could also be encouraging. Keep doing what you're doing and God will keep being pleased with you.

Jeremy Duncan: 15:16

That's also a way to tell the truth. The point is when Paul says in chapter 14, follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the spirit, especially prophecy, I don't think he's talking about you getting to predict the future for your friends. He's talking about you getting to speak the truth in love to the people you care about the most. In fact, I tend to take probably the most straightforward approach here. I read chapter 14 as the direct follow-up to chapter 13, love is the north star.

Jeremy Duncan: 15:52

Therefore, if you're going to worry about gifts at all, focus on how you can speak the most loving, truthful, encouraging, corrective words you possibly can, tell the truth, and do it in love always. Okay. What about chapter 12 verse 31, that verse that's been holding up the show here and stopping us from getting to the love chapter in the first place? Well, the third approach here is to recognize that the verb translated eagerly desire, zelo in Greek or zealously, just so happens to look exactly the same in both the imperative and the indicative mood of Greek. And since we're in the Greek weeds already, the Greek conjunction kai here can be read in the continuous or the comparative mode.

Jeremy Duncan: 16:41

And all that means is the verse could be read, now eagerly desire the comparative gifts and I will show you the most excellent way or it could be read, you desire the greater gifts, but I will show you a more excellent way. Both of those sentences look the same in Greek. You have to decide what fits best based on the context. And for me, coming from the context of chapter 12 where Paul has gone out of his way to say that no one is higher than anyone else in Christian community. There is no hierarchy here.

Jeremy Duncan: 17:17

Not based on gifts. Not based on economics, not based on ethnicity. This thing we call church is based on a Trinitarian imagination of continuous gift and reception in stark contrast to absolutely everything else around us. I think the best way to read the last verse of chapter 12 is a corrective. You have zealously, maybe even jealously desired the greater gifts, but now I will offer you something better.

Jeremy Duncan: 17:51

And I think that makes chapter 13 suddenly a lot more interesting. Not just a side note or a parenthetical, but now no longer some quaint words for the back of your wedding invites, now a pointed and powerful correction to some of our most deeply ingrained instincts as human beings. A pushback against this constant want to create our identity over and against what someone else brings to the table. Paul says, I do not want you to be uninformed about your gifts. They are good and they are sacred.

Jeremy Duncan: 18:30

And yet you keep coming back to this idea of hierarchy. So let's try another approach here. Let me come at it another way. Let's talk about what all of this is really pointed at, and this is what he says. If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but I do not have love, I am only a resounding gong, a clanging cymbal.

Jeremy Duncan: 18:52

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge. If I have faith that can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. Note, I might even suggest here that if you can do all that really and you don't have love, you're not nothing, you're a net negative. Let's let Paul cook. Verse 3.

Jeremy Duncan: 19:13

If I give all I possess to the poor, I give my body over to hardship that I may boast, but I do not have love, I gain gain nothing. Because love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others.

Jeremy Duncan: 19:28

It is not self seeking. It is not easily angered. It helps no record of wrong. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. He always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Jeremy Duncan: 19:43

Love never fails. Now, whether our prophecies, they will cease and whether our tongues, they will be stilled. Whether is knowledge, it will pass away because we know only in part and we prophesy in part. But when completeness comes, what is in part disappears completely. When I was a child, I talked like a child.

Jeremy Duncan: 20:04

I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child, but when I grew up, I put the ways of childhood behind me. In the same way today we see only as a reflection in a mirror, but someday we will see face to face. And today, I know only in part, but someday I will know as fully as I am known by God. I know these three remain, faith and hope and love, but the greatest of these is undoubtedly love.

Jeremy Duncan: 20:34

First Corinthians 13, the whole thing. Now, I almost feel like we could just leave it at that, pack up and head out and let Paul's words sink in, but there are just a couple of things I want to point out while we're here that we can carry with us into the week. And first, I want to go back to where I couldn't help but throwing in a quick comment earlier. This idea that Paul starts with that whatever you bring with you to community, however good and true and beautiful it could be, if it's not grounded in love, it's not that. I've been adding my own commentary suggesting that gifts and skills and talent that are not grounded in love, anything less than love are a net negative to those around us.

Jeremy Duncan: 21:23

Now, here's where I'm getting that. 1st, from personal experience of being around incredibly talented people who didn't know how to use their gifts in kind ways. Right? We've all had that. But second, from living out of that reality for far too long.

Jeremy Duncan: 21:42

Do you know what it's like being married to someone who talks for a living? And who welcomes the chance to take live questions And over 22, almost 23 years now, there have been long stretches of my marriage. There are times even today where what I am good at is absolutely a hindrance to the kind of relationship I want with Rachel. Do I wanna win or do I wanna partner? And sometimes my gifts and my skills are at odds with each other, and I have to decide which one I want to follow.

Jeremy Duncan: 22:27

Now, by the way, it's absolutely not that Rachel can't humble me in a debate. She often does. It's just that I know that if I can turn everything into a rhetorical spectacle, then I can lean on a very unique set of skills that I have crafted over the years, and that tends to lean away from love. But more than just my own personal experience, I think this is what Paul has in mind here. What he says is, if I do not have love I am nothing.

Jeremy Duncan: 22:56

If I do not have love I gain nothing. And that Greek word nothing is the word odes, which means nothing, but in a non literal sense like it's being used here, what it means is worthless or maybe even better invalid. I think that's actually the usage Paul has in mind here. He's not saying that without love your gifts don't exist, because that's not true. Right?

Jeremy Duncan: 23:22

There are lots of unloving, incredibly talented people. And he's not saying that without love our gifts are worthless because that's not necessarily true either. We can do good things with ill intent. I think he means something more like invalid. Without love your gifts cease to be what God imagined them to be.

Jeremy Duncan: 23:42

They become something else. Perhaps if we're not careful, even the antithesis of gift, our gifts become a grab. And see, that fits with last week. It flows from chapter 12. I think it leads us into chapter 14.

Jeremy Duncan: 23:59

Love is what guards the best of you and keeps it gracious. With that in mind, I want to touch on one last piece here. This beautiful middle section we've all heard before where Paul says, love is patient and kind. It does not envy or boast, it does not dishonor others, it is not self seeking. It's not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs, love does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth.

Jeremy Duncan: 24:28

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. And as alluring as that is, that is not real life and Paul knows that. And you need to know that too. Because Paul is not talking here about our actual daily experience of relationships or what it's like to raise kids, or Paul's not even describing our actual lived experience of church.

Jeremy Duncan: 25:01

Just go back to our series from last year to see the chaos Paul is dealing with here in Corinth. What Paul's talking to is what we aspire to together. And so when your love doesn't look like the back of a postcard or when your relationships don't work out because sometimes the truth is our best attempts still fail. Paul is not sitting in side eye judgment telling you to be better. Paul is hoping to encourage you to find the strength to try again when the time is right.

Jeremy Duncan: 25:40

Don't give up. And for you, maybe that's about romance and relationships. Maybe it's about finding a new friend. Maybe it's deciding to serve in community, or maybe it's offering your gifts and your ideas to the world again, even though it didn't go well the first time. But the point of this chapter is not the shame for where we fell, it's wonder over what could be next for each of us.

Jeremy Duncan: 26:11

And that starts when we really believe that we are necessary. It grows as we abandon our instinct toward hierarchy. It strengthens as we develop an imagination for what love could be, and it blossoms only when we offer ourselves to each other and we find ourselves welcomed home fully. And, that is a story that is worth leaning into. Let's pray.

Jeremy Duncan: 26:48

God for those times when we have thought about love and had these wonderful images and language in our mind, but we have held it up not as something to aspire to, but as a measure and a marker to set ourselves against. And so when we have inevitably fallen short and our relationships have not measured up, we have piled more shame on top of already existing hurt. And it has made us smaller and less courageous and less willing to bring our full selves forward into the open. God, we pray that in those moments, your spirit would be near working to heal us just the way that you promise So that our imagination of love would move away from a measure to hit and toward an imagination that we can slowly move toward. In our understanding of who you are and how you love us perfectly regardless of where we come to you and in the ways that we can take small steps one foot after another along the path toward your love in the relationships near us.

Jeremy Duncan: 28:05

God, may that commitment not to be perfect and not to never fail, but to continue to move forward, slowly transform us, and allow us to be a loving presence in the relationships we occupy. In the strong name with the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Hey, Jeremy here and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at commons, you can head to our website commons.church for more information.

Jeremy Duncan: 28:39

You can find us on all of the socials at commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our discord server. Head to commons.church/discord for the invite and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you.

Jeremy Duncan: 29:03

Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.