I had the pleasure of preaching at Kathy’s ordination on April 19, and of presenting her the gifts from our congregation — a beautiful red stole that Mary Wood brought home from Bethlehem, and a quilt filled with signatures and good wishes of members and friends.

She chose First Corinthians 13 as the text for the sermon — the famous words about love that are often read at weddings.  Here’s what I had to say about that …

Love and Work

This is not a wedding. I know it seems like it could be: we received beautiful invitations, many of us have traveled to get here, the church is decorated with flowers, the people are dressed in special clothing, promises will be made, there will be a reception afterwards, and – of course – we just heard a reading of First Corinthians 13.

St. Paul wrote this letter to the young church in the busy city of Corinth nearly 2000 years ago, apparently because there was some conflict and dissension in that community. He would be astonished, I think, to learn that his words have come to be thought of as sweet and romantic. You can say many things about St. Paul (and I have!): his writing is variously elegant, obscure, cranky, pointed, narrow, and inspiring; it is never sweet or romantic. His eloquent words about love are not aimed at cooing couples, but at a conflicted congregation. He was not writing about intimacy, but about community. All of which make this passage much more appropriate for celebrations of the church and its ministry than it is for weddings.

So, imagine with me that instead of listing the virtues of romance, St. Paul was listing the qualifications for membership in a community of faith: patience, kindness, modesty, cooperation, cheerfulness, and optimism. Or better yet, imagine that these are the qualifications in the job description for church treasurer or choir director or the Board of Trustees. What would our congregations be like if we asked the members to fill out “Time and Talent” sheets asking how cooperative, cheerful, and optimistic they are feeling, instead of asking whether they know how to make Excel spreadsheets or repair the furnace?

Here is where St. Paul slips in what I like to think of as the “spiritual impact statement” on love – you know, like an “environmental impact statement,” a description of the probable results of a particular action. If you are not paying close attention, it just sounds like more description: “[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

If you listen between the lines, you hear the warnings. Love will not protect you from burdens that are difficult to bear. Love will not insulate you from surprising and startling experiences . Love will not shield you from events that will break your heart and crush your optimism. Love will not turn aside the suffering and conflict that must be endured.

And then, as if that were not warning enough, there is this: love never ends. The holy obligations to bear, believe, hope, and endure do not have a statute of limitations. If we enter into love – love of God, love of one another, even love for our selves – if we enter into love, we become part of an enduring covenant of mutual care and concern that bind us together into a community.

Marge Piercy, our other literary companion for today, tells us about the people she loves: she loves people who get things done. But there is more to it than that, I think. The people she loves, in turn, love what they are doing. They invest themselves fully and skillfully and willingly into their labor. The tools that they use and the materials that they shape are not just objects to them, but subjects of their attention, respect, and creative aspirations.

Piercy tells us that people cry out for work that is real, just as a pitcher (with a “shape that satisfied, clean and evident”) cries out for water. I only wish that she had named more kinds of real work. She stuck, I think, with the easy ones – the ones where the task is obvious, the means are clear, and the outcomes can be seen. The work of ministry, in my experience, is not much like that. The task is often disguised, the means are often foggy, and the outcomes out of our sight. The person who stops us in the parking lot to ask about the bake sale really wants to talk about her friend with cancer. The sermon we thought was about forgiveness washes over a listener as an invitation to finish grieving a loss form long ago. The word of consolation we give to a one-time visitor may – or may not – change that person’s path.

We must be careful, I think, not to think that the only work that is real is the work that we can see easily. And we must be willing to enter into unseen work with the same intensity, skill, and willingness that we would bring to painting the hallway or canning the peaches. We must, I think, be willing to love our work with the same patience, kindness, modesty, cooperation, cheerfulness, and optimism with which we love God and one another.

So today, as we celebrate this ordination not-a-wedding, I shall be imagining these two – St. Paul and Marge Piercy – sitting on either side of Kathy at the head table, smiling and laughing, and calling her to works of love, and to the work of love.