Pastor’s Corner – February 2, 2025
More Excellent Way/1 Corinthians 13
In his final letter to the public, Dr. Vivek Murthy, former Surgeon General of the United States, describes his prognosis of American Health and shares something I think is worthwhile to consider.(here is the link: My Parting Prescription for America )
He shares that growing loneliness is an epidemic and increases the sense of painful emptiness and disconnection people are feeling. He feels it may be a root cause, among others, of the polarization of public discord and conflict.
How can one reconnect and find fulfillment from emptiness? We need to cultivate a culture where relationships are valued and nurtured (make that phone call to a friend you haven’t spoken with for a long time), be part of a community where you can belong and be yourself with shared values and interests (church, synagogue, temple or nonreligious communities), and finally serve– volunteer with local charity groups; help those in need, get involved in serving others.
I think Dr. Murthy’s recommendation is an excellent idea! This is what we do as a church – cultivating and nurturing relationships, serving others, and building community! And we should invite our neighbors who are experiencing emptiness to taste the goodness of God’s love and what it means to belong to a faith community that cares and strives to love God and neighbors.
Paul’s letter for this coming Sunday describes a well-known passage we often hear in weddings on love. However, in context, Paul’s point is to show the church a more excellent way to fulfillment in one’s life and that is to pursue love and grow in love as the driving force for building our relationships, service and community! I invite you to read I Corinthians 13 and allow the words to marinate in our hearts and minds before we come together in worship. Amen.
If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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. If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 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. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 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. For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, 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. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.