Everest - 1 Corinthians 12 & 13

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:27)

 
We don’t get to choose if we’re in the body or not.  Another candidate for the Peak-Passages of the New Testament might be 1 Corinthians chapter 13.  This hyperbolic hymn celebrates the core eternal principle that governs all others: LOVE.  LOVE is who “I AM” is and what “I AM” is all about.  “Love is all you need”, sang the Beatles – they got that right at least.  So our core need is a match with LOVE’s core identity.  This is how we were created to be.  We were made to live in LOVE.  The Bible assures us that it is the golden rule, the guiding ethic in life.  If we do everything out of LOVE, we will always succeed, “LOVE never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:8).  If we’re ever unsure of what to do in any given situation, we should try to do the thing that seems most loving.
 
What I first understood about the character of God was learned primarily from my parents.  But their warm, enthusiastic and tactile love seemed at odds with the Christian faith that I often saw in church settings.  At home there was a loving, fun God who clearly inspired the very best in my Mum and Dad.  My father was a Church of England Vicar who led a church plant on a tough estate outside Leicester when I was very small.  The small chapel we all met in was little more than a shack.  In the Winter it was freezing cold and when it rained you couldn’t hear anything because the corrugated tin roof acted like a drum.  Although I was strangely drawn to it even as a very young child, I recall spending most of the time just wishing I was back at home with my toys.  As a kid I experienced church as too often being a stone cold, boring, austere thing that sometimes seemed to bring out the worst in people.
 
However, one of my most poignant childhood memories is in that shack of a church aged four, becoming very upset in church one Sunday morning, just as my Dad was beginning to deliver a sermon.  I slipped from my Mum’s grip and bolted forwards to Dad.  I straddled his foot, wrapped my arms around his leg like a limpet and clung on for dear life.  I expected my Mum to come and prize me off him.  But Mum stayed where she was and my dear Dad didn’t even try to shake me off.  He let me sit there as he continued to preach.  I sat on his shoe until he’d finished. My heart still melts when I recall it and I can almost smell the leather of his shoes, so powerful is that memory for me. 
 
That single moment probably saved church for me for the rest of my life.  I knew that church was not at all the negative things that it had often appeared to me to be.  At its heart, church was one big family where I could encounter the father heart of God.  Unfortunately, many people have never had such a redeeming experience and if they have any experience of church at all, it’s largely negative.  This is who we must pray for.  Let’s pray for an outpouring of love upon Bournemouth’s church and secular society, that everyone might know this LOVE, who never fails.
 
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:8)