The most-quoted chapter Paul wrote, and the most frequently detached from its setting. It is not a meditation on love in general and it was not composed for a wedding. It sits between two chapters about spiritualgifts in a congregation where the gifts have become a status system, and it is the last and heaviest item in a long list of that congregation's faults.
What happens
"If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests… At present we know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
What to notice
In Greek every one of the famous descriptions is a verb, not an adjective. Makrothymei — it is long-tempered. Chrēsteuetai — it acts kindly. Ou zēloi — it does not envy. Fifteen verbs in four verses. Love is defined entirely by what it does and refuses to do, and never once by how it feels. English, needing adjectives, quietly changes the part of speech and with it the register. And one of the verbs is the tell: ou physioutai, it is not inflated — the word Paul has used against this church since chapter four. The love chapter is not a change of subject; it is the same charge stated positively. Then the mirror: Corinth was a centre of bronze manufacture, and mirrors were among its known products. Di' esoptrou en ainigmati, through a mirror, in a riddle — a polished bronze disc gives a real image that is dim, slightly warped, and worsens as it tarnishes. The comparison is not with a bad mirror but with the best available one, and en ainigmati alludes to Numbers 12:8, where Yahweh speaks to Moses "plainly, and not in riddles." The last clause returns to last Thursday's reversal: epignōsomai kathōs kai epegnōsthēn — I shall know fully, as I have been fully known.
Its third appearance this month. We have had its opening call to praise, its middle view from heaven, and today a combination of both ends.
The selected verses
Psalm 33:2–3."Give thanks to Yahweh on the harp; with the ten-stringed lyre chant his praises. Sing to him a new song; pluck the strings skillfully, with shouts of gladness." Psalm 33:4–5."For upright is the word of Yahweh, and all his works are trustworthy. He lovesjustice and right; of the hesed of Yahweh the earth is full." Psalm 33:12, 22."Blessed the nation whose Theos is Yahweh, the people he has chosen for his own inheritance… May your hesed, Yahweh, be upon us, who have put our hope in you."
What to notice
Psalm 33:3 asks for the playing to be done heitivu naggen bi-teru'ah — "play well, with a shout." The psalm is specific that the music should be skilful, which is an unusual thing for a psalm to bother about, and a pointed thing to sing beside a chapter saying the most impressive performance without love is a noise. And hesed appears twice, at the start and the end. It is the Hebrew word standing closest to Paul's agapē — not an emotion but a sustained loyalty, the thing you can rely on someone to keep doing.
Just after Jesus has praised John the Baptist at length — "among those born of women, no one is greater than John" — and noted that the tax collectors accepted John's baptism while the Pharisees and lawyers refused it. Today is his comment on the pattern.
What happens
"To what shall I compare the people of this generation? They are like children who sit in the marketplace and call to one another, 'We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you did not weep.' For John the Baptist came neither eating food nor drinking wine, and you said, 'He is possessed by a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking and you said, 'Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.' But wisdom is vindicated by all her children."
What to notice
The image is precise and slightly cruel. Children in a square are playing at the two great public occasions of village life — a wedding, with pipes, and a funeral, with wailing — and the other group joins in neither. The complaint is not that the wrong game was chosen. It is that no game works. And the application is exact: John came fasting and was called demon-possessed; Jesus came feasting and was called a drunk. The two prophets between them exhausted the available options, and each was rejected on grounds that would have applauded the other. What is described is not a reasoned disagreement but a settled disposition looking for a justification. The last line is Luke's own: Matthew 11:19 has "wisdom is vindicated by her deeds"; Luke has apo pantōn tōn teknōn autēs, by all her children. In Luke, the ascetic and the diner are both Wisdom's offspring, and her vindication is that she produced both.
How They Fit Together
Impressive display, and the thing it was supposed to indicate
Fasting and feasting both — the audience had already decided
Today's two long readings are about the gap between an impressive display and the thing it is supposed to indicate, approached from opposite sides. Paul lists the most spectacular achievements available to his congregation — the tongues of angels, all mysteries, faith that relocates mountains, giving away everything, handing over the body — and prices each at zero. It is worth noticing how far he pushes it. The last two items are not showy gifts; they are total self-sacrifice, the things nobody could accuse of being merely for display. And he says they too can be done without love, and are then worth nothing. The problem cannot be solved by raising the stakes. What is left, when the list is emptied, is fifteen verbs — patient, kind, not envious, not inflated, not seeking its own — none of them spectacular, and all of them checkable by the person standing next to you.
Luke's generation has the mirror-image problem. They cannot be reached by any performance at all, and the parable is blunt about it: two prophets came with opposite methods, and the same people found grounds to dismiss both. The children in the marketplace are not asking for a different tune; they are refusing the category of tune. And the two accusations — he has a demon, he is a glutton and a drunkard — are not even consistent with each other. They only have to be individually available.
Which is where the readings meet. Paul's church is doing everything and lacking the one thing; Luke's audience is refusing everything and calling it discernment. In both cases the visible behaviour is a poor guide, and in both cases the honest verdict has to wait. Paul says so: now we see through a mirror, in a riddle. That is the sentence to hold today, and it is more modest than the chapter's reputation. Paul does not claim love gives you clear sight; he says the sight is dim now for everyone, himself included, and that what will be complete on the far side is not his knowing but his being known. Love is not offered as a superior form of vision. It is offered as the one thing that survives the tarnished mirror — which is why faith, hope and love remain, and the greatest is the one that will still have work to do when the other two are finished. And Luke supplies the only test available meanwhile: wisdom is vindicated by all her children. Not by argument, not by performance, and not on the day. By what she turns out to have produced.
A Question to Sit With
The children complained that nobody would dance and nobody would weep, and they were right about the facts — but the game they were running required the other party to respond on cue. I recognise that more than I would like: the offer made in a way that makes refusal impossible without rudeness, the kindness that expects a particular reaction, the sorrow displayed until it is acknowledged. Paul's list says love does not seek its own. Where have I been playing a flute at somebody, and what would it cost me to keep playing if they never danced?