“Looking at the One in the Mirror”

1 Corinthians 13

January 29^th and February 1^st, 2004

Saint Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

While I was working on our sermon for this morning, I remembered the story of the man who had just about everything that he ever wanted. He had graduated with honors from a well respected school. He was a chief officer in his company. His house was among the nicest in his neighborhood and his car was the envy of all his friends. You might say that he was the kind of guy who was hard to buy for, because there were few things that he did not already have. One of his many hobbies was that he collected things. He had one of the finest baseball collections, baseballs signed by important players like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. Sports memorabilia were not, though, the only things that he collected. He prided himself on having things around his house that immediately caught the eye and attention of his guests, so that when they were noticed, he would be able to tell the remarkable story of how he had obtained it.

One day he went into an antique store in the city where he lived. He had not bought anything lately and so he was itching to do that. For some reason, he had not been in this particular store before. He smiled to the man sitting behind a counter as he came in. The man just happened to be the store’s owner, who knew, from experience, that his customers needed time to browse before he asked them if they needed help. The man who collected things spent a few minutes looking and after those few minutes, his eyes gravitated toward what looked like a full length mirror. It was covered with a piece of heavy canvas and had note attached to it that was now faded. The note simply read: “Do Not Remove Under Any Circumstances.” It was about that time in the man’s visit when the antique dealer would come over and ask him if there was anything particular that he was looking for. The man smiled when he was asked that question. Then he pointed to the mirror and asked what the story behind the mirror was. The owner said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” This peaked the man’s curiosity. He got ready to hear the mirror’s tale. The man said, “I’ve had that mirror for a long time. It is not your normal, run of the mill mirror. If you look in the mirror, it will only reflect that part of you that is alive in God and full of love.” He continued by telling the collector that he kept it covered because it was bad for business. “Too many people come in here, look in the mirror and do not see what they expect to see and then storm out. Like I said, it is awful for business.” The collector looked at the store’s owner and asked, “Can I look?” The store’s owner did not want him to look, but since he had shared the mirror’s story, he thought that he had no choice. And so he reached behind the mirror and unfastened the canvas and pulled it away. The collector was anxious to see that part of him that was alive in God. At first he thought that perhaps the light was bad. Through the grainy mirror, he did not see anything and so he exclaimed, “Where’s my reflection?” The store’s owner who had a little experience with this sort of thing offered, “There’s always been something before. Why don’t you look again?” And he did. He looked up and down the mirror and sure enough, looking this second time, there was something there. Down near the bottom of the mirror was his big toe. He cried out, “That’s all that there is?!” “Well, that is all that there is for now,” the owner said back. Which prompted

the collector to ask, “You mean that it can change?” The man replied, “Some say that it can.”

Well, the collector had to have the mirror. The truth is that he wanted it for a couple of different reasons. First, he wanted it to prove that there was more of God in him that just his big toe. And second, he knew that it would be a great conversation piece for his friends. So he offered the man a good price, loaded up the mirror, and took it home. He, too, covered it up. He draped a sheet over it, but several times a day, he pulled the sheet back to see if there was anything more showing than his toe. But it was always the same thing. The image never changed. After several days of doing this, the man thought to himself, “There are some things that this mirror just doesn’t know about me.” And so he put on his best business suit, his most expensive one, the one that had cost him almost two thousand dollars and the one that he had used several times to close important business deals. He stood in front of the mirror wearing it, but still, there was no change in the reflection. Next he went to his desk and pulled out several of his bank statements. He went to his personal safe and pulled out several of his stock certificates. He was sure that all the mirror really needed to see was how important he was. But nothing ever changed. He even started going to church more. He went to at least one worship service a week and sometimes two. He pulled out his letter from the church that told of the amount that he had given last year. And he went to the mirror with a pile of worship bulletins and the letter, but the mirror was not impressed.

Seeing nothing but his big toe bothered the man more than he wanted to admit. He had tried everything. He was living differently now. He had given away most of his money. He had donated countless hours of his time, but nothing impressed the mirror and because it did not, his image did not change. Finally, he was at the end of his rope and he prayed. He prayed for forgiveness for all of those times in his life when he could have been better, for those things that he thought set him apart. He knew that he could have helped more, and loved more. Tears welled up in his eyes as he prayed. And then he started crying uncontrollably he did not notice it at first, but then he did. Dimly, at first, and then with greater clarity, as his other toes, and then his foot, and his leg, and his arms, but most importantly his heart as they reflected in the mirror.

How does Paul put this near the end of his thirteenth chapter to the Christians in Corinth? “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.” These words of his come in what may be the most famous chapter in all of the Bible. I am not surprised when I am counseling couples who are about to be married, who, when we get to the point of talking about the worship service, and a scripture lesson that we might use, ask for this one. I am never surprised. I asked that it be used at my own wedding. These words are powerful and meaningful. They are cross stitched with the loving hands of my Aunt Julia Lee, and hang on one of the walls in our house. These words, as great as they are, might need saving from the wedding ceremony. They are as common to it as the ones of the twenty-third Psalm are to a funeral service. But hear this, the last thing that Paul had in mind for these words of his was a church wedding. Paul had a church in mind, the one at Corinth.

If you were here last week, then you heard what I had to say about the pastoral situation that Paul was dealing with in Corinth. The church there was a good and solid church, but whose reputation preceded them. It is not hard for someone to get the impression that all the Corinthians did was to argue with one another. The church there, was in conflict most of the time. They were up in arms about many things. Paul dealt with richer members arriving at the communal meal earlier than those who worked, and gouging themselves so much that there was little left when other arrived. Paul was amazed when he learned that certain members of the congregation were bragging about who baptized them. To him it did not matter if Cephas or Apollos or him who performed the ritual. He was amazed that such an issue had the power to set up rivalries. Paul, most likely, was astonished that some of the Corinthians were bragging about certain sinful behaviors and taking their freedom in Christ a little too far. Like I told you last week, the church in Corinth was not just full of conflict; it was also filled with great promise and potential. There were some great and wonderful things happening in that church. The Spirit was moving around in each of them so powerfully that it was giving them the ability to do spiritual things. Some were prophesying. Some were speaking in tongues. Some were interpreting those tongues. Some were teaching while others were preaching. Some had the gift of great faith while others focused on administering the church. These were great gifts and the Spirit was doing a wonderful thing there. But like the communal meal and the baptismal issue, it had become a problem. So much, in fact, that someone wrote Paul to ask him about it. I want you to see this, you cannot pull this thirteenth chapter out of the air. It has a context. The twelfth chapter is it’s context, and it’s discussion about spiritual gifts and how it takes everyone being who they are and using the gifts that they have, for the church to be the church. Listen to how the chapter is framed. It ends with 12:31 and these words: “But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.” And chapter fourteen begins with these words, “Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts...”

The greater gift and the more excellent way will be love and not these individual gifts. Paul wants the Corinthians to know that. I had not noticed this before, but I think that there is a tone in the first three verses of this chapter. Let me read it to you with what I think Paul’s tone was: “If I speak in the tongues of mortals 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.” Do you see what Paul’s doing here? He is talking about his own accomplishments and his own credentials and saying that without love driving them, his life is nothing. He will say this to the Philippians, too. In the middle of his letter to them, he writes: “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him...” It is not every day that you run across the word rubbish in the Bible. It’s only in there three times. I think that the King James version of the Bible has what Paul really means. In that translation, the word rubbish is translated as dung. And we all know what dung means, don’t we? Paul is saying that all of these things, all of these gifts, do not matter unless love is at the very center of them. And not wanting us to be confused about what this love is like, Paul describes it in verses four through eight. Actually, that is not all together true. The words Paul uses here are not adjectives, they are verbs. So what he is really doing here is giving us a picture of what love does. So we might interpret a verse or two like this: Love bears patiently. Love defers anger. Love perseveres.

Haven told them the important things that count and then showing them how love acts, Paul then does what I think is a marvelous thing. He asks them to look back at their lives. Maybe he is thinking about the time the sentence that he wrote back in the first part of this letter: “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food.” Here he puts it this way, “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.” Perhaps what Paul wants them to do here is not so much to look back at their lives but to take a good look in a mirror. “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.”

I do not mind telling you that it would be a whole lot easier for this sermon just to talk about love. While we were in Dallas, finishing up my last year of seminary, Susie and I attended a United Methodist Church. Our preacher did a sermon series on love and used I Corinthians 13 for thirteen weeks. That is more than enough sermons for any text. I will admit that we missed a few weeks of that series. I have had an idea germinating in my head, an idea for a sermon series based on love and these reality television shows that are just about everywhere. Shows like The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and Joe Millionaire. I even toyed with showing a clip or two from these shows with people like Trista and Ryan and Evan. I may still do that some day.

These words need to do something else this morning. These words ask you to look at your life and the kind of love that is supposed to be our lives. There are just some things, these days, friends, that we don’t understand. I wish that we did. I wish that I did. We look in the grainy mirror and wonder why some things are and why others things cannot be. And while we wait and live, Paul says three things hang around us, hope, faith, and love. And the greatest of these is love, even love on a cross. Let us pray.

(The opening story for this sermon is based on David Griebner’s story, “The Toe in the Mirror” The story can be found in his book, The Carpenter and the Unbuilder available through Upper Room books. My thanks to David from writing these great stories).