Sunday Musings at the Cottage
A reflection on faith, hope, and love
Today’s lectionary reading (the shared texts read by Catholics and most mainline Protestants in weekly worship) is one of the best-known passages from the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 13:
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. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, 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 or resentful; 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 in a mirror, dimly, 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 abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Faith. Hope. Love. Each flickers in the night, like a candle in the window welcoming us home.
What new can be said about faith, hope, and love? A thousand poems invite us to their wisdom, challenge, and comfort. We preach sermons on them, read these texts at weddings, and ponder the words in prayers. Together, they compose a way of life that allows us to see God and each other more clearly, as if wiping a fogged mirror. A blurred image appears on the glass and giving a glimpse of what it will mean to “see face to face.”
If St. Paul had only written one thing, this single passage would have been enough.
Faith, hope, and love abide.
But, on this side of the mirror, so do doubt, despair, and grief. We can’t escape them.
In his book, A Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer writes:
“The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love. . . (W)e are reminded that human nature, like nature herself, can hold opposites together as paradoxes, resulting in a more capacious and generous life.”
Luminosity and gloom are of a piece. In so many ways, the pandemic and the multiple crises of these days have heightened this paradox: We feel doubt, despair, and grief precisely because we know faith, hope, and love. The things we see as “bad” actually affirm the gracious gifts of a full life — in the same way that shadows give depth and dimension to a painting.
This week, if you feel overwhelmed by doubt, despair, or grief, don’t push them aside or deny their presence. Instead, let them guide toward their paradoxical kin. Faith, hope, and love abide. Truly.
Light a candle and gaze into the flame. Welcome home to your own heart.
I so needed these words this morning. Thank you.
I have always loved Parker's teaching on paradox--it's so helpful to know you don't have to sink into the pits or try to talk yourself into clenching onto an illusion of hope (rather than hope itself). Thank you for reminding us about holding paradox in your usual elegant way.