“Grace and peace to you from God, through our Savior Jesus Christ.” This is a salutation Paul used in some form to open many of his epistles. I thought I would use it here as the Holy Spirit has drawn me to invite us to ponder one of the most excellent transitional moments in all of Paul’s letters.

Chapter twelve of First Corinthians features his emphasis on how the church must value the collective and individual spiritual gifts of those that comprise its body. “Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.” (v.14, NRSV) He stresses how the living, breathing body of the church is only as strong as its ability to treasure the uniqueness of each part, and how no body part can say it “has no need of” another body part. Eugene Peterson expresses it this way in The Message: “The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.” (v.25-26, Msg)

As Paul prepares for the hinge point moment, he reframes the body of the church as the Body of Christ, appointed by God to serve as a multidimensional body with a physique that should reflect its greatest strength…a unidimensional commitment to Christ. As we experience the many dimensions of the One that binds us together, we discover the many faces, facets, and feelings of a more excellent way…the greatest of God’s gifts.

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. (13, NRSV)

As we celebrate love, let us also commit ourselves to Christ…and to one another…as we follow the One whose life, and love, shows us a more excellent way.