T.S. Eliot once defined language as "a raid on the inarticulate," and, he said, we have to do it with "shabby equipment, always deteriorating," ("East Coker" in The Complete Poems and Plays, 128). Another favorite quotation about language comes from Gustav Flaubert. "Human language is like dancing bears beating on a cracked drum, when all the time we are trying to move the stars to pity."

We find it difficult to describe what coffee smells like. How are we to talk about the Holy Trinity? And yet, we must try, even if the effort is to say as eloquently as possible, "We can't do it."

I don't say this to despair but to remind us of our proper humility before the mysteries of reality. That reminder comes in handy, as we turn back today to what a life worthy of God looks like at street level.

During our first ministry at Eastern Hills Bible Church in New York State, I had an unexpected moment of pure magic one Sunday morning. For some reason, I was not teaching Sunday School that day. I was in fact sitting outside on the steps, enjoying the beautiful summer day between worship hours.

The doors were open, and from the library came a lot of noise. I checked on it and found that it came from a class of high school students. Their teacher had not arrived. For some reason, their teacher never arrived that day, so I went into the room and with no preparation decided to lead a class discussion.

I began with a question. What does it mean to love somebody? They responded exceptionally well, and their answers were innocent, artless, and predictable. To love somebody means that you really like the person and care for the person, and maybe you don't love anyone else. I had not expected them to be so eager to communicate.

Then, I asked a second question. Jesus said to love our enemies. What does the word love mean in that statement? The room got very quiet. I think I was present at the birth of a new and powerful idea in those young minds. I could almost watch the lights flickering on in their eyes, as they wrestled with incompatible ideas. In that moment I experienced one of the great joys of teaching. Socrates with Plato could not have been happier.

I suspect that even a secular audience would think that being fully human and fully free has something to do with love. The Christian vision of what it means to be fully human and fully free certainly agrees. But the Christian vision of what love is marches to a different drumbeat.

Here's how I'd like to get this vision into our hands. I'll start with a definition of Christian love. Then, I'll move on to a useful experiement with a familiar part of the Bible. Finally, I'll try to give you an idea of the Bible's estimate of love's priority. I'll wrap up with an exquisitely personal way to put Christian love to work on the street.

What Love Is
The definition has to do with the love we Christians are to show to all human beings. Christian love means intending and, where possible, for the sake of Christ, doing what is best for the other person, regardless of who the person is, regardless of what it may cost us, and regardless of what we get for our efforts.

Don't miss the central motive in the definition. It is "for the sake of Christ." We want to learn to love like this to honor Jesus Christ. He said, "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you" - John 15:12.

This definition raises many questions. I'd like to touch on three. First, the phrase, "regardless of who the person is" brings us face to face again with the nettlesome question of love and liking. Most people would answer the question, "What is love?" by saying, "Love means liking someone very much." That is clear sailing until we remember, like those high school students, that Christ told us to love our enemies, whom by definition we don't like.

Christian love doesn't require you to like anybody. We don't have to dredge up happy feelings toward unlikeable people. The only feelings of liking that matter are those we have toward Christ. Now, the person we don't like is a person who is connected with Christ at least in this: that Christ died for that person. It is out of affection for Christ that we begin to look for any good we might do for that person we don't like. That's love.

A second difficulty has to do with the phrase, "regardless of what you get for your efforts." It seems to imply that personal expectations should go away and hide. No doubt some day they will. For now, the reality is that we seldom do anything without expecting something in return. The temptation is to feel that if our motives are that selfish, we've ruined any chance of really loving that person; so, why try?

We need to get over it. If we wait till our motives are pure, we'll never act. There is an acid test that can tell nearly every time if Christian love is holding its own along side of selfishness. Do we persist in seeking what is best for the other person, when the person doesn't respond in the way we had hoped, or our motives are mixed? If we do, then we're on the right path. Selfish people give up. Christian love persists, even when it is disappointed at the other person's response or at its own motives.

A third question arises out of loving the other person, regardless of what it may cost. Loving someone like that is difficult. It can have huge and heroic dimensions, as in a Mother Teresa. It can leave the impression that unless the cost is high, the effort to love is not genuine. That impression would be false. Christian love has huge and heroic dimensions. It has others that are anything but huge. In reality Christian love has to do mostly with putting out the dog and paying the bills and doing both before it is too late. It has to do mostly with little things, because life has to do mostly with little things. Pay the price in small things, and you'll buy enough good will to keep life sweet and flexible.

An Experiment
I can illustrate the power of small things, if we proceed to a useful experiment with a familiar part of the Bible. Please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 13. A few weeks ago, I talked about the tendency of language to lose its power with overuse. That happens to Christian language as to any other. It happens with special force to 1 Corithians 13.

This chapter often makes its way into weddings and other solemn, feel-good occasions, and quite properly so. The problem is that we've heard it so much that we have to be careful that we don't lose our capacity to hear it altogether. So, I propose to do an interpretive reading of the chapter that might break through the calluses of our souls.

Let's begin with verses 1-3. They are blockbusters. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries an all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Great Scott! What praise of love! To speak like an angel, to fathom mysteries, to have a faith that moves mountains, to divest myself of all my worldly belongings, and perish in a great cause - they all pale in comparison with this giant that strides across the world and whose majestic name is love.

But, now, our experiment is read. Verses 4-8 give the characteristics of this giant. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no ecord of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. Now, let's substitute these characteristics back into the places in verses 1-3 where the word love appears.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I am unkind, rude, and keep a record of wrongs done against me, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. But that is so ordinary, so plebeian. How could courtesy rush hour possibly be uttered in the same breath as speaking with the tongues of angels?

Verse two will cause more consternation of the same kind. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountians, but I am impatient, self-seeking, and easily angered, I am nothing. Surely you jest! Am I supposed to believe that restraining my civil right to curse bad drivers and holding my peace with hormonal teenagers is superior to prophecy and fathoming mysteries and a faith that moves mountains? Much learning hath made thee mad, Paul. You've gone off the rails.

I am almost reluctant to read verse three. If I give all I posess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but I envy and boast and rejoice in evil, I gain nothing. Doing for the sake of Christ what is best for the other person has to do mostly with little things, because life has to do mostly with little things. Pay the price in small things, and you'll buy enough good will to keep life sweet and flexible.

The Importance of Christian Love
That brings us to the scriptural estimate of love's priority. Right here at the end of 1 Corinthians 13 Paul expressed the priority of Christian love this way: And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. Our interpretive reading showed why it has priority.

When asked about the greatest commandments, Jesus said in Luke 10:27: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,' which came originally from Deuteronomy 6:5, and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself,'" which came originally from Leviticus 19:18.

The Bible calls them the two Great Commandments. Loving your neighbor as yourself is the one we have focused on today. How great becomes clear from Romans 13:9-10. Paul wrote there: The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Among the three fundamental powers of the human soul, love is the greatest. All the commandments in scripture can be summarized in Two Great Commandments: love God and love your neighbor. And those two commandments not only summarize the other commandments, but obeying those two fulfills all the others. That's priority.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Swiss theologian, Emil Brunner, wrote something about love that reinforces all we've talked about. Here's what he wrote: "To love a human being means to accept his existence, as it is given to me by God, and thus to love him as he is. For only if I love him thus, that is, as this particular sinful person, do I love him. For this is what he really is. Otherwise, I love an idea - and in the last resort this means that I am merely loving myself," (The Divine Imperative).

I choose my friends, for we are alike; but my neighbor is given to me by circumstance. It may be the people who live in the house next door. It may be colleages I work with. It may be the person on the street asking me for a handout. Biblically, they are all my neighbors and have a claim on my love.

Some of them are likeable enough; others are nasty. But nice or not, worthy or not, friend or foe, Christian love seeks to see with eyes wide open each person, "as he is." It is for that person, as she is, that we intend and, where possible, do what is best for the sake of Christ.

Here's the hook in Brunner's statement. If I fail to love "this particular sinful person ... as he is," then I am really loving myself in some sense. So, my first thought must not be to change the person, no matter how much that person needs to change.

The default setting of the human heart that loves that person that Christ loved people. It would express itself each day in each situation like this. "I welcome each person who requires my attention today, as if that person has been sent to me by Jesus Christ, and to honor Christ I will seek to serve that person in any way I can."

The Gospels are full of such love. We may find that love round the next corner and from the most unlikely person. In the eyes of some we may be that most unlikely person. This is no place for that all-or-nothing frame of mind we talked about last week. Most of us are neophytes at this kind of love. We'll be luck for a long time if it's three steps forward and only two steps back. But every success has the smell of heaven to it.

When we talk about a life worthy of God, worthy of the Church's vocation to be God's dwelling place with the human family, this is the bull's-eye. Nothing is worthier of God because nothing is closer to His nature than intending and, where possible, doing for the sake of Christ what is best for the other person, regardless of who the person is, regardless of what it may cost us, and regardless of what we get for our efforts.

BVBC is not characterized by rules telling you what not to do. We don't want your relationship with God to be characterized by rules telling you what not to do. We want you, for the sake of Christ, to welcome each person who requires your attention, as if that person has been sent to you by Jesus Christ, and to serve that person in any way you can." That keeps life sweet and flexible. It is worthy of God and the Church's vocation in the world.

If that seems a lot to ask of you, then you'll appreciate Jeremy Taylor's prayer in the 17th century:

                                        All this deserves more love than I have to give:
                                        but, Lord, do Thou turn me all into love,
                                        and all my love into obedience,
                                        and let my obedience be without interruption,
                                        and then I hope
                                        Thou wilt accept such a return as I can make. (Rules for Holy Living, 18).