Paul’s Ode to Love, found in chapter thirteen of his first letter to the Corinthians, is perhaps the most familiar of all of Paul’s writings. It is the Christian scripture most often used in weddings. It’s words, moving in their very simplicity, have a lyric, poetic quality that is very comforting. Yet because we have heard it so many times I think we often fail to really listen to what it is saying. In writing these verses, Paul was not admonishing us to simply act nice, rather he was responding to a very real and divisive crisis that had developed within the faith communities he founded at Corinth.

One of their struggles was over the competition for power and prestige that was going on within the community, all based on the public exhibition of various “spiritual gifts” that supposedly proved that they had entered God’s Kindom. Paul responded to this earlier in chapter twelve by affirming the value of each member’s contribution to the whole, using the metaphor of the body as a symbol for this unity within diversity. In today’s text he continues his argument by telling them that any gift, without love, is worthless. He will go on to reiterate in chapter fourteen that all of our spiritual gifts were meant to be used for the good of the whole community.

But what I am drawn to today, is the section of today’s reading where he says,

This knowing only in part is one of the most neglected of all Chrsitian scriptures. If all theology done in the name of Christianity was a little more forthcoming about the fact that “we see in a mirror, dimly” perhaps Christian doctrine would never have become so dogmatic. If every Christian creed every written had either begun or ended with the words, “This is what we confess to believe, but we really know only in part,” perhaps we wouldn’t have tortured and killed good people whose only offense was that they wouldn’t sign on the dotted line. How might the face of Christianity be different today if we had had two thousand years worth of Christian teaching based on the humble truth that all our knowledge is partial and incomplete?

Paul uses the imagery of a mirror in this text. Two thousand years ago they did not have the beautiful, high-definition mirrors that we have today. Mirrors back then were simply polished metal. The polished shine deteriorated very quickly and they had to constantly be cleaned and re-polished in order to work. By today’s standards, even the best first century mirror was probably pretty dim! So I imagine that there would have been many times when people looking into a mirror to check their appearance would see a dim, hard-to-recognize reflection of themselves and wonder what they were seeing. Paul is encouraging us here not only to be humble, but to wonder. This is a quality of love.

There is something about true wonderment that frees one from preconceptions, expectations, and prejudices. When we are caught up in wonder and amazement we are not so concerned with being right or wrong, we are not interested in comparisons of “less than” or “better than,” we simply find our whole self focused in the act of paying attention.

Offering each other and ourselves this kind of attention can be profoundly healing and transforming. When we pretend to know all about someone we love we have really stopped paying attention. Not knowing is the most intimate expression of love. Paul was encouraging the Corinthians to know less and to love more. And he sounds a lot like a Buddha here.

There is a popular Zen story about a young monk who is traveling through the forest and come across an old hermit. The hermit invites the monk to join him for tea. As they talk the young monk realizes that this hermit is a true spiritual master. So the monk starts to expound on his knowledge, experience and abilities in an effort to impress the master. As he speaks, the hermit hands him a cup and begins pouring him his tea. He continues to pour even after the cup is full. The tea spills out over everything. The young man pulls the cup away and yells, “What are you doing?” The hermit smiles and says, “Knowledge, experience, ability, blah, blah, blah . . . your cup is full! Empty your cup!”

This emptying of one’s cup, this not knowing, is what Zen Buddhists refer to as shoshin: beginner’s mind. It is more than a setting aside of our judgments, though that is a necessary first step, it is an attitude of openness, curiosity, eagerness that is embodied when one is fully present, focused and engaged in amazement and wonder. It is a state of being that is receptive to a multitude of possibilities.

Today is as good a time as any to empty our cup and to wonder together. What is it we are doing here together? What is this community about? What new possibilities are even now arising? What is our true nature? Just being here together, how amazing it is not to know, but to be open to the mystery.

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 move 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 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.