SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2025 - THE DEFINITION OF LOVE
February 2, 2025
Deborah Laforet
“The Definition of Love”
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by
your Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.
“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; it keeps no record of wrongs; 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.”
It’s a description of love that has been treasured for hundreds of years. It is beautifully
poetic. Unfortunately, it has been heard recently mostly at weddings and tends to be heard as a
description of a romantic love between two lovers. For the apostle Paul though, who wrote this
in his letter to the Corinthians, this was about the love within a community.
From the choir, we heard Jesus’ words from John’s gospel put to a beautiful piece of
music: “If you love me, keep my commandments.” His one commandment of course was to
love our neighbour as ourself.
Bev Sellars is a former councillor and chief of the Xat’sull (Soda Creek) First Nation in
Williams Lake, British Columbia. She is the author of They Called Me Number One, a memoir
of her childhood experience in the Indian residential school system and its effects on three
generations of women in her family. She wrote this about love as she knows it in her indigenous
communities.
“When you love someone or something, you do everything you can to protect them. You
fight for them. You nurture them. You interact with them. Love is a set of emotions and
behaviours characterized by intimacy, passion, and commitment. It involves care, closeness,
protectiveness, attraction, affection, and trust. All of this the Indigenous people felt for their
lands, waters and everything in them.
"Our love was also unquestionable for our children and grandchildren. It is common in
many Indigenous communities to think seven generations ahead to provide and protect the lands
and waters for them. In many of the earliest comments by the newcomers they were amazed at
how free and indulged the children were. Indigenous people felt that their most important
resource, aside from the lands and waters, were the children. Orphanages, abandoned children or
child labour were unheard of in traditional Indigenous communities.”
I was part of an exercise in Saskatchewan that I’ve never seen elsewhere. A small group
was invited to sit at a small table in the centre of the room. They were to represent the children
of the community. Other adults were to be the families of those children and were invited to
form a circle around the children. Then a third was created. They represented the elders of the
community. Then a fourth and final circle with just a few people represented the protectors of
the everyone in these circles.
Suddenly, a few people broke through three of those circles, grabbed the children from
the centre, and walked out with them. Suddenly the core of the community was gone. The
families fell apart at the loss of their children, some who they never saw or heard from again.
The elders had no one to guide and to share their wisdom. The protectors felt they had failed
their community. Without the core, many lost their purpose and direction and got lost. And if
the children did return, most having lost their language and customs, they couldn’t find a way
back into their community. The circles had broken and fallen apart, and many of them were
coming back traumatized and unable to function in healthy ways, and were not able to help form
the circles again..
The love of children is deep and profound, and many of us know that feeling, whether it
be for our own children and grandchildren, our nephews, our students, or those within our own
church community. Children are the most vulnerable in our society. They need the most
protection. They need the most love. Unfortunately, too often we see innocent children suffering
and dying in war zones, children starving, children forced into labour or sex trafficked, children
abandoned and neglected. If we hold children with such high value, if children are the core and
centre of our communities, why do they continue to suffer?
I wanted today to be a have a more celebratory tone. The topic of Truth and
Reconciliation is a difficult one. It’s hard to learn of harmful Canadian policies that attempted
cultural genocide and that treated indigenous people as less than and without dignity and respect,
and of educators and caregivers who ignored the needs of the children in their care and even
harmed and abused them. Love was hard to find in these schools or for indigenous people
anywhere.
Indigenous people are beautiful people. They have deeply meaningful traditions and
rituals. The artwork and craftwork that we see historically and today are works of beauty. The
love of creation, of their communities, and of their elders and their children is inspiring.
Indigenous people, like all people, are people filled with love, love that is taken and
given, love that knows no bounds, love that overflows. We all have it within us, but sometimes
this world breaks us and twists us into thinking that we are not loved and that we have no love to
share. We can learn a lot from indigenous people whose lives have been torn apart by settlers but
who have risen to the challenge to overcome the hurt and the suffering they’ve endured, although
it may take several generations of healing and community work. Like many marginalized
people, who have experienced healing from their trauma, who have overcome the hate the world
spews at them, and who have again found love - mostly loving themselves again - they have a lot
to teach us, and we have a lot to learn.
Christian settlers did not share the love their apostle Paul wrote of so many years ago.
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas would not say they felt patience or kindness, or a love
that was not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, and definitely not a love didn’t insist on its
own way. How might we now, as a church who treasures these words of Paul use these words to
aid in our reconciliation with indigenous peoples? How might we show patience when the
timeliness we value does not match with indigenous people, who will sit and listen to an elder for
as long as that elder needs to speak? How might we show kindness when we hear an angry
indigenous voice, wondering why they are treated without respect? How might we put away our
arrogance, thinking our ways are the best ways, or our rudeness when we ignore the history and
its effects on today’s indigenous communities?
Building relationships with our indigenous neighbours is one step towards the love that
might grow between two peoples and between communities. Getting to know each other,
celebrating our similarities, and appreciating and valuing our differences is how love grows. We
see that in our community now, where everyone is different, where we are queer, neurodivergent,
differently abled, different races, different cultures. The more we accept each other, understand
each other, and love each other for we are are, the more we create a space like the one described
by Bev Sellars, where we protect one another, we fight for each other, and we nurture and
interact with each other. Our community might be described as intimate, passionate, and
committed, and one that involves care, closeness, protectiveness, attraction, affection, and trust.
What a gift to share with the world!
May we be filled by the love of the Creator, may we follow the example of the love that
Christ taught us, and may the Spirit inspire us to share that love with the world. May we give
thanks that the world is abundant with love, there for whenever we need it, and such an easily
accessible and renewable resource. Thanks be to God. Amen.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
(Introduce yourself. - Do not move or tap microphone.)
The Apostle Paul travelled to a lot of communities, telling the story of Jesus. After
leaving these communities, he then kept up the relationship with them through
writing letters. One of those communities was Corinth. He wrote a few letters to
the people of Corinth, as they seemed to have a lot of conflict, especially between
the classes, those with and those without. This morning, I have the privilege of
reading a passage that is loved by many. We hear it at weddings. We hear it at
funerals. It’s a beautiful description of love. It’s important to remember though
that Paul is not talking about romantic love, but the love within a community. I am
reading Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, the first thirteen verses.
13 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a
noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 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. 3 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.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude.
It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs;
6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 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. 9 For we know only in
part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial
will come to an end. 11 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. 12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, 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. 13 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of
these is love.
May the Spirit guide our understanding of this holy scripture.