“…and Charity”

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

I Corinthians 13 (KJV)

Over the past six months, I have undertaken to expound upon the three primary virtues that the Apostle Paul chose to highlight in The First Epistle to the Corinthians. In doing this, I preached an evangelistic sermon on Faith, describing it as “our beliefs put into action.” I led you in a drumming ritual about Hope, defined as “desire with a strong expectation of fulfillment.” Today, I’m parting from both the Epistle-thumping evangelist and the drumming pagan approaches. Today I would like to lead you in a short meditation, perhaps interwoven with a few expository remarks.

When I first conceived of this series, I had in mind this last verse of the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” But I have to admit that from the very beginning, a song kept going through my head. I sang it in Sunday School when I was pretty little and after I looked it up, I remembered why it was so familiar. It was written by Dale Evans, Queen of the West. If you remember her, it is probably from “Happy Trails to You,” sung with her husband at the end of every Roy Rogers show on television. I remember it, because along with Gene Autry and the Sons of the Pioneers singing “Drifting Along with a Tumbling Tumble Weed” and “Cool Clear Water,” my father had just a couple of other albums, and Dale Evans singing “The Bible Tells Me So,” was one of them.

So to set the stage for this little meditation, I’d like to teach you all this simple tune that I remembered under its first line: “Have Faith, Hope, and Charity.”

Have faith, hope and charity,
That's the way to live successfully.
How do I know, the Bible tells me so.
Do good to your enemies,
And the Blessed Lord you'll surely please,
How do I know, the Bible tells me so.
Don't worry 'bout tomorrow,
Just be real good today.
The Lord is right beside you,
He'll guide you all the way
Have faith, hope and charity,
That's the way to live successfully.
How do I know, the Bible tells me so!

We sang that song, and I memorized the scripture from the King James Version of The Bible as “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” It may well have been the second Bible verse I memorized as a child, right after John 3:16. Imagine my surprise when I became a member of Willow Creek Methodist church in 1962 and looked up my favorite verse, only to find that the words were changed! They gave us a Revised Standard Version of The Bible, thinking that it would be easier for us kids to understand. And here it says “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” It was a subtle change and even though the RSV New Testament was published in 1946, it was not much in wide circulation. It was credited as being an interpretation of The Bible, not a translation. It simply modernized the language of the KJV. And, since the Greek word “agape” was translated in this chapter both as love and as charity, it was deemed easier to understand if it was always the same word that was used.

By the 1960s, we were all ready to spread the love. We were a generation of love children. Peace and Love, baby. Make love, not war. Robert Indiana’s huge sculpture “LOVE” appeared outside MOMA in NYC. All you need is love. Yatadadah.
Two new translations of The Bible appeared in print. J.B. Phillips wrote that if it is a good translation, “we should be quite unaware that it is a translation, even though the work we are reading is far distant from us in both time and place.” In 1962, in The New Testament in Modern (i.e. American) English, he translated the verse like this: “In this life we have three great lasting qualities – faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of them is love.”

It may not sound translated, and in fact, according to Phillips’s second rule, might not sound like the translator allowed his own personality to stamp it. But as far as Phillips’s third criterion for a good translation goes, I can’t imagine that the words “produce in the hearts and minds of his readers an effect equivalent to that produced by the author upon his original readers.” As in most of Phillips’s translation, I can barely stay awake while reading it, no matter how real the language was in the 1950s and 60s.

In 1961, we also got the long-awaited Oxford Edition of The New English Bible. In this very proper English English version, calling on the best scholars and linguists in the world, we get the following: “In a word, there are three things that last for ever: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them all is love.” Okay, I’ll admit to this being very nearly as poetic as the KJV and will accept this as a translation. So show me the love.

The startling way this was presented to us in the 60s was that Greek had three words for love: eros, phileo, and agape. Eros, we were told, was romantic love; phileo was familial or brotherly love; agape was this big thing that included man’s love of God and God’s love of man. It is the love described in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son…”

Unfortunately, we do not have three different words for these concepts in English. We have love. And love has not only these meanings, but others as well. I love my wife and daughter. I love my church. I love my country. I love the Beattles. I love Jimmy Dean Sausage. I love baseball. I love the view across the lake. I love sunsets and long walks on the beach. I heart New York. It’s all the same word!

And when you change “charity” to “love” in I Corinthians 13, you change the active caring for humanity into a wedding verse. Think of it. Who wouldn’t want these words read at their wedding? “Love is patient; love is kind and denies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.” Those are the words you want to hear when you are pledging to spend your life with another person. They are not the words you want to hear when two airplanes crash into the World Trade Center. But that, my friends, is when they are needed. That is when we don’t need love, we need charity. We need the ability to stretch out a caring hand, even when it has been bitten. We don’t need smart bombs to carry our love to Kabul or Bagdad or Tehran.

Note that I have not spoken of charity in its dictionary definition, “benevolent giving.” But I believe that this more common usage is exactly what is called for from us. That simple benevolence is what brings love for the world, agape, into focus. I’ll tell you a story I have never told anyone but my wife before, and it is one that is rare enough in my life and distant enough in my past to be able to tell it without either guilt or pride.

Twelve years ago, I was the youth director at Aldersgate United Methodist Church. I had been in the church on Saturday to set things up for my class Sunday morning. There was no one else in the church. I was ready to leave and as I turned to lock the church door a woman was approaching up the walk. She said that she had come to the church to see if we could help her. She had no money and had two children at home with no food. She thought perhaps we had food we could give her or could give her money to buy food.

Now I was in a bit of a state trying to figure out what I should do. I had less than five dollars cash in my pocket. I knew there was no food in the church. I did have my checkbook, but it seemed risky to write a check that she might not even be able to cash until Monday. I felt caught, like a deer in the headlights. After working my mouth a few times, I told her that I could drive her down to Albertsons and get some food for her. So we did.

I got a cart, mindful of how much things would weigh and we selected a loaf of bread, a package of hamburger, a gallon of milk, a box of cereal, a box of hamburger helper, and a little bag of chocolates. There may have been one or two other things. I wrote a check for the purchase and offered to drive her home, but she declined, said thank you, and left with her two bags of groceries. I had spent less than $20. There was no tearful, thank you you’ve saved my babies. Just a simple nod and she was off.

To tell the truth, I went back into the store and bought a six-pack of beer and some chips and a couple of other snacks to take home and spent more on it than I had on her. I didn’t feel loving. If anything, I felt a little guilty that I had done so little. But I did feel charitable. I had done something positive.

When I spoke here a couple of years ago about my bicycle trip across country, someone asked what my message would be if I were preaching on street corners today. I responded then, and repeat today, that our purpose is to leave the world a better place than we found it. Our contribution need not be saving the world for democracy, nor even ending poverty and crime. It need only be to tidy up our little corner so that the world is better for our having been here. That I believe is charity. And that is why I cling to these archaic words from the King James Version of The Bible, “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”