Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

We have been hearing from Paul's letter to the church at Corinthian for several weeks now; and we'll continue to do so right up until Ash Wednesday. Last Sunday, we considered Paul's image of the church based on the human body, each with its own essential function. That insight was summarized this week by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the world-wide Episcopal Church at the web-based conference we sponsored here at St. Thomas. "We are helpless alone and gifted together." And "My well-being is inseparable from the well-being of all."

Those pithy summaries of that complex metaphor help us understand the likewise familiar passage before us this morning. Paul's topic is love. If we are, by nature, communal creatures—helpless alone, gifted together, and with our well-being inseparably linked—then it behooves us to know something about how we can best live together. Paul suggests that the best path for this is the one of love.

Hear again Paul's blessed words:

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.

Please do remember that Paul writes this to the church at Corinth upon hearing of the controversies and divisions that have affected that holy fellowship. He is appealing to them, after reminding them of their inseparably-linked well-being, to behave with one another in a way that befits those who share in Christ's very body—the church.

Patience, kindness, humility, forbearance, truth, belief, hope, endurance, and love. These are modes of behavior that sustain, that build up, and that enable people in community to endure the difficulties and dissensions that inevitably arise.

I must tell you that I have wondered where my last two sermons were going. I wasn't very happy with them. They didn't have the kind of immediacy that I prefer.

Today I understand. They were leading me to this sermon. They were helping me and you—I hope—to hear the Word of God with greater clarity and power, because of the difficult circumstances that we share with a few of our members.

This congregation, like the one in Corinth, has become the locus of some conflict. Many of you will have read in Tuesday's Herald-Times of serious charges being brought against one of our faithful members. It so happens that the party bringing those charges is also a faithful member. I do not intend to use names, but rather to make use of the example as an occasion for considering the texts before us and to reflect on the implications of this love that Paul enjoins us to live in congregations.

It is very important to note that on Thursday, the Herald-Times ran a story indicating that the criminal charges were being dropped. What you may not know is that the matter has now become a civil issue. A restraining order has been filed, and it seeks to prevent the accused person from entering into our church. Now we are all affected by this.

And those words of Paul from last Sunday now ring in our ears. "If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together." Some of our members are suffering today; and we all suffer with them.

This morning, aptly, Paul speaks to us of love. I believe that word to be just about as timely as any I've encountered for a while.

Many of us are asking ourselves: "How might I best be loving in these circumstances." With the conflicts in the history of our congregation, many wonder whether the suffering and conflict between members will expand. Will people begin to pick sides? Will problems expand and tempers flare?

I look back over my past two sermons and see some help for us. Two Sundays ago, the scripture reminded us that our Lord may be trusted with our lives. Based on the story of Jesus' first miracle in John's gospel, we observed how compassionate Jesus was—how much he cared even about the seemingly insignificant need of wine at a wedding feast. Jesus indeed cares for us—all of us—and may be trusted completely with our lives.

And then, last week,

"We are helpless alone and gifted together." And "The well-being of one is inseparable from the well-being of all." In our life together, no one is exempt from damage or incapable of gifts.

So, Jesus cares about everyone involved. God loves all parties of the conflict and everyone in the congregation. And our lives in this part of the body of Christ are inseparably connected.

And, from today's hymn to love, we're reminded about the virtues that build up rather than tear down. These are patience, kindness, humility, forbearance, truth, belief, hope, endurance, and love.

Several members have come to me this week to ask what they might do to support one or another of those persons involved. Some have also wondered aloud what we might do to avoid dissension.

I believe that Paul gives us all of the tools we need.

Even from the perspective of law, people are innocent until proven guilty. That is surely a substantial expression of wisdom that we ought to remember.

But from the perspective of the gospel, we are all guilty already. As Luther would say, "We are all both saints and sinners." From that holy point of view, we have learned nothing new about anyone in the past week. Everyone here was both saint and sinner last week; that truth remains the same this week.

And so, the first counsel is to continue behaving with one another exactly as we have always done—aware of our personal sinfulness and acting as lovingly and supportively of one another as we are able.

In this connection, one member wondered aloud what should be done about the church positions people who stand accused in our legal system hold. I suggested that since there is not a blameless person among us in matters of sin, if we started excusing sinners from holding positions of authority in the congregation, we would quickly run out of candidates.

From the perspective of law, we are innocent until proven guilty. From the gospel's point of view, we are all guilty. Many of you were here last week when we repeated together Psalm 19, verse 12. We lifted our voices to God, saying "Who can detect one's own offenses? Cleanse me from my secret faults."

For in the Body of Christ, we are not confused about who we are. We are sinners, forgiven and made acceptable to God only by the precious gift of God's grace through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We know well that we have no righteousness of our own.

Certainly, we pray that some form of justice may arise from what has happened. But we love and pray for all involved.

We are called this morning to rise about the ways of the world—as we are each Sunday. We are invited into a deep and spiritual maturity that is not a simple matter. The presence of those who are involved in criminal or civil litigation is not a new thing for us in this congregation—nor, likely, for any congregation. We have dealt well in recent years with such things. I hope and pray that we will do so again.

The mature love Paul calls for in the church at Corinth and in us involves a relationship to God that provides a wise perspective. This kind of loving rejoices in what is good and right, is patient, kind, humble, forbearing, faithful, hopeful, and enduring. It looks beyond itself and draws its power from its grounding in a loving and gracious God.

Spiritual maturity is about loving deeply. And the nature of that loving is modeled after the way our Lord loves us. It calls for a reflective awareness of our own flawed and sinful character. It calls for a recognition of the complexities of the human character and motives. It calls us to a wide embrace and an understanding of judgment that stands ultimately in the hands of God. And it seeks a community of grace and blessing.

Virtue is the vocation of the morally serious person and the morally engaged congregation. And Paul lays the nature of virtue out for us. If we are to live into these difficult words of God, we are challenged to take a stance of humility, to bear our own scrutiny, to hold a discerning self-awareness before God and one another, to understand the possibilities of our own corruptions, to engage in honest self-examination, and steadily to expose ourselves to the truth. For our mutual well-being involves both a hopeful honesty and a profound awareness of our need of grace.

These are the components of love. These are the signs of spiritual maturity and mature spirituality.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

And God so loved the world that the Son was sent to live and to die and to be resurrected for all of us (paraphrase of John 3:16). Amen.

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord unto eternal life. Amen.