Love is or it Ain’t

the Rev. Dr. DeWayne L. Davis

February 2, 2025

Text: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

In her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved, Toni Morrison narrates the story of an enslaved woman, Sethe, who escapes the plantation where she is brutalized, only to find herself coming face-to-face with the overseer trying to reclaim her and her children from their new home in freedom. Sethe makes a fateful, tragic, violent choice to keep her children out of the clutches of the horrors of slavery, leaving the land, house, and her surviving family haunted and disinherited. When she is reunited with Paul D., another enslaved person she grew up with on that plantation, she finally gets a chance to explain herself and the terrible choices she made. Upon hearing her story, Paul D, thinking he is being helpful, says to Sethe, “Your love is too thick.” He was cautioning her to love in a way that doesn’t hurt too much when you inevitably lose somebody, that doesn’t require you to sacrifice too much of yourself, that doesn’t put you in a position to have to make an impossible choice. Hearing this wisdom, Sethe replies, “Love is or it ain’t. Thin love is no love at all.”

I have come to see those words, “Love is or it ain’t,” as a perfect, pointed encapsulation of the Apostle Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 13. Nowadays, the poetry of the love chapter in 1 Corinthians is so powerful and intimate that people read and hear it more often at weddings than during the preaching moment of worship. But this word is far from an exploration of romantic love. Paul is putting before the people the hard work of living out the spiritual and theological reality of the reign of God amid the political reality of an empire that grinds humanity in the machinery of profit, industry, and military might. Paul writes these words to a community that well knew the greatest commandment: to love God with all your heart, soul, and might, and your neighbor as yourself, but who had gotten comfortable loving thinly, loosely, and contingently because true love meant abandoning the rewards and privileges of the empire or challenging the status quo of existing social arrangements.

In a place like Corinth, to talk about love as a way of navigating would have been shocking because would have been viewed as weak and foolish. While Corinth was a vital city in the growth and development of the early church, as the largest and most prosperous city in Greece, it was the center of trade, tourism, manufacturing, and religious pilgrimage. The Corinthian Christians would have been influenced by the prosperity and opportunities it offered. The church included individuals with newfound wealth, chances to socialize with the elite, and the ability to elevate their honor and status. Unfortunately, too many church members inadvertently introduced and recreated the worst impulses and practices of the larger culture. As one scholar noted, the church in Corinth fell into the habit of “reinforcing the social hierarchies” of Romanized Corinth. Thus, Paul wrote to a church community mired in factionalism and inequality, where self-serving opportunism clouded the church’s purpose and mission. The rivalry among different people and groups led to an exaggerated focus on spiritual gifts as a means to distinguish oneself from others or gain a status advantage. Too many succumbed to the human tendency to exploit their gifts, including spiritual gifts intended for building up the church, for personal gain. Boasting about and competing over gifts of tongues, prophecy, and service began to tear the church apart.

So, the apostle interrupts his own argument about spiritual gifts to the church to talk about the real issue at stake. He says it right before this familiar treatise on love: “Strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way” (1 Cor 12:31). Love is the more excellent way to live in the community. Love is more significant than any gift anyone can possess. In the poetry of this digression in the letter, Paul clarifies that thin love, loose love, or contingent love is no love at all. Love is or it ain’t. And it makes sense because everything else we can think of, especially the gifts we are so proud to possess, will pass away. They will cease to matter, especially when we can no longer offer them. But love will not end. Love is the main thing. No matter how articulate, spiritual, prophetic, faithful, or generous we are, it won’t mean anything without love. Without love, whatever gift, skill, or talent deployed for any purpose other than service to others will end up being just another way we reinforce the social hierarchies of the greedy, violent world. Love is the imperishable, always available force that gives meaning to everything we do, that provides the world with a foretaste of God’s glory amid the brokenness and profanity of the world.

Notice that the poetry of love is timeless and universal. Love is not a Christian possession or theological theory. Love is not just a feeling or emotion. Love is a way of being that inflects everything we do. Paul’s encomium to love, his praise for it as a universal virtue, invites us to consider how love can be a universal practice even when anchored in or reflected upon in the context of the unique witness of the church. Paul knew that the beloved community would need love for what was coming. It was love that sustained them after Jesus was betrayed and nailed to the cross. Love is the only force that can counter and overcome what the world throws at us. Love was the only way God’s people could endure the world’s hatred, the government’s persecution, and the inevitable likelihood of betrayal and disagreement that periodically arise when humans create community. Love will keep us together.

We are not so different from the saints in Corinth. Our society is not so different from the city of Corinth, where wealth, inequality, and tribalism reinforce destructive hierarchies. The constant variable is humanity. Something in the human condition compels us to create a hierarchy. Something in the human condition compels us to create another to dominate, others over whom we feel superior. Something in the human condition tempts us to hoard food, status, riches, and human dignity at the expense of those we’ve made weaker. Only love can counter it. Only love can prompt us to do something.

Unfortunately, we rob love its power because we still too often see it as just a feeling, seldom as action. Paul recognized that love encompassed more than an emotion and included an element of choice. In his book, The Art of Loving, the renowned psychoanalyst Erich Fromm asserted that love is more than a feeling and is within our ability to choose. According to Fromm, love “is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one ‘object’ of love.” This assertion is wholly consistent with Paul’s teaching to the church in Corinth. Love is an attitude and an orientation that finds expression in our actions. What does love look like when we encounter a shabby, unhoused stranger standing at the intersection as we drive by? What does love look like when we see a seemingly menacing Black kid in a hoodie on the sidewalk? What does love look like when we come across a trans woman seeking a job or asking to use the facilities? What does love look like when migrants and immigrants seek safety from violence and economic devastation at the border? A loving response extends beyond warm feelings and good intentions. And this is where love as an attitude and orientation makes all the difference.

Sadly, in the failure to love concretely, there has also been the practice of redefining love to give license to being unkind, impatient, rude, and unmoved by those we have relegated to the margins. In my ministry with people looking for the love and safety of their faith communities, I have found just how thin, loose, and contingent love can be, which no love at all. I heard it from the mother of a gay son who said the church told her, “We love you. You should send your son to a conversion therapy program, and if he refuses, you should kick him out.” I heard it from the trans kid I visited in a juvenile detention center who said that her priest told her, “We love you. You can’t come to youth group if you insist on wearing girls’ clothes.” I heard it from clergy colleagues in the aftermath of the killings of Philando Castille and George Floyd, who said members of their church told them, “We love you, but you are talking too much about white supremacy and Black Lives Matter, and we want you to stop.” I’ve seen it with churches and faith leaders all over the country who invoke the word love even as they support policies and politicians that demean immigrants, exacerbate poverty, violate civil and human rights, and tolerate and legislate discrimination and criminalization against women and LGBTQ people. Love is or it ain’t.

Like in the ancient city of Corinth, our culture, economy, and politics have little use for love. However, the witnesses of Jesus and the early saints commend love as the enduring antidote to what the world is likely to do and has done. So, as we confront the chaos and confusion of mass deportations, white supremacist rhetoric and discrimination, suppression of the truth of science and history, and the perennial exacerbation of differences and reinforcement of old hierarchies, let love ground, prompt, and energize us. May we kindle and nurture an attitude and orientation of love that finds expression in concrete action. Love never ends. Amen.