There has to be a better way. Too many families are hurting. Too many people who fell in love have fallen out of love. Too many people live with bitterness and cruelty. Too many have spoken things they didn’t mean, or said things, some ugly things, they really meant!! I understand that after the meeting between the President and the Republican leaders on Friday they won’t be sending each other Christmas cards this year!! Look around – there has to be a better way.

There was an old fellow being interviewed by a reporter because he had just reached his 100^th birthday. “Yes, sir, I’m 100 years old and I don’t have an enemy in the world.” “Well, that’s wonderful. You must be very proud of yourself.” “Yes”, said the old man. “My last enemy died about a year ago.” Is that how to live in love with all? Outlive our enemies? There must be a better way.

I applaud Paul for being so upfront with his letters to the congregations that he served. If ever there was a congregation that settled for far less than ‘the better way’ it was the Corinthians. They had no time for the better way of love. Their Voters Meetings, their Council Meetings, their worship services, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper were all awful. They were as divided as a congregation can be. I bet you have a few horror stories about a congregation or group that you have been in that didn’t get along, that fought and had great division. No fun, huh? It is a terrible thing. It rips the heart out of your chest. Folks that once fought for each other now fight against one another. It can bring you great dissolution. It stinks!! And this is what this congregation had. One said they followed Paul, another said they followed Apollos, another Peter, and some said they were the only ones who followed Christ!! (I Corinthians 1:12)

And Paul said that there had to be a better way. “And now I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” If I have the greatest faith and can even move mountains with such an amazing faith, or, If become a martyr, allowing myself to be burned at the stake, to stand up for my faith, but if I don’t have love, I am nothing and I gain nothing. (See I Corinthians 13:1-3)

There is a better way but it can a hard way. C.S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves said, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure to keep it intact, you must give your heart to no one…[there] it will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” But it will also be dead and empty. It will be a rock, hard and calloused.

I heard a story from Henry Fingerlin who used to be the Pastor of Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in Centennial. Henry said that during World War II, while Jewish people were being loaded into boxcars and transported to camps to be exterminated, the railroad tracks traveled quite close to a Lutheran Church. The people in those boxcars would cry out for help. But it was too much for the worshippers to hear, the cries were too disturbing and so loud that the organist in the Lutheran Church was asked to play louder when the train and the boxcars were traveling past and the cries for help were being raised. I hope the story is legend. I hope there would be no truth to it. I hope that we didn’t just play the organ louder so we couldn’t hear the cries of those in danger and suffering.

Love is the better way. No doubt about it. In relationships, among family, at work, in church, even in a political arena, love is the better way. But it is not the easy way!!

Love is God’s way. Someone was asked the question, “What is love?” And he got the question right on his first try. “Love is the score in a tennis match when you don’t have a point.” That’s right!! 15-love. 30-love. 40-love. If you have the love in that instance you aren’t doing very well!! But if you have the love in this instance, from Him, you are doing well!!

Love is the gift of God to all of us who don’t deserve to be loved. And it has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ. It became ours when He came to this earth and took on the flesh of all of us – dropping to this level of humility. This better way of love was shown when He kept all of God’s commands and lived a perfect life, for our benefit, so we could wear His righteousness. His way of love meant death for our sins and the invitation for us to believe and have a heart filled with trust in Him. Everyone who has faith in Jesus Christ will live for all eternity in heaven. This a better way than any way we would chose – this is the way of God’s real love!!

St. John, the Apostle of Love, writes, “This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (I John 4:9-11)

This better way that comes to us through the face of Jesus Christ is a way that lasts and endures. There is much too much temporary love in our world. Mary Bear and I fell in love in the fourth grade. Her name was all over my notebooks. But she dumped me. So I scratched out her initials and name with all the hearts that surrounded them from my books. Look what she missed!! (Lucky, girl!!) His love is not so temporary. “For I am convinced that neither life nor death, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

There is a better way for us to live, as well. If you have been to a wedding it could be that you have heard I Corinthians 13, our text, read. It is a favorite, a classic. But the context of this chapter has nothing to do with a wedding. But is has everything to do with love. This chapter is about living out faith in very practical ways. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” ( I Corinthians 13:4-8)

Now these words certainly apply to marriage. Marriage has to have a darn short memory in regards to some things!! Love in our marriages cannot keep a record of wrongs, it cannot be easily angered, it cannot be selfish and self-centered. If you are married take these inspired words and make for a better way, a deeper way of what love and marriage should be. You don’t have to wait until Valentine’s Day to be practical, or impractical, with love.

But a large number of you aren’t married. But this passage is your passage as well!! This is the better way of love. This is what God has given to us very personally and very deeply. This is what we get to give the world around us. To family and neighbors, folks that you shop with or share your road, with people that you do business with and those that you hammer out deals with, the better way is living with patience toward others or with kindness. It is not living in arrogance or snobbery. It doesn’t paint the picture of rudeness. It is actually living in love. Maybe that could even be how Democrats and Republicans could be to one another!! (I’m really stretching here!!)

More than 50 years ago a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore assigned his class to an extremely poor neighborhood to interview 200 boys. Then he asked them, “On the basis of your findings, predict their future.” The ghettos there were tough and the students didn’t hold much hope for the future of these boys. They estimated that 90% of them would spend some time in jail.

25 years passed. The same sociology professor sent out a new class to locate the 200. They found 180 of them. (We’ll make them into census workers!!) And of the 180 of the original boys found, only 4 of them had ever been to jail. Now the professor had to find out why the outcome was so different from the prediction. It seemed that of the 180 of them over 100 of them had a common denominator - the same high school teacher, a Miss Sheila O’Rourke. They remarked what a great influence she had been in their lives. They found Miss O’Rourke at a nursing home in Memphis. When asked for her explanation she replied, “All I can say is that I loved everyone of them.”

Do you ever look at the world that we live in and the world that you live in and say, “There has to be a better way?” There is!! St. Paul says, “And now I will show you the most excellent way.” (I Corinthians 12:31b) The most excellent way is the way of love. God has given it to us in the life of Jesus. Jesus and His love has come into our lives. And now we get to give such a gift to others. It is a much better way!! Amen!!