Truth and Consequences

We all know these familiar words from I Corinthians 13: "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."

Ironically, the familiarity of this passage may work against its significance. We may find ourselves reading past it, in the same way that we fail to look closely at the Mona Lisa or listen carefully to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or attend thoughtfully to Hamlet's famous soliloquies. Through overexposure, amazing things can cease to amaze us.

This text has particularly suffered from overuse at wedding ceremonies. Indeed, these verses have taken on the same predictability as the cute ring bearer, the grin before the kiss, and the bad dancing at the reception. Years ago, a minister friend of mine said that he tried to talk couples out of using this often-requested scripture at weddings because they could not possibly understand what it meant until they had been married for a while.

If, however, we can bring ourselves to back away from the usual invocations of this text and read it attentively then we will notice some remarkable things. Recently, in trying to do this, I stumbled on something I had not noticed before: the statement that love rejoices in the truth. This caught my attention, because we normally associate the other things in these verses--patience, kindness, and hopefulness, for example--with love. But what is truth doing in there?

I suppose there are two kinds of answers to that question. One makes a direct and explicit connection between loving someone and being honest with them. In this sense, love doesn't just "rejoice" in the truth--it depends upon it.

The other kind of answer makes a broader point: that truth is an indispensible component of all of the work of God. It shows up everywhere. It shows up when we're talking about justice. It shows up when we're talking about love. It will set you free.

Lent offers a good occasion to ponder the role of truth in our lives and in our faith. After all, it plays an important role in the story that we remember during this season. To make the point, we might summarize that story this way:

Satan kept trying to tempt Jesus.

But Jesus kept telling him the truth.

Amen.