Savannah Burch, Associate Director of Student Ministries

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (CEB)

If I speak in tongues of human beings and of angels but I don’t have love, I’m a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and I know all the mysteries and everything else, and if I have such complete faith that I can move mountains but I don’t have love, I’m nothing. If I give away everything that I have and hand over my own body to feel good about what I’ve done but I don’t have love, I receive no benefit whatsoever.

Reflection:

A song my mom used to sing in her youth choir days, called Charity, essentially paraphrases these three verses from 1 Corinthians. The chorus goes,

If I have not charity
If love does not flow from me
I am nothing.
Jesus, reduce me to love.

What a strange thing to ask. “Jesus, reduce me.” When we sang it at reunions I wondered at the wording. What does it mean to be reduced to love?

Fast forward many years, while working with international students at Rice University, I had abundant opportunities to practice charitable behavior, with sometimes mixed results. It goes without saying that there were language and cultural barriers in an English as a Second Language (ESL) program, but with patience, usually the students and I were able to overcome those barriers to communicate and find a happy medium.

That being said, one semester there was a specific woman who I thought would be the end of me. She had come to Houston with her college-aged son to study English, and she visited the office daily to ask questions about her son’s grades (which I couldn’t answer) and her son’s teachers (which I wouldn’t answer). Even if another staff member was available, she always came to MY desk. Infuriating! One afternoon, she walked into the office, made a beeline to my desk (of course), smiled, and said, “You remind me of my daughter in Riyadh. I miss her, but every time I see you, I think of her.” And I was…reduced. Remembering it now still brings a wave of conviction. When I looked at her I saw a nuisance, but when she looked at me she saw a daughter. At that moment, with all of our differences and the office bureaucracy stripped away, a Muslim woman graciously showed me what love looks like. If we had a relationship, it was strictly professional: I was there to provide a service, she to receive it. And yet, she still took the time to see me as a person—one worth sharing a part of herself with, in spite of my exasperated professionalism.

1 Corinthians tells us that in the high stakes of living and loving like Jesus, it’s love or nothing. Our good intentions, our Sunday morning attendance, our commitment to Bible studies or daily prayer time are all well and good, but until we can look at another person (regardless of how problematic we find them) and see a friend, a neighbor, a member of the family, we’re just making noise. May we all stop reducing people to problems, and instead allow the Holy Spirit to peel away the layers of our expectations for others’ behavior until we ourselves are reduced to love.

Prayer:

God of all people, thank you for loving each of us when you could just see us as problems to fix. Move in our hearts so that love would flow from us into every interaction we have this week. Amen.