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For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.\xa0 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:12-13)

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These verses come at the end of Paul\u2019s great chapter on love in 1 Corinthians 13, which means that we hardly read it seriously.\xa0 We pass it on to our children to memorize or read it at weddings because it talks about love a lot.\xa0 Because love is mushy and subjective.\xa0 It makes us uncomfortable.\xa0 When we want to get down to brass tacks, we crack open Romans or Ephesians.\xa0 We don\u2019t go to the love part.

And, fair enough.\xa0 Sometimes the word \u201clove\u201d is used rather simplistically, like a slogan.\xa0 \u201cChoose love, not hate,\u201d we say.\xa0 Which\u2014in this abstract form\u2014means precisely nothing.\xa0 The people who chant and shout love act a lot like the folks who are supposedly perpetrating the hate.\xa0 Just as much anger, slander, fear, exclusion, and even violence.\xa0 Love as an abstract concept gets us nowhere.\xa0

But that\u2019s not how 1 Corinthians 13 comes to us.\xa0 It comes to us embedded in a context and among a group of people: the climactic center of the worship wars in Corinth where the church was deeply divided.\xa0 How do you live out the reconciliation you already have in Christ in worship, around the Lord\u2019s Supper Table, and when you\u2019re fighting about gifts, abilities, and who controls the direction of the church?\xa0 You love each other, that\u2019s how.\xa0

I find these words at the end of 1 Corinthians 13 to be one of the best descriptions of heaven and of our Christian longing.\xa0 To see Jesus, face to face. \xa0To know Him fully even as we are fully known by Him.\xa0 And to see and know each other in the same way: fully and face to face.\xa0 What a surprising joy!\xa0 That we can be seen and known fully for everything we are and aren\u2019t: and still be loved fully all the same!\xa0 But that is the promise: this place of deep belonging and fellowship that lies at the fulfillment of our hopes and at the end of our faith; that deep and lasting place of loving, embodied, relationship in its truest and purest form.\xa0 Beyond faith and hope: love remains.\xa0

For now, we only see a dim reflection, as through a mirror, or a glass in the older translations.\xa0 I think of the screens of our devices that tell us all the terrible things going on in the world and church and bring us the disembodied fellowship of text on screens or voice alone in Discord or heads in boxes across Zoom and Facetime.\xa0 What a poor reflection.

Embodied fellowship is what we were created for.\xa0 It\u2019s what we long for.\xa0 The world of face to face.\xa0 Of knowing fully even as we are fully known.\xa0 Sure, we can\u2019t get to that depth of fullness on this side of eternity even when we do come together, but it is the direction our entire, embodied-resurrection faith leans.\xa0 That\u2019s why we\u2019re called to gather as Christians.\xa0 Not because the church is great, but because we need the practice.\xa0

Learning how to see and know another and love them all the same.\xa0 Jesus did it for us.\xa0 Will you come together to love one another in just that same way?\xa0 It is, to quote Paul, \u201cthe most excellent way\u201d through our present difficulties and divisions.

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