25.03 | What Fills the Sandwich
1 Corinthians 13
‘So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’
1 Corinthians 13:13
What’s your favourite sandwich?
I’m probably (this may be impacted by writing this in the morning), an all-day breakfast kind of guy. Put everything in—sausages and bacon and a fried egg, brown and red sauce, and maybe a tomato. Get it in some really good bread, and a strong and milky cup of tea on the side.
Paul was a trained rabbi. Before he met Jesus, in his radical conversion encounter on the Emmaus road, he was a disciple under a rabbi named Gamaliel. A rabbinic disciple was saturated in Jewish thought, Scripture, and ways of communication, and thus these often come out in Paul’s writings. One of these rabbinic norms was how they structured a piece of writing. A conventional approach was to put the core idea in the middle of a block of text, and then bracket this central theme with surrounding ideas. You spot these structures by noticing when certain ideas repeat around a middle section or phrase.
In other words, the rabbis often wrote or taught in spirituality sandwiches.
Today’s reading is the centre of this particular rabbinic sandwich. It goes a little bit like this:1
Men and women in church (11:2-16)
Worship gatherings: Communion (11:17-34)
Spiritual gifts (ch.12)
LOVE (ch.13)
Spiritual gifts (14:1-25)
Worship gatherings: teaching and prophecy (14:26-33a)
Men and women in church (14:33b-40)
This is crafted so intentionally. Paul is writing these ideas around the theme of love, with every other idea pointing both towards and out from this central topic.
In other words, everything else that Paul is writing about is organised about becoming loving. Lose this centre and every other subject and practice and power is emptied of the truest stuff of heaven.
This doesn’t come as easily as we would like. The wider way of our culture focuses on relentless busyness, productivity, and results. Our focus is so often the self—be it self-care, self-actualisation, self-fulfilment or self-promotion. Such values infect our churches too, with our corporate gaze easily being drawn to the external metrics of scale and branding and vibe and programme, or the internal obsession with it feeling like it is benefiting the fragile self.
But love is the more excellent way. It is the antidote to both insecurity and egotism, and it is the only ecosystem within which spiritual gifts, worship patterns, and our relationships can truly flourish. It finds the true self not in what we gain but in what we give. Love is the litmus test of spiritual health and the primary metric of spiritual maturity. When we prioritise any attainment or influence or progress or success over and above love, Paul warns, we are hollow and dead—noisy but unsubstantial, powerful but abusive, slick but insincere.
Paul is setting our focus of what we are to become. It will change how every other thing operates. It is the centre of the sandwich.
This may not come readily to us. But it really can come. And yet it rarely begins in a mighty moment of magical transformation, but in a million little choices in the direction of patience, kindness, and learning to speak with honour. It grows through a million little refusals to insist on our way or to cling onto grudges. It strengthens through daily, consistent, lifelong showing up in great hope for and devotion to those you’ve been positioned among. These tiny choices, accompanied by the mighty Spirit of God—who lives and speaks and loves within you—are where the steady work of becoming loving happens.
Enough of the insubstantial church of noise. Further into the church of beautiful love. Here is the very culture of heaven. Here is the true way of our homeland.
Reflect:
Invite the Spirit to help you in this. Ask Him to show you your activity, and reveal to you, as you scan your mind over the things that you do, your core motivations. What do you find at the centre?
When it is fear, competition, pride, envy, etc., offer Him your repentance. Remember, repentance is powerful when you name it, not just when you feel strong enough to follow through.
And into these places, invite the Spirit, to teach you how to hold love at the centre of all that you do.
Pray:
Father,
When I search my heart,
I find that my motives include a lot of me;
My concerns; my importance; my comfort; my insecurities; my ego.
I am sorry,
I see that this causes pain to those around me,
And is deathly to me too.
When I look at what I value,
I see that I so often value the noisy and impressive,
Rather than the simple, humble, gentle, and kind.
Renew me:
Send your Spirit—
Your life-giving, all things renewing, mighty and gentle Spirit—
To change me from the inside out,
Creating in me a heart that is like yours;
Truly and beautifully
Love.
In Jesus’ Name,
Who loved me first,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Deuteronomy 16:21-19:21 | Psalm 38
The technical term for this is a chiasm. This framework in 1 Corinthians is specifically described in more detail by Kenneth Bailey in his book Paul Through Middle Eastern Eyes, p.293ff.