How many weddings have incorporated the passage, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, to focus on the dynamic which will (they hope) guide and empower the life together of the new wife and husband? St. Paul uses a Greek-style eulogy of “the greatest virtue” to point out the primary place of love in the life of all who follow Jesus the Christ. We know the descriptive flow… Love is patient, love is kind, love is… But there’s (at least) one element of love that Paul omits. Love is inconvenient.
To put it simply: love involves personal relationship; personal relationships are messy and unpredictable. Once we allow another person to have access to our heart, we can count on our life being out of (our) control. Our time, our attention, our care are no longer mine alone – they are ours. Love is always a call to ecstasy – standing outside of one’s self – caught up in the gravitational pull of the other. Love demands availability. My plans, my program, living life on MY terms, all this is up for grabs. How inconvenient!
We have this ego-tendency to think that I have the right to set my own course, to determine my own fate, to “do it my way.” This might have been true if I was the only creature ever brought into existence……but probably not. J. P. Sartre said it best (from this point of view), “Hell is other people.” We are all (in-laws, outlaws, ancestors, aliens..) in it together. And we need to care for each other, love one another, otherwise there’s no future for anyone. Talk about inconvenient!
Here’s a troubling thought. We believe that God is love (1 John:4-16). Love is particularly inconvenient. It follows, then, that God is inconvenient. God, who invites all into relationship – who, as our lover, claims the right to break into our lives whenever, however love requires – is notoriously bothersome, refusing to leave us alone to stumble forever in the dark. God asks things of us that totally disrupt our “best laid schemes.” What conveniences do we need to lay aside in order to experience more fully the warm, all-embracing, inconvenient love that is God?