The Rev. CeCe Armstrong turns to a familiar text during closing worship at the 2024 Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women
by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service
The Rev. CeCe Armstrong preaches Sunday during closing worship of the 2024 Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women. (Photo by Susan Barnes)
LOUISVILLE — The Rev. CeCe Armstrong, co-moderator of the 226th General Assembly (2024) and the associate pastor of St. James Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina, wrapped up the 2024 Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women on Sunday with a sermon focused on the theme “Love Always …,” drawing as inspiration familiar and treasured words from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.
As the 900 or so attendees prepared to depart St. Louis Sunday, “we should leave here ready to do everything in love — or, as my mom would declare, love always,” she said.
The Rev. Dr. Lewis Galloway is among those to have given “us some interesting views on 1 Corinthians 13 and remind us there are few chapters in the Bible that have suffered more varied interpretations and more varied applications than this one,” Armstrong noted. “When we dive into this text and refuse to acknowledge its context, we get a beautiful sentimental sermon on love — and it doesn’t even mention God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit.”
It might be difficult for those who gathered for worship on Sunday “to hear anything fresh about this text. After all,” Armstrong said with a smile, “you’re probably thinking about white dresses as we speak.”
The familiar words “take on a new meaning” when we remember they were written “out of crisis in the Corinthian church,” she said. “They were having problems, y’all,” including the abuse of the gift of tongues, division, “envy of each other’s gifts, selfishness and impatience with each other” in public meetings — not to mention “behavior that was disgracing the Lord.”
“I’m sure that is not happening in your congregation,” Armstrong said, and those in worship chuckled.
“These issues may sound familiar, but I am not talking about modern-day America,” she said to a room that wasn’t quite buying it. “I am still referring to the Corinthians of biblical times. I’m just saying.”
“As sad as that was long ago and as sad as this is even now, we need not be downhearted. That’s why we come to gatherings like this,” Armstrong said, “so we can be rejuvenated and revived and go back to a world that needs us.” The PW crowd gathered in St. Louis applauded.
Paul wrote this letter to a church “that was young and vital and alive,” she said. But “even a vitally alive congregation will have problems. It’s not the absence of problems but how we deal with them that determines our continued growth toward the full experience of blessing.”
Then Armstrong offered this word of pastoral advice: “You don’t have to RSVP for every argument you’ve been invited to.”
According to Armstrong, “the main evidence of maturity in the Christian life is a growing love for God and for God’s people, as well as a love for lost souls.”
“When resources of space, time and money are scarce, tensions can rise, and unspoken assumptions are sometimes verbalized in hurtful and divisive ways,” she said. “Paul gives the Corinthians a simple command, and my mom declared this to be so for us as well: Love always … Whatever comes after that ellipsis is going to be on you. The only one who gets to account for your actions is the one who will meet you when you are gone.”
Love is “not just another spiritual gift, but the way in which God intends us to use our gifts,” she said. “In this passage, Paul speaks about the priority of love, the character of love and the endurance of love.” That got Armstrong to compare loving to learning another language.
Language “is vital to our development as children,” and it’s “vital to our growing stages as teens and young adults,” she said. “Language is vital to being part of a community, and so being fully immersed in a situation will certainly strengthen our knowledge of the language to be learned.”
“Isn’t this true of love?” she asked. “It’s probably the school of hard knocks where most of us learn love the best.”
Learning a language is difficult at times, but always rewarding, she said. It’s continuous and occurs during different periods of our life. Armstrong recalled enjoying no small amount of Facetime in conversation with her young niece. “The whole conversation was me asking questions: Where’s your nose? Is this my eye?” she said. “Shouldn’t we do this for those who are babies in the faith? Shouldn’t we label all our actions with the words they represent? ‘Love is patient.’ Does anybody learn that by watching you? ‘Love is kind.’ Have you taught that lately?”
We should be learning “the basics of love” just as we once learned grammar and sentence structure, she said. “I’m just asking,” Armstrong said, assuring those in worship their answers would be between them and their maker: “Does your grammar reflect love? Are your sentence structures built on love? When you conjugate your verbs, do they agree with the subject of love?”
Years ago, Armstrong spent time in Brazil. She confessed to having no understanding whatsoever of Portuguese. “But what I did understand was conversation,” she said. She “kept on looking” until “they would say something that would make me understand what they meant.” One woman told Armstrong in her best English, “You can’t speak, but you understand.”
“Isn’t that how we as a church ought to reveal love?” she said. Presbyterian Women handles that task well, she said. “When you come to PW events, you get this warm feeling when you see everyone. It’s so good.”
“Our congregations should feel like that too,” she said to applause, “welcoming, affirming, allowing folks to just be loved, because love rejoices in the truth and loves bears all things and believes all things and hopes all things and endures all things.”
“I encourage you today to focus on the way these verses describe a love that is essential, effective and eternal, much like the love offered to us at this table, where Christ welcomes us to have a loving experience,” Armstrong said, nodding to the Communion table that was ready to be put to use. “For it is through God that we get to experience the Creator, acknowledge our Redeemer and are filled with our Sustainer. Through this triune God, may all glory, honor and praise be ours as we do exactly what Christ says: in remembrance of me. Amen? Amen.”
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