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. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:12-13)

These verses come at the end of Paul’s great chapter on love in 1 Corinthians 13, which means that we hardly read it seriously. We pass it on to our children to memorize or read it at weddings because it talks about love a lot. Because love is mushy and subjective. It makes us uncomfortable. When we want to get down to brass tacks, we crack open Romans or Ephesians. We don’t go to the love part.

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

But that’s not how 1 Corinthians 13 comes to us. 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. How do you live out the reconciliation you already have in Christ in worship, around the Lord’s Supper Table, and when you’re fighting about gifts, abilities, and who controls the direction of the church? You love each other, that’s how.

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. To see Jesus, face to face. To know Him fully even as we are fully known by Him. And to see and know each other in the same way: fully and face to face. What a surprising joy! That we can be seen and known fully for everything we are and aren’t: and still be loved fully all the same! 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. Beyond faith and hope: love remains.

For now, we only see a dim reflection, as through a mirror, or a glass in the older translations. 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. What a poor reflection.

Embodied fellowship is what we were created for. It’s what we long for. The world of face to face. Of knowing fully even as we are fully known. Sure, we can’t 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. That’s why we’re called to gather as Christians. Not because the church is great, but because we need the practice.

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