Don't Smile for the Birdy!

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

13:1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
13:2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
13:3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
13:4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
13:5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
13:6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
13:7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
13:8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
13:9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;
13:10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
13:11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

 

Ever notice that folks in old time photos never smile?  In the otherwise horrible movie "A Million Ways to Die in the West" (which is set in a miserable one horse town in the old west) one of the running jokes is that no one smiles in pictures because you would have to be happy for a full uninterrupted fifteen to thirty seconds... and that never could happen.  

Some folks assume that people didn't smile because the shutter speeds were just too slow and it would cramp your face to smile that long.  But try smiling for fifteen seconds;  it isn't that hard.  Some folks have suggested that it is simply a matter that historic photos were often of serious folks like Grant and Lincoln:




That hardly explains Mr. Mark Twain here.  Ol' Samuel Clemens was well known for being a really funny guy.  For, that matter history tells us that one of the attributes that made Honest Abe so appealing to Americans was that he was known for his exceptional good nature and excellent sense of humor. So why are these guys not smiling?



The answer has to do with the notion of adulthood.  Twain once said, "A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever." Adulthood was serious stuff, you didn't go around grinning like the town idiot. In fact Historian Nicholas Jeeves writes that by the seventeenth century  "it was a well-established fact that the only people who smiled broadly, in life and in art, were the poor, the lewd, the drunk, the innocent, and the entertainment." 

Adulthood was serious stuff that required a serious demeanor and a serious attitude. There are places where that still holds true today. I had a Russian friend in college who used to complain that it was hard to trust Americans as a Russian. It wasn't because of the cold war, it wasn't because of the nuclear arms race, it was because Americans all go around with smiles on their faces and, "no adult Russian trusts all that fake good humor."   


Now compare that to the perpetual state of adolescence that passes for adulthood in popular culture today. So many of the public icons in the world today are little more than overgrown adolescents.  Or in many cases they are under-grown adolescents, as we seem equally determined to rush our children into overly early adolescence, making them into mini-adults.  

What does all that mean for the notion that "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways"?  We seem to give equal voice to children in adult drag as though they were wise, and we give equal voice to adults with childish perspectives as though they likewise were wise.  

This begs the question:  When did adulthood fall out of fashion? 

Those of you who know me know that I try to stay positive in these little studies, so I am not going to go too far into beating the dead horse of fallen American pop culture and the vacuous nature  of so many of our celebrities (**cough-Kardashians-cough** ...there it's out of my system).  

Let's look instead at what makes for a good, mature adult who has "put an end to childish ways." First lets, set aside that notion that this means excluding child-like things.  Innocence, wonder, joy, playfulness and openness, all child-like attributes, are all still firmly on the table for adult usage.  No one ever said to set aside these things.  In fact Jesus exhorts us to lift up exactly that sort of behavior as essential to "seeing the kingdom of God".  

When Paul talks about maturity and "setting aside childish things" he is talking about a person growing into a more complete state of being.  Although we cannot hope to ever become perfected in this life Paul is talking about striving toward a maturity.  



This maturity is much more akin to the notion of "ripeness" than it would be to the notion of "oldness".  What makes for a full human?  What makes a person complete, ripe, or in other words: mature?  For Paul it all has to do with our aptitude for love.  In his letter to the folks in Corinth he says that love is the measure of adulthood and that love enables things like: patience, kindness, humility, graciousness, generosity, honesty, perseverance, hopefulness, and faith.  

Love is the ultimate gold ticket to adulthood.  You can frown in pictures all you want, Paul would say, it still does not make you a mature adult.  It may merely mean you have a sour disposition.  

Love, Thomas Merton says, is, "to will that which is best for another above all else...  even yourself." This is a hard definition of love that leaves no room for sentimentality.  It is love that matches what Paul is espousing.  It is a serious, grown up, kind of love that allows for no inaction, apathy, or neglect. We cannot hope to achieve this sort of love on our own, at least not completely.  However, we are far from alone in loving this way.  We have the Holy Spirit bonded with us to help and guide us.  We have the love of God freely given to us in the salvific act of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.  We have the church, the very Body of Christ there to support us.  We do not stand for maturity and love alone but with an army of fellow adults.  But we must stand for this sort of maturity or it will be lost in the world we live in.  

So smile for the camera, or don't...it really does not make you more or less mature...but do love.