“Mind your manners! Don’t be rude!” How many of our mommas gave us that memo before sending us to a sleep-over at a friend’s house, dropping us off at school, or certainly, as they were depositing us at our Sunday School class? The ultimate fear would be to bring embarrassment, certainly to ourselves, but most expressly to our mommas! You don’t want to embarrass momma!
As Paul further ruminated about the nature of agape (gospel-love) in 1st Corinthians 13, I’m sure he wasn’t concerned about minimizing the pain of embarrassment. He had something far more profound in mind when he said, “Love is not rude.” A rude person is someone who cares nothing about the way they impact others. A rude person is context, culture and courtesy insensitive. Rude on steroids is a sociopath-the ultimate expression of having no concern whatsoever about how one’s attitudes, words or actions impact other people. Thus, it makes all the sense in the world that the next phrase in 1 Cor. 13:5 that follows “love is not rude,” is “love is not self-seeking”. To be rude is to be self-seeking. If you’re the “point” then it’s pointless to care one bit about anybody else but you.
Now I doubt Jesus embarrassed Mary, his momma, very much, but his lack of rudeness is at the core of his incarnate life, and expressly in the ultimate rude-less, selfless act of giving himself for us on the cross. Jesus “made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-even death on a cross!”
Good manners matter, but the manner of the gospel matters most. How might we show “gospel manners” today?