The Greatest of These

A spelling bee in Mr. Southworth's fifth grade class comes down to the last word, and the stakes could not be sillier or more serious: the losing team has to do the winning team's spelling homework. Robyn Jacobs spells "republic" perfectly and ties the score for Robyn's Raiders, but Pamela answers "chronicle" just as neatly and puts Pamela's Pirates ahead by one. Mr. Southworth offers Robyn's team a way out - tie the score on the final turn and he will cancel the homework altogether. Then Robyn discovers who is up next: Oscar. She asks to make a substitution, Pamela objects, and Mr. Southworth agrees that swapping players would not be fair. Oscar steps up, gets the word "laugh," and spells it L-A-P-H. The Pirates win, Robyn's team owes the homework, and Robyn's afternoon gets worse when she checks the board and learns that her partner for the upcoming science fair is Oscar too.

At Whit's End, Connie Kendall has a puzzle of her own. She has been leading a Bible study with Robyn, Pamela, and Oscar, and while reading 1 Corinthians 13 the group spotted a footnote about a word Robyn read as "a gape." John Avery Whittaker explains, with some amusement, that the word is agape, a Greek word for a certain kind of love, and that the Bible describes four kinds in all. When Connie asks him which one agape is, Whit points her toward the Bible library in his office instead of handing her the answer. Along the way Connie mentions how the three students are doing. Robyn is quick, Pamela is a strong memorizer, and Oscar asks plenty of questions but never wants to read and cannot seem to remember anything from week to week - he once recited the end of the Lord's Prayer as "for thine is the kingdom and the flour and the laundry forever." Whit listens and grows thoughtful.

Robyn arrives still fuming about L-A-P-H, and she is sure the science project will be a disaster. Then Oscar shows up with his idea: a model volcano that shows how one works and why it erupts. Whit calls it a very good idea, and even Robyn warms to it, imagining a cutaway model with slime for lava and a pump to push it up the mountain. Whit sends Robyn ahead to the library and quietly asks Oscar to stay behind and read him the small table menu so he can update the big menu board. Oscar stumbles badly over "Sunday flavors, chocolate, strawberry," then gives up and suggests Whit find someone else to help. Whit lets him go and murmurs to himself about that poor boy.

A week of afternoons later, the volcano is finished. Whit tells Robyn he is proud of how hard the two of them have worked, and he starts to say that there is a reason Oscar does the things he does - but Oscar calls Robyn away before he can finish. Meanwhile Connie returns triumphant from the Greek dictionary: agape is unconditional love, the best love of all, the love God showed in sending his son and the love Jesus showed in dying for people who did not deserve it. Whit admits he has been doing research too. He believes Oscar has dyslexia, a condition that makes reading and writing very difficult, and in severe cases can make a person see things backwards. He has already called Oscar's parents, who are taking their son to a specialist.

Whit and Connie head back to see the demonstration with their good news ready to share. The model looks wonderful, the pump sends lava climbing up through the clear cutaway, and everyone is impressed. Then Robyn tells Oscar to shut it off, the flow surges instead, and the volcano erupts all over the room and all over Robyn. The dimmer switch, it turns out, has been turned all the way on. Robyn explodes at Oscar in front of everyone, demanding to know just how dumb he can be, and storms off. Left alone with Whit, Oscar quietly agrees with her: he is the biggest dummy who ever lived. The good news never gets delivered.

The next day Robyn is cleaning up alone and still blaming Oscar for the mess. Whit tells her the bigger mess is the eruption of Mount Robyn. Robyn defends herself by listing everything she has done for Oscar - helping with class work and homework, keeping him as her science fair partner, even sharing her lunch. Instead of arguing, Whit hands her a piece of paper and asks her to read it. She cannot; every word on it is written backwards. That, Whit tells her, is close to how Oscar sees almost everything. Robyn realizes Oscar turned the switch the wrong way because he was seeing it in reverse, and immediately says "poor Oscar" - which is exactly the shift Whit wants her to notice. Yesterday it was "you big dummy," and the only thing that has changed is her information.

Whit brings her back to 1 Corinthians 13 and the word she asked about. Agape is unconditional love: loving someone no matter what, not only when they are as smart as you, not only when they behave the way you want, and not only when they have a disability. It means loving people even when they have not earned it. As for Robyn's list of good deeds, Whit reminds her of Paul's warning that giving everything away, knowing everything, and having mountain-moving faith all add up to nothing without love. With agape, it is not so much what a person does as how they do it. Love is patient and kind, slow to anger, and keeps no score of wrongs; it always protects and trusts, always hopes and perseveres.

Robyn understands. When Oscar appears, offering to wait until she leaves before he cleans up, she stops him and apologizes for the way she acted, telling him that she was the dummy, not him, and asking his forgiveness. He gives it without hesitation. Then Robyn points out that the science fair is still a week away and they have already had their practice run - so why not build a second volcano? Oscar can hardly believe she still wants him as a partner, and agrees on one condition: this time, Robyn handles the controls. Connie hurries in with the answer to Robyn's Bible study question, only to find that Robyn already knows what agape means - and that it is the kind of love she intends to have from now on. Connie is left wondering why she bothers studying anything if everyone already knows it, while Whit, grinning, reminds her about agape.