May 11, 2008

Scripture:         1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

Sermon:           “You Are a Gift”

            Let us now turn our attention to the Word of God.  And in our reading, hearing, and exploration of the scriptures, let us be open the Holy Spirit building us up as believers and as a community gathered in Christ’s name.

            Turn with me to 1 Corinthians where we will read from chapter 12.  I’ll begin with the second half of verse 3 and continue on through verse 13.  You can find that easily on page 231 of the New Testament in the Bible provided in the pews.

            Since, along with our American observance of Mother’s Day, this is the Day of Pentecost in the church, today’s lesson will be quite appropriate for it deals with just how the Spirit works within us.  Pentecost, of course, is the day of the Jewish calendar when it so happened that the first followers of Jesus were caught up in a powerful experience of God’s Spirit while they were in Jerusalem following the resurrection.

            We read that story almost every year.  So, this year we’ll use another part of the Bible.

            Keep in mind while we read together that this entire book, 1 Corinthians, is a letter written by that early church leader, the Apostle Paul, in response to a letter from the people who made up the church in a city called Corinth.  They were not having an easy time together.  And they turned to Paul for guidance.

            You can imagine that these early believers came from a very wide spectrum of their society.  Some were wealthy.  Many were not.  And in the Roman world, these two classes of people did not exist on equal terms in any way whatsoever.  While that should not have made a difference in the life of the church, of course it did.  They had problems.

            When Paul here talks about the varieties of gifts that folks receive from the Holy Spirit, you’ll notice that he stresses all gifts are meant for the good of the community at large.  These gifts were not, as was probably happening, to be seen as sources of pride in comparison to other people.

            Let us listen for the Word of the Lord…

            No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.  Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.  To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.  To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.  All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

            For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

            I have, on occasion, tortured you with my attempts to play the guitar on Sunday mornings.  You’ve been patient and kind.  And I thank you for that.  I haven’t given it a try much lately.  And I notice that you haven’t complained or asked me why.

            I’ve always wanted to play that darned thing.  Like many boys my age, I had posters in my room of great guitar players.  I’d listen to my records and tapes in my bedroom and imagine that I was the one entertaining the masses in sold out stadiums.  I even converted an old wooden tennis racket from the basement into a guitar.  I used some thumb tacks and one of my belts for a strap.  I had this crooked piece of metal dangling from the strings like what you’d call a whammy bar.  And I’d just act like a complete fool in the privacy of my room.

            To this day I can manage only five or six chords on the real thing.  I’m still quite good with a tennis racket.  And it takes me a long time to practice even one song.

            I saw this girl a few years ago.  Maybe 11 or 12.  Barely big enough to pick up a guitar.  And she was just running her fingers up and down the neck of the guitar and making it produce the most amazing melodies.  They have a name for people like this:  virtuoso.  She sat on a bucket along the sidewalk in Nashville.  And people walking by would drop money in her open guitar case.  I couldn’t believe it when I saw her.  I’ve been trying for over 20 years to play one of those things, and she just does it perfectly without even trying.  It was like a natural part of her.

            I had to remind myself that you shouldn’t hate someone you don’ even know—especially a child.

            There’s some thing that we all seem to just excel at naturally.

            While I wanted to play the guitar, it turns out that math was my thing.  Math.  Put a math problem in front of me and it just seems to make sense.  I don’t know why.  And I don’t really like it.  But, I can do it.

            Tom Cruise played a NASCAR driver in a film about 20 years ago called Days of Thunder.  Same kind of thing.  Cole Trickle didn’t know a thing about cars.  He couldn’t tell you much about how a race car worked.  And that made life hard for the guys in his pit crew.  The guys in the pit knew everything about cars.  All they needed was some guidance from their driver on how to do what he needed.  Then they might win some races.

            The scene in the movie has the pit chief, played by Robert Duvall—I love Robert Duvall—and he’s sitting there with Tom Cruise (a.k.a. Cole Trickle).  And he says, “you just tell me what you need me to do.”  The driver looked at him blankly and said, “that’s just it.  I don’t know what you’re talking about.  I’m a complete idiot when it comes to cars.  I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            “Well, how can that be?”  That’s what the pit chief said.

            “What difference does it make?  They put me in a car, told me to drive, and I could drive.”

            Something comes so easily to each of us.  Something comes so easily to each of us that you’d swear we were all just born that way.

            Listen to Courtney (our choir director) sing.  She can practice, and that’ll make her perform a song like it was written.  But, most of us weren’t born with a singing voice like that.

            And you’ve got Susan over there that can take a pile of ingredients and magically turn it into some of the most delicious food you’ve ever eaten.  Now, we’ve got some good cooks around here.  But, not all of us can work wonders in the kitchen.

            Have you noticed that some folks just have a personality that connects to people and they tend to be very persuasive?  Some say that’s charisma.  They do very well in sales and politics.  And then most of us are really uncomfortable trying to do that.

            In the language of faith we call those things gifts.  We’ve been made with certain things that just make sense to us, things that come naturally to us.  We understand that God has given to us unique and special things.

            God said to the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in your mother’s womb, I knew you.  That’s when I had this idea of who Jeremiah would be.  You’re a prophet to the nations because that’s the way I made you.”

            Gifts.

            Now, do you hear what Paul’s saying to the Corinthians?

            You’ve got gifts.  Each one of you has gifts.  And not all of you have the same ones.  Some of you teach in the church.  And some of you preach.  There’s a few of you that simply lift the spirits of others by being around.  (Do you folks like that?)  Some of you can speak in the language of the angels.  The rest of us can’t even understand it.

            But, what would happen if some of you tried to get in the pulpit?  You’d have the congregation sleeping in no time.  And if the preacher tried to play the guitar, you’d have quite a disaster.

            And what would happen if some of you tried to sing a solo?  Goodness gracious!

            Paul’s asking that old church, “Do you see how all of these different gifts are really a good thing?  So, why are you looking at each other as if one of you is giving the church something so much better than somebody else?”

            Well, it’s a good question for the church.  Sometimes you get folks who see their own gifts, their own contributions as somehow making them more important in a congregation.  That can happen.

            Back in the days of the Roman Empire where Corinth was located, people were used to gaining honor over others.  Their whole culture depended on systems of honor and shame.  So, acting like they did in the church almost seemed natural to them.  They had to learn different ways of being.

            Now I happen to think that we have quite the opposite problem most of the time.  It’s not that we think we’re all that important because of the gifts we have.  We tend to think that we’re not important enough to use them.  We have special gifts, unique to each one of us, but we hardly can recognize that they are bestowed upon us by Almighty God.  We’re just usually too beat up to ever imagine that we’d have something so important and vital to give to everybody else.  We think we’re not good enough, you know.  The Corinthians thought they were too good.  We think in the other direction most of the time.  We think we don’t have what it takes.

            Either way, it’s not how God has it in mind for the church to be.

            Paul likens the whole thing to the way that our bodies are supposed to function.  You’ve got a lot of different body parts and God put you together that way.  It all works together.  Well, ideally it all works together.  Not a few of us know what it’s like to have one part of our body falling apart.  But, the design is for all of these organs to take care of one another and do what the other parts don’t and can’t do.

            He says that’s what the church is like.  And you’re like a part of that body.  You’ve got God-given gifts.  The Spirit has breathed something into you.  You’re an eye.  Maybe you’re a heart.  Perhaps the lungs.  You’re a gifted singer.  You’ve got a way with young people and you can teach Sunday School.  You don’t have a lot of answers all the time, but you are a good listener.  And people need someone to listen to them, you know.  Or, you do have a lot of answers.  People are looking for direction in the messes they find themselves in.

            I used to coach a soccer team over in Louisville.  Teenagers.  Great kids.  I loved it.  It’s like any organization, I guess.  Players have positions that the rest of the team requires them to play faithfully in order to succeed.  Now, they all want to score goals.  Who doesn’t?  That’s exciting.  You put the ball in the back of the net and you get to run around like a maniac for a minute or two.  That’s fun.  But, then there’s the stuff that doesn’t get so much glory.  Defending.

            I had this kid playing defender and I think it finally got to him.  No goals.  No glory.  And he got a hold of the ball way back in front of his own goal.  Now, between him and the other end of the field, 120 yards away, were his teammates.  Scattered in various places.  They were in position.  Some were just a short pass away.  And he just started dribbling the ball up field.  Forget passing.  He was juking opposing players and just having a heyday.  By the time he’d reached midfield he’d already passed by most of his own team.  And he just kept going.  He was bound and determined to score a goal.

            Here’s the deal.  All of that fancy footwork with the ball could only last so long.  And when somebody on the other team stripped it away he just kicked it long and deep back into the other end of the field.  Do you know where that ball landed?  It landed in exactly the spot where my exuberant young defender should have been standing.  But, he was way off yonder watching it all take place.  I probably don’t have to tell you what happened next.  We gave up a goal.

            Teams.  Companies.  Bodies.  Churches.  Do you see how it’s supposed to work?

            You’ve got gifts.  And you are a gift.  You are God’s gift.

            Now, I want to make a move beyond these walls for a moment.  Paul was writing to that old church in Corinth and he was trying to build them up.  And we can learn a great deal from those wise words.  But, there is something larger at stake, beyond who you and I are when we are gathered together around the Lord’s table with all of our varied gifts.

            You see the church is where you and I encounter that mystical reality of the kingdom of God.  I know it doesn’t always feel that way.  But, that’s the intention.  In the bonds we create with one another, you know, we learn a deeper, truer way of being human.  We hold up these notions of love and compassion and justice and unity that we just don’t find all around us.  We are the community where God’s future is enacted in the very present.  Ideally speaking, God very much has a vision for the entire world that looks like what the church is.

            I say that because it means that you have tremendous gifts, valuable gifts, important gifts.  God created you in such a way and with such a vision that what you alone have within you matters a great deal to how God works to heal this broken world.  That thing that just seems to come naturally to you?  Where do you think it came from?  You are a gift.  You are a gift, I tell you.  You are a gift.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)