Church for the Gifted
1 Corinthians 12:1-13
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert went off the air this week. One of the occasional features of the show was the Colbert Questionnaire, a series of fifteen questions that Colbert would ask of guests who were willing, in the words of the questionnaire’s preamble, to become fully known. Some questions were either/or: Cats or dogs? Apples or oranges? Window or aisle? Others required more individuality: What’s the best sandwich? What was your first concert? What do you believe happens when we die?
Whenever I watched Colbert administer the questionnaire, I would think about my own answers to the questions. Cats or dogs would be an easy one, but others would be much harder. Favorite action movie? My instinct is to say Raiders of the Lost Ark, but if I give it some thought, my mind goes back to my childhood and all those World War II movies made in the 1960s that seemed to always be shown on television on Saturday afternoon: The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, The Great Escape.
The Great Escape, for those unaware, is a story about Allied soldiers who attempt to break out of a German prisoner-of-war camp. The majority of the soldiers are British, but among them are a handful of Americans, Canadians, Poles, and one Australian, played with an unconvincing accent by James Coburn. The conditions of the camp are far from harsh. The men have access to books and time for recreation and even gardening. The Germans want the prisoners’ lives to be comfortable enough so that they will not attempt to escape. It doesn’t work.
The prisoners spontaneously take any and every opportunity to escape, none of which prove successful. The senior officers among them, recognizing that lone, haphazard escape attempts are unlikely to succeed, decide to organize one massive escape in which dozens of prisoners will attempt to escape all at once through tunnels that they will dig underneath the camp’s perimeter fences.
For the plan to succeed, every soldier will have a part to play. A surveyor will need to plan the locations of the tunnels. A manufacturer will need to create makeshift tunneling tools. Tunnelers will need to dig the tunnels. A scrounger will need to procure necessary items, such as a camera for taking fake passport photos. A tailor will need to sew civilian clothing. A forger will need to forge documents. Lookouts will need to warn when the Germans are near. And the great majority of prisoners will need to carry on as though everything is normal. Nothing to see here.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to see some parallels here with the early church, a church that was empowered by the Holy Spirit with numerous spiritual gifts, all designed to work together for the common good. Case in point, just as the prisoners at the camp came from various Allied nations—the UK, the US, Canada, Poland, Australia—so the early church that gathered on the Day of Pentecost, as told in Acts chapter 2, which is often read on Pentecost, came from all over the Roman Empire and beyond—Galilee, Mesopotamia, Libya, Egypt, Greece, Cappadocia, and more. And just as each prisoner in the camp brought a particular skill to bear to make the great escape possible, so every member of the church has received from the Holy Spirit gifts with which we can honor God and love our neighbor.
Traditionally Presbyterians don’t talk much about gifts of the Spirit. Come to think of it, we don’t talk much about the Holy Spirit, period. Among Presbyterians, the Holy Spirit is the often-overlooked member of the Trinity, the George Harrison of the Trinity, if you will. Perhaps that’s because we tend to emphasize reason over emotion and order over spontaneity. Maybe, too, when we think of gifts of the Spirit we think primarily of the more charismatic gifts, such as speaking in tongues, which is not something you tend to see in Presbyterian churches.
What I want to do today is demystify the idea of spiritual gifts. They are not a mystery. They are not rare. They are as common to the church—even the Presbyterian church—as stained glass windows and wooden pews.
Now, normally I try to preach a one-point sermon, but today I’m going to attempt three points because they’re all related and they flow naturally from each other. Point number one is that gifts of the Spirit are just that…gifts. They’re not earned, they’re given. They don’t spring naturally from within us, and therefore we cannot take any credit for them.
Point number two is that gifts of the Spirit are given by the Holy Spirit, who is the presence of Jesus Christ here and now. The Holy Spirit, while often moving in mysterious ways, is not a mystery. Jesus promises the disciples to be with them always, and he is, through the Holy Spirit.
Point number three is that gifts of the Spirit serve the common good, in that they empower our witness to Christ as a church. They don’t point to ourselves; rather, they always point back to their source, which is Jesus.
This is our first foray into Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Paul is writing to the Christian community in the Greek city of Corinth. The Christian community there is one that Paul founded. He arrived in Corinth just after he left Athens, which you may remember from two weeks ago when we heard Paul address the Athenians about their idol to an unknown god, which he proclaimed was Jesus Christ.
As a Roman port, Corinth was a wealthy, cosmopolitan city, and the church there likely included some members of means, and also reflected the city’s diversity of cultures. One of the distinguishing features of the early church was that people of all backgrounds gathered together—Jew and gentile, male and female, enslaved and free, united in their proclamation that Jesus is Lord. Yet the church in Corinth was a church divided on multiple levels. That’s one of the reasons that Paul wrote the letter.
One of the primary sources of division concerned spiritual gifts. Some of those who prayed in tongues—a kind of angelic speech that required interpretation to be understood—considered themselves to be above those with less charismatic gifts. Paul dives more deeply into the matter in chapter 14. But it’s notable that among all the gifts of the Spirit that Paul mentions here in chapter 12, praying in tongues and interpreting tongues come at the end of the list. It’s as if Paul is suggesting in form as well as in content, that those who regard themselves first shall be last.
Furthermore, what reason does anyone have to esteem themselves more highly for having received a gift? A gift is a testament to the giver’s generosity, not the recipient’s merit. Spiritual gifts are not merit badges given for achievement or gold watches bestowed after years of service. They are gifts. We do nothing to deserve them. “Now there are varieties of gifts,” Paul writes, “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.” In other words, the source of all good gifts is our generous and gracious God.
That God, who was made known to us in Jesus Christ, now comes to us in the form of the Holy Spirit. As I’ve already mentioned, Presbyterians don’t quite know what to make of the Holy Spirit. Let me give an example. I once attended a retreat hosted by the Presbytery of New York City. At the beginning of the retreat, the leader had us play an ice-breaker activity in which we divided ourselves into one of three groups based on our answers to her questions. The first question she asked was, “Among the three persons of the Trinity—Father, Son, Holy Spirit—with which one do you most identify God?” She drew three imaginary circles on the ground and gave us a minute or so to go stand in one. After we got ourselves sorted, about ten people stood in the Father circle, another twenty in the Son circle, and over in the Holy Spirit circle there were just two or three nonconformists who perhaps didn’t realize they were at a Presbyterian retreat.
Regardless of where I or any of the other people at the retreat stood, the Holy Spirit is the reason that you and I stand here (you’re seated, but you get what I mean). Each of us has been called by the Holy Spirit to follow Jesus Christ. Collectively we have been gathered by the Holy Spirit into this church so that we might be formed and equipped to witness to Jesus Christ.
Before he was crucified, Jesus promised his disciples that he would send the Advocate, i.e., the Holy Spirit, who will teach them everything they need to know and who will testify on his behalf. After his crucifixion, when the risen Jesus returns to the disciples, he promises to be with them always, to the end of the age. And so he is, through the Holy Spirit. And as the Holy Spirit is the presence of Christ with us now, so the gifts of the Spirit are the means by which Christ continues to teach, equip, and form us to be agents of his reconciling love.
To put it another way, the nature of the gifts themselves testifies to the giver. Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discernment of spirits, tongues, the interpretation of tongues…these are ways that Christ equips the church to be the church, which is to say, his church. With wisdom that looks like foolishness to the world Christ empowers us to proclaim the cross as the means of salvation. With a knowledge of God that is imparted first to shepherds and fishermen rather than to scholars and kings, Christ shows us that humility is the height of divine knowledge. With prophetic words that speak truth to power, Christ compels our witness to the world.
I could go on. The gifts mentioned here in 1 Corinthians are not exhaustive. If working miracles, discerning spirits, and speaking in tongues are not among your gifts (they’re not among mine), then you should know that Paul has another list in Romans chapter 12. Among the gifts mentioned there are ministering, teaching, encouraging, generosity, diligence, compassion, and my personal favorite, cheerfulness. Nor is that list exhaustive either.
The important thing is not the number of gifts or the type of gift. The important thing is that the Holy Spirit gives us the gifts we need to serve the community where we are. Shortly after arriving in Haverstraw three years ago I knew that the gifts that I have matched what this church needed, and correspondingly, that what this community offers I very much needed. I know that it’s the same for you; otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. Make no mistake, God has called you to serve this community, that you might bless us with the gifts that you’ve been given.