Gifting Spirit
Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians was not a cold-call letter. He knew their situation, namely a community made up of Gentile converts – those outside of the original Abrahamic covenant – still living in a primarily pagan part of the world. Paul founded this community. He knew these people. Paganism reigned supreme, and the early church would navigate living as the minority religion in the Roman Empire until the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312 A.D.
You might be asking yourself why I am beginning this sermon with a crash course on Christian life in first-century Corinth. Well, over the coming weeks, we will be spending time with the church in Corinth using their experiences to reveal the goodness of God’s everlasting love and mercy. Some of Paul’s most famous words were written to the church in Corinth, “Love is patient, love is kind.” But there is always more to the story when it comes to God, the church, and us.
We find ourselves in the season after Epiphany. Epiphany comes from the Greek epiphaneia and can be translated as “the light shines,” referring to the manifestation of light that causes knowledge, understanding, or a relationship. In the church, the season after Epiphany refers to the time after the manger when the light of the world, the fullest revelation of the love of God, Jesus Christ, was received outside of Israel by the magi. So, we will be exploring the never-ending love of God, the love that shines beyond the manger, over the coming weeks with the help of the Corinthian church.
The issue at hand in the Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth is disunity – inside and outside of the church – and we will get to that in a few weeks. Before Paul addresses the conflict that divides the church, he looks to what unites the church, the things, the persons that run common through our shared lives that span generations – the giftedness of the church, through the Holy Spirit. You might know these gifts as “gifts of the spirit.” These are the things that we do and make us who we are, that, outside of a gift from God, it is hard to tell where or how the gift made its way in your life. In our reading today, Paul lists the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, tongues, and interpretation. In the twelfth chapter of his letter to the church in Rome, Paul adds serving, teaching, exhortation, giving, leadership, and mercy.
Individually, these gifts may not seem like much. Maybe a resume line you could build on in a pinch if you needed to fill dead air during a job interview. But together, these gifts have the power to do more than we could ever imagine.
Paul is explicit in stating these gifts are not something we can conjure up on our own. Paul is not talking about a Myers-Briggs assessment or your Enneagram type. Paul tells us the gifts of the Spirit are allocated by God among diverse members of the one body of Christ. Spirituality is not an innate human capacity. These gifts are not a natural endowment we carry with us like great hair or height.
These gifts, Paul tells us, are also not hierarchical. Paul does not list these gifts in order of significance or priority as the significance and priority is the source of the gifts, the Holy Spirit, which we believe is at work in each of our lives. Ever since the waters of baptism hit our brow, we have been filled with God’s Spirit. This Spirit moves and shapes our lives of faith, pushing, nudging, and at times dragging us to the people and places God has called us to be in ministry alongside. No matter how great the gift may be, spiritual gifts can only be ascribed to God’s initiative. We should not take credit for these gifts.
Take, for example, hypothetically, you are the organizer of many church committees or groups. When you walk in the room, there is a collective sigh of relief as the group knows that you will organize, lead, and ensure the group stays on task – completing a study on schedule or ensuring the church's work is done. It seems like every interaction you have in the church is an opportunity to shine your administrative skills. Yeah, that is less about your ability to organize and lead and more about the work of the Holy Spirit in your life.
Let’s try another one. Say, hypothetically, you an amazing prayer. When you are around the holiday table at a family gathering, your sweet granny nods to you to deliver the blessing over the meal. Year after year, you nail it better than a two-time seminary graduate. Year after year, a single tear stream down your mother’s face, and she beams with pride. That, too, is less about your ability to string together a few words of blessing and more about the work of the Holy Spirit in your life.
Do you see where this is heading?
These gifts are more than administrative skills and public speaking. The gifts of the Spirit are God’s way of reminding the church that there is more going on than we know. These are gifts given by the grace of God. We did not do anything to earn these gifts, but you better believe God is going to use those gifts in your life to further God’s redemptive work. This work began in the waters of your baptism and will continue to grow as we, the church, Christ’s body, continue to attune our collective attention to God’s will. These gifts are not a product of birth, instead are gifts of rebirth.
These gifts, Paul reminds the church, are intended to unite the community of faith for God’s common good. God’s common good, not the common good of the pastors, church council, or any individual – no matter who that individual may be. The gifts of the Spirit are intended to position the church, then and now, to share the good news of Jesus Christ across generations and geography. It is a gift of the Spirit for the church in Corinth and the church in Arlington to declare Jesus to be lord. The lordship of Christ is not a declaration the church can make on its own or a declaration the church can sustain over generations without the help of God. And this is where we find the gospel good news – regardless of what gifts the Spirit has given you, regardless of whether you think you are worthy of such a gift, and regardless of the priority others might place on those gifts God is going to use you to further God’s kingdom. Buckle-up because God promises to use the gifts God has given to individual members of Christ’s body to build up the entire body, and in building up the whole body, the Kingdom of God is advanced, revealed a bit more as we await Christ’s promise to return, and the Kingdom of God is fully revealed.
Christ has leveled the field. He is Lord, and there is no hierarchy. No one higher than the other because the lordship of Jesus Christ, a gift to all of creation, refocuses the attention of the church away from division and conflict, pointing us toward the salvific work that began in the manger, was revealed in a star, and was realized when Mary and Mary found the tomb to be empty.
