[Propertalk] Fwd: Gifted, 1/17/10, 1 cor 12:1-11

[Joe Parrish]

Forwarded:

Gifted
A sermon preached at Niles Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
Fremont, on Sunday, January 17, 2010, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  1 Corinthians 12:1-11 and John 2:1-11
Copyright © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Spencer
 
 
            Did you get everything you wanted for Christmas?  It’s been three and a half weeks.  The rush of the holiday is over; the decorations are down.  The great winter solstice gift exchange has past.  And I wonder, looking back, did you get what you wanted?
            My dad gave me my favorite gift of this Christmas.  It’s an old pencil sharpener, the one that was on the counter in the family room while I was growing up.  I’m very grateful for this gift.  Not only is it practical (it’s the best darn manual pencil sharpener I’ve ever seen), but it is filled with memories and represents family and love to me.
            And isn’t that what gift giving is really all about?  We use the giving of gifts to make occasions special and to express something in that moment.  Birthday, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s and Father’s Day, and Christmas – we often mark the occasions with gifts.
            One of the most famous stories of gift giving has got to be O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi.  In it, a poor husband and wife each make a significant personal sacrifice to purchase a gift that is perfect for the other and that expresses their love at Christmas.  Sometimes it’s not so easy to find what is perfect.  My step-mother’s a challenge for me.  And I remember wondering, when my nephew was only one, what gift would express how grateful I am that he is part of my life?  I decided on a book that told a story about being loved.
            There’s a whole other category of gifts we’ve received (and probably have given) that aren’t really gifts.  I remember getting note cards from my grandmother when I was a kid.  As soon as I opened the present, I knew what she was saying:  write to me!  She gave so that she would receive.  But a real gift is given with no strings attached.
            If I invite someone over for dinner or loan my lawn mower with the expectation that the person will come help me reseal my driveway later that month, then I haven’t really given a gift.  It’s been an exchange, a trade.[i]  If I give a Christmas present but expect a Christmas present in return, it’s a trade, not a gift.  More subtly, if someone gives a present only expecting appreciation back, it’s still not truly a gift; it’s a trade.
            A true gift is given with no strings attached.  That means that there are no strings attached for the receiver (such as hidden trade agendas) and there are no strings attached for the giver (meaning they are free to give or not give the gift, as opposed to feeling they have to give it to satisfy someone’s demand, or to ease some guilt, or to balance out some unconscious trade agreement).
            A gift is only a gift if it comes with no strings attached.  Even when it comes to the gifts God gives.
            Paul writes about the gifts God gives in our second lesson.  He’s writing to the members of the Christian community at Corinth, a thriving port city near Athens and a center of Hellenistic culture.  “Some members of the community, which Paul had founded on his second missionary journey and where he had spent 18 months, experienced the gifts of the Spirit in highly visible ways.  Others not similarly endowed felt that their faith must be lacking.  Paul’s pastoral word to them was to reassure them – and the whole church – of the importance of each member’s gifts to the whole community.  There is not, he argues, one supreme gift.  Rather, each member should recognize their own gifts and use them for the benefit of the community.…”[ii]
            These gifts, Paul says, are “given … for the common good.”  This can be easily misinterpreted.  God does give the gifts for the common good.  But they come with no strings attached.  They don’t have to be used for the common good, even though that’s the reason they were given.
            Back when he was one, my nephew could have decided to rip apart the book I gave him.  I gave it to him for him to enjoy.  I hoped he would enjoy it by listening to the story and looking at the pictures, and maybe by reading the inscription some day when he was older and remembering my love for him.  But there were no strings attached.  He could do whatever he wanted with it, and if he was going to get enjoyment out of the book by ripping it apart …
            God doesn’t take away our gifts if we don’t use them in a certain way, even though they have been given for the common good.  They may atrophy if they aren’t exercised.  And they may change as we go through life – even gaining new gifts and changing how old gifts are made manifest in our lives.  But the gifts come with no strings attached.
            So, what gifts did the Spirit give you?  Paul makes a list of gifts the Spirit gives:  wisdom; knowledge; trust and fidelity (Paul uses the word “faith”); healing; working of miracles; prophecy; discernment of spirits; multiple languages; interpretation of languages.  This is not an exhaustive list.  And it is a bit generalized.  For instance, to one may be given knowledge of mathematics and to another knowledge of music.  Paul seems to lump them together as ‘the gift of knowledge.’
            So, even though it’s not exhaustive, what from that list would you say God has given you?  How about gifts from outside that list?
            A colleague shared about a church member who has the gift of baking pies.[iii]  They are not necessarily the best pies you ever ate.  But whenever there is a death in her church or whenever she knows about someone going through a tough time, she shows up with one of her pies.  And she has an uncanny ability to match the type of pie to the person.  It is a gift from the Spirit.
            Another has a gift for writing letters.  Homebound, she keeps up on what is happening in the lives of church members.  Whenever she hears some good news about someone – a teenager accepted into college, someone receiving a promotion at work, the birth of a baby – she writes a letter.  It is a gift of from the Spirit.
            Another has the gift of peacemaking.  He knows who in the church needs a phone call or a visit to facilitate peace in the church.  “Jesus doesn’t command us to agree,” he says, “just to love each other.”  A gift from the Spirit.
            These people don’t have to use these gifts for the common good, but they do.  What a waste it would be if we don’t use the gifts we receive from the Spirit for the common good.
            Something amazing can happen when we use the gifts God gives for the common good.  Time stops.[iv]
            There are two Greek words that get used in the New Testament that mean “time”:  chronos (from which we get the word chronology); and kairos.  Chronos is the linear sense of time, the ticking of the clock, the flipping of the calendar pages.  Chronos leaves the impression – usually (perhaps even always) a false impression – that we can control it, can enter it into our Blackberry and pocket calendars and deal with its events on our own terms.  Kairos time, by contrast, represents discontinuity.  Something unexpected happens, a barrier forces us to move off our planned schedule and adjust to new realities.
            When we use the gifts God gives for the common good, chronos can be interrupted and a kairos moment can occur.  Back almost 27 years ago, I went back to my high school as a substitute math teacher.  It was the final week of classes and they school wanted someone with a math background to help the students review for their final exams.  In one of the classes that day, one of the students had a kairos moment.  Using the gifts of teaching and knowledge of math, gifts the Spirit had bestowed on me, I said something – I have no idea what – that caused things to click for Martha Wyman.  It was as if a year’s worth of Algebra crashed into that one moment, that one-hour class.
            When Jesus was at the wedding in Cana, he took some water and turned it into wine, and in doing so, he revealed who he was.  Chronos was interrupted with a kairos moment, and the kingdom of God was revealed.
            When Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, time stopped.  A kairos moment occurred.  The photos and the film may be black and white, but that moment is still alive today.  He used his gift of prophecy for the common good and we caught a glimpse of the realm of God.
            Five days ago, a major kairos moment occurred.  The earthquake in Haiti not only shook everyone and everything in Port-au-Prince, but also every plan everyone had for that Tuesday.  And the kairos moments have continued all around the globe.  People are responding to the devastation in Haiti, using the gifts they have been given by the Spirit.  Healing is taking place as people reach outside themselves, thinking and acting for the common good.  In the midst of great sadness and suffering, glimpses of the realm of God are being revealed.
            We are, each one of us, gifted.  “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”  The gifts God gives are not for show, not to lord it over someone else, but for the building up of the body of Christ, for the strengthening and building of community.
            We are faced with a question:  How will we use the gifts God has given us?  When water changes to wine, we know the Spirit is at work, animating us to be Christ’s body in the world – working for the healing not just of people, but of nations and of the whole planet. 
            Each one of us has received gifts from the Spirit, no strings attached.  God invites us to use them for the common good.
            We are challenged by a poem by St. Teresa of Avila:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.[v]
Amen.





[i] This example came from Kelly Tobey, Opening Our Gifts Before Christmas, www.kellytobey.com/christmas.htm (18 January 2004).

[ii] Jim Rice, Abundant Gifts, http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=resources.sermon_prep&item=LTW_980149_CEpiphany2&week=C_Epiphany_2 (16 January 2010).

[iii] These examples are adapted from William Willamon, “The Gifted,” Pulpit Resource, Vol 32, No 1, January-March 2004.

[iv] These thoughts are adapted from Jack Good, ”Defining Moments,” The Christian Century, 13 January 2004.

[v] Teresa of Avila (1515–1582), selected by Dan Clendenin for The Journey with Jesus: Poems and Prayers, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/PoemsAndPrayers/Teresa_Of_Avila_Christ_Has_No_Body.shtml (16 January 2010).

Additional resources used:
Joyce Hollyday, No End of Gifts, http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=resources.sermon_prep&item=LTW_941249_CEpiphany2&week=C_Epiphany_2 (16 January 2010).
Malinda Elizabeth Berry, Being God's Body, http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=resources.sermon_prep&item=LTW_070149_CEpiphany2&week=C_Epiphany_2 (16 January 2010).
 
 
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emailed from my home:
Rev. Jeffrey Spencer
Pastor and Teacher at Niles Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
PO Box 2265, Fremont CA 94536
510-797-0895   www.nccucc.org
My blog is:  jeffsjottings.wordpress.com 
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Check out my curriculum for Adult Learners (and older youth) at:  www.deathpenaltycurriculum.com
 
 

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