You are Gifted... and Called
Scripture: I Corinthians 12:1-11
Rev. Richard H. Thompson, May 9, 2010
[Wrapped Gift on Table]
When you're given a gift, what's the first thing you do? What did our mothers teach us? Open the card! Why? To see who gave you the gift. Because who gave you the gift probably explains why they gave it. And the result is that from the moment you unwrap the gift you will think of it as a kind of reminder of your relationship. The gift is a kind of symbol that you are loved. Except maybe for the Mothers' Day I gave Suzanne a really nice iron. Even though it had lots of knobs and adjustments, and steam settings, it even had a retractable cord, somehow that gift didn't work out so we11. (I've since learned.)
Today mothers will open cards from sons and daughters that explain why we give them gifts and flowers-that we love you. Where would we be without our mothers?
We're thinking about life with the Holy Spirit. If you have opened your life to the Risen Lord, if you have decided that the Lord Christ shall be your Lord and Savior, His Spirit brings you gifts. Which means you, and I, are gifted.
Me? Really? How? What's my gift? But wait. Remember what mom said. First, let's open the card.
I Corinthians 12: 1-11:
Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Let Jesus be cursed!" and 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.
So the card says this gift is from the Holy Spirit of the Risen Christ, which explains why we're given this gift. As the apostle put it, II To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good."
But what does that mean, "common good"? You have to read the earlier part of this letter to know that he means helping each other grow up in Christ to spiritual maturity. But why? So that together we honor him. So that we glorify him. But, (here we sound like our own children who ask this a hundred times) "Why?"
Let's put it another way. We are gifted so that we accomplish what God wants to get done. This makes sense. If you're going to start a movement you have to get your people ready. Like an army before battle. Like the launch of a brilliant new business idea. What do you do before you launch that idea? You give out the tools people will need to make that business successful. You train with those tools. You practice using them. What about the Holy Spirit? Same thing. When Jesus conquered death two thousand years ago a movement was launched. What does the Spirit do to,get us ready for this movement? The Spirit of God "gifts" you and me.
The gifts of the Holy Spirit are not for our purposes. They are for His purposes.
Which suggests that the gifts can be misused if we don't know what they're for. I have a small brass sextant in my office mounted on a little wood base. It sits on my book shelf. But that's not what a sextant is for. To look shiny on a shelf. It's supposed to be used to navigate with the stars. It's supposed to help people find their way. It's a wonderful gift. But there it sits on my shelf, useless. Because I don't know how to use it.
From what we can tell the Christians at Corinth were less than clear about why they had been gifted. So it appears they used them for their own purposes. You could say they "embezzled" their gifts.: to impress each other, to play "spiritual one-upsmanship" ("l have the gift of ecstatic speech. Would you like to hear me be 'spiritual'? Too bad you don't have my gift!") The result was some felt one-down, second class, worth-less. There was resentment, jealousy, and a spirit of competition. Because people forgot to open the card before they unwrapped their gifts the gifts became worse than useless.
Thank you moms for teaching us to open the card first.
Thank you God for giving us this card [BIBLE].
Still even with the help of Scripture, these gifts of the Spirit carry some mystery with them. Because this movement we are gifted to take part in is beyond our total comprehension, which can be a problem. If we don't get the Big Picture, or at least trust that there is a Big Picture, we can be tempted to begin to think that our gifts don't really matter, or that someone else's gift is more important than ours.
Last summer I signed up to work on the Habitat house up in Santa Paula. I was given the job of nailing 2x4 blocks up between floor joists. They gave me a hammer, some nails and access to a cordless drill to start pilot holes in my wood blocks. It occurs to me a person could say to him or herself, "Well, this is a stupid job. A nail gun would take care of this in seconds. But no, we Saturday volunteers can't handle a nail gun. They're afraid we'd nail somebody to the wall. How boring it is to pound in nails with this hammer. I'd rather be up on the roof with the big guys, putting in those 4x12's instead of these dumb little 2x4's." But on the other hand I suspect everyone of us out there that Saturday were telling themselves, "I may not know how what I'm doing exactly fits in, but one thing I do get is the Big Picture, that when this all finished there's going to be a couple of homes here for a two families to live in. And that's cool, even if I do have to nail these boards in one nail at a time..."
These gifts are supposed to be unwrapped. how? From the New Testament descriptions we're told there are no "solo" gifts. That is, no gift the Holy Spirit gives works in isolation or independent of the other gifts. That suggests that the gifts are discovered in conversation with others who have seen us at work, who know us well, and our hearts, what we love to do, what, while we do it, causes us to lose all track of time.
A leading indicator of the gifts we have been given is that we will probably love to use them. That we are even compelled to use them.
For example, some years ago a woman in our church came up to me on the courtyard between services and said something unusual. "This is going to sound strange," she said, "But I have a word for you. I've not ever done anything like this before. It's like I'm being pressed to share this with you." She explained that she had been praying for our church and me and it came to her that the Lord had something he wanted me to hear. I can tell you that word made total sense to me. I have never forgotten it. As I seek to be faithful to that word I have seen amazing blessings result. The apostle called this gift "the utterance of wisdom" or "word of knowledge".
Another friend agonizes over ideas that so often go unexamined which drive our basic assumptions. For years he's been drawn to read deeply and widely. He drinks in theology and philosophy. He wrestles to find ways to articulate the Big Picture of Christ's movement to a skeptical world. Sometimes he makes people feel uncomfortable only because he's trying to help them see where their root ideas come from, and where they go. He's helped a lot of people, me included, to do our best thinking, and discerning the spirit of the age. This too is a gift of the Holy Spirit. I.t is called "prophecy", the gift of helping God's people know what God cares about not just in the future, but right now.
Another example you have just heard speak. I've known Norita and her husband Ken for a long time. I've watched them in ministry in many different very challenging settings. I'm convinced, among other gifts, they both share the gift of the Holy Spirit called "mercy". This is a hard gift. Because someone with this gift suffers. But the suffering that mercy brings compels action. So years ago Ken started a wheel chair factory in Ankara. Norita, as you have heard, has been called to ministry with children with severe disabilities and their families. And do this work in a land that historically persecuted Norita's own family. There is no other explanation for this than that the Holy Spirit of the Risen Jesus has gifted them both, and called them to His movement.
In order to unwrap these kinds of gifts, to figure out what we've been given, we need God's word in scripture. There are three principle places in our New Testaments where we find teaching. Actually we've used all three this morning in this service. From these scriptures we can see that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are distributed in widely various ways. We can also see they are not the same thing as natural born abilities and "talents" though they probably integrate with them. It also seems that these gifts find expression in roles which are exercised in the body of Christ. In fact the way the gifts of the Spirit are described seems messy. Maybe that's so we can't expect to nail all this down too precisely, or place the gifts of the Spirit on a spread sheet, or turn them into a check list. Evidently the Holy Spirit is free to gift any way the Holy Spirit deems necessary. Still, from these three passages it seems we might be able to broadly describe the gifts in three functions.
- One might be called the "Equipping" gifts such as shepherding, leadership, encouragement, evangelism, teaching, wisdom and missionary.
- Another broad grouping might be called the "Serving" gifts which might include administration, helps, service, mercy, giving, and hospitality.
- Another could be called "Prayer and Worship" gifts including knowledge, miracles, healing, intercessory prayer, creative ability and prophecy.
So we unwrap our gifts in conversation with people who know us well, by noticing what we love to do that helps others, by a careful study of Scripture.
There's one more important way. That is by experimentation. We all know that expression, "You can't steer the wheels on a parked car" If we've got it right that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are for the purpose of advancing the movement Jesus began at his resurrection, then what Robert Schuller said so many years ago really makes sense: "Find a need and meet it." In other words, start your engine, put it in drive, release the brake (sometimes we forget this step), step on the gas, and go! Experiment in the grace and truth of God. Risk. See where you go. Risk. See what happens in others, and in you. Risk. No doubt there will be some surprises.
My friend was surprised by the sense that she was supposed to come share a word of knowledge with me. It felt like she was taking a chance.
Maybe you sign up to teach a Sunday School class and you are surprised to find that you just love to study the Bible and find ways to make it clear to your students.
Maybe you go on a local mission project and you find you can't keep the people you met there out of your mind. You find you pray for them every day. It's like you can't help it. It's just something you're supposed to do.
Another surprise I think you'll have is that you'll discover you are gifted with more than one gift. There's a spiritual principle at work in all of this: When it comes to the Holy Spirit the more you notice, the more you notice.
[TO THE TABLE AND THE WRAPPED GIFT]
I wonder what's in here? Maybe you're wondering too. "What's in here?" We've already opened the card. We know who this is from. So we know why we've been given this. Let's see what's inside. [WHILE UNWRAPPING GIFT] Some of us have been working on a way to help us unwrap these gifts. It's called the "Inspired Living Workshop". There's two parts. The first one is on Saturday morning, May 22. The second part is on Sunday afternoon, June 6. We're going to study God's word, and have conversations about the leading indicators of our gifts. Basically we're going to do what I'm doing right now we're going to help people unwrap their gifts.
[PAPER , BOX OPEN, REVEALING A CORDLESS DRILL]
Because the gifts of the Spirit are supposed to be put to work. If you have said "Yes" to Jesus Christ. If you have opened your soul to His Spirit, then you are gifted. -to put things that have fallen apart back together -to make solid connections - to build up the people of God
To serve the Lord.
We have a lot of work to do. It's a busy movement. Thanks be to God.
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Westminster Presbyterian Church |