1 Corinthians 12:1-11
Do you read the cards before you open the present? If you do, probably someone taught you. We are impatient to see what we got, and skip over the reading of the cards before and sometimes even the writing of thank you notes after. So it is with lists of Spiritual Gifts. Like a heavenly wish list we look at the gifts and consider what we got. Hmmm…tongues, If I get that one, I wonder if I can exchange it for something in a Presbyterian size?
The card detailing where they are from is in the ending of the reading. All of them are signed the same way, “Holy Spirit.” All the gifts from the same spirit. No one gift is more spiritual than another. This isn't all the spiritual gifts. Various lists have appeared. One on the Presbyterian Church web site from C. Peter Wagner list twenty gifts and includes a quiz to help find your gift. Print outs are in the gathering room.
But this sermon isn't about Spiritual Gifts, nor about the source of all Gifts being the Spirit. It is about the purpose of the gifts. It is in verse 7, for the Common Good in one translation. The Greek has no object, gifts are given “to the benefit.” I see the gifts of the spirit given to benefit all people. Yet I see more and more the language of war being hijacked by the church against others. Warfare and struggle has replaced gifts and the common good.
Part of this is the strain of the times we are in. Risks that used to be assumed by employers and the government are now shifted to families and individuals. Retirement and health care used to be part of most jobs, but that has turned on head, with most jobs ranging from no benefits to self-funded benefits with the majority of the risk assumed by the individual. Schooling for some is a necessary expense instead of a social benefit. What if we have government funded child care and when you picked up your children at the end of the work day, you were given a hot meal? This was done during World War II when women went to work. Now with the majority of the women in the work force to pay mortgage and health insurance, we don't have near the support from our institutions.
Such hopelessness is fertile ground for the attitude of getting our own, instead of contributing to the good of others. The articles about Hudson and Stow are sickening, “we are growing they are shrinking so we are leaving them”! There was a time when a perceived lack of missionaries would prompt a special offering, not a withdrawal of all support. I'll talk about our unity next week, but the idea that our money is for us, our church is for us, our gifts are just for us is a perversion of Christ's gospel and the church we are entrusted with, entrusted not for our benefit but for the common good.
Chris Hedges, the former New York Times bureau in the Mid-East and Balkans, son of a Presbyterian minister and a seminary graduate talks about the danger of using our gifts for fighting instead of common good in his book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. In an article in Salon.com he quotes our state's own Rod Parsley: “I came to incite a riot”, “Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! Lock and load!” You heard some of his rhetoric during the governor's campaign. The leaders of fight and fright movements bring millions of desperate and despondent good Christians into their fold by promising to do something Godly and purposeful. It is a lot more attractive to pick up a gun and fight and work hard at the thankless and long term project of rebuilding society. That is why terrorism grows in troubled places.
In salon.com Hedges says,
tens of millions of people in this country feel completely disenfranchised, where their physical communities have been obliterated, whether that's in the Rust Belt in Ohio or these monstrous exurbs like Orange County, where there is no community. There are no community rituals, no community centers, often there are no sidewalks. People live in empty soulless houses and drive big empty cars on freeways to Los Angeles and sit in vast offices and then come home again. You can't deform your society to that extent, and you can't shunt people aside and rip away any kind of safety net, any kind of program that gives them hope, and not expect political consequences.
In Presbytery, we are working against this tide of me and mine. The Presbytery's only actions with regard with Stow and Hudson declaring that they and their property do not belong to the Presbyterian Church any more have been to appoint a commission to talk to them, declare those wishing to stay Presbyterian to be the true Presbyterian Church, and provide for their pastoral care. Hudson has dragged us into court as a defendant because they thought Presbytery might do something to stop their self-serving unilateral actions. Acting on fear instead of trust, which sells well in these troubled times.
In Goodyear Heights I want to resist getting ours. There is no place for “Getting our supply in, before the hoarders get theirs.” I want this place and these people to be renowned as using our gifts, actually the gifts given to us by the Spirit, which we hold in trust for the Presbyterian Church (USA) and not for our own benefit, as using them for the common good. We saved the carpet, doesn't move me as much as we provided a parent a safe place for her children, instead of a waiting list or keeping the child in a place of worry instead of comfort. It's tough. I like a nice things, I like quiet in the afternoon instead of a thundering herd of children…but we are here for the common good not my selfish goals. Parents need a good safe place for their children. Can we increase our using of gifts for the common good? I would love to negotiate a scholarship for a needy family with Color our Rainbow. Maybe a tithe of their payments we can give back to the common good.
We should be the yeast that makes the entire loaf grow, the light on a stand that lets everyone see. We should bring peace and goodness, not fighting and struggle, hope and faith, not despair and fear. It is harder to do, and more subtle. I remember a firefighter chaplain who told me he was thinking about not going to the volunteer meetings. They were rowdy and out of hand, with an occasional curse. He spoke to one of the officers about not coming any more since he wasn't making a difference in the meeting. The officer was horrified and said, “Oh no, Rev. You gotta come. We you're not here there's fistfights!” The chaplain was contributing to the common good without knowing it.
Speaking of contributing to the common good without fanfare instead of leading a charge in a self-declared war, let's go to a wedding in Cana where we see Jesus using gifts for the common good. I wonder what Jesus meant, when he said the Aramaic equivalent of “My hour has not come.” after his mother informed him of the family problem of running out of wine. Jesus' mother knew it wasn't a rejection or refusal. She told the servants to do whatever Jesus commanded them. She knew he would do something. Maybe Jesus was joshing his mom. This isn't my wedding, Mom, maybe reminding her of marriage hints she had been dropping for the last ten years or so. Yet, he makes over 100 gallons of good wine for people that are already drunk, prompting complaints from the caterer. He does it in a way that only the servants knew the source of the wine. The guests were unaware of the contribution to the common good done by Christ.
“So long - volunteers.” By Erma Bombeck
“I had a dream the other night that every volunteer in this land had set sail for another country. I stood smiling on the pier, shouting, ‘Good-bye, phone committees. Good-bye disease-of-the month. No more getting out the vote. No more playground duty, bake sales, rummage sales, thrift shops and three-hour meetings.'
As the boat got smaller, I reflected; ‘Serves them right, that bunch of yes people. All they had to do was to put their tongues firmly against the roofs of their mouths and make an O sound–No. It would certainly have spared them a lot of grief. Oh, well, who needs them?'
The hospital was quiet as I passed it. The reception desk was vacant. Rooms were devoid of books, flowers and voices. The children's wing held no clowns, no laughter. The home for the aged was like a tomb. The blind listened for a voice that never came. The infirmed were imprisoned in wheelchairs that never moved. Food grew cold on trays that would never reach the hungry.
The social agencies had closed their doors–unable to implement their programs of scouting, recreation, drug control; unable to help the [mentally and physically challenged], the lonely and abandoned. Health agencies had signs in their windows: ‘Cures for cancer, birth defects, multiple sclerosis, heart diseases, etc., have been canceled because of lack of interest.'
The schools were strangely quiet, with no field trips and no volunteer classroom aides. Symphony halls and the museums that had been built and stocked by volunteers were dark and would remain that way. The flowers in churches and synagogues withered and died. Children in day nurseries lifted their arms, but there was no one to hold them in love. Alcoholics cried out in despair, but no one answered. The poor had no recourse for health care or legal aid. I fought in my sleep to regain a glimpse of the ship of volunteers just one more time. It was to be my last glimpse of a decent civilization.”
Copyright (c) 2007 Advanced permission is given for non-profit, for-prophet use of the above at no charge as long as it is reproduced unedited with notices and copyright intact. Written copies are provided after they are preached as a courtesy for the personal, private, appreciative use of the congregation of Goodyear Heights Presbyterian Church, their families and friends to support the ministry of Goodyear Heights Presbyterian Church and its pastor the Rev. J. Christy Ramsey. Join us Sundays! 8:15 Traditional Worship and 10:15 Blended. Mingle in our Gathering Room between services and take advantage of Christian Education opportunities.