Equipped for the Kingdom: Sermon 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

I love the Discovery Channel. Angie and my mom would tell you that I watch entirely too much of it, but I have always enjoyed watching something at least partially educational on TV. One of my favorite shows on the Discovery Channel is called Dirty Jobs. The host, Mike Rowe, travels from place to place and documents the dirtiest, nastiest, most unpleasant jobs in America. This ranges from working in a sewer, to being a garbage man, to harvesting crawfish and oysters, all kinds of jobs that most of us wouldn’t dream of doing. The great thing about the show is that it not only focuses on the jobs themselves, but it is really about the people who work those jobs. Those people who wake up each day and go to work and to their jobs in what we would think of as the worst of conditions and they simply do their job and without those people we would not be able to enjoy some of the conveniences in our lives. Remember that saying “It’s a dirty job, but someone has got to do it.”

I think that the same can be said in the Church. The most visible person within the church is the pastor. He or she is the person who preaches the sermons, says the prayers, and visits you in the hospital or at home. The pastor is the person that is looked to when there is trouble or when there is success. However, the truth is that there are many people, both clergy and laity who must work together to make a church not only function, but also to grow. Some of these jobs are not glorious and some of these jobs go completely unnoticed to most of the congregation. We are all given certain gifts. In fact, Paul says that all believers, all Christians, have been given gifts according to the Holy Spirit. That is the Spirit gives each of us spiritual gifts, we don’t get to pick those gifts, but each one is very important and we must all put those gifts together to make the Body of Christ active in the world today.

We don’t talk much about the Holy Spirit in the Methodist church today. Our focus is on Christ and God, and too many times the third member of the Trinity is left to a lesser position. But let’s remember that each part of the Trinity is important and is equal to the others. One is not above or below the other two and all three are present and active within one another. It is the Holy Spirit that empowers us to do the will of God in the world. Everything we do that is good, every commandment of God that we uphold is done through the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul says that even the most basic Christian affirmation “Jesus is Lord” cannot be said apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. If you believe the words of the Apostle’s Creed that we recite each Sunday morning then the Holy Spirit is within you.

If the Spirit is within you then you have been given spiritual gifts. The Greek word for these gifts is charisma, which means “gifts of grace”. This is what spiritual gifts are; they are gifts of God’s infinite grace. There are many different gifts, but they all came from the same Spirit. This was important distinction for the Church in Corinth. This was a Greek city and the Greeks had many gods and goddesses and each one had a different purpose, there was a god of the ocean, a goddess of beauty and love, a god of the moon and sun, a god of the harvest and if you wanted a particular thing or gift you would pray to the specific god. Paul turns the Corinthians on there heads a little bit by saying that all gifts come from the same God and the same Spirit.

Let’s look for a moment at some of the spiritual gifts that Paul describes for the Corinthians. This is by no means an exhaustive list, that is there are other spiritual gifts aside from these listed here. These are among the main gifts. The first we encounter is the utterance of wisdom, not simply to be wise but to speak wisely. The Message Bible calls this “wise counsel”. All of us, I think, have that certain someone we can go to with our problems and they know just what to say to not only make us feel better, but also to inspire us to go great things. These are the people who can take Scripture and make it applicable in our lives in 2007.This is a gift from the Holy Spirit and these people are so crucial to our lives and to our growth as people and as Christians.

The next gift is called the utterance of knowledge; this could also be called the ability of “special knowledge” or “clear understanding”. This is not necessarily would you would call “book learning”. In fact, I know a lot of people with PhDs who don’t have walking around sense. This is instead is the ability to clearly understand the world around us and how if affects each one of us. It is also the ability to be able to understand and to enact that wise advice given to them by the people we have just talked about. This is the gift of knowledge.

Next, we have the gift of faith. Faith is a strange thing because we always assume that it comes from within us. It is something that we have to work for and earn, but instead it is a gift of grace given by God. John Wesley said that God not only gives us grace, but also gives us the faith to respond to his grace. We all have faith, or we would be here this morning. However, have you ever know a person who seemed to have faith that could literally move mountains? Some people stand so strong in their faith that no adversary can knock them down. We look up to these people, but they did not earn this great faith, it is a gift of grace, by the Holy Spirit.

There is the gift of healing. We are sometimes skeptical when it comes to so-called faith healers. We see them all the time on TV. Folks like Benny Hinn and Robert Tilton seem to heal the sick and physically challenged, just with a touch of their hands. Some believe in these people’s abilities and some cast serious doubt on these healings. I have never seen them person, but I have seen another kind of healing. I have seen the power of prayer and the power of a simple touch or hug and how these things can aid tremendously in the healing process. I have seen people whose voice and touch can calm those who are in pain and I have seen how just stopping by for a visit and dropping off some old magazines and books can make some feel so much better.

We don’t put too much credit in miracles anymore. We are a scientific society and we are all from Missouri, we have to see it to believe it. I don’t know about you, but I believe in miracles. I have seen a little baby born 3 months premature, 1 lb 7 oz grow and blossom into a healthy 18 month old little girl who is running around being a terror to her parents. I know that the miracles of modern science are not just coincidences, but are gifts of God. The wisdom of scientists and doctors are not self-made, but are from the Almighty.

Just like miracles, we are skeptical of prophecy as well. When we hear prophecy we either think of those in the Old Testament, Isaiah or Elijah, or we think of modern psychics telling the future. However, prophecy is not limited to telling of the future. In fact, most of the Hebrew prophets did not tell the future, but instead the proclaimed messages from God. They proclaimed the God’s disappointment with the people and God’s future judgment that would come to the people. There are those in modern times with that gift. I don’t feel that I can talk about prophets without talking about Martin Luther King. Tomorrow we celebrate the birthday of this great leader of the civil rights movement. He wasn’t perfect, but he proclaims what we felt was the truth of God that all men and women are created equal, with equal rights. There is so much injustice in the world today and we need a new generation of prophets who will tell the world that this is not what God wants, tell the world that God wants peace. \

These and others are gifts of the Spirit, given by God at God’s choosing. All of these gifts are given by God through the Holy Spirit. One gift is not better than the other and they are not given to make one person better than another. But they are given so that all of the gifts might be used together to what Paul calls the “common good”. We all benefit from it. Spiritual gifts, gifts from the Holy Spirit are not given for individual pursuits. It is about a community living and working together, sharing and loving one another and reaping in the gifts of the members. This is what the church should be doing. Working together, but we will speak more on this next week.

Spiritual gifts are given not for one person, but for the whole. Each of these gifts we looked at today are not done alone, they are all done to someone else, worked within the community. This begins the responsibility of our baptism. We become members of a community, we receive gifts for the benefit of that community, and we must use those gifts for the improvement of that community and the glory of God.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.