January 16, 2022 “Gifted People” – I Corinthians 12:1-11

I Corinthians 12:1-11
“Gifted People”
January 16, 2022 – Second Sunday after Epiphany

The CDC said on Friday that we should all up our game a bit in regard to masks, not just wearing them, but wearing good ones. Cloth masks recommended at the beginning of the pandemic are now said to be not as good as medical type masks. Since there is no longer a shortage of N95s for medical workers, the recommendation is to wear one of those or a Chinese equivalent, a KN95.

The problem comes when you try to buy better masks, as Beth and I discovered before our trip to England last fall. There is a bewildering array of brands and types, along with both good and bad reviews. The same authorities who recommend better masks also warn that there are loads of counterfeits on the market. So how do you tell what’s genuine, what’s good and what’s not?

I’ll just pause here and say that almost any mask, worn properly, over your nose and without big gaps as it fits to your face, is better than none. But fake copies of brand-name masks are not as good as the real ones.

Spiritual counterfeits were a problem in Corinth. So in our text today, Paul addresses that concern by telling that church in verse 1 that he does not want them to be “uninformed,” ignorant about spiritual things. Uninformed ignorance was exactly where they were before coming to know Jesus. Verse 2 says, “You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak.” In other words, before Christ they bought into all sorts of spiritual fakes.

As Willie James Jennings suggests in his book, The Christian Imagination, we ought not jump too quickly over words like “pagan” in the Bible, thinking they don’t really apply to us, that idols weren’t ever our problem. Instead, let us own our actual ethnic and spiritual heritage as Gentiles, as people outside God’s chosen people, as people who live in a culture of idols and prone to idol worship ourselves. We too need to discern the spiritual fakes.

You can check on-line for articles from the CDC, NIOSH and others telling you how to distinguish a good face mask from a fake imitation. Here in verse 3 Paul offers a simple test for spiritual things. It almost seems too simple. “I want you to understand” the apostle told them, “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.”

It seems too simple because you and I know that people can say all sorts of things, like “Jesus is Lord,” without actually meaning them. Deceitful manufacturers print whatever brand name they like on face masks without them being real. Can’t unspiritual or deceived people profess allegiance to Jesus without it being genuine at all? Yes, they can.

That’s why, thinking about that statement, “Jesus is Lord,” I need to say that a belief about Christian faith I was raised with is simply not true. That’s the belief that Christian faith doesn’t and shouldn’t have anything to do with politics. It’s a conviction that has sometimes allowed us to have real love for each other across political differences, and that’s good. But the truth is that biblical religion, both in the Old and the New Testament, was and is always connected with how people live in society. And that has to be political.

We see that connection between faith and politics in the life of the man our country remembers tomorrow, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The very existence of the Black church should be a constant reminder to us that believing in Jesus calls for taking part in politics.

As Esau McCauley at Wheaton College suggests in Reading While Black, Jesus didn’t get crucified and Christians didn’t get martyred for telling people to love God and their neighbors or for preaching grace and redemption. It was because the political powers of that day, both Jewish and Roman, perceived Jesus and His followers as threats.[1]

I’ve said it before. That little affirmation of verse 3, “Jesus is Lord,” was political to its core in a time and place where everyone was expected to affirm, “Caesar is lord.” And saying “Jesus is Lord” got Christians in political trouble all the time. Jesus was hung on the Cross because His kingdom threatened earthly governments, because He and those who came after Him would not acknowledge the lordship of Caesar and the power of Rome.

Even the part about saying “Jesus is cursed” concerns political and judicial realities of the first century. Christians arrested and tried for sedition could sometimes escape judgment by denying Jesus. But genuine Christian believers faced even death and refused to say words like that. An old man named Polycarp stood tied to a pile of wood on which he was to be burned. When they asked him to curse Jesus to save his life, he said, “Eighty and six years have I served Christ, nor has He ever done me any harm. How, then, could I blaspheme my King who saved Me?”

In our own time, we can sometimes discern those who truly confess “Jesus is Lord” from those who do not by their political actions. Those who name Jesus or hold up a cross, but then engage in acts of violence or hatred or discrimination, are frauds. Those who elevate allegiance to a party or to a leader or to a nation above allegiance to Christ are fakes. Jesus is Lord. No one can honestly and truly say that and show they mean it, except by the Holy Spirit, just as Paul said.

Paul’s concern in all this, as he began this part of his letter, is what we call spiritual gifts. Read through this letter to Corinth and you see that church struggling with discerning what was really spiritual. Some of them displayed all sorts of giftedness and power, but it wasn’t all genuine work of the Holy Spirit. Some of it divided and confused that congregation. Paul wanted to inform and teach and correct them so that the real gifts among them might be recognized and put to proper use. He wanted their gifts to unite them rather than divide them.

That’s why the text in verses 4 to 6 makes a statement of diversity in unity in regard to spiritual gifts. At first glance it appears Paul just says the same thing in three different ways: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.” But it’s not merely poetic repetition with a difference. It’s the Trinity—the Holy Spirit, Jesus the Lord, and God the Father—at work.

The variety among the spiritual gifts which God bestows upon different Christians in the church is a reflection of the variety of God’s own being as the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three different persons yet one God, with one will and one being. That is how spiritual gifts are supposed to work in the church. Those gifts are to be diverse yet all working together among people with a unified heart and mind.

So verse 7 goes on, “To each is given through the Spirit the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” That last phrase adds another way to discern if spiritual gifts or genuine or not, if the supposedly spiritual person is truly and honestly confessing Jesus as Lord or is up to something else. Real spiritual gifts work for the common good of all. A true spiritual gift does not just benefit the one who uses it. It benefits everyone else in the church. As Paul says in Ephesians 4:12 about spiritual gifts, it edifies, it builds up the whole congregation in Jesus.

In our age that often emphasizes individual rights and self-fulfillment, to the detriment of the common good, our friends and neighbors need to see how that holy reflection of the Trinity happens among followers of Jesus as they are gifted by the Holy Spirit. Christians are witnesses to our friends and neighbors of how things work when people take the common good seriously. We are people who do things like wear masks and get vaccinated, not just for own sake but for the sake those around us, both inside the church and outside it.

Paul lists in verses 8 to 11 some of the gifts given by the Spirit for the common good. Wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, gifts of miracles, gifts of prophecy, discernment, speaking in tongues, and interpreting various tongues.

These were not all the spiritual gifts there are. There are other lists of the Spirit’s gifts in the New Testament, in Romans 12, Ephesians 4 and I Peter 4, and even right here in I Corinthians 12 further down in verse 28. Then there are the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5, as well as the spiritual gifts of the Old Testament, which Catholics recognize, found in Isaiah 11:2. As we read, “there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.”

I can see a huge variety of spiritual gifts in our congregation just looking around our sanctuary right now, even without most of us present in-person. The building itself testifies to the artistic and architectural gifts of the previous pastor and members then. The platform I’m standing on and the cherry wood behind me was done by members with gifts for carpentry and craftsmanship. The stained glass of our denominational logo reminds me of elderly member who donated it in memory her husband and her gift for prayer and love for missionaries. The screens are new and were hung and wired utilizing Stan’s architectural and construction gifts alongside the gifts for helping several others of you have. One of the banners was crafted by a member with a gift for sewing and the other was purchased and hung with Janet’s artistic gifts for color and beauty.

That of course is not all. Each offering of worship here, even on a livestream like this, is a blend of music, speaking, praying and other corporate gifts. Gifts of the Holy Spirit to each us blend together each week to bless everyone, whether physically present or not. Our worship team’s technical gifts allow us all to hear and see what’s going on. You all got to enjoy Bryan’s gift for preaching last Sunday. Karen’s gifts for administration make sure you have links to the service and a bulletin to follow along. Everyone’s gift of giving helps pay for the space and the light and equipment and the art. Bob’s, Chris’s and others’ gifts for accounting for it all keep track of those financial offerings. There are varieties of gifts and services and activities, but one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of us all.

Those gifts of wisdom and knowledge are in many of you. I’m blessed when your wisdom and knowledge offers wise counsel and good ideas. Kendal sent me a post by Skye Jethani yesterday, reminding me that, as I mentioned earlier, spiritual service and activity doesn’t just happen “in church.” You are all using your gifts where you work, where you learn, where you play, where you live. You use wisdom to sort through a conflict in your workplace. You exercise faith to pray for and offer help to a sick or lonely neighbor. You are “speak in tongues” to communicate with people who literally speak a different language or with those who simply see the world differently, like a child with autism might.

Therefore, I’d like you not to take today’s message about spiritual gifts to be a call to just do more “church stuff.” Many of you, as I’ve pointed out, already do lots of that. Rather, I invite you to realize that the Holy Spirit has done and is doing just what Paul says here. He’s given you gifts, spiritual resources to do just the things God calls you to every day, whether it’s making a sandwich or grading a paper, packing a grocery bag or creating a spreadsheet. In all of that, the Holy Spirit is inside you, gifting you, empowering you. You are gifted people.

Sidney Poitier died this past week. He was a brilliant actor who broke all sorts of new ground for Black Americans. My favorite of his performances was an old black and white film, “Lilies of the Field.” He stars as Homer Smith, a drifter with construction skills who spends a night in a little southwestern border town and ends up being persuaded by a tiny convent of German nuns to stay and build them a chapel.

Homer is a loner. He first thinks he can do it himself. Then when he accepts a few helpful hands, they make a mess of things and Homer quits. But what I would identify as the Holy Spirit in the form of a Mexican store owner speaks to him. Homer realizes that everyone in that community has a part to play: the Mexican people who would be baptized and confirmed and married in the chapel, the nuns themselves, and even an Anglo construction businessman who scoffed at the whole project.

In a moving scene we watch those German sisters tread adobe in their bare feet, and Mexican men place bricks and roof trusses while the women prepare lunch. The townspeople donate bricks and wood, and in one moving moment an old Hispanic couple brings a shining candelabra which must have been in their family for generations. The next day even that haughty white company man shows up with a load of bricks which become the material for a steeple on top of the whole project.

In a scene that is a cacophony of Spanish, German and English all being spoken at once, Homer discovered how a church is built, by diverse people putting all their different gifts together for the good of the whole. It’s a pretty good picture of what Paul is talking about here. It’s an image of how the Holy Spirit creates a gifted people who themselves are the Church which God is building.

The other texts we read today—wine at a wedding in Cana, Isaiah’s picture of Israel as God’s beloved bride, the psalm rejoicing in God’s protection and provision—may not seem like they have much to do with I Corinthians 12 and spiritual gifts. But they do. Each of those other texts celebrates the lavish and abundant grace and love which God pours out on His people. That same divine abundance and gracious generosity shows up in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Paul says in verse 6 that God activates His gifts in everyone. Our last verse today, verse 11, says that all the gifts are activated by the same Spirit. That word “activate” is energeō in Greek, from which we get “energy” in English. God energizes His people, pours out into us His own energy when we have little or none of our own.

Some of us in just a bit will talk together on Zoom about our church budget for this year. One of the questions that will lurk in the background will be the same as it is every year. Can we give enough to meet the goal we set? Will we have what we need? That’s a good question. We should use the gifts of wisdom and knowledge and discernment in answering it. But let us also remember that we already have the most important gifts, the gifts that God in the grace of Jesus Christ has placed in us through the Holy Spirit. We have those gifts in abundance. In a sense, we are those gifts, the gifts which really matter.

Be encouraged also today if lack is what you are feeling instead of abundance. Our energy runs and lags. Many of us have felt that more than ever before over the last couple of years. Yet the energy of God, like those huge jars of water which became wine, is far beyond anything we can possibly consume and use up. His gifts in in all of us can help restore and carry those of us who don’t feel particularly gifted or energetic right now. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are there for the common good, to be used so that we all have what we need to know the love of God and follow Jesus.

That final verse also reminds us of something crucial to the discussion of spiritual things. We are talking about gifts. They are capabilities, talents, aptitudes, energies which we didn’t produce in ourselves or obtain on our own. They are all given to us. We don’t choose them. The Holy Spirit “allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.” Spiritual gifts come to us individually, but as gifts of the Spirit they do not belong to us individually. They belong to all of us together. They belong to a common good in which we all share by the grace of God.

May you rejoice today in whatever gift or gifts the Spirit has placed in you. May you join that gift with the gifts of your sisters and brothers for the good of us all. May you receive from that sharing of gifts even more than you offer in sharing yours. May the holy and beautiful community which those shared gifts build say clearly and gloriously to the world around us, “Jesus is Lord!”

Amen.

[1] Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2020), pp. 54-57.