“Spotlight Gifts, Spirit Gifts”
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
Reverend Beth Hessel
January 20, 2013
I have a confession to make: I am a bit of a fan of the Fox television show Glee. It is a story about an Ohio high school Glee Club, and the trials, travails, and small triumphs of students who battle against the opinions of hostile classmates to claim their artistic gifts, and compete amongst each other for a chance in the spotlight to showcase their talents. While often over the top and campy, Glee also touches on the basic needs of young people, indeed of all of us, for love, acceptance, and the opportunity to discover and use our God-given gifts while also respecting and encouraging the giftedness of those around us. The show explores how a community – be it a student body, an organization, or a larger group — disintegrates when the talents or traits of some individuals are valued over those of others – when the athlete or the prima donna singer or the able-bodied or heterosexual individuals are privileged and the contributions of everyone else denigrated. Glee celebrates the unique giftedness of every individual and the importance of using our gifts for the common good. It highlights the integral value of everyone to the health of a body and challenges the notion, so prevalent in our culture, that some people and some gifts, are more important than others.
Perhaps you, like me, have at some time or other fallen into that trap. I remember as a teenager poring over fashion magazines with my friends, bemoaning the fact that we would never be beautiful because we didn’t have Christie Brinkley’s perky, perfect nose, or the clear skin of the airbrushed models. Our own talents for writing poetry or telling a good joke, for tending to younger siblings after school while our parents worked, or raising prize-winning sheep, seemed nothing compared to the girl down the street who could transfix all the boys with her soulful rendering of the latest pop song. The curse of adolescence is self-doubt; it is a denial of one’s own God-given gifts by negatively weighing them against the gifts of others.
As adults, we also find ourselves circling in this pattern. We eye co-workers advancing up the corporate ladder, and think that if we just had their talents, instead of our own, we would do the same. If we are a stay-at-home parent, we may look with envy upon the parents who work outside of the home, and if we work in an office, we may be convinced that the parent who is home with the children has the best world. We assume that the ordained leadership of the church, our pastors and elders and deacons, have abilities of more worth to the congregation than our own. We might believe our days of usefulness and value to the outside world are over because we are retired, or limited by a body that is aging.
Some of us have never even had the chance to discover what our gifts are. We are competent, active people, but what we do every day, and do well, seem commonplace things – preparing meals, caring for other people’s needs, remaining cheerful in adverse times, remembering the names of people we meet, befriending the neighborhood animals. Mundane activities that are second nature to us, that hold none of the glamour of talent that receives the attention – what I consider Spotlight gifts like charisma, athletic ability, public speaking skills, or the ability to earn a lot of money. We have a vision of the ideal person in our heads, and when we fail to live up to that image, we may berate and belittle who we are and what we bring to our world. Apparently, the Corinthian church was suffering this malady. Certain of the members found they had Spotlight gifts. When they went into a trance during worship and began speaking another tongue, everyone noticed. When they healed the sick through prayer or touch, their power awed the congregation. Whatever their gifts, they stood out as exceptionally gifted people who were to be emulated. By the time Paul wrote this letter to them, the congregation was rumbling with dissension, as some claimed that everyone must aspire to attain the Spotlight gifts; that all other talents and abilities were lesser gifts, worthless when compared with the Spotlight gifts.
Paul countered this claim. He put before the congregation a mirror that reflected back to them who they were formed by the Spirit to be. “Now there are varieties of gifts,” Paul wrote. “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.” Without being contrived or calculated, Paul eloquently states what we affirm as Christians: God is Three-in-One. By God’s very nature, God is multifaceted. No term can capture the essence of God. Standing alone, such terms as God, Spirit, Father, Son, Savior, Rock, Redeemer, or Creator may point to an aspect of God, but none alone gives us a complete picture of who God is. We use many names for God because God is active in our lives and through history in manifold ways. And still, with such a diversity of names to describe God, we proclaim that God is the One God we know through Scriptural witness, in Jesus Christ, and through our participation in a community of faith. We recognize that the diverse aspects of God work as a unified whole. This multifaceted God is the One Source of the wide variety of gifts we find in our community. Just as the divine nature is inherently diverse, so are we, God’s creations, intentionally diverse. Paul further states that “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good . . . all are activated by the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.” The Holy Spirit, who is
God’s active presence among us, has given each one of us a gift. And not one of these Spirit gifts is ordinary or mundane. For we each have received a “manifestation of the Spirit;” a “revealing” of the Spirit. Within each one of us resides a gift that can reveal God’s Spirit to the world. We could say that we’ve each received a piece of God, an element of God’s character. We each hold a puzzle piece that belongs to the image of God. So, how do we know what our Spirit gifts are? When we feel dwarfed by people so obviously gifted with God’s grace – the Martin Luther King’s and Mother Teresa’s of the world – how do we discover, celebrate, and bring to the common table our own God-given abilities?
Paul gives us an entry into this puzzle. He writes that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit enables every Christian to share through our words, actions, and the manner in which we live our lives the good news of God’s ultimate sovereignty over this world. That which we do reveals to the world God’s love, God’s compassion, God’s beauty, God’s joy and delight, God’s mercy, God’s steadfastness, God’s wisdom, God’s loyalty, God’s patience, God’s healing . . . in short, an ability to demonstrate an aspect of God’s character and purpose is our Spirit gift.
Your gift is what you bring to this world to make it a better place, a kinder, more loving, more open, more just, more joyful, or more beautiful place. Perhaps your gift is making afghans for nursing home residents, or warmly greeting visitors on Sunday mornings, or tending to a community garden. Perhaps your gift is tinkering with the broken and aging parts of our facility so they can work a bit longer, or making your workplace or school or this congregation a more welcoming place with a positive attitude, or listening carefully and offering thoughtful analysis at committee meetings, or encouraging others in the use of their gifts. Perhaps your gift is blending your voice in praise with the choir or running errands for a shut-in. Perhaps your gift is simply your faithful prayers or your smile. Your Spirit gift is what author James Fowler calls “the deep disposition of your heart” – that unique grace that stirs within you, the fire that glows in you, your response to God’s call to you that wells up from the truest place inside you. Each one of us has a talent, a skill or characteristic that illuminates God’s purpose and intent for God’s creation when it is used and shared in concert with the multitude of Spirit gifts in the community of faith. Today we have called out some of you with certain gifts to serve our congregation as Elders, Deacons, and Trustees. You have faithfully and carefully listened to the invitation and accepted this call. Yet our recognition of your graces and gifts does not place upon you the undue burden of holding up the church alone. Each of us is here to support and encourage and join you in your ministry by sharing our own gifts. This is what a church is: a faith community that affirms the value of all Spirit gifts, and helps us identify our special gifts, encourages us to excellence, partners with us, and frees us to rejoice in the gifts and graces of others.
Our individual gifts may seem small, but our different gifts complement each other and make a whole – one’s wisdom channeling another’s energy and enthusiasm; one’s practical know-how making reality of another’s grand visions. Working together, our gifts can make a difference to the world; laboring side-by-side, valuing each individual’s unique contribution, we are partners with God in God’s redemptive, creative, justice work. Indeed, Paul asserts that our Spirit gifts only reveal God’s intentions when we offer them to the community, the common good. Just as blood vessels carry necessary oxygen to the heart, so we, when we use our gifts in concert, become vessels of God’s Spirit, vessels for life, carriers of God’s designs for this world.
As we celebrate the unique giftedness of the men and women who kneel before our prayers today to become leaders of this congregation, we also celebrate the graces and gifts each one of us holds, gifts that the Spirit empowers us to use together to reveal God’s many facets to the world.