(Is 62:1-15; 1 Cor 12:1-11)

Sun, Jan 19, 2025, FBC Amherst, JG White

We sing an old hymn today that mentions the seven-fold gifts the Spirit of God imparts. But no two lists of spiritual gifts are the same. Today, in 1 Corinthians, there are nine. Each Bible list is different.

We could categorize the ‘spiritual gifts’ in this chapter as three types. Gifts of instruction or understanding: uttering wisdom and uttering knowledge. Gifts of power or activity: faith, healing and miracles. Gifts of speech or communication: prophecy, discernment, speaking in tongues and interpreting tongues.

All this talk in chapter twelve is basically about the faith community, the Christians and how they are together. There is quite a bit about how they do what they do when they gathered, in their city, Corinth, for worship and fellowship. Paul gives guidance about how to deal with idol worship that was common among their neighbours, about the Lord’s Supper - often called Holy Communion by us, this talk about spiritual gifts, then the various people with different roles in the body of the Church, more details about prophecy and speaking in tongues, and doing worship in and orderly fashion.

So, all these centuries later, this gets me wondering about how each one of us has our God-given ways to contribute to the fellowship we have. Our particular gifts will often be different from the things that seemed to be among those first Christians around the Mediterranean. What we are blessed to do, by God, will be, as it was then, for information and understanding, or for action and empowerment, or for communicating and sharing.

Is this really what we are about? Learning and understanding the world? Getting trained for better actions in our lives? Becoming far better talkers and sharers of what is most important?

Forty years ago, Annie Dillard famously wrote about ‘going to church,’ which I prefer to call ‘going to worship.’ We happen to gather in such a grand building, sing and preach grand ideas, but what might go on here? Dillard asked:

Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 40-41.

What powerful reality is our Christianity touching? I reflected about it, this past week.

Last Sunday morning here, many of you were here with me. One moment that particularly moved me was in a song. It was just for a moment. We were singing ‘Shine, Jesus, Shine,’ which is fine - not one of my favourites. I chose it. But, last week, I was aware of Canadian politics, American politics, Israel and Palestine, Lebanon, and so on. These words suddenly became very real to me:

Blaze, Spirit, blaze, set our hearts on fire

Flow, river, flow, flood the nations with grace and mercy

Send forth Your word, Lord, and let there be light

The gift of music had it power, last Sunday, here.

Another service of worship last week had its profound moments for me. It was not even one I attended. A few days after the fact, I skimmed through video of the state Funeral of President Jimmy Carter, in Washington, DC. There, often shown on screen, were the Bidens, Obamas, Bushes, Clintons, and Trumps, and vice presidents, seated all together in one section. And they were hearing things like this, in the context of giving thanks to God for Jimmy Carter.

At the end of his presidency, with Walter Mondale as vice, they agreed: "We told the truth, we obeyed the law & we kept the peace."

Carter’s grandson, Jason, said: “Fifty years ago he was a climate warrior who pushed for a world where we conserved energy, limited emissions and traded our reliance on fossil fuels for expanded renewable sources.”

Also he spoke of his grandfather as one to “carry out that commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.

Essentially, he eradicated a disease with love and respect.

He waged peace with love and respect.

He led this nation with love and respect.”

Another grandson told of his speech when he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Carter said, “‘The most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth.’ For the next two decades, as the problem compounded, he would return to this theme in the adult Bible class he taught each week, with stories from the Bible and stories from today.”

It struck me how that funeral, a national moment for the USA, was filled with positive values and inspiration, in the face of some clear and present danger in our world today. I wondered what the returning President took in from all the speeches at the funeral. And what all his many supporters heard across that nation.

The funeral was, for me, a shining moment of hope and nobility. So timely. Once in a while, crash helmets are needed in pews.

The activity of God in God’s people happens in a lot of moments that are not Sunday morning moments. The gifts of the Spirit in our lives that enable more learning and understanding are present everywhere.

I was so very happy to see such a group of you adult students gathered for Bible Study on Thursday afternoon. You remember how I peeked in on you, at the beginning, middle, and end. I was not spying on you, or checking up on Marlene, your teacher. I was just excited to see you together for this.

And I hear, in these studies about prayer, that you wanted to learn more about how to prepare prayers. And there was interest in the practice of reading scripture out loud. This is thrilling to me! It does my heart good. I guess, in my own Christian thinking, I see an overlap of what you, as people, desire, and what the Holy Spirit inspires in you. A gift of faith, a gift for praying, the gift of interpreting scripture, these things I give thanks to God for, and I am so pleased they come from your hearts also.

I have so many of my own dreams about things that could happen. I want a workshop on prayer I will call Build a Prayer. Like ‘Build a Bear’ in a shopping mall, where you take all the parts of a stuffed animal, the clothing and hat and shoes and all, and build your own teddy bear. So then, we have a session on building a prayer.

And a weekly prayer session here. And a pilgrimage day which includes prayer in our walking of two or five or twenty kilometers, one day. And so on.

Do we sense that God allots to us some ability to discover what prayer is? How it works? What is next for us? Do we notice when we get activated - turned on - by some simple word, or song, or silence?

Thanks be to God we are in a little faith community called First Baptist. And that we are not alone, we are siblings to all the faithful nearby and around the world. The annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity has just begun. How I wish we were having daily prayer gatherings in the community!

Anyway. That’s some examples of the communicating and the understanding that comes from the spiritual gifts of God among us. The other category is the action, the power, the reaching out and touching others in helpful ways.

Sharon and I went to the community supper on Friday, next door at the hall of Christ Church. It is a very nice, free, monthly event. It is cool to see the Anglicans, and Maggie’s Place, and others, teaming up together to show this generosity and hospitality. (Those get called spiritual gifts too.)

One small girl was very efficient in cleaning up our dishes as we ate our lasagna and salad and cake. Then, she said to me, “Are you the man who goes to Church all the time?”

“Uh, yes, I do go a lot. Every week.”

“I recognize your voice,” she said. I’m not sure how she knows my voice. Maybe I sound like someone else. Or perhaps she hears our YouTube services. Anyway, she was teaming up with Church to help at that dinner. Good for her.

The gifts of the Spirit, some special abilities and inspiration, are doled out by God. So Paul wrote. So we experience them. These are things that are for the common good. ‘The manifestation of the Spirit for the common good,’ it says here. Remember how this is all such community stuff. Blessed, somehow, to bless others.

At the root of this Corinthian message are the statements we heard at the end: All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: is to do your part - your new part or your old bit of work - in the fellowship of this life. This life with Christ, in Christ.