1 Corinthians 12:1-27
Listen Link: http://www.firstcovenantcadillac.org/#!this-weeks-sermon/c20mw
Way back in ancient history, back in 1979, Kathy and I used to attend the Thornapple Covenant Church in Grand Rapids. They used to meet in a school gymnasium. One of my favorite things about worshiping there was watching all the people pitch in to set up the "sanctuary." Oh, uh, I pitched in too. Tables and chairs had to come out of a closet, and be arranged. The risers for the choir had been handmade by a man with the gift of carpentry in our congregation. Our banners were supported as a screen behind the podium, in paneled frames, also made by the carpenter. Of course, the banners themselves were made by people with gifts for that kind of work.
One day the church service was held up because the one who had the key to open the building was late. The preacher was there, but he waited outside with everyone else until the one with the gift of stewardship-showed up with the key to open the door.
Our preparation for worship was a hands on affair. It was good to see the people active. It was good to be reminded, so graphically, of the various gifts that were contributed to make worship possible in a school gym. It was a sign of our motivation and interest in worship. Working together as a team to get ready for worship made worship itself something more meaningful, even though the halo that hung over the pastor's head was actually a basketball hoop.
Is this a story of a perfect church? Not by a long shot. There is no such thing. Anyone who thinks that joining a church is a good way to meet all the best people and cultivate smooth social relations ought to read Paul's letter to the Corinthians. The Corinthian Christians gave their founding pastor, Paul, more trouble than all his other churches put together. If anyone should have been able to build a perfect church it would have been Paul, the master pastor. Despite his esteem in our eyes as an author of Holy Scripture, no sooner did Paul get one problem straightened out in Corinth than three more appeared.
But however much trouble the Corinthians were to each other and to Paul, they prove to be a blessing to us, for they triggered some of Paul's most profound and vigorous writing. Though he wrote most kindly and sympathetically, Paul didn't mince words. He wrote with the confident authority of a pastor who understands the way God's salvation works and the kind of community that comes into being as a result.
The trouble with Corinth was that they saw diversity and stratified it, ranked it and classified it, valuing some more than others instead of valuing all equally with significant appreciation of each one's special place or role. Of course, the more spectacular gifts were the more highly valued. Spectacle and sensation are more appealing to our worldly sensibilities than subtlety and hiddenness. This is the error of the Pharisee.
The Pharisees sought to prove their worth and demonstrate their great spiritual stature through their public and lengthy prayers. The Corinthians sought to prove their worth and demonstrate their great spiritual stature through their public and ecstatic speaking in other tongues. The common denominator between them is that this tendency is the result of a competitive spirit in which each one is trying his or her best to be the best.
Today, the competitive spirit is still going strong. We celebrate rugged individuality, independence, autonomy, and self-reliance. We are over-individualized. And yet, we also follow fads and fashion trends, submit to peer pressure and try to be like everyone else. We experience a double edged identity crisis. On the one hand, we want to be in an accepting community, where we are welcomed and made to feel that we belong. On the other hand, we want to be unique enough to have our own individuality, distinct from others in the crowd. One way to have both is to do exactly what everybody else does, only do it the best so you're the only one who can do it that good.
The church is one place where the sense of community is supposed to be strong. It is a place to belong. But unfortunately it can also be a place that supports the drive to stand out. The modern worship service and church structure provide a space where talented individuals can rise to the positions of leadership, even stardom. Trouble is, if you can't be the best, can you be satisfied?
The problem with this picture is that some places of leadership become elevated and glorified to the point that those who are not leaders, aspire to be leaders, and therefore are not content with less. Or, if they fail to make the grade they may become resigned to their fate and accept a lesser glory, but also feel the pain of second class citizenship.
And by the way, as long as I am up here like a leader telling you all these things I should also say, please don’t put me on a pedestal. Put me on your prayer list! I have my own flaws and imperfections. All of us are sinners saved by grace.
On the other hand, we are all gifted children! That’s a good label right? It is good to be gifted. And we are children of God so we are all gifted children! We have a lot to offer to the world. We are advanced creatures, born again and spirit filled we are alive in Christ! But this is not our own doing. It is the gift of God through faith in Jesus Christ. The unbelievers are dead and lost. But we don’t look down on them. Oh no. in the Spirit of Christ we love them and long for them to hear the good news and join us in fellowship. Let’s do the best we can with the gifts God has given.
The first epistle to the Corinthians speaks to these issues. Chapters twelve through fourteen are full of instruction about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the need for love and humility to prevail within those who have the special talents and gifts provided by God's grace. It seems that the ones with the more "special" gifts thought that made them special. Special gifts for special people. Therefore, these chapters have been used most often in our day, to admonish and correct the abusers of Spiritual gifts and the fanatics who lord it over others who are less charismatic.
These chapters are addressed to the "tongues speakers" who loved to babble during worship services, and who haughtily believed themselves to be more spiritual than those "less" gifted. The text bursts the bubble of those proud souls, insisting that they honor the other members of the body with love and equality. But by reading between the lines we can see that the text is also speaking to those weaker brothers and sisters about their attitudes toward those who considered themselves better.
It tells the more common folks that they too must practice the principle of love and not be resentful or hold grudges against those who sin by puffing themselves up. It also tells them that their giftedness, though of a different and sometimes unrecognized sort, is just as valid and important as the more spectacular manifestations of God's grace through the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, special gifts, like Apostle, preacher, prophet, teacher, healer are really only special in the sense that they are less common. Each church needs only a few of them. The other gifts, helps, mercy, hospitality, generosity are distributed more bountifully because the more people there are that have them, the more effective will be the churches' outreach in the community.
People are like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Each piece has a special place, a unique function in the puzzle. When we celebrate individuality, it represents a recognition of the fact that each piece of the puzzle has a distinct identity that sets it apart from every other piece. Each piece fits in only one place in the puzzle. Each piece makes a unique contribution to the finished work, a contribution that cannot be made by any other piece. Each piece is essential to the completion of the whole. If you like jigsaw puzzles, you know how irksome it is to spend hours and hours assembling a great 1000 piece picture, only to find that one piece is missing. That one missing piece can ruin your satisfaction even though you've got the other 999 pieces.
Jigsaw puzzle pieces have certain things in common. They all belong to one puzzle. They are all made of the same stuff. They all fulfill their design by being in relationship. You could go for total uniformity. You could create a jigsaw puzzle in which every piece has exactly the same shape and color and pattern. It would go together so easily as to be dull and uninteresting. Such puzzles are not made.
No piece is a whole puzzle. The church is the whole picture. Each member is a piece, a whole piece. Each piece needs to be fitted into its own special place. The particular attributes of each individual puzzle piece vary in color, pattern and shape. Let the color relate to spiritual gifts. There are bright colors. There are dull colors. They are all of equal importance to finishing the work. Let the shape refer to relationship. Each puzzle piece fulfills its task in the body of the puzzle primarily by being in its proper relationship to the pieces surrounding it. The particular color on any given piece is meaningless apart from the context of its place amongst its brothers and sisters.
Relationships are more important than gifts! Gifts are for doing tasks! Certain tasks, like saying hello, or helping a friend, or telling the truth, are indispensable to maintaining good relationships. But the relationship is more important. The gifts make possible the tasks which serve the relationships. Beloved, let us love one another. Love is a verb. That sounds task oriented, but it is a certain sort of task. More specific than a generalized act, the verb to love is defined by the sorts of acts which are motivated by and promote healthy relationships.
One thing that our denomination recommends for congregations on the Vitality pathway who want to become spiritually healthier is to enter into the process of creating a relational covenant. Church isn’t something we do. It is who we are. That is a good way to explain why our church has done the work of creating a relational covenant. The relational covenant is a statement of what kind of people we intend to be with each other, and really with everyone we meet.
Today is a special day. Last week at our quarterly business meeting we formally adopted our new relational covenant. Today while we are celebrating the Lord’s supper, everyone will be given an opportunity to sign it. There is a large posterized version on the table in the back and a pen you can use to sign your name and say, “Yes, I want to live like that.” Signing is totally optional, and totally open to visitors as well as members because we believe this statement is a universally applicable statement of how Spirit led people would want to relate to each other.
Relationships are more important than gifts or tasks. When we act as if tasks are more important than relationships, pastors come to churches full of ideas and plans for ministry and outreach and run roughshod over the feelings of the people who have to do the work. When we act as if tasks are more important than relationships, churches argue and split up over whether to use white or pink napkins at their 100th anniversary celebration.
Now when the pieces of a puzzle are lying on a table. They just lie there. They don't assemble themselves. They can't. It's a mess, a meaningless jumble. That's the way Jesus found us. He's the great puzzle builder. We are being knit together in Christ! He's building his church. Jesus takes each piece and puts it in its proper place. In and through Jesus Christ each and every person is significant and important to the body of Christ. More than that, Jesus found the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, his church, scattered in a muddy world, mixed up with odd pieces of another puzzle. Only he can tell which pieces are his. Only he can clean the mud off each one and make it new again, ready to be installed.
Eugene Peterson's version of our text reads, "You can live without an eye for instance, but not without a stomach. When it's a part of your own body you're concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to a full head of hair?" We are Christ's body-that's who we are! We must never forget it. Only as each one of us accepts his or her own part in that body does that part mean anything. And, we can only accomplish truly beautiful and meaningful things as we look out for one another and all stick together.
Spiritual gifts make the jigsaw puzzle called the church of Christ come alive. We do not just quietly lie beside each other like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Relationships really mean interactions. Love defines the ways in which we treat each other. You know, the church really is the best place to meet all the best people and enjoy good relationships. But it doesn't just happen. We have to work at it.
Soon we will celebrate Communion, the Lord’s Supper. We will do this by a process the church calls intinction. This means we come forward to receive the elements. You take a piece of bread, dip it in the cup and then eat it immediately. Please come down the center aisle and go back to your seat using the side aisles. If you would rather remain seated, the ushers will bring the elements to you. At the very back of the last pew our Relational Covenant is available for you to sign.
Many of you have probably noticed in your bulletins a small card with a number on one side and a letter on the other side. There is a message there for us. But can anyone one here tell me what the message is? Not yet. Now however, as we come forward for communion, Michelle will collect them from you, and then she will get the other young people to put the puzzle together in order on this poster board. If you aren’t able to come forward or just don’t feel like it, you can just give your piece to a person near you who is coming.
Now to God’s dear gifted children I say, let us rejoice and be glad in all that God has done for us and all that he has planned for us to accomplish as we work together in the power of the Holy Spirit who has given us gifts for service!
Listen Link: http://www.firstcovenantcadillac.org/#!this-weeks-sermon/c20mw
Way back in ancient history, back in 1979, Kathy and I used to attend the Thornapple Covenant Church in Grand Rapids. They used to meet in a school gymnasium. One of my favorite things about worshiping there was watching all the people pitch in to set up the "sanctuary." Oh, uh, I pitched in too. Tables and chairs had to come out of a closet, and be arranged. The risers for the choir had been handmade by a man with the gift of carpentry in our congregation. Our banners were supported as a screen behind the podium, in paneled frames, also made by the carpenter. Of course, the banners themselves were made by people with gifts for that kind of work.
One day the church service was held up because the one who had the key to open the building was late. The preacher was there, but he waited outside with everyone else until the one with the gift of stewardship-showed up with the key to open the door.
Our preparation for worship was a hands on affair. It was good to see the people active. It was good to be reminded, so graphically, of the various gifts that were contributed to make worship possible in a school gym. It was a sign of our motivation and interest in worship. Working together as a team to get ready for worship made worship itself something more meaningful, even though the halo that hung over the pastor's head was actually a basketball hoop.
Is this a story of a perfect church? Not by a long shot. There is no such thing. Anyone who thinks that joining a church is a good way to meet all the best people and cultivate smooth social relations ought to read Paul's letter to the Corinthians. The Corinthian Christians gave their founding pastor, Paul, more trouble than all his other churches put together. If anyone should have been able to build a perfect church it would have been Paul, the master pastor. Despite his esteem in our eyes as an author of Holy Scripture, no sooner did Paul get one problem straightened out in Corinth than three more appeared.
But however much trouble the Corinthians were to each other and to Paul, they prove to be a blessing to us, for they triggered some of Paul's most profound and vigorous writing. Though he wrote most kindly and sympathetically, Paul didn't mince words. He wrote with the confident authority of a pastor who understands the way God's salvation works and the kind of community that comes into being as a result.
The trouble with Corinth was that they saw diversity and stratified it, ranked it and classified it, valuing some more than others instead of valuing all equally with significant appreciation of each one's special place or role. Of course, the more spectacular gifts were the more highly valued. Spectacle and sensation are more appealing to our worldly sensibilities than subtlety and hiddenness. This is the error of the Pharisee.
The Pharisees sought to prove their worth and demonstrate their great spiritual stature through their public and lengthy prayers. The Corinthians sought to prove their worth and demonstrate their great spiritual stature through their public and ecstatic speaking in other tongues. The common denominator between them is that this tendency is the result of a competitive spirit in which each one is trying his or her best to be the best.
Today, the competitive spirit is still going strong. We celebrate rugged individuality, independence, autonomy, and self-reliance. We are over-individualized. And yet, we also follow fads and fashion trends, submit to peer pressure and try to be like everyone else. We experience a double edged identity crisis. On the one hand, we want to be in an accepting community, where we are welcomed and made to feel that we belong. On the other hand, we want to be unique enough to have our own individuality, distinct from others in the crowd. One way to have both is to do exactly what everybody else does, only do it the best so you're the only one who can do it that good.
The church is one place where the sense of community is supposed to be strong. It is a place to belong. But unfortunately it can also be a place that supports the drive to stand out. The modern worship service and church structure provide a space where talented individuals can rise to the positions of leadership, even stardom. Trouble is, if you can't be the best, can you be satisfied?
The problem with this picture is that some places of leadership become elevated and glorified to the point that those who are not leaders, aspire to be leaders, and therefore are not content with less. Or, if they fail to make the grade they may become resigned to their fate and accept a lesser glory, but also feel the pain of second class citizenship.
And by the way, as long as I am up here like a leader telling you all these things I should also say, please don’t put me on a pedestal. Put me on your prayer list! I have my own flaws and imperfections. All of us are sinners saved by grace.
On the other hand, we are all gifted children! That’s a good label right? It is good to be gifted. And we are children of God so we are all gifted children! We have a lot to offer to the world. We are advanced creatures, born again and spirit filled we are alive in Christ! But this is not our own doing. It is the gift of God through faith in Jesus Christ. The unbelievers are dead and lost. But we don’t look down on them. Oh no. in the Spirit of Christ we love them and long for them to hear the good news and join us in fellowship. Let’s do the best we can with the gifts God has given.
The first epistle to the Corinthians speaks to these issues. Chapters twelve through fourteen are full of instruction about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the need for love and humility to prevail within those who have the special talents and gifts provided by God's grace. It seems that the ones with the more "special" gifts thought that made them special. Special gifts for special people. Therefore, these chapters have been used most often in our day, to admonish and correct the abusers of Spiritual gifts and the fanatics who lord it over others who are less charismatic.
These chapters are addressed to the "tongues speakers" who loved to babble during worship services, and who haughtily believed themselves to be more spiritual than those "less" gifted. The text bursts the bubble of those proud souls, insisting that they honor the other members of the body with love and equality. But by reading between the lines we can see that the text is also speaking to those weaker brothers and sisters about their attitudes toward those who considered themselves better.
It tells the more common folks that they too must practice the principle of love and not be resentful or hold grudges against those who sin by puffing themselves up. It also tells them that their giftedness, though of a different and sometimes unrecognized sort, is just as valid and important as the more spectacular manifestations of God's grace through the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, special gifts, like Apostle, preacher, prophet, teacher, healer are really only special in the sense that they are less common. Each church needs only a few of them. The other gifts, helps, mercy, hospitality, generosity are distributed more bountifully because the more people there are that have them, the more effective will be the churches' outreach in the community.
People are like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Each piece has a special place, a unique function in the puzzle. When we celebrate individuality, it represents a recognition of the fact that each piece of the puzzle has a distinct identity that sets it apart from every other piece. Each piece fits in only one place in the puzzle. Each piece makes a unique contribution to the finished work, a contribution that cannot be made by any other piece. Each piece is essential to the completion of the whole. If you like jigsaw puzzles, you know how irksome it is to spend hours and hours assembling a great 1000 piece picture, only to find that one piece is missing. That one missing piece can ruin your satisfaction even though you've got the other 999 pieces.
Jigsaw puzzle pieces have certain things in common. They all belong to one puzzle. They are all made of the same stuff. They all fulfill their design by being in relationship. You could go for total uniformity. You could create a jigsaw puzzle in which every piece has exactly the same shape and color and pattern. It would go together so easily as to be dull and uninteresting. Such puzzles are not made.
No piece is a whole puzzle. The church is the whole picture. Each member is a piece, a whole piece. Each piece needs to be fitted into its own special place. The particular attributes of each individual puzzle piece vary in color, pattern and shape. Let the color relate to spiritual gifts. There are bright colors. There are dull colors. They are all of equal importance to finishing the work. Let the shape refer to relationship. Each puzzle piece fulfills its task in the body of the puzzle primarily by being in its proper relationship to the pieces surrounding it. The particular color on any given piece is meaningless apart from the context of its place amongst its brothers and sisters.
Relationships are more important than gifts! Gifts are for doing tasks! Certain tasks, like saying hello, or helping a friend, or telling the truth, are indispensable to maintaining good relationships. But the relationship is more important. The gifts make possible the tasks which serve the relationships. Beloved, let us love one another. Love is a verb. That sounds task oriented, but it is a certain sort of task. More specific than a generalized act, the verb to love is defined by the sorts of acts which are motivated by and promote healthy relationships.
One thing that our denomination recommends for congregations on the Vitality pathway who want to become spiritually healthier is to enter into the process of creating a relational covenant. Church isn’t something we do. It is who we are. That is a good way to explain why our church has done the work of creating a relational covenant. The relational covenant is a statement of what kind of people we intend to be with each other, and really with everyone we meet.
Today is a special day. Last week at our quarterly business meeting we formally adopted our new relational covenant. Today while we are celebrating the Lord’s supper, everyone will be given an opportunity to sign it. There is a large posterized version on the table in the back and a pen you can use to sign your name and say, “Yes, I want to live like that.” Signing is totally optional, and totally open to visitors as well as members because we believe this statement is a universally applicable statement of how Spirit led people would want to relate to each other.
Relationships are more important than gifts or tasks. When we act as if tasks are more important than relationships, pastors come to churches full of ideas and plans for ministry and outreach and run roughshod over the feelings of the people who have to do the work. When we act as if tasks are more important than relationships, churches argue and split up over whether to use white or pink napkins at their 100th anniversary celebration.
Now when the pieces of a puzzle are lying on a table. They just lie there. They don't assemble themselves. They can't. It's a mess, a meaningless jumble. That's the way Jesus found us. He's the great puzzle builder. We are being knit together in Christ! He's building his church. Jesus takes each piece and puts it in its proper place. In and through Jesus Christ each and every person is significant and important to the body of Christ. More than that, Jesus found the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, his church, scattered in a muddy world, mixed up with odd pieces of another puzzle. Only he can tell which pieces are his. Only he can clean the mud off each one and make it new again, ready to be installed.
Eugene Peterson's version of our text reads, "You can live without an eye for instance, but not without a stomach. When it's a part of your own body you're concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to a full head of hair?" We are Christ's body-that's who we are! We must never forget it. Only as each one of us accepts his or her own part in that body does that part mean anything. And, we can only accomplish truly beautiful and meaningful things as we look out for one another and all stick together.
Spiritual gifts make the jigsaw puzzle called the church of Christ come alive. We do not just quietly lie beside each other like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Relationships really mean interactions. Love defines the ways in which we treat each other. You know, the church really is the best place to meet all the best people and enjoy good relationships. But it doesn't just happen. We have to work at it.
Soon we will celebrate Communion, the Lord’s Supper. We will do this by a process the church calls intinction. This means we come forward to receive the elements. You take a piece of bread, dip it in the cup and then eat it immediately. Please come down the center aisle and go back to your seat using the side aisles. If you would rather remain seated, the ushers will bring the elements to you. At the very back of the last pew our Relational Covenant is available for you to sign.
Many of you have probably noticed in your bulletins a small card with a number on one side and a letter on the other side. There is a message there for us. But can anyone one here tell me what the message is? Not yet. Now however, as we come forward for communion, Michelle will collect them from you, and then she will get the other young people to put the puzzle together in order on this poster board. If you aren’t able to come forward or just don’t feel like it, you can just give your piece to a person near you who is coming.
Now to God’s dear gifted children I say, let us rejoice and be glad in all that God has done for us and all that he has planned for us to accomplish as we work together in the power of the Holy Spirit who has given us gifts for service!
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