Sermon: "Walk the Line": Confessions of a Reluctant Charismatic (1 Cor. 12:1-12)

 

Note: All of my sermons are written out like this but they aren't preached this way - I don't write out all of my illustrations, change things even while preaching from my notes, and occasionally ad lib - hopefully as the Spirit moves. So while I appreciate any who would find what I say worth reading, I always encourage people to go listen to the sermon directly at www.mcchurch.org, click on the RESOURCES tab at the top of the page, and then click on sermons.

1 Corinthians 12:1-12

¹Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. ²You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. ³Therefore I want you to understand 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. ⁴Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; ⁵and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; ⁶and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. ⁷To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. ⁸To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, ⁹to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, ¹⁰to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. ¹¹All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. ¹²For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.


I’ve served as a pastor in churches whose theology of spiritual gifts was more about what they were fearful of and what they wouldn’t do and I’ve served as a pastor in churches whose theology of spiritual gifts was basically, “Hey, whatever, whenever, loud, noisy, let’s get nuts.” I grew up in a church where gifts weren’t talked about – except under the guise of natural abilities until I encountered the charismatic movement in my college years – this was an immense blessing for me and despite an often overindulgence and self-aggrandizement on the part of many, I learned a lot. It wasn’t all rosy, and over time I confess I’ve adopted a certain reluctance. However, I always take comfort from those who follow reluctantly – maybe it’s because so many of those people are our biblical heroes: Abraham, Moses, Jonah, all of the disciples, even the Apostle Paul. Reluctance therefore doesn’t have to mean a lack of faith in God nor a negative view of gifts – but a lack of faith in myself: I can self-deceive, self-promote, misunderstand, misconstrue, and that’s why I’m reluctant. And yet I am still a charismatic and I believe in all of the spiritual gifts –even the odd ones. And I believe in them because of the scriptural witness and my own story. So this morning, I preach as a reluctant charismatic trying to walk the line. What do we need to know in order to use our spiritual gifts well?

          1.      Spiritual gifts are from God to all his children

For Paul, “spiritual” refers to the origin and means of God’s gifts– I think it’s important to follow Paul’s logic here right off the bat. He points out in the first three vss. that to be a Christian is to have the Spirit for Christians are those who claim “Jesus is LORD” and can only do so by the Spirit. In other words, salvation is your first spiritual gift, so to speak. Your own declaration of faith is always Spirit-empowered. So a Spirit-filled Christian is not some extraordinary Christian or even a good one with cool gifts but one who can confess Jesus as LORD. So Paul goes on to say that that all who are Spirit-inspired receive spiritual gifts. So you come fully-loaded – there is no need for factory extras, a better stereo, leather seats, a spoiler. Once you become a Christian you have all you need to live out your faith in the larger body – you have been given gifts from God that didn’t come from yourself can’t be chalked up to natural abilities, or talents, or even degrees, there is no PhD in spiritual gifts – and they work because of God’s power – not your own. He both “gives” them, Paul says, and “activates all of them in everyone,” vs. 6.

What are these gifts? It’s quite a list and this isn’t the only list in the New Testament – there is also Romans 12 and Ephesians 4. In 1 Cor. there is utterance of wisdom and knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, working of miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, tongues and their interpretation. This is a high octane list – absent are the quiter gifts of administration, giving, hospitality, even celibacy) but if we remember the origin of gifts we will find a helpful leveling. Where do ALL GIFTS come from? GOD, the Spirit, Jesus! This means that there aren’t miraculous gifts and non-miraculous gifts – they are ALL miraculous gifts because they don’t originate with us or receive their power from us. I worked in a furniture factory for a time on an assembly line and where I worked everyone tried to come early because you had two choices of drills: battery-powered or pneumatic-powered. The battery powered drills were a pain because they worked fine until the battery drained but the pneumatic never died down because the air never stopped flowing. So, calling these abilities “spiritual gifts” is Paul’s way of reminding us that just as we didn’t save ourselves – it was by God’s grace – we don’t power the Christian life on our own steam. Are you tired? Then spiritual gifts are for you – because they are grace-filled “activities” [energȏn] in vs. 6 fueled by God himself. Stop trying to blow the wind into your own spiritual sails. A good place to begin is to tell Jesus, “Without Your Spirit, I can’t make it.”

We’ve seen that spiritual gifts come to all who confess Jesus as LORD and are activated by God himself. What does that leave then for us to do? We need to be obedient to Jesus NOT experience. I once had a Professor of Spirituality tell a shocked class of seminary students that if they wanted to have a religious experience they should take LSD because it was more powerful than most things they’d experience in church and they wouldn’t blaspheme God in the process. We are to be Christ-seekers NOT experience-seekers, he warned. His warning fits well with Paul’s confession that “Jesus is LORD” because Paul’s audience would know that to say so, was also to say “and Caesar isn’t.” To confess Jesus as LORD is to say that one pledges his or her life to him, loves him, looks to him for guidance continually, honors him as king above all others. The Corinthians were in danger of looking at gifts as an area of spiritual experience – they were substituting the gift itself for Jesus. Paul wants them to see it as the place where they serve the one true God who empowers them to serve others. To be obedient to Jesus is always think of others first and not to worry about self-promotion. It’s looking to Jesus to guide you in the use of your gifts. This is not about spiritual stardom – it’s always about Jesus.

          2.      Spiritual gifts are for the common good

So spiritual gifts come from God and are activated by God but there is always a danger that we might treat them as possessions. That’s why it’s important to remember Paul’s other words for “gifts” in this passage: “services”, and “activities” for the common good. Services and activities aren’t something we are, something we possess, something in us, but something we do and that’s getting to the heart of what a spiritual gift is. So, to put it strongly, you don’t have spiritual gifts – you give them – you are a re-gifter. Illus. toddlers at a birthday party – the kids wouldn’t give up their gifts (to hear the full story, go to the MCC website and listen to a recording of the sermon). So there is a tension here – On the one hand, there do seem to be gifts that we continually give on a regular basis and we need to, out of obedience to Jesus and for the common good, discover what these might be – do you know what your’s are? So I hope that this sermon is a catalyst for you to discover those gifts that God gives you for others and I have included a Spiritual gifts inventory in your bulletin for you take online so that you can have the joy of utilizing these gifts. But, on the other hand, there is also an openness required to God who gives gifts and a danger in regarding gifts as natural capacities or talents for which we might claim ownership or credit. I like to use the idea of a mail carrier to express this aspect of spiritual gifts. Sometimes, you may be called to delivering something else and so you need to maintain an openness to the Spirit – who is actively at work to address particular problems in our midst. In 1 Cor. 4:7 Paul poses an important question: “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?” So one of the ways to keep from viewing gifts as possessions is to see God as one who constantly gives. As soon as gifts start to be treated as possessions for the private thrills or personal aggrandizement of individuals, they become corrupted and may begin to cause dissension. Illus. A marriage in trouble (to hear the fully story go to www.mcchurch.org - RESOURCES-sermons)

What is helpful about the story is that it reminds us for the gifts to function properly– they need to be needed. One of the dangers in being a stable church where we have so many educated, bright, well-respected people is that we struggle to be vulnerable, to express need. We are a very self-sufficient crowd – and that’s not all bad but I worry if our self-sufficiency doesn’t sometimes rob us of something better – mutual interdependence. Otherwise, there really is no environment to use our gifts because there is no one to give them to or even worse – we really aren’t a church – we really aren’t connected together by the same Spirit who gives gifts – we’re a sort of Frankenstein monster. So an essential part to expressing spiritual gifts isn’t simply the willingness of the giver but the courage of the receiver. We need to be able to express our personal pain, our concerns, our inner lives to one another. And we need to know that those pains will be treated with respect and great care. But we also need to be able to express our corporate need, as well. We’re going to be doing this in our Vitality discussion following the service today. And we have some significant needs as a church that require giftedness that God has given – we need those with the gift of hospitality to help us with welcoming others, preparing food for events, serving in the nursery and welcoming little ones, we need teachers to help teach Sunday school classes for all ages, we need those gifted by God with administrative gifts to help us with our database so that we know who is coming in order to  plug them in, we need those gifted with healing gifts, and faith to join us for prayer teams to pray for those in need after the service, and people who are willing to be available to whatever the Spirit asks them to deliver – to be obedient to Jesus. And guess what? You need to be needed. This is why spiritual gifts are so wonderful – you get to participate in a body life where you contribute significantly to the church as a whole.

Now, it strikes me that we are a community that does fairly well with the quieter gifts, the warm gifts like hospitality, giving – we treasure them, give them proper attention, and value those who practice them. But just as Paul was rightly critical of the Corinthian church for focusing ONLY on the flashier gifts – he might challenge us to be a little less risk averse, to not be afraid to express some of the more dramatic and noisier ones, to not play it so safe. I sort of envision our church like that kid about to ride a bike who has every inch of herself padded so that she can’t peddle – if you’re not willing to fall, you will never be able to ride. Or, I think of my son who Jeremie who was so cautious when he was learning to drive that in the end he became reckless, so fearful of making a mistake that he was dangerous.

There’s nothing wrong with being safe and orderly – that’s Paul’s point but I don’t think safe and orderly are our problem. A pastor once asked me one time how do you spell faith, “R I S K” was his answer – I think we can all agree that it’s rarely spelled “S A F E”. That’s why Paul’s answer to the Corinthians in ch. 13 is not safe but love. And love takes risks. The sign gifts often scare us but they have their place – if we think back to Paul’s metaphor of the body, I suspect he might tell us – Yes, toes and fingers are important but twenty toes seem excessive, and you do also need some powerful organs like a heart, some lungs, and a couple of biceps and the willingness to use them properly. So we need to risk and need some good models to use all the gifts well – but whatever our concerns may be we must never let the absence or abuse of certain gifts dictate our vision of them. Despite the enormous problems at Corinth, Paul never demands that they stop using them - we need them, and we must step out in faith and act on them.

I don’t have a closing story – no joke to give, no inspiring tale because you’re it. This sermon rises or falls with us – our obedience to Jesus to use His gifts, our availability, our vulnerability, and our bravery. Trust me – love God, love each other – and the gifts will fall right into place.

Worship Matters - Our Church Building

Last week we spoke about our invocation, “The Lord be with you” and how it helped us begin worship with a biblical prayer, marked the boundaries of who we are, and reminded us that we belong to God. This week I would like to talk about our church building and what it says about us and how it shapes our worship.   

When we worship in this space, . . .

       1.      We are surrounded by the Trinity – the cross, the dove, and creation.

·         We are surrounded in stained glass which features the many oaks in our area, connecting us to the God who creates, YHWH, who commanded us to be caretakers of the earth

·         We have in front of us an empty cross. The cross doesn’t move, fixed in place it reminds us of the historical reality of Jesus’ coming to earth, witnessing to God’s kingdom, and dying and rising again for us and for our salvation.

·         We have the Holy Spirit in the shape of a dove – Unlike the oaks and cross, however, the light of the Spirit moves around the sanctuary reminding us of Jesus’ words, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

        2.      We are reminded that salvation is a social miracle.

·         The main part of most sanctuaries is called a nave (Latin navis, "ship") because the vaulting, like ours, looks like an upside down boat, a reference to 1 Peter 3:20 in which salvation is linked to being in Noah’s ark

·         This is a church building not THE church but the building reminds us that the Bible is much more interested in the plurality of salvation –renewed relationships – the bringing together of the near and the far, the Jew and the Greek, the slave and the free, men and women, all together to eat, to serve, to worship. There are no individual lifeboats in the church and social miracles always require a place

         3.      Finally, our weekly altarpieces mark us as a pilgrim people with the Word.

·         We don’t walk through these doors every week to buy something, get informed, or perform a job – we do this every week to worship God and have our lives shaped by His Word.

·         Each week we have that Word preached, sung, read, but also made visible by the artistic gifts of our members– it’s our cloud by day and pillar of fire by night that leads us and helps us remember that truth is more than good, it’s also beautiful

Your Story is too small: Salvation and the Old Story of a Surprising God - Romans 10:4-13

⁴For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. ⁵Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things will live by them.” ⁶But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) ⁷“or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). ⁸But what does it say? “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); ⁹because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. ¹¹The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” ¹²For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. ¹³For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” 

I know many struggle with Paul – he’s hard. It’s biblical to think so. The Apostle Peter who had a number of difficult encounters with him said it best, “Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” (2 Peter 3:15-16). Okay, we’ve read the warning on the label – but this is medicine for our salvation, so we have to take it. And trust me; the Book of Romans is a big pill! This is what Paul says we need to know about salvation.

            1.      Salvation is about what we read

For Paul, salvation is a story of the whole Bible – not 1/3. Paul quotes from the OT four times in this discussion of salvation: Leviticus 18:5 in vs. 5; Deut. 30:14 in vs. 6; Isaiah 28:16 in vs. 11; and Joel 2:32 in vs. 13. The gospels (which means “good news”) are particular books in our Bible but The Gospel is NOT only a genre but the epic story of our salvation – a much bigger thing than any one book, a much more harrowing story with twists and turns, a lot more characters, geographies, subplots, and themes. It’s the story of the God who created us out of his good pleasure, who allowed us the freedom to go our own way even though it harmed us, enslaved us, but who loved us enough to pursue us relentlessly and to accomplish for us what we were incapable of doing for ourselves – he died and rose again. Paul will later say in Romans 15:4 says, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” This is why we read the Old and New Testament – they belong to the same story and this is why he asks in vs. 8, “But what does it say?” and quotes Scripture throughout.

So we need to read it – all of it, thoroughly, for salvation is at stake. In the Old Testament Moses urged the Israelites to tie portions of Scripture on their arms and foreheads (called, phylacteries), to place it on their doorposts, to talk about them at home and away, as reminder of what the law was for – called the Shema Deut. 6:5-9, which Jesus quotes as the greatest commandment and representing the whole of the law: “You shall love the LORD your God, with all your hear, all your soul, and with all your mind.” These people understood that Scripture should be central to knowing God, themselves, their salvation. The symbolism of wrapping one’s body in scripture seems apparent enough – the Bible is to connect directly to our lives, our thoughts, our comings and goings, our actions and what we love. That Scripture portions were tied both on the head and the arm is instructive – this is a story for both head and heart.

But more than just OT practice, we need to read and learn the OT because Jesus read it, used it to talk about God and God’s plan, it was his platform for ministry, his response to temptation, his solace when he understood the crucifixion - his own transfiguration featured two men who embody the OT (Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets). Jesus will even go so far as to claim the authority of Torah in the sermon on the mount as both its author and interpreter.

This is why Paul says that Jesus is the goal of the law, in vs. 4. Another way of saying this is to say that, Jesus, himself, is the Word. So, if Paul says that Jesus is the culmination of the law, then why does he continue to quote from it – that is, the law. Why not simply be a NT church? Because Christ has come to make clear the true purpose of the law, and used it to describe himself and God’s work. 

My point is not to denigrate the OT but direct how we read it. Similarly, Luther argued that Christ was the sole content of the Bible.  He likened the words of Scripture to the swaddling clothes within which Christ lay and, therefore, insisted that Scripture must be interpreted Christocentrically.

So the OT should inform our relationship with God, our theology and doctrine, our ethic and hospitality. Not in a simple way for there is much that remains past as well as much that remains present. How do we discern that? We discern through Jesus’ teaching as well as his death, burial and resurrection.

Robert Capon, an Episcopal priest, gives a helpful example of what I am saying with respect to why we should read the whole Bible and how we should read it with Jesus in mind. When you watch a movie, you don’t stop 10 minutes into the film and try to decide what it means. You cannot fairly say anything about the movie until you have seen the whole thing and hold it in your mind as a whole piece. And that is what needs to be done with the Bible. It has to be seen as one thing. So I encourage you to see biblical authority, not as a matter of word-by-word inspiration, but as scenes in a movie which work only as a whole.

A simple example is that you cannot fully understand what the very first words in the Bible, “In the beginning,” mean until you see all the other occurrences of the image of “beginning” in the rest of the film. You can’t properly understand God’s activity in the beginning until you hear John say of Jesus, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” And finally, at the end, where you have in Revelation, “I am the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega,” and so on.
So as the movie progresses, we find that in the beginning was Christ, the incarnate Word. You have clues woven into the movie such as, “He chose us in him before the foundations of the world.” When we see the whole picture, we can see what the director was doing with the film, what he was getting across to us, from the beginning. Before anything was made, it was all already done within the Trinity. The whole thing was accomplished before it started and the whole thing was salvation, not science, not a political action committee, not hate speech, but a story about God who knew from the beginning and who would make it so in the end.

That bring us to our next point.

               2.       Salvation is about who God is.

For Paul the OT is a gospel text and the God we find there is a gospel God and that God was in Jesus Christ! That’s what the early Christians meant when they said Jesus is LORD (which is not the same thing as saying Jesus is God). LORD means YHWH. So Jesus then is not one who challenges that God, satisfies that wrathful God, but is that God. That’s why the Shema is important, “Remember, the LORD your God is one”and why Paul states in vs. that Jesus is the "same LORD."

The point of Paul’s use of the OT is to underscore that God’s ways and intentions in the Christian message or consistent with God’s ways and intentions in the past. This God is that God. Otherwise, you have a schizophrenic God, dual personality disorder. That’s why how God treats the Jews matters, and why God’s intent with the law matters.

Salvation is about the one God. So Paul in vs. 6-7 argues that just as Moses tried to convince the Israelites that the observance of the law did not demand that one scale the heights or cross the seas, so Paul plays on Moses’ words, applying them to Christ himself. The heights have been scaled and the depths have been plumbed, for Christ has come down to the world of humanity and has been raised from the dead. To attain the status of uprightness before God, you are not being asked to climb to heaven or cross the vast sea of your own sinfulness; but only speak, to accept in faith what has already been done for humanity and to associate with Christ incarnate and raised from the dead. God has done what we can’t do for ourselves – which despite its failure, Paul says, is what the law was intended for in the first place. It was always meant as a gift from a gracious God.

           3.      Salvation is about anyone and everyone who can’t.

Paul recognizes that religion has the frightening ability to create insiders and outsiders.

The tragic point in story centers around the fact that the rejection of Jesus by many Israelites did not occur because they were not religious enough. They were very religious, and that perhaps brings us close to the root of the matter. They were so religious that they did not want to settle only for something God could give them. They wanted to be religious enough so that they could become partners with God in the matter of their salvation. 

How we want to believe that our relationship with God is due, in no small measure, to our own religious value – to being good enough, smart enough, cute enough, to be worthy in God’s eyes. And in that moment, the sin of idolatry has flared back to life. That’s Paul’s point in Romans that the law was taken prisoner by sin, forced to do sin’s bidding. Our temptation is to be something other than the trusting and grateful creatures we were meant to be. The temptation that Christians often undergo is that they feel they must, and can, earn Christ’s presence. Yet, Paul says, that Jesus is as near as heart and mouth, and he calls us, not to help him but only to acknowledge him. 

So, how do we make sense of Christianity’s claim that salvation is open to everyone but only through Jesus Christ?

The writer Lee Strobel describes two clubs to help explain the point. The first club only lets people in who have earned their membership. They must have accomplished something that makes them worthy, attractive, worth recruiting, obtained superior wisdom, or fulfilled a list of demands and requirements before they’re considered for admission. Despite their efforts, many people just won’t make the grade and will be turned away. This is not what is meant by Christianity’s claim that Jesus is the only way of salvation. 

The second club says, “Anybody who wants in can come in. Men, women, black, white, old, young, rich, poor, even enemies- whoever seeks entrance can have it through repentance and faith in Christ. Just see him – he’s paid your membership fee, he’s fulfilled all the requirements, he welcomes you, and values your membership. We won’t turn anyone away who asks to come in, but we’ll leave it up to you, whether you want to join.” That’s what Paul is saying to this morning. So which belief system is snobbish and exclusive? The door of self-righteousness or the door of the church, which is Jesus Christ – It’s open to anyone who wants to come in.

This has been God’s plan all along!

Worship Matters - "The Lord be with you."

I'm starting a new thing at MCC during worship called Worship Matters. The premise is simple and comes out of having read the book, Desiring the Kingdom by James K.A. Smith. Basically, each week I will offer a brief explanation about why we do what we do in worship and how understanding it better can transform our worship. Feel free to offer other points - I consider this a conversation about what we do as Christians and why it matters.

Invocation – “The Lord be with you.” “And also with you.” Have you ever asked yourself, “Why do we do that?” or “What are we doing?” So, what are we doing when we begin with the Dominus vobiscum? How might such an invocation transform our worship?

1.      We begin our worship with a biblical prayer.

·         We join with friends from the Bible who used this phrase like Boaz, Azariah, Saul, David, Solomon, and even the Apostle Paul.

·         This greeting, then, is more than a “Hi, how are ya?” It’s a prayer that reminds us that the whole Bible, Old and New Testaments, fundamentally shape our worship

·         prayer is critical to worship – it’s how we begin and end our service.

2.      We mark the boundaries of who we are.

·         We say this with Christians who begin their service the same way around the world over hundreds of years - so worship isn’t new and isn’t even only us.

·         what we do in worship stretches back across space and time – the living and the dead, seven continents, diverse ethnicities, said in churches with steeples and catacombs and those with folding chairs in shopping centers.

·         Worship maybe personal but it is never merely private, and never done alone

3.      We remind ourselves that we belong to God.

·         It’s an important moment when we acknowledge that it is God who has called us together, and that it is God who will keep us safe.

·         This prayer then stretches forward – for we know that life will tumble in – it always does – but we need not be afraid.

·         This is the prayer that Saul gave to David before he slew Goliath. This is also the invocation that David gave his son Solomon to build the temple. And when we say it to each other we are remembering “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). The Lord be with you!