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.