Grace and Peace to you from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
As Seniors at Gettysburg Seminary, Debbie and I were often asked to give prospective married students tours, show them our apartment and answer their questions about life in Gettysburg. They were almost universally concerned about the quality of Gettysburg schools. They would smile and say: “Our children are gifted”. Others of our senior classmates had the same experience, and before long we were mimicking Garrison Keilor of Praise Home Companion fame. We’d chortle, “Welcome to Gettysburg Seminary, where all the student are knife sharp theologians, the spouses good looking and the children all are gifted”.
Gifts are on St. Paul’s mind in today’s lesson from 1 Corinthians. It is a famous passage; we always read it when we are installing new council officers or Sunday School teachers. Gifts in the Greek language, the language St. Paul wrote in are called “Charismata” we get our world charismatic from it. When someone has an energy, personality, and unusual ability to draw people to them, we say that they have charisma or that they are charismatic. It is related to and derived from the Greek world for grace. These gifts that all of us receive are gifts of grace that God gives to strengthen and build up the church. The Corinthian church was divided at the point of Paul’s writing because a group of members were able to speak in tongues. Those who had this grace, this charisma, saw it as a special, better-than-others gift and their pride and subsequent snubbing of others who did not posses this gift was causing division in the church. So Paul begins this section of his letter by explaining that it is the Spirit who gives gifts and that all gifts are vital to the up-building of the church. Paul then offers a list of the charismata, a list of gifts. This list isn’t intended to itemize every gift the Spirit gives – there are others Paul mentions in Romans 12 and in Ephesians. Paul’s point is that we live in community and that the gifts God gives are given for the good of all the people and for the world.
While I was an intern in Colorado, I met a rather tough mechanic, who was on the social ministry committee. He’d worked all his life with his hands and had the rough hands of a man who’d held wrenches and screwdrivers for years. Yet, he had a softness in his voice and an uncanny ability to look you in the eye and be able to read your emotions mostly from observing your body language. When I told him he should join the hospital visitation team or become a Stephen’s Minister – a group that provided spiritual support to people in crises, he was astounded. “I couldn’t do that, I barely graduated from high school”. I read him this passage and the one from Romans and said that I believed that he had the gifts to do this work. I then read him a quote from Fred Beuchner which goes like this: “We find our joy in being when the gifts we are given meet the world’s need. There ministry happens and there grace is revealed”. Ned became one of Advent Lutheran Church’s best Stephen’s Ministers.
My sister hates to sew, don’t ask her, but we all discovered early on that she had incredible gifts as a teacher. She taught Vacation Bible School while still in Jr. High and has been teaching practically ever since. She loves it. God always finds ways of using her. She gravitates to the activity because she finds deep fulfillment in it.
Notice in the lesson that there is mention made of healing. Healing ministries are making a big come back in the church. The service involves spoken prayer and the laying on of hands. The laying on of hands is simply another way of praying – it is direct prayer through the medium of touch. Jesus used touch to heal. He took earth, spit into it, made a salve of it and rubbed it on a blind man’s eyes. The scene is reminiscent of God taking dirt, it is referred to as the dust of the earth, and hand fashioning Adam into a living being. Like God’s hands, Jesus used his hand to heal, to re-create, to restore, and to save.
People were always seeking to touch Jesus. In Luke 7, a woman comes in, kneels at Jesus’ feet, and washes them with her tears of sorrow and contrition. She rubs precious ointment on them called nard, and dries his feet with her hair. By touching Jesus she is healed. She is forgiven, saved, restored made whole by holy touch. We will be speaking alot more about this charism of the Spirit. Healing will be our theme for Lent and we want to re-introduce healing services.
I was introduced to healing services in Seminary, and was a bit surprised that we Lutherans were doing that. Most of my experience with healing was from the TV evangelists like Oral Roberts or Kathryn Kuhlman whose shows I had rarely stumbled upon when channel surfing. Those healings seemed staged, theatrical and inauthentic to me. They were a far cry from the calm gentle, soothing services I saw at seminary.
We use hands to communicate God’s presence all the time in the church. When I baptize, I put my hands on the head of the baptized – child or adult – and call on God to pour out His Spirit – the sprit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and awe of the Lord. These are charisms too. All of them are given by God in the power of the Sprit, for the up-building of the church and for your benefit. Your gifts are important to our mission – they are vital to it. When we use our gifts, ministry happens and blessings abound.
It’s a new year. We are gathered as one body for our meeting to discuss God’s business here in Fallston. What are your gifts? Are you using them for the up-building of God’s church? When you use them you become an instrument of grace for others and are blessed yourself. If you need help identifying them we even have a spiritual gifts inventory to help you discover them.
Of course, like Ned from Colorado it may require you to leave your comfort zone. But those whom God calls, God also empowers.
So, may you discover the spiritual gifts that God has given and may you trust that the call that comes from God may be depended on, and may you use the gifts God has endowed to God’s glory.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen
Pastor John