January 14, 2007

You Are Gifted and Talented
 

by Rev. Dr. Jim Carlson

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Opening Illustration

This passage raises a question that most Christians find themselves asking at some point or another in their lives: What is this whole deal about spiritual gifts and speaking in tongues and miracles? Is that all real or is it just something people fake in order to make themselves look better in the eyes of others?

The question of spiritual gifts and their use in the church is one that has caused confusion and dissension ever since the church began. And the fact that it still causes division in the church shows why Paul needed to write this passage in the first place.

Let’s see if we can clear up some of the muddy waters surrounding this question by talking about this situation. As you probably know, this passage comes from a letter Paul wrote to a church in Corinth Greece in the middle of the first century A.D. Paul wrote this letter because the church he had started was experiencing a number of different problems.

You have to realize that this church consisted mostly of Greek people who started believing in Jesus when Paul came to their town and started preaching. In addition to preaching about Jesus, Paul also claims that what he said about Jesus was confirmed when certain miracles, which he doesn’t identify, occurred within the church.

In fact, those miraculous occurrences continued in the congregation, especially as they gathered together for worship. Some of those inexplicable things were called “spiritual gifts”.

Those gifts were special abilities which the Holy Spirit enabled within the people of the church to perform certain tasks which they would have been unable to do on their own, given their own set of talents and knowledge.

Paul mentions a number of those “gifts” in chapter 12. Some people were enabled by the Holy Spirit to have special knowledge of God that was unavailable to other people. Others were enabled by the Holy Spirit to heal others in ways that they could not on their own.

Some people were empowered by the Holy Spirit to speak words of prophecy to the church, either about something which was about to happen or concerning something happening in their current situations.

But the one which seemed to impress everyone the most was when the Holy Spirit enabled people to speak in a language which they had never learned. This is probably a reference to a kind of unintelligible divine speech which could not be understood by anyone unless the Holy Spirit also empowered another person to translate.

People were very impressed when someone in the congregation began speaking in this language. In fact, it made such an impression that everyone wanted to do it. Everyone wanted to be empowered by the Holy Spirit to speak this language. They honestly didn’t even care if someone was around to translate.

This spontaneous speaking in tongues ended up becoming a real problem when it was supposed to be a gift. Not everyone was given this gift. And the church held those who had it in higher esteem than other people who had received other spiritual gifts.

This dynamic caused a great deal of resentment in the congregation. It also caused people to try and figure out how to receive this gift. Paul writes this part of the letter in order to teach them that every gift is just as important, and that speaking in tongues is much less important than other gifts.

You also have to keep in mind that these people were “speaking in tongues” long before Paul showed up in Corinth. In their earlier days before becoming Christians, they worshipped idols. Part of that idol worship involved them working themselves up into some kind of frenzy and making all kinds of sounds they believed to be inspired by the gods they worshipped.

So when someone would begin making these noises, the question arose as to whether they were doing so because the Holy Spirit enabled them to, or because they were making the same kind of ecstatic noises they used to make simply because they wanted to speak in tongues but couldn’t.

Paul say you can tell the difference between the two by looking at what they say. People who are motivated by idol worship are not going to talk about Jesus being the Lord of all. And no one who is empowered to speak by the Holy Spirit is going to get up and curse Jesus.

You can imagine the mess they created. People who were enabled by the Holy Spirit to perform healings or speak words of wisdom or perform miracles were ignoring those gifts and instead trying to speak in tongues. Instead of having an orderly worship service, they had a contest where everyone was trying to show they were as good as the next person.

Paul responds by reminding them that regardless of what gift they received from the Holy Spirit, every person is empowered by the same Spirit. For that reason, no one could say they were better than the next person.

He tells them the regardless of what service they do for the church, all the different ministries of the church are inspired by the same God. So no one can say that what he or she does is more important in God’s sight than what another person does.

He wants them to be satisfied with whatever gifts they have been given by the Spirit. He wants them to be satisfied with whatever service they have been called to do on God’s behalf. He wants them to value every single person in the church equally.

Now, what I just got done doing is explaining to you, as best I can, how Paul understood and responded to this situation. But I have to tell you, I find it very difficult to relate on a very direct level to this situation in Corinth. I’m going to say the thing that many of you are thinking but may be a little hesitant to say.

My own experience as a disciple of Jesus, as a Christian, as a pastor, is very different from what I read about in 1 Corinthians 12. Maybe there’s just something wrong with me, but I have never had an experience where the Holy Spirit empowered me to do something which I was completely unable and unprepared to do on my own.

I’ve never spoken in tongues, I’ve never healed anyone miraculously, I’ve never been given knowledge or wisdom by the Holy Spirit that I didn’t’ learn through my own study or experience. The Holy Spirit has not empowered me to be a musician or a preacher absent of any preparation and study I’ve undertaken.

Everything I do involves learning and preparation and experience. And I would imagine most of you would say the same thing. Yes, I have certain affinities for things like learning languages and performing music and other things. But even given those affinities, I still have to work with them and develop them in order for them to be of use to God.

I’m not saying this to take the Holy Spirit out of the equation. I think that in some mysterious way the Holy Spirit has been involved in the process of developing my talents and abilities. And I believe God has worked in my life to provide me with the opportunities I need to develop them. I’m sure I’m no different than the rest of you in this respect.

For whatever reason the Holy Spirit doesn’t empower people in this congregation to speak in tongues or perform healings or miracles. I would resist the idea that the lack of these things in our community is due to some kind of obstacle we’re putting in the way of the Holy Spirit.

I’m not saying that the experience of these people in Corinth was phony, or that the experience of people today who speak in tongues or perform healings is less than genuine. What I am saying is that their experience is not my experience, nor has it been the experience of this congregation, as far as I know.

I don’t have any desire to have us seek out these kinds of experiences. And Paul would tell us that if you’re going to seek anything from the Holy Spirit, what you really want to seek out is faith, hope, and love.

Having said all that, I also don’t want you to go away this morning thinking this passage has no value for us today, because it does. The real key for us in this passage is Paul’s statement about the Holy Spirit enabling people to do certain things. He says the Holy Spirit doles out these gifts to individuals according to the Holy Spirit’s desires.

In other words, we don’t determine how the church is gifted and empowered to do ministry. And neither does the culture around us. That plan is rooted in God’s own plan for the salvation of the world. So we shouldn’t say, “Wow, I wish God would empower us to do this kind of ministry or that kind of ministry.”

Paul is telling us to look at what we as a community have been given, and use those gifts, talents, abilities to heal, encourage and build up one another so that we can go out into the world and tell other people about Jesus.

The place where this passage intersects our experience in the 21st century is in our approach to ministry. Many folks in the church, in their zeal to bring more people into the church, have honestly moved away from planning and designing the ministries of the church around the gifts that people in the church bring to the table.

They’re getting away from saying, “OK, God has brought us together with certain people who have certain gifts and talents. What are we good at? What talents and abilities has God given us? Let’s figure those out and do the kinds of things God has enabled us to do.”

Instead, the church in many ways is approaching the question giftedness not by asking what the Holy Spirit has done, but by asking what the public wants. They are applying the principles of capitalism to the ministries of the church, and in doing so they are saying, “Giftedness and talents are great, but we’re interested in the ones which are most marketable.”

I think we in the church are at a point where we’re going to have to ask ourselves, “Are we more interested in deciding which are the most marketable gifts that the people in our church have and emphasizing those, or are we content in seeing what the people of the church bring to the table and going with what we’ve been given?

At the heart of this issue is really the question of whether or not all people are of equal value. The question of spiritual gifts is really another way of asking that same question. For Paul, diversity was something to be celebrated, rather than being a cause for someone to show their superiority over others.

This week we will celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, who devoted his life to advocating from a Christian perspective the value and equality of all people, regardless of how they are gifted or where they live or what they bring to the table.

Back in April of 1967 he made a speech at a gathering of pastors at the Riverside Church in New York. That night he spoke forcefully about the unjust foundations for the war. For Dr. King, the war was an illustration of the fact that we as a country did not see all human beings as having equal value.

He talked about the irony of seeing white and black soldiers working together to burn villages and kill Vietcong. Yet these same soldiers would not have been allowed to live on the same block in places like Chicago. He would know – he himself was almost knocked unconscious by a brick thrown at him the summer before when he marched through areas of Chicago where housing was strictly segregated.

He didn’t think it was possible to even say to the Vietnamese that we thought of them as having been created by the same God who created us, given our policies and actions. In speaking about people who questioned his opposition to the war, he said:

“Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?”

This week as we remember the contributions Dr. King made to our society, I want you to think about the implications of what he said and what Paul said for our community. If the same Holy Spirit gives a diverse set of talents and abilities to the people of our community, isn’t it obvious that we should embrace them all and treat every person as someone of great value?

Paul said peoples’ differences no longer mattered as a result of what Jesus did. When Jesus died, our reasons for hating each other died with him. Our rationale for thinking we’re more important than someone else went to the grave with him. And a new era of love and acceptance and diversity and mutual respect rose with him when he came out of the tomb.