January 17, 2016 – I Corinthians 12:1-11
I Corinthians 12:1-11
Together We Are Better
Second Sunday after the Epiphany – January 17, 2016
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
When I was in seminary I got to know a woman who was also a seminary student,
although not at my school.
She was a Presbyterian and she was concerned about how far she could “advance” in
her career in the church as a woman.
At some point, she said, “I’m going to hit a glass ceiling. Which is just not right,
because I have all the gifts for ministry.”
Ha! Wow! She really said that! All of the gifts except, maybe, humility, I thought.
And what I also thought was: only one person has all the gifts for ministry, sister,
and you are not that person.
Only one person has all the gifts, and the rest of us just share them.
Which is not an original thought.
I stole that from Paul: Paul says exactly that this morning.
The one triune God, says Paul, gives a variety or diversity of allotments:
The Spirit gives allotments of gifts.
Jesus gives allotments of ministries.
God gives allotments of activities.
These varied allotments are given by the one God.
And every single Christian has them.
And they are all important.
They all have their place in the building up the common good of the community,
so that it can achieve its purpose of doing the work of God.
Paul was addressing in Corinth precisely the issue I had with my friend:
there were those in the Corinthian church who thought they were gifted,
Who thought they had all the gifts,
and that therefore they were better than anyone else.
Hang on a mo, says Paul.
That is just not the way the triune God works.
The triune God is most like a loving community of three persons.
And therefore the triune God most likes to work through communities of persons.
Not through spectacularly gifted individuals.
Now there may be those here this morning who feel they have not been given a
divine allotment of gifts.
Like they didn’t have the winning Powerball ticket.
But, Paul says, they would be mistaken.
If you’ve come to the assembly and announced “Jesus is Lord” that is the work of the Spirit,
says Paul – and if you have the Spirit you have gifts.
In other words, Paul is saying, if you’re here you have the Spirit and you have gifts.
I was talking to a guy at the Community Meal on Wednesday.
And he says to me, “I think I’m gonna come to church one Sunday morning.
I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I don’t know why. It’s just this feeling I have.”
And I say, “That’s the Holy Spirit, brother.”
And so he says, “Okay.”
If you’re here, the Spirit is working in you, somehow, some way, and therefore you are gifted.
You are charismatic, which is the word Paul uses this morning in Greek and means “gifted.”
According to Paul, we are all charismatic Christians because the Spirit is at work in
all of us and the Spirit brings varieties of gifts.
And these gifts are for the common good. – not the individual good.
But, says Paul, for the common good.
The gifts you have, says Paul, are for the building up of the common good of this community.
Because ultimately the many are smarter than the one – together we are better.
The fellow who writes the excellent business column for the New Yorker magazine,
James Surowiecki, has written a very interesting book called The Wisdom of Crowds.
Most of us, he writes, have this bias:
Most of us believe that valuable knowledge is concentrated in a very few hands (or, rather, in a very few heads). We assume that the key to solving problems or making good decisions is finding that one right person who will have the answer.
We have, he says, in general, a great suspicion of crowds.
Perhaps, because, most of us think we’re ordinary, so how, we wonder, could we ever expect a
large number of ordinary people like ourselves
to make better decisions than experts could?
This idea has a long history.
The American writer Thoreau believed that groups don’t rise to the level of the best member but
sink to the level of the lowest.
The American ethicist and preacher Reinhold Niebuhr thought that
although individuals might be moral crowds are immoral.
Paul, though, is making the opposite case.
The Corinthians thought that what is most needed and what is most valuable is
concentrated in the special abilities of just a few exceptional individuals.
But Paul, in contrast, thought there is much collective wisdom and merit to be found and
coordinated in the community of the church.
And to that end he developed his understanding of the one God pouring out an
allotment of gifts for the common good, for the good of the community,
whose purpose is doing the work of God.
It’s ironic, then, that we still find in the church the belief that valuable knowledge is
concentrated in the hands or the head of the exceptional individual rather than
the church community.
When I was at the same seminary a retired theologian came to visit whose specialization
had been Christian-Muslim relations and who was bitter because no one had
really listened to him.
We started talking at a reception and he kept pressing me about what I was going to do when
I called to a congregation to be a pastor.
“What’s your plan? What’s your idea? So many churches are going down the tubes?
How are you going to revitalize the mission of the congregation you’re sent to?”
To all of which I answered a very unsatisfying, “I don’t really know.”
Well, there was more to it than that.
With my encounter with the woman seminarian fresh in my mind,
I said that I would have to discern the answers to those questions with
the people I was sent to, with the members of the congregation.
I did not – and do not believe – there is a cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all solution
appropriate to every congregation dreamed up by some so-called expert.
Nor do I believe that I have to be the one exceptional individual to dream that up.
For sure you can find people who make a living on the speaking circuit selling just that.
But I think such things have limited helpfulness.
So when I got here I had a conversation early on with . . . Rudy Weidenbacher.
And we were talking about how much the neighbourhood around the church building had
changed over the course of 40 or 50 years.
And Rudy said to me,
“We want to help the people in this neighbourhood. We just don’t know how.”
I said, unsatisfyingly, “Me neither.”
But you could sense a deep will on the congregation’s part to start figuring it out together.
And we have – started, that is! We are still figuring it out!
But we’ve come a long way because most people have had a say and
we have listened to one another and council has been great about listening to people and
pitching things to people and the people have been willing to try things that
haven’t worked as well as some other things that have.
And today, through the recognition that it takes a village to participate in God’s mission,
today we’ve come a long way and have come to build great relationships with
the people in our community and do some great work.
The gifts of everyone have been respected and the gifts of everyone, I think,
have been put to work helpfully.
Some in dreaming things up.
Some who work on the front lines.
Some who work behind the scenes.
Some who work even further behind the scenes:
the “behind the behind the scenes people” I like to call them, the people who
just by their presence set the tone of welcome and graciousness and
faithfulness and joy and appreciation that are so vital to our work together.
Clearly, the one God is working here through a huge variety of allotments of gifts to
build up this community for the purpose of doing God’s work, of engaging in
God’s mission to love, bless and heal this whole world and every person in it.
You have a place here.
Your gifts can be put to use.
You have them.
And together we are smarter. Together we make better decisions.
Together we are more faithful. Together we are more Christ-like. Together we are better.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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