Isaiah
62:1-5
1
Corinthians 12:1-26
John 2:1-11
We limit God's gifts - we limit our
understanding of what is a gift from God.
And we limit who we allow to express what gifts.
During
the French Revolution, there were three Christians who were sentenced to die by
the guillotine. One Christian had the gift of faith, the other had the gift of
prophecy, the third had the gift of helping.
The
Christian with the gift of faith was to be executed first. He said he was not
afraid to die. "I have faith that God will deliver me!" he shouted
bravely. He said a short prayer and waited confidently. The rope was pulled,
but nothing happened. His executioners were amazed and, believing that this
must have been an act of God, they freed the man.
The
Christian with the gift of prophecy was next. "I predict that God will
deliver me from this guillotine!" At that, the rope was pulled and again,
nothing happened. Once, again the puzzled executioners assumed this must be a miracle
of God, and they freed the man.
The
third Christian, with the gift of helping, was next. The executioners were
about to pull the rope when the man stopped them. "Hey wait a
minute," he said. "I think I just found the problem with your
guillotine."
--
I
would like to invite you to think for a moment about what gifts God has given
to you. By gifts I am meaning talents or
abilities. In a moment I'm going to ask
you to share what some of your gifts are.
I know this can be uncomfortable because we are also called to be
humble. But as Paul described today, we
are as different parts of one body. And
as such, it is important for each of us to know the
gifts/talents/purposes/functions that God has given to us. If we do not know we have a gift for sight, how
can we help the body see? If we do not
know we have the gift of hearing, how can we help the body to hear? Being humble, walking humbly with God, is not
about denying God's gifts to you.
Instead it is about recognizing that all talents are gifts from God and
that one talent is not more worthy or more honored by God than another. My gifts are not more valuable than yours,
the gifts God has given me do not make me a better or more beloved person than
anyone else's. Each of our gifts are gifts
God has given us for the purpose of serving God in the world. As Paul explains, the feet are not less
important than the eyes. All jobs are
needed, all gifts are needed. That is
humility. When we deny God's gifts to us
we are being ungrateful to the God who has gifted us with our talents. With
that in mind, I invite you to share for a moment what gifts/talents/abilities
God has given to you. To make this a
little easier, I ask you to turn to someone near you and share a gift that you
have that your neighbor may not know about.
What
did you hear? Did people share with you
obvious or safe gifts? Or did you learn
something new about the person next to you?
Did anybody say anything surprising?
Now what I'd like you to do is to think for a minute at a different
level. Think about something about
yourself that you don't usually think of as a gift- it may be something that
you don't like about yourself such as stubbornness, or it may be something
you've worked to change about yourself such as sensitivity - getting hurt by
others easily. I want you to think about
something about yourself that you don't usually think of as a gift and consider
for a moment whether or not that, too, might not be a gift from God.
While
you are doing that, I want to share with you about a person who was one of the
members of another church in which I worked.
This is a person who was - well, annoying. Some might have said he was abrasive. But whatever you want to call it, he was a
difficult person in the church. He
always questioned every idea that came forward, never satisfied with simple
answers, never just saying "let's do it!" He spoke his mind and when he didn't like
something, he spoke out, which was often.
When he heard someone say something with which he disagreed, he challenged
it right away. He also came with his own
ideas, but these ideas challenged the norm, challenged the status quo at every
level. "Let's try this kind of
music." "Hey, I'm going to
start an anti-gang program here at the church.
Anyone want to join me?" "I
think we should go out every Friday evening with a big sign about our church
and stand on the street corner at the mall talking to anyone who passes by
about what we do here." He didn't
go through the right channels and he was always a pain in everyone's life. Do you know people like that? People who are part of your communities who
irritate and cause your life to be difficult?
Eventually
"Jason" got called away to a job out of the area and he had to leave
the church. It was only after he had
left that we realized the huge hole he had left in his leaving. He had brought so many gifts to our
congregation. He had challenged us to
grow and to expand our thinking. He had
challenged us to be clear in our explanations of the visions and ideas that we
had. He had called us to think through
our positions and to be open to differences.
He had challenged us to be open to the movement of the Spirit in a new
way, one that didn't go through the long chain of committees, but instead moved
into ministry and action without fear and with a great deal of true and deep
faith. I don't know if Jason was aware
of his gifts. I don't know if he
recognized that he was in so many ways the head of our body, thinking,
dreaming, leading us forward. I do know
that he realized that for many of us he was a pill, he was a challenge. I know he knew that he wasn't the most
popular guy and that people hid when they saw him coming. I can only hope that he also came to see that
the things we all struggled with the most in him were the deepest gifts he had
been given by God. And that his sharing
of those gifts brought all of us spiritually, and faithfully deeper and more
genuine in our relationships with each other and with God.
C.S.
Lewis in the second book of his space Trilogy, Perelandra, wrote, "Don't
imagine I've been selected for ...any
task...because I'm anyone in particular.
One never can see, or not till long afterwards, why any one was selected
for any calling. And when one does, it
is usually some reason that leaves no room for vanity. Certainly it is never for what the ...person...themself would have regarded as
their chief qualifications."
We
don't see all of the gifts God has given to each of us ourselves. And we don't see all of the gifts God has given
to those around us. Sometimes we fail so
completely to see those gifts that we limit how they can be expressed by
others, how much good God can bring out of them, how much we allow others to
help us grow in our spiritual journeys.
Tomorrow
we celebrate the life of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. We look at the life of a man who had a big
impact in helping to change our image of who African American persons are and what
African American men and women can do in this world. Not that the battle against prejudice is
won. We still deal with prejudice,
racism and its affect on us, on our nation and on our world. But Martin Luther King brought the
conversation to a new level, to a more real level, to a more honest level. While any people are enslaved, physically or
metaphorically, while any people are seen as less than others, while any people
are limited in their abilities to exercise fully their gifts and talents that
God has given them; we, too are limited.
As
Paul said in today's passage, "If one member of the body suffers, all
suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with
it." We are limited in what we
allow others to teach us, what we allow them to share with us, what we allow
them to give us. We are limited by what
we allow others to teach the world, what we allow them to give the world. We are all part of the same body. But we bind our own feet when we say that
some people are not allowed to do certain good and godly things in this
world. We blindfold our eyes when we say
that certain types of people must be restricted from using the gifts God has
given them. We injure our own body, the
body of Christ, when we fail to see that God has gifted us all with talents and
abilities beyond what we can see or know or recognize.
We
can see how this has played out throughout history. People of different backgrounds, ethnicities,
cultures and races have all been given gifts, spiritual gifts, gifts to be used
to the glory of God. But when we limited
their access to the world, we limited how they could use those gifts, and we
were all lessened as a result. For a
long time women have been limited - and in many denominations and in many
places they still are - with what they are allowed to do in the church and
beyond. And we continue to limit others
for many reasons and in many ways. As a
result, we are injured. But more than
that. When we limit what gifts God can
use in others, when we decide what gifts God can or cannot give to certain
people, when we limit what in ourselves we believe to be a talent or gift from
God, we are also limiting God God-self. We
are limiting what God can teach us through these people, we are limiting how
God can relate to us through different people, we are limiting how God can use
us and our gifts, and we are limiting our very relationship with God. God can do anything, and yet as a people, we
insist that God can only do certain things with certain people. We work hard to put boundaries around God's
gifts and God's calling. And we suffer as
a result.
In
today's gospel reading Jesus changed water into wine. Today would we find this an acceptable use of
the gifts and talents God gave to Jesus?
Would we be offended that Jesus wasn't using his gifts in that moment to
heal or confront the system, but was instead only enabling people to
party? If we saw that some people became
drunk on this wine, would it offend our sensibilities? This was Jesus' first miracle recorded in the
gospel of John. Would we shrug it off as
a learning time for Jesus? Or would we
be open to hearing that God calls all of us to take time to celebrate as well
as to care for others? Was his ability
to turn water into wine something that we would recognize as a gift from God?
I
am not saying that we should ignore the obvious gifts we have and assume they
aren't the "real" gifts from God.
As I said at the beginning, an awareness of the gifts God has blessed us
with can enable us to serve more effectively and more faithfully our God and
God's people. But I'm also saying that
we need to strive to be more open to what God does and can do with the things
that we deny as gifts, in ourselves as well as in others.
Wind and Sun wanted to see
who could be first to remove a man’s coat.
Wind blew hard, trying to force the coat off. The cold man only pulled it tighter. Sun smiled brightly to warm the air. The hot man took off his coat. “You see,” said the sun, “there is great
strength in gentleness."
The
wind knew its own gift - but it could not see that the gift of the sun was just
as strong, just as meaningful, just as necessary. What gifts are you not seeing?
Amen.
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