Believe: spiritual gifts February 26, 2017

Believe: spiritual gifts

February 26, 2017

 Surprise!

Welcome to the biggest surprise party ever!

Most of you had no idea when you came in this morning that you are the guest of honor at the biggest surprise party the world has ever seen. It is being thrown for each of us, and all of us together by our loving heavenly gift-giver.

Yes! I said gifts. Didn’t I tell you there are gifts for everyone? You didn’t know you were getting gifts did you? There’s one for each of us. Some are humongous, so big you can’t miss them. Others are tiny. But you know what they say, sometimes the best things come in small packages.

These gifts are not some mass-produced, store-bought, no-thought, plastic trinkets. Each one is a hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind, specialized gift designed, built, and given to a specific person by our loving God. And there is one for you. For you! How awesome is that?! There are no exchanging gifts, because no one else’s gifts will fit you.

There is one catch. The tag on each gift says that the gift must be used with others. These gifts are no fun to play with alone.

What you do next is up to you.. You have to decide if you are going to open your gift. Well, that seems like a no-brainer. Of course you’ll open it right? You would be surprised how many people leave them wrapped up and sitting on the shelves.

 Of course, I am talking about spiritual gifts. And everything I have said is true. There is one for each of us, they are all different sizes, and they are all custom made… and many people never even remove the wrapping paper.

Perhaps we need to understand spiritual gifts a little better. That’s what we are going to try to do today.

 First, I want to explain what spiritual gifts are. Spiritual gifts are not talents that you are born with. They are not skills you can practice. Yes, our talents and skills are also gifts from God, but they are not spiritual gifts.

A spiritual gift is given to each and every Christian by the Holy Spirit after they accept Jesus as Lord. It is truly a gift. It is not something you learn in school or just do naturally. In fact, it might even seem unnatural at first, but remember it is made just for you, so no worries about it being the wrong size or color.

Fundamentally, a talent or skill is something YOU do. Your spiritual gift is the way GOD WORKS THROUGH YOU. But they are often complimentary.

•              A person teaching LIGHT, for instance, might not have the gift of teaching (don’t worry they can learn those skills) but they might do a great job in that ministry because they have the gift of encouragement.

•              Not every pastor has the gift of preaching, but they may be a great pastor because they have the gift of pastoring (which is not a job but a gift for looking after the flock and caring for people’s spiritual needs.)

•              Someone might be great cook and people might enjoy eating their food. Cooking is not a spiritual gift, it is a skill they have learned, but couple that with a spiritual gift of hospitality (the art of making people of all kinds feel comfortable and accepted.) Then you really have a wonderful ministry using a skill and your gift together.

Spiritual gifts are not  abilities with which you are born. Spiritual gifts are not skills you can learn.

But sometimes our spiritual gifts and our natural skills and abilities, might complement one another.

The other way Spiritual gifts are different is that they are no fun by ourselves. As the tag on the gift says, “to be used with other people.” A skill or a talent, you can use however you want. Hopefully if you are a good cook, a carpenter, an accountant, a gardener, a facebook guru, whatever it is… hopefully you will share it with the church, because after all it is from God as well.

 But the spiritual gifts are given for the specific purpose of being used in the church.

Starting in verse 12 of Ephesians 4, they are given to EQUIP the saints for the work of ministry. That is, get the people of the church ready to do the work of the kingdom. This is for persons inside the church. Not that we can’t use our gift of compassion or healing outside the congregation, but that is an extension of the church’s ministry through your spiritual gift. The spiritual gift is given to prepare the body of Christ to be his hands and feet in the world.

 Later in that verse, Paul writes they are to EDIFY the body of Christ, or BUILD UP the body of Christ. I know people who seem to think they have the gift of criticism. They don’t, because a spiritual gift is not for the puffing up of the ego. Anything that tears down, or divides God’s people is not a spiritual gift. Spiritual gifts are for the building up, strengthening, and preparing of God’s people to reach out to the world.

 One of the next phrases in Ephesians goes along with the building up. That is unity of the faith. If a gift causes dissention in the church, it is not a spiritual gift or it is not being used right. You might know that the gift of speaking in tongues is listed in 1 Cor. 12 as spiritual gift. It has been, unfortunately, badly misunderstood and abused over the years, to divide the church into have’s and have not’s, spiritual and unspiritual, true Christian and unchristian. That is not the purpose of any of the spiritual gifts. They are to bring the church into the UNITY OF THE FAITH.

 In verse 13 Paul writes the spiritual gifts are intended to bring us to MATURITY TO THE MEASURE OF CHRIST. In other words to be more like Jesus. Discipleship is not an overnight event. Poof and you are a disciple. That is the point of this whole series on spiritual practices. There are exercises we must do if we want to grow closer to Jesus. We don’t expect our children and grandchildren to act like adults at 4 years old, or even 10 or 16. We know they have to mature. The same is true for discipleship and knowing and practicing our spiritual gifts is part of maturing in Christ. We need to grow and mature in our discipleship before we can take on the world.

 Finally, and maybe most importantly, Paul teaches that our spiritual gifts will speak the truth in love. He makes the same point in 1 Cor 12, where he has that famous passage about the different parts of the body not being able to say I don’t need you. He ends that with “Let me tell you about an even more excellent way”… and of course he goes into the beautiful 13th chapter which ends saying everything else will pass away… even our gifts will pass away, but three things remain… “faith hope and love, these three, but the greatest is love.” If our gifts don’t come from love. There is something wrong. If our gifts don’t bring love … there is something wrong. All things …our teaching and preaching and exhorting, and prophesying, and healing must come out of the Great love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord and help others to see that love.

 So, how do you know what you gift is. You can take an inventory, and I have placed a stack on the back table. But the truth is, those are mostly good to affirm us and reassure us that we are on the right track. Fundamentally, you will not be surprised at what the inventory says, because you already know what you spiritual gifts are. Even if you don’t think of them that way.

Let me illustrate. Suppose someone here spilled his or her coffee this morning. This is how people with different gifts would respond.

•              Service: “Let me help you clean it up.” (click)

•              Mercy: “I’m so sorry that happened. Let me get you another cup.” (click)

•              Giving: “Here, you can have my cup. I’ haven’t drunk out of it yet.”

•              Administration: “_____, would you get the mop? ____, please help pick this up. _____, could you get him another cup of coffee?” (click)

•              Faith: “Where God empties one cup, He always fills another.” (click)

•              Teaching: “What did we learn? We learned that it would be best to give people trays for their coffee.”

•              Exhortation: “Maybe we should let someone else carry your coffee for you next time.” (click)

•              Wisdom: “It’s OK, ‘there’s no use crying over spilled coffee.’ ” (click)

•              Miracles: “Let’s ask God to put the coffee back in the cup, shall we?”

•              Healing: “Don’t be embarrassed. In fact I did something a lot worse than that my first Sunday here. ” (click)

•              Prophecy: “If you keep doing that, someone going to get burned.” 

I know they are a little contrived, but you get the idea.

 What is your natural response to that situation… that probably points you toward your spiritual gift.

What if everyone had the gift of administration, who is going to help clean up.

What if everyone had the gift of giving, the man would have 10 cups of coffee to drink. You see, we need all the gifts in the right balance that God provides. I am persuaded that God gives the church all the gifts we need. The problem is some people leave them unwrapped on the shelf.

Let me tell you about a little boy named Tony. Tony’s singing voice was high and squeaky, he did not make the tryouts for the choir. When he took violin lessons, the neighbors persuaded his parents to make him stop. But Tony had music in his soul. He wanted to make music.

 His friends gave him a hard time because his only talent was whittling. When he was older, he served as an apprentice to a violinmaker. His knack for whittling grew into a skill of carving and his hobby became his craft. He worked patiently and faithfully. By the time he died, he left over 1,500 violins, each one bearing a label that read, “Antonio Stradivarius.”

 They are the most sought-after violins in the world and sell for more than $100,000 each.

•              Tony could have said, “If I can’t sing I won’t make music.” His gift would still be sitting on the shelf and the world would never have heard the sweet tones of a Stradivarius violin. Some of you still have a gift sitting on the shelf because you haven’t opened to it yet.

•              Tony could have decided since he couldn’t sing, he would let the professionals make all the music. Some of you store your gift on the shelf figuring that’s what we hire a pastor for. (If all the body were a mouth, where would the hearing be.”)

•              Tony could have said, “I’m afraid that making violins may not be right for me, so I’ll just whittle Kazoos.” Some of you have wonderful gifts for teaching for instance, but you seem to settle for so much less.

•              Tony could have said. “Someone else will make violins.” Some of you have left your spiritual gifts to gather dust and let others do the work.

•              Tony could have said, “I’m good that this, but what I really want to do is write a book about making violins.” Some of you know what you gift is, but you decide you chose not to make a commitment, or prefer to do something else.

•              Tony could have said, “Who me? I can’t do that I’ll just work at Burger King.” Some of you sell yourself short, not believing that EVERYONE has a gift to offer: EVEN YOU

•              But Tony didn’t do any of those things, and look at what he did.  Thanks be to God that some of you have opened you gift, you have put it on, polished it up and are exercising it for the edification and unity of the body and the glory of God.

Even a Stradivarius violin, if it is locked it up and never played, will eventually dry up and loose its resonance. Now ask yourself if you are guilty of locking up the most wonderful gift of God, rather than using it to change the church and the world for Jesus Christ.

No one can do it for you. I could pick up Stradivarius’ tools and there would be no music because that is not my gift.

 It is up to you. We keep talking about every person in ministry… this is where the rubber meets the road. The party horns have been blown. The confetti has fallen, The balloons are starting to lose their buoyancy. The punch is going flat. And everyone waits for you. Only you can decide what you will do with the spiritual gift God has given you.

What will you do?

Believe week 16 “Christian Community February 19, 2017 Reinbeck UMC

Believe week 16 “Christian Community

February 19, 2017 Reinbeck UMC

Just a word about today’s Scripture reading. This scripture has received a lot of criticism. It is often abused by preachers and teachers on the one hand, and it is outright condemned by others.

Don’t let the words, “Wives submit to your husband” keep you from hearing the rest of the scripture. I am going to address those words, but they are not the focus of today’s message. There is something else going on here. See if you can figure out what it is.

(Ephesians 5:21-35)

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I guess, the good news is no one got up and walked out. I can’t blame you for being a bit skeptical. I admit I had to work very hard on the passage before I was convinced my thesis was correct. I’m glad you are willing to give this scripture a chance and I pray that God gives me the right words to communicate what I believe is Paul’s deeper message.

First, let’s get rid of the distraction.

Paul seems to have written the letter to the Ephesians during his first imprisonment in Rome, which would be about 62 AD. In those days, every culture, including all of Rome and Israel, was very patriarchal and women were considered property of the father then the husband; and not even very valuable property.

It might not look like it to you but I believe Paul was a radical feminist for his day. In Galatians Chapter 3 he writes, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, …(He could have quit there, but he didn’t) there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” That was radical.

In I Corinthians, he writes, “For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; … (That is the traditional view, but he continuers) likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does.”   That was radical.

Paul is not the misogynist or woman hater, that some have made him out to be.

On the other hand, he knew his audience and he also had to walk a thin line of using language that will not alienate too many people while being true to himself.

Yes, Paul wrote, “wives submit to your husbands,” but he also sticks his neck out and says, “Husbands love your wives.” That was radical.

Yes he writes, “The husband is the head of the wife,” but he also adds that a “husband should love his wife like his own body.” That was radical.

Paul is trying to cut off the diseased limb of patriarchy, but he is trying to make sure that he does not go down with it.

Paul might not have accomplished that to everyone’s liking, but I believe that Paul is trying very hard to say that, in God’s eyes, women are just as loved, and just as valuable as men, but he is trying to say it in a way that people won’t just turn him off and walk away.

I don’t know if that makes you feel any better or not, but I don’t want to be stuck there.

I said there is a deeper meaning in this passage, let’s get to it.

This passage from Ephesians is a little hard for our modern minds to follow. In Western literature we are used to the first sentence of a paragraph, telling us what the paragraph is going to be about. That is Journalism 101. If we read it through those western eyes, we have to conclude that this is about family relationships.

Paul’s readers, however, would have seen something different in this passage. It was very common to put the most important part of the thought in the middle and surround it with parallel thoughts before and after. It is called a “chiasm.” The first phrase is balanced by the last phrase. In this case, “wives submit” is balanced by “wives respect” and so forth.   It is like building an arch adding one stone to each side until you get to the keystone: the one that holds it all together. Just like the keystone, the midpoint of the passage, the thought that does not have a counter point, is the real subject of the passage.

 So what is the keystone of this passage? If we look right in the middle, we read

“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for her. “

 Oh, now we understand that this passage is not really about marriage as much as it is about the church. Paul is saying if you want to understand the church, look at a healthy marriage. When marriage is done well, it can teach us some important messages about the church.

What better message on this day that we renewed our wedding vows.

We renewed ___ wedding vows today. If your marriages are like Robyn’s and mine, you have not done it perfectly. There have been good times and bad. Times when we have worked harder and when it has come easily. So maybe none of our marriages is a great illustration for the church, but if we take all of our experience and add them together, there are some things on which we could agree.

First, we can all agree that when marriage done well, the couple is one in love. That is exactly what the Bible means when it says, “the two shall become one.” Saying we are one in love. That is not to say that we lose our individuality, but rather that the things that make us different are not as strong as the one love that holds us together. To be one in love is to be so close and so in-sync with our spouses that, like the blur of a couple’s figure skating team in a fast spin we can hardly tell where one starts and the other stops. Marriage means that our hearts, our hurts, and our hopes are one with our spouse.

 The church should be the same way with Jesus. We should be one in Christ. When we are baptized and brought in to the church we are made one with Christ, we are baptized into his death so that we might be baptized into his eternal life. In Romans 6, Paul writes that in baptism “we have been united with him in a death like his, and we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.” “Though there are many parts, there is only one body.”  The body of Christ.

In the church, we are one in Christ so we may worship the one true God through Jesus Christ.

Marriage at its best means the couple is one in love.

Church at its best means that we are one in Christ.

Second, I think we could all agree that when marriage is done well there is mutual serving of one another. In a successful marriage, each person puts their spouse’s needs first.

 When church is done well there is a mutual serving one another. We put the other person’s needs first. Jesus washed the disciples’ feet and said, “Do what I have done.” The early church “Held all things in common and gave to each as they had need”

We can see that in our church. When one hurts, we gather around them to ease the hurt. When one is in trouble, we rally to their side. When a family is grieving, where do they turn? The church, because we care for the grieving very well. We serve one another.

 I talked about servant discipleship 2 weeks ago. If the church is not practicing servant discipleship, there will not be enough teachers, not enough, cooks, not enough helpers, and not enough of anything to go around. When the church is practicing servant discipleship, every person is in ministry to others to whatever degree God has given them the ability

In Marriage done well, there is mutual serving.

In church done well, the church is a servant community.

Finally, when marriage is done well, love grows. It grows beyond jus the two people who are married. In many marriages that means having children and growing love in the family. In other marriages, that means growing love with nieces and nephews, neighbors and friends. Love kept to ourselves is not a strong love. When marriage is, done well love grows.

 When church is done well, Love grows too. Not just inside the doors, but in a healthy church love is nurtured so that it will grow and overflow to the community by reaching out to the needy and serving wherever there is need. In a healthy church love is nurtured so that it will grow and overflow into world by subsidizing disaster relief, supporting seminaries and schools, bringing people to Christ in faraway places, and sharing Christ’s love even with the least of these. Have you ever been in a church where they say, “the worship is ended, let the service begin.”

In marriage done well, love grows beyond the couple.

In church done well, love grows and overflows beyond the doors of the church with the whole world.

 When God created Adam God said, "It is not good that man should be alone." (They say because there would be no one to ask directions) but I believe it is because Adam was built to be in community and so are we.

We can learn some things about the church as we examine Marriage, because it is not good that Christians should be alone.

When God created the church, he did so because the faith is best practiced in community. I believe there are no solo Christians. Historically, even those who went off to the desert to be hermit Christians learned that they needed Christian community and they ended up building communities that became known as monasteries.

I believe there are no solo Christians. Today many people think they can be Christian all by themselves, but I believe that they too will eventually realize that they need Christian community.

I believe there are no solo Christians.

•              I know I need people in Christian community with whom I can be one in Christ as we worship. YOU ARE THAT COMMUNITY.

•              I know I need people in Christian community where we can practice love by serving one another as Christ served. YOU ARE THAT COMMUNITY.

•              I know I need people in Christian community where we can nurture our love for God and let it overflow to the world. YOU ARE THAT COMMUNITY.

For me, YOU ARE THAT COMMUNITY.

In marriage, we use rings to symbolize the uniting of the man and the woman.

I couldn’t find a ring big enough to represent the uniting of God’s people in the church, so I made one. It is made of four cords and you’ll never guess what they represent.

•              Red for sharing Christ’s Love

•              Yellow for Knowing God’s word

•              Blue for growing in faith

•              Green for going to share our faith bringing others to Christ.

So, just like a wedding. Do you the Reinbeck United Methodist Church, take this as your ministry, to share Christ’s love, know God’s word, Grow in Christian discipleship and go share faith bringing others to Christ?

The answer is I do. Will you so answer?

What? I could not hear you…

Do you the Reinbeck United Methodist Church, take this as your ministry, to share Christ’s love, know God’s word, Grow in Christian discipleship and go share faith bringing others to Christ.

The answer is I do. Will you so answer…. That’s better.

I declare before God and all God’s people that you are church in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. AMEN