“GIFTS OF
THE SPIRIT”
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A sermon preached Readings:
Acts
2:1-13 and 1 Corinthians 12:4-13 |
“Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the
common good”
(1 Cor 12:7)
I don’t know if we have any
Southampton, Crystal Palace, Norwich or West Brom
fans here today.
If so, you won’t need me to tell you that this is the make or break day,
the last day of football’s Premiership season -
The day when three club are relegated from the Premiership
and one stays up.
It is easy for us all to assume that the Spiritual life
is worked on the basis of some sort of heavenly league table system –
with some people in the spiritual premiership elite,
and others hacking about
at the wrong end of the Torbay
Combination League or wherever.
Evidently that is how the early Christians at Corinth saw
it –
·
there were those with the spectacular gifts
of speaking with tongues and working great miracles
(the Premier League Christians as they saw themselves)
·
and then there were those who did ordinary stuff,
cleaning up and sorting out –
they were very much looked down on as 2nd Division Christians.
Paul makes it very clear in this passage that that is all
wrong.
We are all different, he says, we are all given different
gifts –
but being different doesn’t mean being better or worse.
This is the start of Christian
Aid Week.
Each year Christian Aid
highlights a different part of the world,
and this year we are thinking
especially about Mozambique.
So it seems appropriate to quote
here are some words from
Pastor Isac Pirilau, of the
Presbyterian Church of Mozambique:
Every church member has gifts,
not just the pastor.
The grace of the Holy Spirit is that we are all the same,
whether rich or poor,
and so we all have gifts that enable us to serve the Lord.
Some people think that in Africa all people want to do is receive.
But Christians know that is not true.
With the guidance of the Holy Spirit
we all have the talent to change and to create
our own turning points.’
And what is true for Mozambique
is true for us all –
God never made two classes of Christians –
the active and the passive,
the 1st class doers and the 2nd class watchers or
receivers –
God made us all different, but all with a part to play.
When the blind man carries the
books from the library
for the man with no arms,
and then the man with no arms reads the books to the blind man,
who is to say who is the important one in the partnership?
We each have a part to play.
We each have our Spiritual Gift to use
And that is not only a great privilege but also a great
responsibility.
Heaven forbid that we have spiritual gifts and don’t use
them.
The great 19th Century
Danish theologian
Soren Kierkegaard said of his Church
that it had received the gifts of
the Spirit like gift-wrapped presents.
But instead of opening and using
these great gifts,
each generation wrapped them up
in more and more wrapping paper,
and the gifts were never opened,
never used.
And an unused gift is like a light under a bushel – no use
to anyone.
Do you know the story of the man
who found an eagle’s egg
and gave it to a broody hen to hatch in the farmyard?
The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks
and grew up with them.
All of its life, the eagle, thinking it was a chicken,
did what the chickens did.
It scratched in the dirt for seeds to eat.
It clucked and cackled.
And it flew in a brief thrashing of wings and flurry of feathers
no more than a few feet off the ground.
Because, after all, that's how chickens were supposed to fly.
Years passed. And the chicken eagle grew very old.
One day, it saw a magnificent bird
far above him in the cloudless sky.
Hanging with graceful majesty on the powerful wind currents,
it soared with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
"What a beautiful bird!"
said the chicken eagle to its neighbour. What is it?¨
"That's an eagle - the chief of the birds,¨ the neighbour clucked.
But don't give it a second thought. You could never be like him. ¨
So the chicken eagle never did get to gave it another thought.
And it died thinking it was a chicken.
We
need to ask ourselves, we need to ask God, what gifts he has given us –
what Spirit given power and ability there is within us waiting to be used for
God.
The very last of the
Star Wars movies opens this week –
we’ve already had parts 1,2 and 4 onwards –
the last movie fills the gap between parts 2 and 4.
It tells the story of Luke Skywalker’s father and his fall from grace.
It is the story of his Faustian deal
to gain power over the world at the price of his soul -
how the noble Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader,
his true humanity hidden and crushed
behind a mask of evil.
God
gives us a potential for good – everyone of us made in his own image –
but do we fulfil that potential or pervert the gifts of God for evil ends,
masking and hiding our God given potential in a selfish desire for power and
dominion?
The new Stars Wars
movie by all accounts ends on a fairly bleak note –
and so it must - Darth Vader has gained power and influence –
the Force of the Jedi is almost extinguished.
All seems a lost cause.
But of course those who
have followed Star Wars since 1977
already know even before they go to watch the movie how the story will end,
how in fact in later episodes the power of good gathers itself & fights
back,
how ultimately Lord Vader’s evil dominion is overcome,
how indeed he removes his mask
& finds again the humanity he has lost.
And
this weekend we celebrate Pentecost –
and it is a rather similar story.
The story of just a handful of followers of Jesus
huddled against the dark might of Rome
at the end of the prequel to the story of the Church –
surely just a matter of time before the end comes?
But
we know better – we know how the story goes on -
How
God unleashed on the world at Pentecost
a power greater than any the world has seen –
the power of the Spirit at work
As Tim
Merrill puts it,
“Now these 120 believers, Spirit-troopers,
are empowered to counterattack,
to launch the Starship Good News,
to engage a growing galaxy of believers,
now known as the Church,
against the powers of darkness,
to go out into this
world to draw people to the light.”
And this isn’t Hollywood make-believe –
it is about real lives and real need and real power to change –
So here is another quote from
Mozambique -
This is from Armando Rafael Namuchia,
a Baptist pastor in Namarroi:
He says:
‘We are very grateful for the
support of Christian Aid.
It has enabled these poor,
isolated communities in Mozambique
to turn themselves around.
But each individual has to turn
his own life around.
We cannot sit waiting for
change.
We need faith and we need the
Holy Spirit.
If we are given gifts, we must
use them to change situations.
That is how we will end
poverty.
Faith & action and
partnership
are what make turning points happen’
And again, what is true for Mozambique is true for us all.
So do you want to be part of the people that change the
world?
Well if you do, you’ve got to be open to the Spirit,
·
You’ve got to tear the wrapping off God’s gifts and
use them
·
You’ve got to take off the evil mask,
and let yourself be what God wants
you to be
·
You’ve got to spread your wings
and let the wind of the Spirit lift
you up.
And I don’t care whether
·
You live in Mozambique or Exeter
·
you are scoring the goals in the premiership
or cleaning boots in the Unibond League,
·
whether you are writing Malcolm Glazer style cheques
or giving a hard earned widow’s mite for Christian Aid,
·
whether you are waxing eloquent or waxing the
furniture,
·
whether you are in the farmyard or the mountain top
None of that matters –
Just as long as you are fulfilling your own personal God
given potential,
Just as long as you do what the Spirit wants you to do.
For remember, there is a world to be changed out there,
And if we will open
ourselves to the rushing power of the Spirit
who knows what together we may not change in his name?