2025-01-14
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
1-12-205 Sermon Federated Church Rev. Betsy Wooster
Today’s Scripture Passage: 1 Corinthians 12: 1-11
12 Now concerning spiritual gifts,[a] brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be ignorant. 2 You know that when you were gentiles you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. 3 Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says “Let Jesus be cursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.
4 Now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, 5 and there are varieties of services but the same Lord, 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit,
10 to another the working of powerful deeds, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
Please pray with me, Dear God, we listen for your voice in a world so filled with noise. Calm us now and open us to your spirit. May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable to you, our strength and our redeemer, Amen.
Sermon:
The English poet and Jesuit Priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who lived and wrote in the last half of the 19th century, was well known for his poetry and especially his poem “God’s Grandeur,” which begins: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning, also a poet of the 19th century, wrote that “Earth is crammed with Heaven, and every common bush afire with God.”
Now, how did these poets perceive the holiness of God in all the world? What lens of experience, or what perception of faith, allowed them to see that “The world is charged with the grandeur of God” and the “Earth is crammed with Heaven”? That may be a hard perspective to hold, especially when we can experience the world as a place of struggle and tragedy, a string of accidents and circumstance that are sometimes happy and lucky and sometimes painful, but not exactly holy.
And yet, the poets and the prophets assure us that the world is infused by the Spirit of God. In the end, I believe that it is the poets who might save us by repeatedly writing about the glory of God and the presence of heaven within us. Like God, “poets see the sacred in everything, in everyone. They bring the gifts of the spirit to light through their writing, through their poems.” So much of scripture is poetry. Poetry helps us to be aware of the presence of God that we often fail to perceive. Like the Corinthians in today’s text, we often fail to perceive the gifts of the Holy Spirit in each and every person, in nature, and in the well streams of our own hearts. Paul reminds the people of Corinth that their lives are filled by the Spirit of God.
While they have been arguing and divided about which people should be most valued, and what kinds of lives should be honored above others, Paul brings a poet’s holy perception. Paul reminds them that each person’s life is infused with the Spirit of God. Each kind of gift that a person has to share is a gift of the same Spirit, and each one is valuable.
Paul uses this description as a way to introduce us to the work of the spirit of God, the spirit of God in each of us that is often revealed in the diverse and varied gifts unique to each person. Paul sees the person who has learned great knowledge and names it as a gift of God’s Spirit. And another person who may not have knowledge but has wisdom, and Paul names that person’s insight and intuition as a gift of God’s Spirit.
And then Paul sees the person who practices healing, who may not have the time or interest to be knowledgeable or insightful about scriptures or theology, and yet Paul sees the Spirit of God in her hands as well.
Paul sees the teacher who helps children to read and spell a complex language; in the person who repairs the heat for a home; in the manager who coordinates the goods and services and responds to the crisis with competence and care; in the attorney who shepherds clarity and justice, in the child who asks you to cuddle with her.
Paul sees everyone, and wherever Paul looks, he sees God’s Spirit at work. He sees that earth is crammed with heaven. The scriptures tell us we are made in God’s image. And what would life be like if we didn’t have this diversity of gifts to help shape the world and to give thanks for the ways in which God is made manifest through each and every one of us. What is the human spirit if not some part of the spirit of God?
There is such beauty in this diversity of God’s gifts among people, a beauty bestowed upon us by the Holy Spirit so that the many gifts of God’s incarnation become real in the world and in our lives. The theologian John Calvin, a pastor of the Protestant Reformation, taught that the primary problem for human beings is not that we fall into sin, but that we become oblivious to the presence of God that infuses all of creation.
Our awareness of God can become dulled, and the world seems to be mundane, until some gift of God reawakens us. And when we are awakened, we begin to perceive the gifts of God’s spirit everywhere.
The Episcopal Priest Barbara Brown Taylor told stories of her friend who was always out taking walks, and became quite open to the gifts she encountered, especially among the trees. Once, she says, her friend was walking along fretting about how she ought to be, things she ought to change about herself, when this big poplar said ‘Hey, why do you worry so much? Watch me be a tree.’ So, she just stood there a minute or two and watched the tree be a perfectly acceptable tree. ‘Okay,’ the tree said, ‘Now you go be you.’ And she did.
“Then there was the time she was mulling over everything that had gone wrong lately and ran into a maple with great upswept branches. ‘Try it,’ the tree said, and she did, lifting up her arms and looking into the deep blue of the sky. All of a sudden, she said, she understood that it was a gesture of thankfulness, and with that understanding she herself became full of gratitude. ‘Thanks,’ she said to the tree. ‘Don’t mention it,’ the tree replied.
“It is not only trees that talk to her. . .
Once it was a stunning sunset that said, “Do not worry too much about the world. I can handle it,” and once it was some river rapids that said, “I know it looks rough to you right now, but there is a real quiet stretch a little further along. Trust me.’
“Trust me.” Trust the poplar, the maple, the sunset, the river. Trust God to inhabit every living thing and use it to announce [God’s own] presence. Trust yourself enough to notice.” (BB Taylor, Mixed Blessings, pg. 14.)
The world is full of diverse gifts, Paul wrote to the people of Corinth, and these many gifts all reveal the Spirit of God dwelling among us and working within us. This diversity of God’s gifts infuses the world with divine presence. Each of you has different gifts to share, and all of them are valuable. Each of you has different gifts that may speak to you most clearly.
No particular gift or way of knowing God is more valid or important than any other. The key is to be open to the ways that God is revealed to you, and the gifts that are yours to share. Paul encourages us to recognize the variety of gifts that God’s Spirit has given. God gives us these gifts not for signs of approval from God, but in response to the needs of our communities, to work together for the common good. Wherever we are, wherever we look, the gifts of God are there to be shared. In your life, in the lives of the people around you, in the lives of the trees and the rivers, and the rising sun.
Paul said to the people of Corinth, over and over again, that this indwelling of the spirit in each of their lives was inseparable from God. And thanks to the scriptures that have lasted the test of time, Paul is now saying it to us. Let us give thanks and celebrate the diversity within the character of God: God, Son and Holy Spirit, that leads to the diversity of gifts bestowed within us, within all creation, straight from the heart of God.
Open the eyes of your heart to every living being, every face, every event of your life – the big and small, the hoped for and the feared, the bad and the good – look into every one of them for God’s presence. Risk looking foolish or being wrong. God’s spirit is infused within you, and like the tree said, “You go be you.” Believe that wherever you are, God is there, and God can be trusted. Thank be to God. Amen.