Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
The Second Sunday of Epiphany
January 14, 2007
W. Gregory Pope
Gifted
1 Corinthians 12:1-13
The second sermon in a series on
Being the Body of Christ in the World: Loving God, Loving Neighbor
In this season of Epiphany we are being reminded:
who we are (The Body of Christ)
where we are to be (In the World)
and what we are to be doing (Loving God, Loving Neighbor)
“Being the Body of Christ In the World: Loving God, Loving Neighbor.”
Last week, drawing from the two sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, and the experience and action of Jesus at both, we considered what it meant for us to be the “chosen, blessed, broken and shared Body of Christ.” As we gathered around the table, we remembered Jesus taking the bread that would symbolize his body - and later symbolize us as his Body - and after taking the bread, blessing it, breaking it and sharing it with his disciples.
So we have been taken, chosen by God, and blessed in order to be broken and shared with the world.
This morning we began our worship in the waters of baptism. The blessing of the bread spoken by Jesus at the Table is joined with the blessing from God he heard at his baptism: “You are my child, the beloved, in whom I take delight.” It is the blessing I share with all who are baptized: You and I are God’s beloved in whom God takes delight. In that baptismal blessing is where true life begins for us all.
It is in those waters that we not only hear God’s blessing upon our lives, but also make our baptismal confession of faith. In a long tradition within this congregation and going back to the early years of the church, the confession that one makes in the waters of baptism is the one we heard Donovan make this morning and reaffirmed ourselves: “Jesus Christ is Lord.”
To say that Jesus is Lord is to commit our lives to walk in the way of Jesus. It is dedicating our entire lives to honoring Christ. Every day. Every decision. It is to refuse to divide life into the sacred and secular with two different value systems for the two different areas. Jesus is Lord over everything in our lives all the time.
To say that Jesus is Lord is the work of the Spirit in our lives. Paul said in our text this morning, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” It is God at work within us that enables us to see the truth of the way of Jesus. It is the Spirit of God that leads us into the way of Jesus and to commit our lives to walk in his way. It is not a coercive Spirit. We are given the choice whether or not to make Jesus Lord of our lives. But we cannot do it apart from the Spirit.
That same Spirit at work in our lives that leads us to confess “Jesus is Lord” is the Spirit that descends upon us at our baptism the way the Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism.
The Spirit’s descent upon us at our baptism is the promise of God’s presence in our lives. We will not walk in the way of Jesus alone. God is with us always.
The Spirit’s descent upon us at our baptism is the power of God’s presence in our lives. We will not walk in the way of Jesus in our own strength, but in God’s strength nurtured within us through prayer and worship, scripture and community.
The Spirit’s descent upon us at our baptism baptizes us into the Body of Christ, a community of disciples. The baptized life is not a solitary life. In the waters of baptism we hear the pledge of our family of faith to rejoice with us, to pray for us, and to walk with us in the way of Jesus. Community is crucial for the baptismal life.
The Spirit’s descent upon us at our baptism also brings gifts for ministry to the world as we join with others in the Body of Christ, using our gifts together for the common good.
Baptism is the ordination to ministry for every person as part of the body of Christ. In the baptismal waters and at the Table we experience ourselves as chosen and blessed of God in order that we may be broken and shared with the world, using our gifts for the common good.
Paul writes of these gifts as spiritual gifts. What makes a gift spiritual? It’s not just what you do in church. It is any ability or talent or gift you have that can be used for the good of other people. Any such ability, talent, or gift comes from the Spirit of God. You may work to develop it or increase its capacity or quality, and in fact should do so, but it remains a Spirit-gift to be used not at your discretion but as God’s Spirit leads.
Three years ago you chose as a congregation to base your ministry together on the gifts you’ve been given and to serve together on teams to do particular ministries as you felt called by God. It is a Gifts-Based Ministry Team Model. It is not a perfect model. We as a congregation do not yet fully understand how it best works. But we’re learning and will be talking together this Wednesday night about how we can make it work better. Bring your constructive ideas.
It is a model for ministry based not on congregational approval, but on a calling and a passion for a particular ministry, finding others both inside and outside the congregation who share a similar calling and passion, and doing that ministry together based on the church’s agreed upon mission and core values. The role of the congregation is to grant permission and to enable people to do the ministry to which they have been called.
It is a model based on life in the early church. As best we can tell, the first two centuries of congregational life were organized around the various spiritual gifts of the individual members. These gifts are given by God to individual members to be used on behalf of the Body of Christ. Each member is free to use his or her gifts as God leads them. No mention is made of formal offices in the early church, so members are never elected to offices. By the third and fourth centuries, spiritual gifts were replaced with “offices,” and soon spiritual gifts were considered the domain of the clergy. (Bill Easum, Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Burgers, 59-61).
Bill Easum, who wrote the handbook on Gifts-Based Ministry Teams, says: The human body is a bottom-up network (beginning with cells) based on cooperation, freedom, and the common good. So is the body of Christ. The Body of Christ, like the human body, is a network of a variety of autonomous cells called spiritual gifts. Each gift is autonomous and different, yet functions on behalf of the entire body, not (on behalf of) the person with the gift. Individual members of the Body of Christ find their fulfillment, not as their ministry makes them feel good but when their ministry contributes to the health of the Body of Christ. (Easum, 43-45)
Ministry happens when people discover their spiritual gifts instead of fulfilling roles or tasks the institution requires done. Instead of asking people to serve based on the need of the institutional church, we should be asking, “What gifts do you bring to the Body of Christ, and what do you need from the Body to help you exercise them? Tell us and we’ll equip you to use them.” (Easum, 51)
Authority in the church is given not to those with the most years of membership or with the highest standing in the business community. Authority is given to those who have the spiritual gift of discerning the Spirit. (Easum, 60)
It is the role of the ministerial staff to identify and enable people to use their spiritual gifts on behalf of the Body of Christ. They do not do ministry for the laity. (Easum, 72)
How do we discover our spiritual gifts? We discover our gifts by listening to those around us in the faith community and paying attention to the places where others affirm us. Because sometimes we cannot see our own giftedness. And sometimes we need others to correct us. Sometimes we are not gifted where we think we are. We have a Gifts Affirmation Team ready to help you discover your gifts and use them in this place and in the world.
We must also look within ourselves at what we like to do and where our passions are. Sometimes, not always but sometimes, the recognition of a spiritual gift begins with a passion to do something in particular.
And often, I think, that passion burning within us toward a certain ministry is the work of the Holy Spirit moving and guiding us to do what God is wanting us to do.
One thing I like most about this ministry model is that it encourages us to do only what God is leading us to do. Don’t do something because someone is trying to talk you into it. Do it because God is leading you to do it.
Paul says there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. In order to live as the Body of Christ we have to believe that. With all the different kinds of gifts in our congregation, we have to believe and trust that the one Spirit of God is working in us all. And, as we say in our mission statement, we welcome God’s calling and each other’s gifts.
A few years back, the movie Good Will Hunting, starring Matt Damon and Robin Williams, showed the struggle of an exceptionally intelligent youth from a disadvantaged childhood trying to decide what to do with his gift. In some ways he wants to remain just one of the boys and he grieves the loss of his beer guzzling, brawling buddies. In other ways he is lonely in his genius and longs for more. People urge him to use his gift for the benefit of humanity (and to their profit). But in the end he goes with his heart and follows romance.
There was within the movie an important emphasis on the freedom an individual should have to choose his or her own way through life. But one might ask: Does a person have any responsibility to use his or her gifts to benefit the world, or is our only responsibility to use our gifts to make ourselves happy? And can these two goals ever coincide?
We do, I think, have a responsibility to do what we can to make the world a better place, following the leading and guiding of God’s Spirit. To use the gifts we’ve been given for those purposes which God most needs to have done in the world. Because our gifts do not originate with us. They are gifts that come from the Spirit of God.
Our calling before God is connected to a larger community and to the purposes of God. We do not live unto ourselves alone, and while only you as an individual can choose who you will be and what you will do, what you decide has an impact on all of us.
One such person connected his calling before God to the larger community to help create what he called “the beloved community,” and he changed the course of our country. Martin Luther King Jr. would have been seven-eight years old tomorrow. A couple of months before his assassination at the age of thirty-nine, he was preaching at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, talking about what he would want said at his funeral. Don’t talk about my Nobel Peace Prize, or other awards and degrees and commendations, he said. Instead,
I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. . . . Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. . . . And all the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Stephen Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound, 458)
Two months later, on April 4, 1968, he left such a life behind, snuffed out by an assassin’s bullet.
We began today with the baptismal confession: “Jesus Christ is Lord.” It has cost many a person their life. It is the confession of a committed life. A life dedicated to doing what God is calling you to do, using your gifts for the common good of the world.
Thomas Merton wrote in his journal:
I am obscurely convinced that there is a need in the world for something I can provide and that there is a need for me to provide it. True, someone else can do it . . . But I feel [God] is asking me to provide it. (A Year With Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations From His Journals, selected and edited by Jonathan Montaldo, Harper San Francisco, 2004, 12)
What is God asking you to provide this world? It may be God is asking you to provide something through the ministries of this church. To be the Body of Christ in the world through our church we need help in our children’s ministries. It takes a lot of energy and giftedness to provide meaningful children’s ministry. And we can do better with less burden on less people when more people are offering their gifts. They’re meeting today at 4:00. You’re welcome to join!
It may be God is asking you to provide this world a voice of justice, peace, and compassion in our community through your place of work or other organizations.
This world needs what you have to offer - your gifts, your passions. Else God would not have given you the gifts and passions you have. What are you doing with the gifts in your hand? What will you do with what you’ve been given?
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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