Christ Lutheran Church

1701 Arroyo Chamiso

Santa Fe, NM 87505-4775

(505) 983-9461

church@clcsantafe.com

  

Sunday, January 17, 2010
Second Sunday after the Epiphany

 

SECOND READING: 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. 2You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. 3Therefore 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.
4Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

Paul to the Corinthians, Part I

 

+ In nomine Domini.  Amen.

We are going to spend the next several weeks with Paul of Tarsus, the converted follower of Jesus from the 1^st Century.  In particular, we are going to spend the next several weeks reading and listening to him write to a congregation of followers of Jesus in the Greek city of Corinth, a letter he wrote during the three years he was in the city of Ephesus (then a Greek city, but located in what is now Turkey), sometime in the period of the year 53-57 … or some 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Basically we will read Paul at his finest as he sends a letter to a congregation the he helped put together but what is now facing internal dispute.  Among other things they are not behaving well as followers of Jesus, and the ill behaviour seems to express itself in the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist.

Unfortunately, we won’t be reading that part of the Letter, but you can at home.  It’s in the chapter just preceding what we heard read this morning in our Second Reading, chapter 11.

Here’s a little taste:

^{I Corinthians 11.17}Now in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. ¹⁸For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it. ¹⁹Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. ²⁰When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord's supper. ²¹For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. ²²What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you?

And the answer Paul of Tarsus, follower of Jesus, starter of congregations, offers is: “No.”

And then Paul writes down the words that are the earliest record of what the followers of Jesus said as they celebrated the Lord’s Supper each time they came together … these are the familiar words you will hear, as you do each week, in the middle of the Eucharist Prayer as we bless the Bread and the Cup.

And then after that, Paul gets pretty harsh and says what can happen if you don’t eat and drink in love with the Christ of love who is present in the Supper himself.

And then begins the section of the Letter that we read this morning.

It is all about living out the reality of faith in a community whose very existence is founded in the Good News about Jesus (the Gospel); it is all about love that recognizes that the center of oneself is not inside oneself but in the external and outside word that comes from the Holy One who tells each person, “You are a child of God, and there is nothing in the world that can change that.”  For Paul of Tarsus, this word came most intimately and most fully in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, in whom he believed, was the fullness of God.

And, Paul believes, if all that is true, that the center of ourselves is not something internal that we can say to our inner hearts, but a word that comes to us that affirms, acknowledges, builds up, sustains, protects, heals, enlightens, inspires, includes, and any other word we might thing of in this light … if the word that comes to us from the Holy One, then we are to do the same for others … and others, by the way, means , by the way, means any others, not just some others, not just a selected group of others … it’s helpful to remember that when we take the Corinthian Letter to ourselves and use it to shore up our faithfulness today … everyone means everyone, all means all, and not just some or a few or the ones we want to love.

The fact that the word of love which came from the Holy One through Jesus was being ignored and trampled upon by some of the Corinthian followers of Jesus was evidence, Paul was writing, of a lot of things … but not the Gospel, not the fullness of Jesus in things like the Bread and the Cup.

Because, look, if you can’t see Jesus in the Bread and the Cup, then how will you see Jesus in the face of your neighbor.  And, if you can’t see Jesus in the face of your neighbor, then how can you see Jesus in the Bread and the Cup.

It’s amazing that sometimes folks can eat the bread, drink the cup, and then attack fellow members of a congregation, or a whole Church!  It’s almost as if nothing happened around the Table just moments before.

This is the kind of thing Paul was addressing half-way through the 1^st Century, and it’s the kind of thing he still addresses (when we bring him into our liturgies by reading his Letters) in the 21^st Century.

So then, Paul writes next, the whole thing hinges on the fact that everyone who is coming together as followers of Jesus, knowing that the external word of the Holy One tells them they are children of God, loved by God in spite of anything and everything, the whole business means that each person comes with a gift. 

And when Paul writes about gifts in Greek (because he wrote his letters in Greek), he uses the same basic word as the Greek word for grace. 

χαρισμάτα  “Gifts” is from χαρισ “Grace”.

And he says in his letter to the Corinthian followers of Jesus, now that he has their attention, There are many gifts, and they are all different, but they all have the same origin, the Spirit … literally, the breath of God. 

It’s an old biblical concept.  God creates the heavens and the earth and breathes upon what God has created, and it comes alive.

Here, says Paul, God speaks to us that we are precious and beloved children and breathes into us a gift … maybe several gifts, but always at least one.

And then he lists what some of those gifts are. 

Now here we must be very careful, because the list is not an exhaustive list, it’s not meant to be the list of the Gifts of the Spirit (as I have often heard this preached, especially by TV evangelists, when I can stand watching more than 2 minutes).  It’s not … “Here are the Gifts of the Spirit according to Paul and if you have one of these, then boy are you holy and all that.” 

No, not at all.  The list is a starting list, an example, a collection of things which are holy χαρισμάτα .

We could add many things to the list, as we take this Letter into our own congregation this morning:

Assisting Minister, Organist, Musicians … those are all χαρισμάτα of the Breath of God.

So is feeding the hungry, and bringing food for the pantry, and helping make food for the homeless shelter …

So is decorating the Common Room and making coffee …

So is serving on the Parish Council …

So is coming to the Annual Meeting and bringing love into the congregation …

So is offering our prayers for the country of Haiti, and its people, and the victims of the Earthquake, and those who were killed, and those who are homeless, and those who have not found out what has happened to their loved ones …

And so is offering our money to our ELCA Disaster Relief for Haiti, because that is what it takes to make relief happen and love occur and healing begin in another country and for other people … who are, Paul would say, if he were penning this letter right now to us from his desk, who are … children of God, loved by God, and therefore our neighbors as well, and more than that, our brothers and our sisters.

If it helps for you to think of someone as your very own brother or your very own sister or your mother or your father or you child … in Haiti … if that is what helps you make your prayers and your offerings, then by all means, take that meaning!

You see what Paul means … the list is a start not an end.  The list describes what happens when people breath in the breath of God, what a congregation looks like.

And Paul does not mean that it ends in the congregation, rather it begins there and spreads throughout the world.

That’s why it was so offensive to hear two remarks, two very public remarks, two very mean and unloving remarks by two media personalities (we shall call them in kindness), who in the midst of the Earthquake and its devastation and its death and destruction, could care less about the Gospel and only remark in the one case, that it all happened because God was punishing the Haitians for pagan beliefs, and in the other remark, that the leaders of our nation were using this disaster for their own publicity and that you shouldn’t give money to support any effort of assistance for Haiti … then later backpedaling to say that what he really meant was to encourage folks to donate through the Red Cross …

Hmmm …

 

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NOTE:

The “Hmmm …” is where the written sermon ends; making this yet another three-quarter sermon in the every growing bin of such.

The sermon ended a bit differently at the two Sunday services in the preaching thereof.  I recall asking the question (following the hateful remarks of this past week by the two media personalities), “What do we do?”

And the answer (a Pauline one I believe) is to love even harder, share the gifts even more, and show by our words and more importantly our actions that the Good News is meant for the healing of the world.

On to next Sunday!

  +Deo Gratia

The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III

Pastor

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