Spiritual Gifts and the Gift of Community

Good morning friends.  For those of you who do not know me, my name is the Rev. Kristen Yates, and I am the Associate Pastor here for spiritual formation and congregational care, and it is my joy as always to be able to share the Word of God with you.  

So, a few weeks ago, Fr. William told the story of the first time he encountered someone using a Bluetooth headset with his phone.  The person said “hi”, and when William enthusiastically answered “hi” back, the man scowled at him and said, he was not talking to William.  It turns out that he was talking to someone else on his phone.  He was right in front of William, face to face, yet he was not with William.  He was somewhere else.  In his own private world.  

 And I have had similar experiences.  Over the years, there have been numerous times when I have tried to start a conversation with someone and have become perplexed when those people did not respond.  What was going on?  Well, it turns out that they could not hear me because they had their earbuds in and were listening to music.  They were there besides me but not with me.  

 And of course, all of us know the experience of being with people and instead of engaging with each other, we are all looking down at our smartphones.  We are next to each other but not with each other.  We are in our own private worlds.  

 Now, while I think that most of us would agree that modern technologies have brought us some good, there is no doubt that in many cases, they have also kept us isolated us from one another.   

 And technology is only part of our problem.  Increasing American individualism and the quest for greater autonomy, authenticity, and emotional safety has meant that we increasingly live in our own private, well-managed worlds, even when it comes to issues of faith and our participation in faith communities.

 We may pursue spirituality and even go to church, but we are often not really with each other.  We are in our own private worlds.  In the western world, we have increasingly made faith all about us, and as a result, our spiritual growth and relational connections in the family of Christ have become stunted, and our witness to the world has become compromised.  

 So, while we may be a culture that continues to be dazzled by our iPhones, it is increasingly clear that our culture is not dazzled by our i-faith.  Such individualistic faith cannot lead us to become who we really are as followers of Jesus – that is people who exist to be in relationship with each other, to build up one another in the Body, and to live for the sake of the world.  Yet, this is our calling.  Can we live into it? 

 Well, friends, would you pray with me.

 Dear heavenly Father, we thank you for your Church – a community of fellow believers that you have called to join in your mission of reconciling the world to yourself and to each other, a community of love that exists to build up and support one another and to extend your love to the entire world.  The church is messy, we know, as we are all in different stages of our journey with Christ, healing from our various wounds and struggling with our own sins and growth into spiritual maturity.  The church, however, is also a gift.  Help us, dear Lord, to see this wonderful truth and empower us to play our part in making the church a gift to one other and indeed to the entire world.  Amen.  

 So today, after a couple-week break, we continue our journey through the Book of 1 Corinthians, and today we find ourselves in chapter 14, a chapter where the apostle Paul addressed the misuse of spiritual gifts within the context of corporate worship.  And while Paul spent a good deal of time focusing specifically on the gifts of speaking in tongues and prophesy, cautioning about the former and encouraging the latter, we have to understand what Paul’s main thrust in this chapter was all about, and I believe we can do that by first noticing Paul’s first two words of this section.  Paul wrote, “Pursue love”.  

At the heart of this passage on corporate worship and spiritual gifts was Paul’s call to love one another.  You see, we in the western church are not the first people to pursue a faith that is “all about me”.  Long before modern western individualism, followers of Jesus in the Corinthian church fell into the trap of focusing more on themselves and their personal experiences in worship rather than focusing on being a blessing to others in their community.

Prideful of the spiritual gifts and enamored by their spiritual experiences, many Corinthians turned corporate worship into a chaotic collection of individual expression that in many ways resembled the worship experience of other cult religions happening at the time.  Just as worshippers were being carried off into all kinds of ecstatic states, trances, and varying kinds of speech in these various cult religions, so now too were the Corinthian Christians.  

So not only were the Corinthians’ worship gatherings beginning to look more and more like some version of cult religion, but these gatherings were also failing to accomplish one of their central purposes and that was building up fellow believers in the faith.  The Corinthians were misusing their gifts in order to show off or to have some good “me and Jesus time” rather than employing their gifts for the sake of others.  

And that is why Paul called them out for speaking in tongues in this passage.  It was not that he was against believers speaking in tongues.  In fact, he said he wanted all of the Corinthians to speak in tongues and that he, himself, spoke in tongues more than any of them.  Speaking in tongues was not a problem, however, the way the Corinthians were employing this gift in the context of corporate worship was a problem.  

You see, on occasion, the gift of tongues is meant for the sake of others, for example when a person is able to hear the Gospel preached in their own native tongue or when someone is able to interpret a prophetic message spoken in heavenly tongues that is for the benefit of all those present.  When tongues are employed in these ways, they are clearly appropriate for corporate worship.

However, in many situations, the gift of tongues is simply for the benefit of the one speaking in that tongue.  It is a private love language between God and believers that deepens their intimacy with God.  It is a beautiful gift, and thus in his letter to the Corinthians, Paul encouraged the community to desire it.   

However, in this particular situation, Paul also called the Corinthians out, for what did not make sense in the context of the Corinthian church was when people were having their own “me and Jesus’ time in corporate worship, spending large amounts of time in a prayer language that no one else understood.  Such a use of this gift in this way created a collection of individuals doing their own thing rather than a family that was with each other and for each other.  Unfortunately, however, this was what the Corinthian worship gathering was becoming.

And that is why Paul instead encouraged the gift of prophesy in corporate worship.  For prophesy is a gift that benefits everyone in the congregation.  Prophesy, which is not necessarily a word about the future (although occasionally might be), is a word of wisdom, insight, and teaching in line with the Scriptures, which comforts, admonishes, convicts, guides, or provides revelation for everyone gathered in worship.  

Prophesy is not a word spoken willy-nilly as one simply feels “moved by the spirit”, but is a word that comes through careful listening to the Holy Spirit and prayerful meditation.  Those who have the gift of prophesy cultivate this gift over time, and when they prophesy, others test this prophesy. In fact, Paul said in today’s portion of his letter that the words of prophets were to be weighed by others, to be tested by other prophets.  In this way, so-called self-proclaimed prophets were prevented from pronouncing their own personal agendas and inspirations on others, and instead, the congregation got to hear a word that was edifying to all.  Thus, Paul encouraged the Corinthians to pursue prophesy in their corporate worship. Prophesy was a gift that created a togetherness among the people – a sense that the Corinthians were all in this together – rather than just being there for their own spiritual satisfaction.

And in the same way, friends, we are to also have a sense that we are all in this together when it comes to our weekly worship.  Just as Sundays were not about the Corinthians own individual spiritual satisfaction, they are not about our own spiritual satisfaction.  Sundays are about something more, and so I would like to spend some time this morning talking a bit about this because as I mentioned earlier today, we in the American church have a tendency to make it “all about us”.  While we may not have the same struggles as the Corinthians about the use of gifts in corporate worship (although some more charismatic churches potentially could), we have our own struggles.  

And one of those struggles that many of us American Christians deal with week by week is whether we even should attend corporate worship on any given Sunday.  Now, in saying this I am not addressing those whose callings or health situations legitimately prevent them from coming on Sunday from time to time, but I am talking about those of us who are able to come, but may choose not to.  For the reality is that we are a busy, tired people who have other interests that compete for our time on Sunday, and it is easy for us to pursue other ways to have “me-and-Jesus time.”  

I’ll give you an example from my life.  Before I was a pastor, there were large stretches of times when I as an introvert and busy person, felt that I could have better “me and Jesus” time on a Sunday morning if I stayed home and had a quiet time with the Lord.  In fact, I felt that the people in church were just a distraction to my deeper pursuit of God.    This, however, I have come to realize over time, was faulty thinking.  It was privatized faith.  

For if I truly wanted to grow in love and become more like Jesus, I needed to do that in the context of the whole body of believers.  Sure, at home, I had a nice peaceful and restful time with the Lord, but at church, I was convicted and guided as I heard the Scriptures read and preached.  And even more importantly, at church, I was stretched to grow in patience and love and the other Fruit of the Spirit as I interacted with people I loved to be with and people I frankly did not really love to be with.

Over the years I came to see how much I missed out when I skipped Sunday worship more often than not. For I saw how I failed to build real community with my church family because I could not really be known or come to know others, and thus I could not really open myself up to be loved or to truly love others in that community when I only saw them once or twice a month.

And friends, I know that in this day and age when there is no cultural pressure to participate in church at all that it can be challenging to make Sunday morning worship a regular priority and commitment, but I encourage you to consider Paul’s words to “pursue love”  and to consider how your participation – the act of you simply being here -  is actually a gift that strengthens, encourages, and builds up the church and helps us all grow into spiritual maturity.  It really does make a difference even if we do not see the impact immediately.  

That said, even if we do participate regularly in Sunday morning worship, that does not guarantee that we’ll be free of our individualized ways of thinking.  Just as the Corinthians gathered together, but were not really with or for one another, we can find ourselves in the same situation.  So, we might ask ourselves.  What are the modern-day equivalents of the Corinthians misusing their gift of speaking in tongues in corporate worship? 

Well, I think it is not too difficult to come up with several examples.  For example, any time we use our leading, preaching, singing, prayers, or leading of worship music as a means to prop up ourselves rather than to draw people to the Lord and build up community, we are acting like the Corinthians.  Whenever we insist on our preferred music or prayer style or liturgy without considering the desires of others and what might actually be best for leading people into deeper worship, spiritual growth, and community, we are acting like the Corinthians.  Whenever we come to church on Sundays and get our spiritual fix but spend little to no time interacting with our brothers and sisters that morning or throughout the weeks – especially the people who we don’t particularly like, we are acting like the Corinthians.   Whenever we notice the new ones among us on Sunday mornings and do not welcome them into our community, we are acting like the Corinthians. And whenever we approach Sunday worship simply for what we can “get out it” or how we can be entertained rather than how we can bless our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, we are acting like the Corinthians.  

Now, for some of us, parts of this message today may seem a bit harsh.  Actually, I would be surprised if any of us did not find at least one aspect of this sermon to rub us in the wrong way for you see, friends, our imaginations as Americans are deeply steeped in an individualistic, therapeutic, consumeristic mindset, and as such for decades, many of us in the church have approached Sunday worship as consumers, rather than as participants and family members.  These have simply been the waters we have swum in for as long as we can remember.  This is what we know.

That said, it is now time for us to move beyond this kind of thinking and to develop a new imagination. For gathering for Sunday worship is not about simply having “me and Jesus” time.  It is not about getting all my needs met and having a spiritual high or finding peace. Rather, it is about a family gathering to worship God together and to bless one another.  It is about a family planting seed of relationships on Sunday morning which can be nurtured throughout the rest of our weeks.  It is about members of that family receiving, nurturing, and sharing spiritual gifts with one another.  

Ultimately, gathering for Sunday worship is about growing in love – love for God, love for each other in the Body of Christ, and love for the world, and not love in some abstract way but love that looks something like Jesus’ love.  Is sacrificial, servant-oriented, committed, and long-suffering.  Is like what Paul said just previously in Chapter 13 about love:  is kind, does not boast, is not arrogant or rude, does not insist on its own way, and so forth and so on.  Love is the goal of our life together as Christians and thus it is also the goal of our corporate worship together.  

And that includes the exercise of our spiritual gifts, whether in the context of corporate worship or in other settings.  Now, at this time, I do want to say just a bit more about the role of spiritual gifts in the life of the Christian community.  I do think it is important for you to know that we as Anglicans and as local church community believe that the spiritual gifts are available to us today.  They have not ceased in our time, and we do believe that God calls us to be open to the host of spiritual gifts mentioned throughout the Scriptures.

At the same time, we do not highlight any one of the gifts as being better than the other gifts.  Nor do we expect that we will all be given the same gifts.  As such, none of us are to either feel pride nor shame for the gifts we have received or not received.  Rather, we are to be open to what God would give us and then to be humble and thankful, nurturing and sharing these gifts with one another in order to love God and love one other.

As Paul reminded the Corinthians in Chapter 13, the spiritual gifts will eventually cease, but love will remain forever, so love is our aim when it comes to the exercise of our spiritual gifts and our time in corporate worship together.  

So, Mission Cincinnati, as we draw this sermon to a close today, let us remember Paul’s call to pursue love, starting in the context of corporate worship with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and then flowing out into every aspect of our lives.  Let us not pursue privatized faith, whether in the comfort of our own homes or on in the context of corporate worship, but let us work to truly be with and for each other in the Body of Christ.  In doing so, we can become the gifts that we were always meant to be for each other and for the entire world.  This, my friends, is the kind of church that most truly reflects Jesus and is the kind of church that makes the world take notice.  In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.