FOR THE COMMON GOOD

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

            “You have such a gift!”  Have you ever had anyone say those words to you?  Have you ever told someone that they had a gift?  We have been blessed with some talented musicians who have offered to God and to this congregation their gift of music.  Have you ever said to any of our regular or guest musicians, “You have such a gift”?  Sometimes when we say that to someone, there is a hint of envy in our voice.  “You have such a gift!” we tell someone while at the same time we are thinking, “I wish I could do what you do.”  “I love the way you play the piano,” we say.  “I wish I could play that well,” we hear our inner voice say.  “I like the way you raise your children.”  “I wish I had raised my kids that way.”  What we are saying to ourselves is that other people have a gift, but we don’t.  Not one that counts, anyway.

            Well, to hear the apostle Paul tell it, everyone in the church has a gift.  Everyone has a spiritual gift.  Everyone has a gift that has been given by God.  Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, says that everyone in the Corinthian Church has a gift.  Not just certain people.  Everyone.  Everyone in First Presbyterian Church of Lancaster, Texas has a gift.  Everyone.  Not just people who have gone to seminary and been ordained by a presbytery.  Not just people who have been elected by their congregations as elders and deacons.  Not just people who can play beautiful music on a very complicated pipe organ.  Everyone has a gift from God.  Not just people who are very smart.  Not just people who are very wise.  Not just courageous people.  Not just creative people.  Everyone has a gift from God.  Not just people with whole bodies.  Not just people who can see.  Not just people with hearing.  Everyone.  Everyone in the church has a gift.  Everyone has a gift that is God-given.  God doesn’t give spiritual gifts to some people in the church.  Paul is right.  Everyone in the church has a spiritual gift, a gift from God.

            What’s more, everyone in the church has one gift that is the same.  To be a member of the church of Jesus Christ, each person had to confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  The impulse to make that confession does not come from ourselves.  The desire to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and to call him Lord is not of our own making.  We wouldn’t have such a desire if God hadn’t first put it in our hearts to confess Jesus Christ as Lord.  Remember.  Remember when you were younger.  Perhaps you were brought to worship and to Sunday school.  You held the hymnal in your little hands and sang the hymns.  Remember the hymns you were learning back then.  I remember singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy!  Lord God Almighty!”  Remember where you sat in church.  Remember where you sat in Sunday school.  Remember vacation Bible school and your confirmation class.  Somewhere in all of this, the faith of your father and mother was becoming your own faith.  You wanted to become a disciple of Jesus Christ.  You wanted to confess him as Lord, and allow him to reign in your life.  That urge grew strong, and one day you acted on it.  You stood before the congregation and declared that Jesus Christ was your Lord and Savior and that you wanted to be his disciple.  Where did that urge come from?  Not from yourself.  Not from your parents or the pastor or the congregation.  God gave you the gift of faith, and you wanted to act on it.  This is the gift we all have in common.  God has given to all of us the gift to declare Jesus Christ as Lord.

            Still, there are other gifts the Spirit has given to people within the church.  Truth be told, we tend to rank these gifts as to their degree of importance.  When it comes to our spiritual gifts, some gifts are more important than others, aren’t they?  Some gifts in the church are indispensable, while others are non-essential, right?  Look:  When a U. S. Embassy is being evacuated because of danger to its occupants due to war or natural disaster, all “non-essential” employees are frequently ordered to leave.  You wonder who those people might be.  Probably the ambassador would qualify as “essential.”  Who else?  Would some support staff be considered “essential”?  I wonder.  Are “non-essential” employees those who deliver the mail?  Are they the ones who clean the offices?  What about the caregivers in the day care center?  Are those “non-essential” employees?  If in government there are people who are considered “non-essential” employees, what about in the church?  Surely, there are “non-essential” gifts in the church, aren’t there?

            No!  No gift in the church is “non-essential.”  Consider where they come from.  All gifts come from the same Spirit.  All of the gifts that are given to the church come from the same Lord.  The whole range of gifts comes from the same God.  If God has provided all of these gifts for the church, they must all be needed.  Some people have the gift of preaching.  Others have the gift of singing or playing music for worship.  Those sound like “essential” gifts.  But if that is all the church had, the church couldn’t do its ministry.  The church also needs to provide for the nurture and education of its members; that takes people with the gift of teaching.  The church also needs people to provide for the stewardship of the people and to manage the church’s money; that takes people with the gift of stewardship development and the gift of management.  Still this isn’t enough.  The church needs people who have a passion for the care of the buildings and grounds; that takes people with the gift of organizing beauty.  It takes people with the ability to diagnose and fix things that are broken, or to hire those who can.  But that still isn’t enough.  The church needs people to welcome visitors so that they will want to return.  So the church needs people who have a loving heart, one open to welcome strangers and make them feel right at home.  But that’s still not enough.  When we’re all so busy, the church needs people to notice that someone is missing from worship.  The church needs people who find it important to contact the missing and find out what is happening in their lives.  The church needs people who are comfortable calling on the phone, sending a card, or visiting the sick and those who mourn.  So the church needs people with this kind of a loving heart.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’d want to belong to a church that didn’t have all of these gifts.  Each one of these gifts is “essential.”  A church might have the greatest preacher; but if the people are unfriendly, who’d want to worship there?  A church might have the most beautiful building and grounds; but if no one noticed that I was absent for a long time, I might feel unloved by that congregation.  All of our gifts are “essential.”  They were all given by the same Lord.  Therefore, there are no “non-essential” gifts in the church.

            Of course, you have your gift and I have mine for a purpose.  Our gifts are not given to us for the purpose of providing us with an elevated status.  Since we did not endow ourselves with our gifts, having them is not something we should boast about.  What, then, is the purpose of our gifts?  It is the same Paul taught the Christians in Corinth:  for the common good.  You have your gift to be used in the church for the common good.  I have my gift to be used in the church for the common good.  Our gifts are not endowed for the purpose of competing with others in some kind of bragging contest.  No.  God has given us our gifts to equip us to serve in and through the church.  You have your gift and I have mine because they complete each other.  Imagine a symphony orchestra.  As you look on the stage you see the strings:  first violins, second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses.  You see the brass section:  trumpets, trombones, horns, and a tuba.  You notice the wind instruments:  flute, piccolo, oboe, bassoon, and clarinets.  Behind all of these are the instruments from the percussion section:  snare drum, bass drum, triangle, xylophone, chimes, cymbals, and timpani.  Now, for certain pieces, you can do without some of these instruments.  But imagine Tchaikovsky’s Overture 1812 being played without all of the players.  Take out any of the colors of that work and it wouldn’t be the same.  A single missing cymbal crash would impoverish the piece.  In the same way, the church would be impoverished without the gift you bring.  Once I told one of my elders that I liked working with her.  I affirmed that she offered strengths where I had weaknesses.  She also could see those things I didn’t see.  We were like two pieces of a puzzle that, when put together, made a more complete picture.  That’s why you have your gift and I have mine.  When we put all of our gifts together, we have all that we need to do the work of the church.  Take away any of those gifts, and we wouldn’t have enough.  But God has seen to it that our church has all of the gifts needed to do the work of the church.  God has provided us with all we need for the common good.