Sermon: Gifts

          There's an interesting tradition in Japan, among other countries, with regard to housewarming gifts.  The gift is less about what's inside, and more about how it appears when you wrap it.  It doesn't have to be expensive, but it does need to be thought out.  A gift from your home country or city is much better than an expensive gift from a shop around the corner.  One month after you receive a housewarming gift from someone, you must send a gift of approximately half the value of the original gift, and again, how the gift is wrapped is quite important.  There is a whole list of gift giving etiquette surrounding gifting in Japan.

          It's not uncommon for people to collect housewarming gifts and return gifts in the closet, in order to ensure you're always prepared.  So today, I'd like to talk about those gifts we set in the closet – only these were given to us by God at our baptism.  Paul's letter to the Corinthians is pretty clear:

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to 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. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

          Now keep in mind, Paul lists gifts of the Spirit in both this letter to the Corinthians, and his letter to the Romans – which some of you may be studying with The Good Book Club during Epiphany.  And there's also a list in 1 Peter.  There are similarities and differences in the lists, but what's important is that these are examples – not the totality of the gifts you may receive.  You may get one gift, or more, depending on your capacity and what the Holy Spirit thinks you can handle.  And let me tell you – we vastly underestimate what we think we can handle.  God knows much better than each of us just what we are capable of.  And sometimes, He sends a push.

          God will give us the ability, and the desire to use it. Many Christians seem to sit on that desire, or put it on the closet shelf. Steve Goodier shares the story of a piano player. He played in bars and he was pretty good at it. People came out just to hear him play. But one night, a customer told him he didn't want to hear him just play the piano anymore. He wanted him to sing a song. The piano player said, "I don't sing." But the customer was persistent. He told the bartender, "I'm tired of listening to the piano. I want that guy to sing!" The bartender shouted across the room, "If you want to get paid, sing a song. The customers are asking you to sing!" So he sang a song. A piano player who had never sung in public did so for the very first time. And nobody had ever heard the song, "Mona Lisa" sung the way it was sung that night by Nat King Cole! He had a talent he was sitting on. He might have lived the rest of his life as a no-name piano player in a no-name bar. But because he HAD to sing, he went on to become one of the best-known entertainers in America.  Was it the Holy Spirit that prompted the customer to demand he sing?  I'd have to believe so, because music is a language all its own, and the gift of tongues given to Nat King Cole, son of a Baptist minister and member of the famous Harlem Abyssinian Baptist Church, spoke to many people.

          Developing the gifts we have is a good way to honor God's belief in us.  We probably all know people who are wise or knowledgeable, but it doesn't seem like those are particularly spiritual gifts.  We may merely foster and develop talents as we pursue our interests.  What makes these talents and gifts, different from simply learned faculties?  The answer is in the New Testament lesson:  "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good."  What makes them activated by the Spirit is when we are inspired to use them for the common good.

          Now the other aspect of spiritual gifts that I want to mention today has to do with the whole concept of spiritual gifts being "supernatural" in some fashion.  As Episcopalians, we're not big on supernatural, despite the fact that our beliefs are about God, who begat a child with a human through the Holy Spirit, and that His Son died for the sins of the entire world, and came back to life.  Can we get any more spiritual and supernatural than that?  No – but we need to not discount that spiritual gifts and understanding exist.  We need to be prepared to use the gifts that God gives us for the common good, and to encourage others to use their own gifts.

          The fastest growing section of the population have marked on surveys that they are spiritual but not religious.  Many of our religions are rejecting the concept of the supernatural, while at the same time, we recognize that not only did Christ perform miracles – the first of which we learned about in today's Gospel – but he instructed every single one of us who is baptized in His name, through Mark Chapter 16:

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

          Again, He's not giving an exhaustive list, but He is telling us to use the gifts the Holy Spirit gives us – don't set them in a metaphorical closet to be ignored.  We are each given gifts to our own capacity, and each of those gifts are equally important in the common good of the Church.

          A young schoolboy was trying out for a part in the school play. His mother knew that he had set his heart on it, though she was afraid he would not be chosen. On the day the parts were awarded, she drove to school to pick him up. The young lad rushed up to her, eyes shining with pride and excitement. Then he said some words to her that should remain a lesson to us all: “I have been chosen to clap and cheer.” In the same way, God has lovingly chosen each of us for different and special tasks.

          So this week, think about your own gifts.  Think about the minister who once worked with two men who had opposite attitudes toward their gifts: the one man constantly insisted that he was unable to believe he had a gift, and would not use them, and the other man constantly boasted about gifts that he did not possess. Actually, both of them were guilty of pride, because both of them refused to acknowledge God’s grace and let Him have the glory. Moses made a similar mistake when God called him in Exodus.  Individual believers in a church should know their gifts, accept them by faith, and use them for God’s glory. 

          If you need help in determining what your gifts might be, let me know.  I have a fairly easy test you can take for some of the spiritual gifts.  It might give you a direction to go in, and see what you want to accomplish this year in developing and using those gifts from God.  Let's clear out our closets.