Sermons

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For the Common Good
September 2, 2001
Series on I Corinthians
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

I Corinthians 12: 4-11

My second year of college, I was over in Pullman, Washington, before I converted to Purple and Gold the following year. One Sunday morning during my time in Pullman, I met a friend to go to church. My friend, John, had been brought up in a fairly conservative Catholic home. Somehow, we wandered into a church which met in a school, and was very charismatic. That is, the gifts of the Spirit were readily expressed. I was not uncomfortable with that, having had some experiences of the Spirit the year prior. But this particular congregation was a stretch for me…let alone for my friend John.

The church we went to sang praise songs that went on and on and on…I think some songs for at least 15 minutes. John made it through that. Most people had their hands raised for the entire time. In another part of the service, it seemed like everyone in the entire room was speaking or singing in tongues, all at once. John made it through that, too. Occasionally, someone would shout out a word of prophecy, “This is what the Lord says.”

Now, I could tell that John wasn’t very comfortable at all. He kept kind of glancing at the door. But the clincher was when they pulled out a song called “The Lord Loves You,” and the Worship Leader instructed everyone to find someone they didn’t know and sing the song TO them…while looking deeply into their eyes. I felt a breeze behind me, and I knew John was gone…and I wasn’t far behind.

The manifestation of the Holy Spirit has been a source of tension in the Christian church for as long as we have records. The city of Corinth was no exception, apparently.

As we continue to read the Corinthians’ mail, we hear Paul apparently answering some of the questions which had popped up. “Now concerning spiritual gifts,” he begins.

Last year, a friend of mine (actually a professor from seminary) from the East Coast showed up here for worship one Sunday morning. I didn’t know he was here until after the service. As it turned out, a number of things in the service that morning dealt with God’s gentle presence in the midst of difficult times.

It turns out that this professor was back in the Seattle area to visit his mother, probably for the last time before she passed away. He needed desperately that morning to know that God was with both his mom…and him. And he was stunned that God would meet him in such a timely and powerful way…he felt as though the Holy Spirit had led him right here, for that exact moment.

Who was in control…of that worship setting? Us? Oh, we had planned the service, typed the bulletin…but we didn’t know who would come. What place they would be in life. What the content of people’s prayers would be. That was the Holy Spirit’s work, orchestrating, touching, pointing people to the comfort of Christ. It was, in fact, beyond our control at that point…and ultimately, that’s a very good thing.

Have you every asked yourself…why is it you come here on Sunday morning? Oh, you might say for the circle of people. Or for a particular kind of music. Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian, thought that people step out of the world, out of work, out of struggles, and go to church…to be assured…to find out if this absurd claim might actually be true: “God is present.”

We come because of the possibility that we will encounter something (or Some One) that is bigger than us, out of an expectation that we will be in the presence of something beyond our control…that we will encounter Almighty God, sometimes in ways we don’t control.

We spend most of our waking hours trying to bring things under our control, don’t we? The more we remove the mystery, the spontaneous, the unexpected from life…the safer we feel. And when we carry that over to church, to worship…we end up in a terribly safe place…worshipping a God who looks remarkably like we do…instead of a surprising, life-transforming God who is remarkably present in the Holy Spirit. A God beyond our control.

Paul wants to talk about the Holy Spirit. Or rather, the Corinthians apparently asked him to talk Holy Spirit. There were some specific manifestations of the Holy Spirit amongst the congregation, and some folks weren’t comfortable with them.

Paul lists out some of these: wisdom utterances, words of knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues…and he calls them GIFTS. They are not talents or abilities.

The word Paul uses here for “gifts” is “charismata.” The same word we get “charismatic” from…but further, it’s related to “charis” which means “grace.” There are varieties of “graces.” Grace is a gift… something unmerited that someone chooses to give you. These “gifts” that Paul mentioned are not something that we set out on a goal to accomplish, not something we earn…they are gifts. And they come from the Spirit.

Jesus promised that when he left the earth, he would send the Holy Spirit to be with his people forever. The Spirit, it says in Acts, would bring the power to witness in the name of Christ to the whole world. Here in I Corinthians, Paul gives another role of the Spirit’s power:

Verse 7: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Now, some of these manifestations of the Spirit are frightening to us, because we’re not used to them, and they feel out of our control. Exactly. But notice also the purpose that Paul states for these gifts: “They are for the common good.”

In our worship, it is not unusual for us to have a time when we listen to the Lord, and during that time for one of these gifts to be manifest. Sometimes it is a word of prophecy…not so much a foretelling of the future as much as a “Thus says the Lord…” and something follows for our community…something God would say to us. Almost without exception, when that happens, I hear afterwards that there was a person or people in our congregation here for whom that word was incredibly timely…where they say “that was exactly for me, for where I’m at.” The word wasn’t to glorify the speaker, it was for the common good, to draw all closer to God.

I remember some 10 or 12 years ago when I was a member of this congregation, sitting in worship one morning…right over there (look at the people scatter!). And at an appropriate time in the service, someone began to speak in tongues. When it was done, the worship leader said, “God has given a gift of tongues, and we wait now for the interpretation.” And so I waited, always a little nervous wondering if the interpretation would really come, if we could trust God for that. And God’s little voice in me said, “You stand up and interpret.”

Now, I had actually had some experience with these kinds of gifts…but never interpretation. And so I was able to easily say, “That’s not really God.” We waited. And God said again, “Stand and speak.” And this time I responded and whispered, “God, you know I have never, ever heard you ask me that before, and therefore you couldn’t possibly be asking now!” I was in control. And God said quietly, “You need to stand and speak.” That seesaw went on for a bit, until finally and I confess with great reluctance, having no idea what I would say, I stood and opened my mouth…and God gave me the words, because ultimately, it is God who is in control.

And after the service… a couple of people came to find me. One wanted to say something like… “Sigh. And you seemed like such a normal person…now I have to re-think this whole Holy Spirit thing.” And the other said, “That interpretation…was exactly a word I’ve been dying for.” It was for the common good. . . . That has only happened to me one other time. But I still remember it vividly, and it always reminds me not to limit God. God wants to act.

Paul understands that there was some tension there in Corinth. It seems there might have been some praying in tongues without interpretations, so nobody could understand anything. But notice that Paul doesn’t “the gifts of the spirit are creating some problems, so let’s just scrap them.”

If that was the right strategy, I guess we’d feel free to follow it in other areas as well. “The Bible is creating some tension…so we’ll just throw it out. Every time we bring up the cross of Christ, there are some who are uncomfortable, so we’ll just throw it out.” That would be ludicrous.

I listened to a pastor at a conference last week say “that our church is determined that the charismatic gifts will not cause division.” That was another way of saying they just ignored the whole subject. But what a huge cost…that the surprising God of the Unexpected…would be limited by his own church, that could not trust him for the power, the healing, the wisdom, the word…that came from outside ourselves.

Listen to Paul, and we we will see that he does not stifle the gifts of the Spirit. In fact, he provides a slightly different list in verses 27 and 28…apostles, prophets, teachers, deeds of power, gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. He does not stifle these things that God GIFTS to the church. What he says is that they are to be used for “the common good.”

Now, I want you to notice something else here. In both lists, Paul mentions “speaking in tongues” last. Unfortunately, it seems that perhaps the same thing was going on in Corinth that often goes on today. There were people who were saying that a Christian who spoke in tongues was superior to another…or more precisely, that a person who speaks in tongues is obviously filled with the Holy Spirit and one who doesn’t does not have the Holy Spirit. That seems far from Paul’s truth.

He lists tongues as the last of the gifts. He takes great care to say that ALL the different gifts are critical to there being a healthy body…one is not better than another, as Lynne read in our first reading. Tongues is NOT the only mark of the Holy Spirit’s presence. But it is one type of manifestation. No matter what your experience, you need to perceive the tension here…a healthy tension, I think.

If charismatic gifts like speaking in tongues is part of your experience in Christ, that’s wonderful. God bless you, and may God bless us through you. But please don’t think it is the sole sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence.

And if the gifts of the Spirit have not yet been part of your experience, fine. But please be open to the fact that God indeed uses various gifts of the Spirit for ministry and for the common good. And if God were to prompt you, in that still, small voice sometime…maybe today…with a word, a tongue, a song, a scripture…something for the common good…I hope you will be open to sharing it. To allowing God to do something new in you…and in us. We so desparately need to let go of the reins, and see what God wants to do.

I received a note last week that Manly Wilcox, the father of a friend in Minneapolis, had passed away. Manly was in his 70s, a huge bear of a man, a lineman for the UM Gophers long ago. When I met Manley a few years back, he was in a wheelchair, the victim of a severe stroke. One leg had been amputated, and his speech had been so affected that he could barely string together three or four words without beginning to stutter so badly that he would just quit in sheer frustration. The last time I was there, another friend and I chatted with him for about 15 minutes, with the usual inability on his part to speak without stuttering.

As we got ready to go, we decided to pray. We held hands, and took Manly’s weak hand, and prayed. The other man prayed first, and then I prayed, and started to sort of close off the prayer (we pastors sometimes think we’re the only ones who can close in prayer). But that’s when Manly began to pray. And then slowly, slowly, this beautiful prayer to God began to come out of Manly’s mouth, and then… “God, I thank you that you have given us your grace. Lord, I thank you for my family…” For three or four minutes, Manly prayed in this eloquent, deep voice…not one stammer, not one stutter. Absolutely unexpected, amazing. A thing only God can do. That was a thing that built our faith…that’s a gift of the Spirit as well.

If Paul were to write a letter on this subject of the gifts of the Spirit to most 21st century American churches, or Christians…I don’t think he would write about us being TOO concerned with the gifts of the Spirit. I think he would be far more concerned…that we quench the Spirit…that we limit God far too often, by forgetting that God wants to work, and maybe…just maybe…in ways we wouldn’t expect.

All of the various gifts of the Spirit, Paul says, are badly needed…for the health of the WHOLE community…each part working together. “Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues?” No. Each brings what they have been given. And if you are going to insist on the surest sign of the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, Paul says, “I will show you a still more excellent way.” That sign is a deep and selfless love for others. And we will turn there next week in chapter 13.