Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12.
“Now concerning spiritual gifts…” Paul writes at the beginning of chapter 12 of 1Corinthians, and then basically he says, “We’ve got to talk.” He goes on to develop at some length the metaphor of the body of Christ, suggesting that the people of the Corinthian church belonged to each other the way the parts of the body belong to the whole, and that they needed each other the way different parts of the body need each other. Apparently the Corinthians had some issues. We don’t know exactly what they were, but apparently they had some issues concerning spiritual gifts. It may be that we do too.
A while ago the worship committee had a retreat. We put aside the ongoing work to be done and spent a full evening talking about the worship life of our community, to some degree how we function as a committee and therefore how worship gets planned, but also what worship is at Sojourners and what we hope for it to be and how we are experiencing worship…those kinds of concerns.
Now I have to say that this was a typical Sojourners gathering in the sense that there were at least as many points of view being expressed as there were people present…and if you allow for some people changing their minds or having divided feelings about some things, you could say there were more points of view than there were people present. And mostly it was not our purpose that night to arrive at consensus, so I am not going to present the conclusions of the discussion or summarize what was said. In what I have to say this morning, I am of course speaking for myself, not for the committee. But what I have to say does arise significantly out of that discussion, as well as other thoughts I’ve been having.
We were talking about diversity that evening, the diversity that is present in the Sojourners community, but not so much the diversity of race, or age, or sexual orientation, or marital status, but the diversity of religious feeling and belief and the diversity of how we want or need to express our various spiritualities in worship. As I say I don’t want to presume to speak for the committee but I think it is fair to say that many or most, or maybe all of us are feeling that it is a challenge to plan worship for a group of people like us. It may be that we are less comfortable and less sure of ourselves with regard to our spiritual diversity than we are with regard to other kinds of diversity that are present among us. So concerning our spiritual gifts, like Paul, like the Corinthians, we probably do need to talk.
First just a few words on how I understand spiritual gifts, not because there is any one right definition, mine or anyone else’s, but so that we have a better chance of understanding each other on these issues. In my understanding spiritual gifts have to do with who we are, not what we are good at, not some talent, skill, or interest we possess, but who we are. Let me use prayer as a “for instance”.
The spiritual gift of prayer is not the contribution of someone who is really, really good at praying. A person doesn’t have the spiritual gift of prayer because she can really string some beautiful words together and put them in the form of a prayer. A person doesn’t have the spiritual gift of prayer because he can pray at some length on a moment’s notice. A person does not have the gift of prayer because she is particularly vocal about the importance of prayer or has a well-developed theory or theology of prayer. A person has the gift of prayer when praying is an integral part of who that person is. It is not something we can grab hold of and put out for use or display. It is just who we are.
And this is true whether a person is someone of very deep and sincere piety for whom prayer is as natural and as easy and as necessary as breathing, or whether prayer for someone else is an issue, and a struggle, but a struggle that is important to that person, where the struggle with prayer occupies some significant space in a person’s soul.
For one person prayer is a serene expression and a way of life, woven into the very fabric of his being, an offering of the heart to a God who is very real and always present. For another person prayer is filled with questions: why do we pray? Are prayers heard? Are prayers answered? What kind of answers should I look for? Are some prayers better than others? What makes a prayer good? Can I pray for my friend to get well without praying for everyone to get well? And so on. For such a person as this prayer will always be self-conscious and difficult.
But both of these people—the one for whom prayer is natural and the one for whom it is not—both of these people have a spiritual gift, whatever name we may choose to give it, there is a spiritual gift here, because prayer is embedded in who both of these people are. If prayer does not even appear on the screen for someone—they don’t do it, think about it, struggle with it, ask questions about it, nothing—then we can say that this is not part of that person’s spiritual giftedness, though of course something else is. But if prayer, whether it comes easy or only with difficulty, if prayer is part of the very being of a person, not just an incidental or accidental part of a person, then we can truly speak of a spiritual gift.
It is true that prayer that is whole-hearted and pure and flowing and unencumbered by questions is a gift. But it is also true that prayer that comes in the midst of questions and God-doubts and self-doubts, prayer that comes in the midst of and in spite of struggles of the soul, that this is also a gift. And it is even true that the questions themselves and the struggles and the doubts can be the gift.
But we often don’t look at it that way, do we. We often have trouble seeing the gift in both places, and seeing it as equal. The person struggling with prayer may look at the person whose prayer life appears to be simple and serene, and feel envy. I wish I could be like that. I wish I could somehow get from over here, where I’m stuck, to over there, where I’d like to be. I would love to just be able to pour out my heart to God, but there’s all this stuff inside my head, and I don’t understand why God doesn’t fix things up without my having to pray about it, and I wish I knew what your secret is, why your prayer life seems so uncomplicated. Or, someone standing in that place may feel a kind of disdain, or resentment, or criticism of people whose faith seems calm and peaceful. How can you sit over there and be so unquestioning and so sure of yourself and of God, and so untroubled by the world’s troubles and God’s lack of intervention? Have you literally lost your mind, that you don’t ask any questions? How naïve and how superficial can you get?
On the other hand, the person occupying the other position may look at someone going through all sorts of mental or spiritual gymnastics and maybe feel just slightly deficient for having a faith that is so simple, or maybe feel slightly superior for having a faith that is so simple. Or from that position they may view a person struggling with prayer or with faith with a kind of condescending attitude: I need to be patient and understanding, because I remember when I was in that spot and now I’m so much farther along on my journey, and someday those folks over there who are having such a hard time, will be farther along on theirs. They just haven’t traveled very far yet. In one way or another, wherever we stand, we tend to see ourselves either in a superior or inferior position, either we being relatively more gifted or the other person being relatively more gifted than we are.
I am sure this is the kind of issue that Paul was dealing with in the Corinthian church. Again, I don’t know the specifics. Corinthians may have been very different from Sojourners. But the fundamental issue is the same. Can we see the spiritual gifts in one another, and honor those gifts in one another without being jealous, envious, judgmental, or condescending? Honestly, I don’t think it’s such an easy task, even though none of us would set out to be either jealous or judgmental. None of us wants to be those things, but it is not necessarily so easy to avoid it either.
We are a diverse people. In fact one way I have of thinking about all this is to recognize that I am a diverse person. There is a part of me that is skeptical, questioning, doubtful (doubt-filled), always unwilling to simply accept another person’s belief, or the church’s inherited belief system, as my own, always resisting letting my own beliefs be too firmly set, suspicious of anyone’s beliefs, my own or anyone’s beliefs that are too firmly set or too tightly held.
There is also a part of me that needs to believe, and that does believe, and that holds some things dearer than life itself. There is a part of me that receives expressions of faith from others not with skepticism but with gratitude, a part of me that allows the faith of others to lay hold of my heart. There is a part of me that is faithful (faith-filled), that is trusting of God, that trusts my life to God, that knows deep down inside that everything will be o.k. no matter what, because of God’s presence.
Both of those parts of me are real, both parts, not just one, and I need both of those parts of myself. It is not that there are these two sides of myself but that I wish there weren’t, that one of those sides of me is unwelcome or embarrassing. The challenge for me is not to see if I can suppress or get rid of one side of me, get rid of my doubts and questions because they make my faith less pure, or get rid of the faith-affirming side because it’s embarrassing to my self-image and I don’t want to be grouped with those evangelicals and true believers over there who seem so blasted sure of themselves. My challenge is not to abandon either side of myself, but rather to embrace somehow both sides of myself at the same time, even if they do not live comfortably with each other.
So it is with the church. Our challenge is not to suppress, deny, or get rid of some part of ourselves but to try to find ways to embrace those different parts of ourselves, the different spiritual gifts that are present here. We are a wonderfully diverse community, spiritually as well as in many other wonderful ways. And if we see spiritual gifts as embedded in who we are as people, then clearly every one of us brings spiritual gifts into the community. And they all need to be honored, and they all belong to each other the way the parts of a body belong to the whole, and they all—we all—need each other the way the parts of a body need each other.
I’m going to do something concretely in a few minutes that is intended to be in this spirit, and I want to say a few words about it, to make sure everyone knows it is intended in this spirit. I am going to lead the Lord’s Prayer, beginning with the words “Our Father…” I need to take a deep breath as I say this because I sympathize with the reasons the Lord’s Prayer has not been said with these words at Sojourners. I believe our language needs to be inclusive. I believe our images of God should not be exclusively masculine, and because they have been exclusively masculine for so long we need to be exceedingly sparing in our use of masculine images to make as much room as possible for other images. As I said earlier, I am rebellious enough to challenge just about any part of Christian tradition that I feel I am expected to receive unquestioningly or unthinkingly. There are those parts of me.
But there are also other parts of me. The Lord’s Prayer with the traditional wording has been not just a formal part of worship but a meaningful and sometimes intimate part of my experience in other Christian congregations. I have said it with feeling in worship with people I cared about. I have shared the Lord’s Prayer in its traditional wording at the bedside of people who were dying. Not to say the Lord’s Prayer, with the traditional words, feels to me like cutting off a part of myself, and I think of not recognizing similar feelings in many others here, for whom the “Our Father” is not just a comforting part of Christian tradition but a connection to Christians in other times and places and a recognition of being part of the body of Christ in a larger sense than just here at Sojourners.
I say I am going to lead the Lord’s Prayer that way. Of course that doesn’t mean you are going to say it that way. It should go without saying, but it should also be said out loud, that saying the Lord’s Prayer and substituting different words, or not saying it at all is an option that can be taken free of judgments one way or the other.
Of course how we are going to say the Lord’s Prayer is just one relatively small decision we have to make about worship. As with many seemingly small decisions, it may turn out that it may be small in one sense but large in another sense, in the sense that there is a lot to think about and a lot at stake in making the decision.
But of course the larger question is not just how we deal with the Lord’s Prayer. The larger questions are those asked in the hymn we are about to sing, which is why I chose it for today. How do we creatures say awe or praise or grace or thanks? How do we variously gifted people of God cry woe or save? How do we members of the body of Christ here at Sojourners, as different as we are, somehow say together in a symphony of voices…love, or peace, or joy?
Today I leave us just with the questions, but we know that sometimes merely asking the questions can be at least part of the answer. Next week I will have more to say, about how we not only respect our various spiritual gifts and allow space for them but also how we engage one another at this level. In the meantime, may God keep us open…open to the different parts of ourselves we may need to embrace, open to the differing gifts among us, open to the gifts coming to us from the hands and heart of God. And may God give us bread for our continuing journeys of faith. Amen.
Jim Bundy
May 7, 2000