Grace, Gifts, and God

Grace, Gifts, and God

I Corinthians 12:4-11

So, at whiplash speed, we’ve jumped all the way forward to Paul, this morning.  You remember him—intense, smart as a whip, used to be the head of the “in” crowd, now he’s the head of the “out” crowd.  The man has suffered for his faith, from the moment God knocked him down on the road to Damascus and turned his life around to proving himself to anyone and everyone to spending plenty of time in jail.  Undoubtedly, he could tell tale after tale about how bad things had been and how poorly he’d been treated.  And yet, what he wants to talk most about are grace and gifts and God, not grievances.

Paul will tell those who want to listen all about how things used to work.  He will tell you that the law—God’s rules, or at least the temple’s rules—used to dominate his life.  He was in the business of showing people what it would take to get right with God, to be righteous before all: “Do X; Don’t do Y.”  If you had a question, He had answers.  His answers were supposed to change how you lived.  And being the answer guy meant that without flinching, he would stand in front of you and point to himself as the embodiment of lived faith.  Life was a battle against ourselves, struggling to live up to God’s calling, fighting our impulses and desires.  Faith was about following the rules.

Interestingly, a lot of Christians in history seem to be stuck back in the law.  Life is all about sin and brokenness.  Life is all about confession and and shame.  God is the one who reluctantly hands out absolution, who maybe will forgive us this one more time but don’t ever let this happen again.  You either feel anxiety and fear when you come to church or my job as a pastor is to make you feel those things.  Ask yourself…does that sound like a loving God? 

Here’s the thing, though.  Sin and brokenness and forgiveness and absolution and righteousness are the tired old ways of the worst of faith.  We make you feel bad so that we can make you feel better… “Ta-Dah!”  We sell you something so that you might have a shot at being loved:  “You’re this close!”  We make you dependent on a priest or a pastor or a rabbi because only the holiest people have sway with God.  So, if you want someone to make your choices for you, if you don’t want to bear the burden of being responsible, there will always be a priest or a pastor or a rabbi who will run your life for you.

If you want a specific example of this, I would point to my experience as a child growing up.   Every time I went to church, the first thing that popped up in the service after the call to worship and the prayer of invocation was the prayer of confession.  In my church, this was a unison prayer.  Everyone together would affirm how bad we were and the wrongs we had done, (although we were Presbyterians so we don’t go into details!)  Then and only then would my father pronounce the assurance of pardon. This was what happened every Sunday.  This was the top priority.

Maybe you grew up in a tradition where you went to confession by yourself—just you and the priest.  Growing up in a Catholic town, I would hear from my friends about what they would and would not confess.  I heard them compare notes on what they shared and on the penance that they received.  The penance assigned was always discussed to see who the priest liked more.

Honestly, the fact is that we are broken.  That’s not news!  We fall short of who we could be all the time.  We do things we shouldn’t have done and we fail to do things that we should have done.  We know we could be better so sometimes we try to hide who we are.  What a giant waste of our energy! What a waste of life.  There are better things to do with our lives than wallowing in regret and remorse and hiding who we are.  The question, though, has never been whether God can know us and love us, anyway.  God always has.  The question is whether God’s love and grace could help us actually learn to love the self who we really are.  Can I be broken and know it?  Can I be a total piece of work and still believe that I have worth? Can I make God’s unconditional love the foundation of my life?  Can I get over myself and get on with living?

Paul did some really terrible things and he did them in really public places.  For Paul, the least interesting thing—the old, old news—is that he is capable of being a real jerk.  No, the news, the Good News that is at the heart of our text this morning, is this:  when I can finally let go of thinking that this life is about me and what everyone else thinks about me, when I can finally let go of thinking that if I just try harder then I will finally get control of things, when I can finally let go of thinking that my job is to make myself so good and so holy that God will have no choice left but to love me, then I will finally be able to discover a livable faith.

The foundation of that faith will be the living, breathing experience of a loving God who already loves us.  Think of it this way.  When you were a baby, did your parents wait for you to contribute enough to the family that you finally earned their love?  Of course not!  You were their beloved child.  The instant they held you, they loved you.  Of course, your parents were broken, too.  They were not God. Their love was unconditional but that doesn’t mean it was uncomplicated.  This is true of even the best parents.  However, the God whom Paul discovered and to whom he points is a God who loves…period…full stop.

So, every time you see that sign that threatens you with hell “unless”…question that sign!  Every time you hear someone tell you that God will love you, if you attend church, if you give at this giving level, if you refrain from doing this list of things and you “religiously” do this other list of things, question that person.  Don’t hate them.  Don’t attack them.  Look at them and realize that they are God’s children, too.  However, have the courage to share with them that the judging, withholding God that they are selling is not the God whom you know.  Let them know that there are better things to do than spending your life just thinking about yourself.  Let them know that once you realize that God already loves you then it becomes okay to face the challenges and embrace the joys of trying to live a loving, faithful life.

In the fantastic translation of our text that we read this morning which is from “The Message,” Paul paints the picture not of a God who is stingy and withholding but of a God who is unconditionally loving and who lovingly and lavishly showers us with gifts.  God’s gifts can be found everywhere.  You definitely don’t have to go to a church or a temple to get them.  God’s gifts can be seen at work in the lives of all sorts of people.  God’s gifts are the fuel for wildly different ministries.  The most important thing to know is that wherever you see those gifts, whoever is living them, whatever the ministry might be, the source of those gifts is God.  Sometimes, the church can be threatened by people who are different.  Sometimes, people can be uncomfortable when they see different gifts than their own.  Sometimes, one ministry can think it’s better than another or can just be competitive with anyone who walks onto their turf.  In contrast, what Paul is saying to us is that God loves variety.  How can people and churches and ministries be so different?  It’s not because we’re right and they’re wrong.  It’s because God made us this way.  As our text says, “The variety is wonderful!”

Not only does God love variety but God loves each variant.  Everyone is in.  No one is excluded.  Everyone benefits when we accept each other and when we see that each person has been given different gifts. When you see God’s loving presence shining through the shared gifts of the people around you, you realize that there’s nothing we cannot do.  It’s not because we’re that great.  It’s not because we were all in the “talented and gifted” program back in school.  No…as our text says, “Each person is given something to do that shows who God is.” When we become aware that we are loved and that there is way in which God can shine through us, then we know that we are here to share what we’ve been given. Maybe we develop the gifts we’ve been given.  However, we never “own” those gifts.  God gives them to us and says, “Do something good with them!” Being a loving person who freely shared those gifts is pretty much the only way we’ll ever find to thank the God who freely gave us those gifts in the first place.

Let’s put the matter simply.  We have been given the gift of life.  We are loved unconditionally.  We don’t live in a “dog-eat-dog” world of scarcity.  We leave in a world of abundance, as long as we share, as long as we honor those who live differently and think differently and love differently.  If variety isn’t a threat but is in fact evidence of the presence of God, then we can finally make the shift from, “How am I going to get what I deserve…” to “How can I help?”  When we’re here to help, we end up living in a world where we keep getting surprised by God’s presence and God’s gifts popping up in the most surprising places and shared by the most surprising people.

We go to the Social Security office with dread and run headlong into someone who is so helpful.  Their gift is compassion.  Thank God!

We run into a friend who asks how we are and, for once, we actually answer the question honestly and say, “Not that good.” And when we take that risk, our friend offers some real wisdom.  Their gift is wise counsel.  Thank God!

We put up the P.A.D.S. sign up list and almost before the list is even posted, people are signing up in a flurry.  Sure, you can cook and we all love that!  However, you take that gift and lovingly feed our homeless neighbors some amazing food.  Thank God!

We look to create leaders in the church and some people actually say, “Yes!”  One of them finds their way to the “Building and Landscape” committee because they know how to fix things.  Another of them makes their way to the finance committee because they’re comfortable with numbers and think it might be interesting to run a few numbers for the church.  Another person answers the call not to be on a committee or a board but to take on the challenge of teaching a bunch of kids what it means to try to live our faith.  The gifts are so varied but God comes to life when they are freely and gratefully shared.

As we consider our life together as the Union Church of Lake Bluff, just know, I’ve always felt blessed to be here and so blessed to have such a gifted and generous group of human beings.  We have everything we need to rise to meet the challenges we face.  Watch carefully and you will discover the presence of God in the variety of gifts shared and in the variety of the people who do the sharing.