Sermons
3. ELEMENTS OF UNITY
A sermon by Pastor Noel Anderson at First Presbyterian Church of Upland
TEXT: EPHESIANS 4: 1-6 CEB
11 Therefore, as a prisoner for the Lord, I encourage you to live as people worthy of the call you received from God. 2 Conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness, and patience. Accept each other with love, 3 and make an effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit with the peace that ties you together. 4 You are one body and one spirit, just as God also called you in one hope. 5 There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all. †
aul, a prisoner IN the Lord (not for or of) calls the early Church to do all it can to maintain unity. He addresses the church members by reminding them that as he himself is bound into the body of Christ, they are also—and inasmuch as they are bound together into the body of Christ, they are bound to one another. So they need to acknowledge their basic connectedness and seek to remain as one. The unity of the Church is God’s clear will. The Church has had trouble with unity from the very beginning because, well, people are people.
The Church has been in division of one form or another since as early as the second or third century, but all the elements that divide us are implicit here in Paul’s letter to the Christians at Ephesus. Paul represents God’s heart in encouraging the church to remain unified.
The word we use to signify the desirable unity of the Church is “ecumenism” from the Greek meaning “one house.” We are anything but. The Church’s most monstrous divisions came first in the Great Schism of the 12th century, wherein the Roman Church divided itself out from all the Orthodox churches. With the Protestant Reformation, dividing and denominationalizing became our DNA.
The problem is: it is not the DNA Jesus planted and not the DNA he wants for us. In John 17, Jesus prays for the unity of the church:
20 “I'm not praying only for them but also for those who believe in me because of their word. 21 I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. 22 I've given them the glory that you gave me so that they can be one just as we are one. 23 I'm in them and you are in me so that they will be made perfectly one. Then the world will know that you sent me and that you have loved them just as you loved me.
There is no way around it; Jesus desires that the church be one. Division is always a move in the wrong direction.
As a student at Jesuit Gonzaga University, I was surprised at how strongly the resident Jesuit Fathers (who were also teachers) valued church unity. They have something that we Protestants don’t always get. When they celebrate the Lord’s Supper, the same words are being used all around the world in every time zone. One worship unifies them. As I worshiped I was impressed by this vision of the table being a single, unbroken meal—one being constantly celebrated somewhere around the planet at any moment—by a worldwide church unified and unifying all humanity through time. While it’s a beautiful vision, my Jesuit teachers also made it pretty clear that they (meaning the Roman Catholic Church) were waiting for their Protestant brothers and sisters to come back home into the one, true fold.
Today, the division is beyond heresy. We have market-driven churches. We shop churches to match our personal preferences and create new ones to scratch the itching ears of a faithphobic culture. You can find a denomination to match your specific personality and personal peccadillos.
We can and must grieve all things that divide us, and whenever we come to the table we do so with some shame over our divided denominationalism. Paul has further recommendations, which are not merely virtues but fruits of the Spirit.
PAUL’S PRESCRIPTION
Paul offers four virtue/fruits that we do well to consider:
Humility
Literally, the Greek word means “lowliness of mind” This doesn’t mean thinking of yourself as something less than your are (which is false humility), but rather refusing to ride a high horse. Christianity undercuts worldly caste systems and class designations. There is no one who is “beneath” us—no one unworthy of our love and positive attention.
Jesus said that those who would be greatest must become the servant—slave, actually—of all. It is this servant orientation and servant heart which is the Christian strength.
Gentleness
Again, we should think of gentleness less as a soft touch and more as doing what is noble. This is an excellent basis for Christian ethics as well. For any difficult situation or moral quandary, it is perhaps less useful to ask “What is right and wrong?” than to ask, “What is the most noble thing I can do in this situation?” What line of action reflects that you and I are in fact sons and daughters of the King of the cosmos?
Gentleness means that we live this life like princes and princesses who remain disguised. The world may not perceive our royal stature, but we know who we are and to whom we belong. We can and ought to live like children of the Heavenly Father, seeking what is noble for ourselves and others.
Patience
Again, the Greek word is literally long-suffering. That means we put up with stuff we may not agree with or dislike—more specifically, we practice love towards people with whom we disagree and with whom we may struggle to find common ground.
We tolerate differences and practice mutual forbearance. We all have a right to our opinions, but we don’t make that a reason to reject other people.
Acceptance (with Love)
To practice acceptance means suspending judgment, which is very difficult. “How can I practice ‘good judgment’ if I suspend judgment?” Within the Body of Christ, wherein we are all bound together in the bonds of peace, we are called to apply to others the same grace of God that we would apply to ourselves. Acceptance means that we not presume the condemnation of anyone. Got that? We are not to expect that anyone in particular is Hell-bound.
When Jesus says “do not judge,” he is not saying that we shouldn’t practice wisdom—good judgment—but that we shouldn’t speculate on God’s own judgment over any individual. Do not judge also means that we never consider anyone unworthy of our love, attention, and service.
THE VISION OF ONE
Paul says we should strive seriously to protect unity of the spirit in the “bond of peace.” This is the way the Church is held together—by the Holy Spirit connecting us to each other as we share Christ’s peace.
The vision—beyond dispute—is that we be one. It is fair to ask what kind of unity is expected and worthy of our striving.
I don’t think institutional unity is necessary. In fact, if we all came back under one company, we would be like a worldwide DMV—an addlepated bureaucracy—only less efficient.
Spiritual unity is required. We are one not based on human efforts and ecumenisms, but we are made one by the work of God. Though differentiated into too many denominations, there is only “one body, one hope, one faith, one Lord, one baptism.”
It is crucial that churches—all churches and all denominations—acknowledge our essential oneness at the table of Christ, with none claiming exclusive access or sole propriety. We rightly come to the table grieving our necessary divisions, and we all ought to downplay the importance of the dividing factors.
This spirit of oneness begins when we accept one another—and all of humanity, God’s creatures—and proclaim the inherent value of others.
An inspiring example of this comes from the most-excellent downtown ministry known as Homeboy Industries. Father Greg Boyle (who happens to be a Gonzaga grad, not that it matters), has built t [ he most successful outreach to gangland members in history.
He has built this all one a single premise: we are all kin. Best you hear it from Fr. Boyle himself:
[Fr. Boyle video]
And here it is: we are all kin. Can you see it? Can you feel the love behind it? We are to think of every person—no matter how different from ourselves—as relatives. Brothers and sisters—kin.
From here, it is only natural that we should be fair with them. Patient, humble gentle, accepting—all the signs of agapé love.
May our witness—yours and mine—so grow in this kind of love that everyone and anyone would feel their essential belonging with us and among us, to the glory of our one Father, who is all in all—over all, in all, through all—and may our witness of oneness become the compelling factor that draws the wayward home to the love and peace of Jesus. †
2. FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT
TEXT: GALATIANS 5: 16-25 CEB
16 I say be guided by the Spirit and you won't carry out your selfish desires. 17 A person's selfish desires are set against the Spirit, and the Spirit is set against one's selfish desires. They are opposed to each other, so you shouldn't do whatever you want to do. 18 But if you are being led by the Spirit, you aren't under the Law. 19 The actions that are produced by selfish motives are obvious, since they include sexual immorality, moral corruption, doing whatever feels good, 20 idolatry, drug use and casting spells, hate, fighting, obsession, losing your temper, competitive opposition, conflict, selfishness, group rivalry, 21 jealousy, drunkenness, partying, and other things like that. I warn you as I have already warned you, that those who do these kinds of things won't inherit God's kingdom. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against things like this. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified self with its passions and its desires.
25 If we live by the Spirit, let's follow the Spirit. †
s we continue our series on The Virtues, we today hear Paul telling us that right actions do not come from well-intentioned attempts to fulfill the Law, but flow from those who “live by the Spirit.” Paul says that those who are guided by the Spirit “won’t carry out selfish desires.”
The Greek word is “flesh.” the problem with this is that when we hear “flesh” with tend to think it’s about sex, lust, or pleasure. Rightly understood, flesh means materialism—the common pursuits of being invested primarily in this world as opposed to the kingdom of God.
The Spirit and the flesh are opposed to one another, which means they are mutually-exclusive systems. The switch from life in the flesh to life in the Spirit is a total transformation, like going from PC to Mac, or gasoline to an all-electric car. It is a new diet with new foods and life runs differently under the influence of the Spirit than it does under the Law.
Life in the flesh is essentially self-centered or self-absorbed. It is the natural, normal life—the American pursuit of happiness—taking care of business, looking out for number one, minding your own business and picking up the perks. It is the life of security and material accomplishments. It is wealth, health, and well-being. While glimmers of virtue arise in the midst of this kind of lifestyle, it is essentially about taking and its top practitioners are predominantly takers.
By contrast, life in the Spirit is God-centered rather than self-centered. The self is not one’s chief concern, but rather the glory of God stands as the highest value in reality. Our citizenship is secured not in this world but in the kingdom of God. As we serve The Lord and the ends of his kingdom, we prove that we our lives are qualitatively different. Therefore we become givers, because the Spirit leads us to live beyond fear, anxiety, and the loves of this world. Loving God’s world and all God’s creatures becomes our nature, so we do the things that constitute “right action.” That is life in the Spirit, and it is more interested in right actions than sinful ones.
e do better to focus on Virtue rather than sin.Sin is all too easy and essentially unimaginative. The list that Paul names—idolatry, sorcery, addiction, enmity, trouble-making, strife, hatred, fighting, rage, obsessions, jealousy, addictions, perversions, fighting—all are part of the natural world and human character. These things simply flow out of life lived in and for the flesh.
The problem with a sin-focused morality is that it makes us morally self-absorbed. There is a false kind of piety comprised by avoiding sins. If I don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t cuss, don’t sleep around, etc., then I am a good or holy person. We can’t define virtue based upon what a person does not do. Virtues—what Paul calls “fruits of the Spirit”—are positive things done to glorify God and to reveal his nature and kingdom. When we live by the Spirit instead of the flesh, we bear fruit, and that is the purpose of Christian life.
9 SPIRITUAL FRUITS
As we seek to focus on the virtues rather than the vices, I invite you to consider these nine fruits named by Paul in our text. How are they present or absent in your life, heart, and character? How differently would our lives look if we reflected more of them rather than looking normal—like the rest of the world?
- 1.LOVE (AGAPÉ)
Love says it all. It is the beginning and the end of all virtue. You can rightly say that all virtues are found in love, and you’d be right, but let’s understand it if we can. The Greek word is agapé which means self-sacrificial giving. Sorry if you were looking for the love of sixties hippiedom, or the drippy sentimentalism of country music, or the hormonal circus of adolescent eros—sorry, but agapé is none of these. This love is costly love, and understanding it rightly demands that the word sacrifice accompany it. All true giving is a kind of loving, as we love, we certainly become givers in many ways.
2. JOY
Joy is not the same thing as happiness. Happiness is something like success—particularly, the successful attainment or accomplishment of what you want out of life. You have what you desired to take. Happiness is self-gratifying, but Joy is not.
Joy only comes as the result of an inner life secured in the power and providence of God. Those who live by the Spirit know Joy whether they are rich or poor, healthy or sick, flourishing or under oppression. The greatest Christians that ever lived are those who were packed into crowded cells beneath tho Coliseum, held prisoner until they would be thrown to lions, or lit on fire as they hung from crosses. Where was their pursuit of happiness? Forget happiness, but they had Joy—Joy in miraculous abundance—because as they awaited their gruesome deaths, they rejoiced and sang with joyful hearts, counting themselves lucky to suffer for the name of Jesus. If you can’t understand this—if you can’t fathom what on earth they were thinking—then you’re probably living life in the flesh, not the Spirit.
- 1.PEACE
When we talk about peace we’re talking about more than the absence of war or conflict. Peace is not an absence, but a presence.
Most of modern life is driven by the fight-or-flight instinct. We are driven by the odd amalgamation of our aggressions, fears, and anxieties. Think about it: fear and anxiety are the two things above all else which characterize natural life and a good deal of what we call civilization. The drive to succeed, to avoid pain, and to maximize contentment all constitute life in the flesh.
Even Christian evangelism can come off anxious and fearsome. We Christians have dangled others over the pits of hell in fear, or we have demanded immediate decisions to follow Jesus. This, too, is only a product of fear and anxiety. How much better would our outreach be if we gave them instead the one thing this world cannot give them—the one thing for which every soul longs and which cannot be taken but only received by grace—peace.
When we pass the peace on communion Sundays, we are not exchanging anxieties, but instead channeling the peace of Christ to one another. That too is what we give the world when we live by the Spirit instead of the flesh. God has given us his peace; we should make this our our first and last communication to those outside of faith. Peace.
- 1.PATIENCE
The Greek word for patience is literally long-suffering. This is a good definition. To be long-suffering is to be willing to put up with things we don’t like for the good of others. We “suffer” others for their own sake and not for our own.
The patient Christian does not use or exploit others. We are more likely to be exploited and to gladly endure our exploitation.
Put simply, do you know what an Energy Vampire is? How about an Emotional Vampire? People in our daily orbit who can suck the life out of us telling us their troubles, problems, or interests. Yes, we should all be long-suffering with them. Maybe they just need to be heard—so why can’t you and I be their ears? Patience means enduring the inconvenience of another for that other’s sake. This also is love.
I am an impatient driver. I’m not proud of that; in fact, I truly long to be one of those drivers who is always unflappable and holds all things in higher perspective. I tell myself, “Noel, getting annoyed or angry will not change the way others drive, nor will it speed up traffic.” I’m still working on it, but as I deal with my own impatience I become aware that we are living in the most impatient civilization that has ever existed on the planet. That’s us, right now, in the United States—we are the most impatient people that have ever rushed their way around the surface of this planet. Learning patience is part of learning love; I’m sure we all have lots yet to learn.
- 1.KINDNESS
Kindness, I think, is all about attitude. Our attitude matters. If you’ve ever been greeted by a “frenemy” you know what I mean. They acted kind—shook your hand and smiled—but something in their eyes or greeting let you know as plain as can be that they are bad-mouthing you behind your back.
No, real kindness comes from the heart. It means we have a certain generosity toward others. They’re only human and like you and me make mistakes.
Kindness means first acknowledging that God loves that person more than you can imagine anyone loving anyone. You and I either stand with God in loving that person or against God by our grudges and/or general enmity.
We all should be more like Mister Rogers, who likes everyone “just as you are.” Kindness is a disposition toward positive regard. We feel it when we are living in the Spirit. We labor for it when we live in the flesh.
- 1.GOODNESS
First of all, is anyone here named “Agatha”? No? Good. I think Agatha is an ugly-sounding word, sorry. It is the Greek word that we translate to the non-descriptive and unfortunate “goodness.” Goodness describes a quality of character that is simply good. Goodness is what life in the Spirit should make Christians seem like to the world.
Our world doesn’t really believe in goodness anymore, only relative goodness. This is a shame, because goodness is real and good whether it is acknowledged or not. The world says, “There is no absolute good, but only the contrast between good and less-than-good.” They say our “good” is just a projection of our own needs and preferences. We “project” goodness onto something we choose to value. Our community is one that shares an idea of good, that’ all. Codswallop! I say.
We believe in good—absolute good. To say we only know good by its contrast to bad is faulty. You and I don’t have to eat apples with worms in them in order to know that eating an apple without worms is good. An apple without worms is good in and of itself, not because of its contrast with wormy apples.
This applies to all the Earth and every human being. When God created, he said, “It is good!” That means the Earth has absolute value. It is good because God says so. So is every human being.
A big part of learning to love is recognizing all that is from God and all he calls good. When we see the good in all things, we know we are living in the Spirit. Our challenge is to dwell there as well.
- 1.FAITHFULNESS
Faithfulness is more than loyalty or belief; it is becoming completely God-trusting. When we trust God for all things, we become unanxious, unworrying, unflappable, patient, and devout.
I think of the dozens of people whom I have known at the end of their lives who, looking through the threshold of death, have nothing but smiles and peace. These people don’t look at death as the end of being or the end of the universe, but simply as the doorway to their true home. No platitudes, no fakery—they really know with peace in their heart that Jesus is ready to welcome them home. They trust him in their death as they did in their lives. This is life in the Spirit: being able to trust God in every circumstance, no matter what.
- 1.GENTLENESS
When you hear the word gentleness, you might think of something like a soft touch. I tend to think of commercials with white teddy bears perched on puffy clouds hugging rolls of soft toilet paper. That’s not what gentle means.
Gentleness, rightly understood, is something like nobility, or that which ennobles. The English word gentle literally means something like royal and noble. Shakespeare more than once speaks of “gentling one’s condition” which means going from very base and lowly being to higher, more noble being. It is something like refinement, something like royalty, and something like high excellence.
Our nature has been “gentled” by Christ who makes us as his own adopted siblings—heirs to the promises and kingdom of God! We are royals and ought to live like it, not like cockney gits living in the slum gutters. Our souls have been ennobled by God, and we can reflect that same quality to others as we see them ennobled and adopted into the family of God.
- 1.SELF-CONTROL
Martial art practitioners have a gesture that speaks well to self-control. It is the fist of one hand covered over by the other hand. The suggestion is “this is my power and it is under control.” Or, “I could beat you within an inch of your life, but I choose not to.”
This is the basis of all mercy—that power is often best expressed by those who will not wield it coercively.
Self-control means more than avoiding that last cookie on the kitchen counter, more than steeling yourself against temptation—it is about becoming the master of your flesh with its drives and desires.
Mastery of our appetites is an expression of power; giving in to every impulse is what it means to be a slave to sin. Life in the flesh is slavery to sin. Life in the Spirit is what enables Christians to feel and act above their fleshly nature.
This is why many Christians fast. Fasting is a reminder of the role our appetites and drives play in our life, and an exercise in mastery over them.
Self-control is far easier for one whose life has been given away to Jesus Christ than to one whose hands are still on the steering wheel of every earthly concern. As we give ourselves away to Christ and to each other, self-mastery becomes more than easy; it becomes our true nature, pattern, habit, and joy.
e do well to consider all these fruits of the Spirit even as we seek to become the trees that bear them. But here’s the final trick: you and I cannot by our own effort produce a single fruit. We cannot will one into existence by intensely desiring to do so. We can imitate the actions of life in the Spirit, but without the actual Holy Spirit working through us, it is just hypocrisy, play-acting. Fruit is borne by the work of the Spirit in us and through us, not by our own accomplishment (that is the lesson we learned from the Law). So how do we become effectively fruit-bearing Christians? Should we instigate new programming to siphon our selfishness out and bolster our fruit-like behaviors? I don’t think so; I don’t think this works with adults. What we need to do is much simpler. We need to become empty vessels that the Spirit can fill.
As our baptism is a dying to self—selfhood, self-absorption, self-centeredness—and rising to serve The Lord, so we need daily to remember our baptism and the reality that we are not our own. Your life, my life, do not belong to you and me for we have been bought with a price.
It is only in giving ourselves away daily to God that we can be channels of God’s Spirit and thereby fruit-bearers. We don’t have to do anything other than surrender to the Lord as often and as completely as possible. It is only by our utter surrender that we present the Lord with an empty vessel that can then contain his Spirit. This should not only be our daily prayer but our longing.
And it is, for when we live by the Spirit, we are not only bearing fruit, but we are being fed from the Tree of Life. When we are self-empty/Spirit-filled, we relish a feast of spiritual fruit that feeds us to the core of our souls: joy, peace, love, patience, kindness, mercy, warmth, music, praise, beauty, etc. And all these satisfy us, fulfill us, and become for us that new fuel—that new system—by which we live for others to great and eternal glory of God.
God is our security, our peace, our hope and mercy. When we live in the Spirit, we come to feel like Heaven is close indeed. So close, we may wonder, “Are we already there?”
Well, are we? †
1. SURRENDER
“
TEXT: ROMANS 12: 1-8 CEB
Today is Mothers’ Day. I attended seminary somewhere on the cusp between first and second wave feminism when women would walk out of chapel services if others persisted in referring to the God of Scripture with male pronouns. Some insisted that God be referred to as he/she, or at least that we refer to God from time to time as Mother.
I refused, not because I’m a male and using male pronouns for God can reinforce patriarchal privilege which I—as a male—benefit, but rather because I take the whole “Father/Son” thing as part and parcel of God’s self-revelation. God was Father/Son/Holy Spirit infinitely before there was a cosmos, Earth, animals, genders, or human beings.
Still, I uphold that Scripture sometimes proclaims that God is like a loving mother as a simile. Jesus, in both Matthew and Luke’s gospels, mourns over Jerusalem, saying he would to gather them like a mother hen gathers her chicks beneath her wings. This image is especially appropriate today.
I have recently read of cases wherein barnyard fires, once burnt out, have revealed mother hens on the ground, dead but covering chicks who survive. This is a perfect image for our text, where Paul says we are to “present our bodies as living sacrifices.” This is a perfect image of divine, agapé love--perfectly manifest in a mother’s love for her children. Yes, God is certainly like this!
Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, says Paul in our text. I need to talk about a few Greek words to demonstrate how things come together in today’s text. The first word is chara, which I’ve also seen as a woman’s name. Chara means joy. Charis means grace and it might be the most important word in the New Testament. It means that unexpected gift of love and mercy which comes to the undeserving. Charism means gift and charismata gifts plural. See the common thread? Grace is a gift that bestows gifts by which we find joy at the core.
These words also suggest another word: charisma. I think we wrongly use the word charisma to describe individuals of enormous personal charm. People with charisma are often thought to be the Pied Pipers and elegant orators who exercise tremendous influence over the crowds. The problem with this definition is that it also includes those narcissistic salesmen and politicians—everything from revolutionaries like Che Guevara to Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man.
Scriptural charisma is not like that. In the Old Testament, charisma was embodied by the prophets whose main function was to steer Israel back into obedience to the Law. Charisma meant honoring the Lord and condemning evil, manifested in chosen individuals like Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and Hosea, etc. But in the New Testament, charisma is transformed from chosen individuals to a chosen community, the Church. The gifts of grace are given to the Church in order that righteous actions would flourish.
The gifts of grace exist for the purposes of righteousness—justice, if you like—and they are the substance of Christian obedience. We are no longer called to adhere to the terms of the Mosaic Covenant—the Ten Commandments, etc.—but to obey by practicing the gifts given by the Holy Spirit. God’s grace has saved us, but that does not exempt us from doing what is right. Grace is not a substitute for right action, but its basis.
We don’t so much obey the Law as we do the Spirit by means of the gifts. These spiritual gifts are our specific form of obedience—the discipline of faith. We are a charismatic community because of these gifts. To practice our gift is to renounce self in service to the Lord, and thus to present ourselves as living sacrifices. How do Christians obey the Lord? By exercising our gifts.
Seven Gifts of Grace
Verses 6 and 7 constitute what has been classically called, “The Seven Gifts of Grace.” Let’s look at all seven and consider how they are present in our own lives.
1. PROPHECY
First, prophecy is not about fortune telling or predicting the future. It may come to that but that is not its basic nature. The basic nature of prophecy is Word-bearing. A prophet is one who bears the word of God to the people. It is truth-telling, particularly when it involves the truth about who God is and who we are in relationship to God. The gift of prophecy today occurs whenever you or I bear the good news about Jesus with family or friends. Prophecy is preaching, but it is also truth-telling done with love.
2. SERVICE
Service comes from the word from which we get “deacon.” In short, it is volunteerism. For all the ring-leaders and front-line visionaries in the Church, the real credit goes to those who simply show up and get the work done. Those who pitch in, step up, roll up their sleeves and serve are the ones who give real traction to our mission.
3. TEACHING
Teaching should be obvious, but I’d like to add a distinction. Teaching means training. This is more than just words into one ear and out the other; it is training that prepares people for action. Imagine someone teaching a group of people to be firefighters—exactly how much can be done in the classroom compared to getting outside, gearing up, and truly training how to fight fires? Our teaching is in vain if it doesn’t lead to concrete actions that make a difference.
4. ENCOURAGING
This comes from the word paraclete, which is another word for the Holy Spirit. It includes both comfort and advocacy for others. If you’ve ever received a thoughtful note or card just at the right time, you’ve been on the receiving end of this gift. Likewise, if you’ve ever had someone stick up for you when you’ve been wronged, insulted, or oppressed, you’ve experienced advocacy. The Holy Spirit is certainly active and present in such acts of encouragement and advocacy.
5. GIVING
Mary Catherine Prather was the grand-daughter of the man who donated all the land for Texas Tech. She had lots of money, but she knew what to do with it. Mary Catherine Prather was famous in Lubbock, Texas for her incredible generosity. “Money’s like manure; it ain’t worth a thing unless you spread it around,” she said. She would have cringed if you asked her to lead a group in prayer or teach a Sunday School class, but she stepped up for every mission, every building project, and every local outreach her church attempted. To give freely is a gift indeed, and those who have it are the camels who sail through the eye of the needle. All who give sacrificially are the same.
6. LEADERSHIP
The word for leadership suggests those who put forth goals and focus the work of themselves and others on getting there. Leadership is focused work and includes the ability to cast vision and draw others along for the journey.
7. MERCY
Last but not least is mercy. We can think of this as pastoral care for the sick, the sad, the poor, the naked, the imprisoned, and the lonesome. We communicate the mercies of God whenever we show love and mercy to someone who is down on their luck.
So now consider where you are with these gifts of grace. God has redeemed you and the Holy Spirit has given you gifts—what do you think they are?
Now as soon as you have an idea, I’m going to mess with it, because I think churches have erred in their attempts to classify people by their spiritual gifts. “Here, take this survey and we’ll put you in our database so we’ll know to call you if we need your gift! and so forth.
The chief problem with identifying “our” spiritual gifts is that it is so limiting. “What? Help in the nursery? Well, you see, it’s not my spiritual gift to do that, so.…” To say you have “a” gift seems a patent way of denying your Christian responsibilities in all the other areas. We need to see these gifts much more broadly and accept them as more mysterious than whatever ways we might like to put them to our use.
While we may have our strong suit, so to speak, what about those gifts that we do not feel we have in much measure? Can we simply dismiss them as “not ours”? I think not for several reasons. First, the Holy Spirit is wild and not tame, which means you might be given any gift at any moment as needed. The area you feel is not your gifting may become your gift if put in the right context.
Imagine we broke up the congregation into groups of 7. Do you really think it’s guaranteed that you would have the same strengths and weaknesses in every group? What happens to you if you are put into a group with five others who have “your” spiritual gift in much greater measure? Likely, you’d develop other gifts and that’s what we all ought to be doing anyway.
I would say: what is not my gift is my discipline. What does not come naturally to me yet is needed by the church is the gifting I develop, so if it is not my native gift, it becomes my discipline.
Our natural strengths and weaknesses are probably all over the spectrum. God empowers us with gifts—even different, unexpected gifts—as we are put onto the front line of mission and we obediently step up. Prophecy may not be your chief gift, but put into a situation where bearing the Word will make a life-and-death difference, I believe you’ll be given that gift.
THE TWO MOUNTAINS
David Brooks is a cultural commenator and Op-ed writer whose pieces are syndicated internationally. The New Yorker magazine recently reports that he has been having significant spiritual development of late. Following a divorce and something of a dark night of the soul, he reported to friends that he was experiencing “religious curiosity.” Though raised Jewish, his Jewish faith declined through adulthood. When a friend challenged him on the notion of God’s grace, some bells went off for him:
“You cannot earn your way into a state of grace—this denies grace’s power, and subverts its very definition.” The article continues:
An informal competition opened for David Brooks’s soul. He received, by his own estimation, three hundred gifts of spiritual books, “only one hundred of which were different copies of C. S. Lewis’s‘Mere Christianity.’ ”
[ ALL QUOTES: “David Brooks’ Conversion Story” Benjamin Wallace-Wells The New Yorker, April 29, 2019]
One morning, passing through Penn Station at rush hour, Brooks was overcome by the feeling that he was moving in a sea of souls—not the hair and legs and sneakers but the moral part. “It was like suddenly everything was illuminated, and I became aware of an infinite depth on each of these thousands of people.
“Suddenly it seemed like the most vivid part of reality was this: Souls waking up in the morning. Souls riding the train to work. Souls yearning for goodness. Souls wounded by earlier traumas. With that came a feeling that I was connected by radio waves to all of them—some underlying soul of which we were all a piece.”
Brooks’ book, The Two Mountains, presents a principle that may appeal to us all. Says Brooks:
“It’s gotten so I can recognize first- and second-mountain people,” he writes confidently. Those on their first mountain of life tend to focus on themselves: on establishing an identity, on managing their reputation, on status and reward. The second mountain is normally reached only after a period of suffering (“the valley”), and those who make it there come to focus on others. “The second mountain is about shedding the ego and losing the self,” about contribution rather than acquisition, egalitarianism rather than elitism, Brooks writes. The satisfaction of second-mountain people is deeper (it is a “bigger mountain”) and leads not to happiness but to joy.”
This idea of two mountains seems to sum up the Christian life very well. Some people never have a second mountain; they spend their entire lives in service to the acquisition of wealth, influence, and reputation and may never come to the realization that these things are all in and of themselves vanity.
A few special people start their second mountains early, giving themselves to lives of mission and service. The idea is that the “pursuit of happiness” may lead to little more than glorified self-gratification, whereas the second mountain can become our soul’s true home and a source of endless joy and fulfillment.
So how is your second mountain coming? That second mountain is all about your gifting and the exercise of your spiritual gifts are how you and I climb it. Grace saves us and it changes us. To be in a state of grace means that our sins are forgiven but it doesn’t mean that right action is not expected of us. That right action is not about a self-absorbed piety—you and me putting all of our energy into trying to make ourselves holy—but rather about exercising our gifts with risky, costly love. Together we constitute the Church, which is a community of charisma. We are a “Charisma Collective” and we are to encourage, upbuild, prepare, plan, and execute mission that will communicate the good news of Jesus Christ to our neighborhood and world.
The picture is this: that God’s grace is given through gifts that we would build 2nd mountains and know deep joy.
May we all be grown in our areas of giftedness, ever mindful that the Holy Spirit can at any moment supply us with power beyond our imaginings, and may we seek to develop all our gifts with diligence as we daily die to ourselves in service to our Lord and his kingdom! †