When the family of Daddy B and Polly Jacks gather for Christmas, there is pandemonium and predictability. Pandemonium, because we now gather 60-strong, pushing through tight kitchens and crowding tables and every nook and cranny, before converging around the “big Christmas tree” for a token sharing of gifts. It’s pandemonium, because gift-giving is always a little “pandemonious,” (I know that’s not a word, but it’s kind of fin to say!). And it’s predictable because for at least 22 Christmases now, Amy’s brother, Rutledge, has perched himself under the tree, as possessor and provider of all the pretty parcels. And, for at least 22 years now, Christmas has begun in this way:

            “OK. Here we go. Let’s see what we’ve got… (Children’s anxious eyes bulging. Ears listening for their name.) ‘To Rut…” (Coincidence that his gift came up first – 22 years in a row!) ‘To Rut…’ (Rut smiles. Pleased with himself. Adults chuckle. Humoring him, again. The kids don’t get it quite yet.) ‘To Rut…’ (Eyes roll. Kids, catching on now, groan and growl.) ‘To Rut…’”

            How dare he claim his gift, first, in front of God and everyone!

            But maybe Rut is onto something. Maybe there is more true Christmas praise in his good-natured selfishness than meets the eye. For there are varieties of gifts… varieties of services… varieties of activities… but it is the same Spirit, the same Lord, the same God who energizes them all. And… To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

In the introduction to this letter to the progressive and well-educated church at Corinth, Paul affirms the giftedness of that community – for in every way you have been enriched… so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift… (1 Corinthians 1.4-5). Not everyone had every gift, you understand, but such is the value of community. For in community, what is mine is yours, and the gifts I lack, someone among us is sure to have.

In community, the government is the Common Good. The economy is Uncommon Grace.

So Paul affirms his church: you have been blessed. But apparently there was an issue among these people, for Paul seems to be responding to them at the point of today’s text, “now… concerning spiritual gifts. Many scholars think the issue was a presumed superiority, by some, of the gift of speaking in tongues, and a corresponding competition for who was the most spiritual. Whatever the issue, Paul’s address to the Corinthians still bears repeating.

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good (vs.7). I had to work on this text for several days before the import of this sentence spoke to me.  My dictionary tells me that our word “manifestation” is Latin in origin, and meant literally, to be “caught in the act.”

Paul’s church had already been “caught in the act.” That they had received their gifts was evident to Paul in the myriad ways could see God already using them. In the same way, your giftedness (yes, you, too, have been given every gift) – your giftedness is not a giftedness you need to receive so much as it is a giftedness you need to acknowledge and celebrate.

This is the good word this day. It is a word that desperately needs to be heard by a world destroying itself for lack of confidence, with low self-esteem, in fear and timidity. In his commentary, Paul Sampley says,

With so many modern Christians having low self-esteem, we might do well to pay special attention to Paul’s insistence in 12.15-17 that all the members are equally important to the well-being of the body of Christ. No one is less important. No one brings less to the body of Christ.[1]

God has given you a gift, a gift that only you have. And God is already using that giftedness. Your life is a part of the fabric of this beautiful and diverse world. And God, the great Weaver, is always at work, intertwining the thread of your voice, your hands, your mind, your silent attendance into the fabric of common goodness, as past becomes a present (for someone – a gift!), and as that present gives way to a future, which is always waiting to reveal even more of God’s uncommon grace.

            God teaches us this lesson in the life of Jesus, who made clear the uncommon grace of God through the common actions of a simple Galilean peasant.

He feeds, washes, weeps, celebrates, and enjoys the good wine at Cana! He listens, because he wants to learn. He is silent. He travels and teaches. He works… He grows. He visits the home of Simon Peter – and there enjoys being served a good meal. He eats and rests. He craves quiet, prays, and sleeps. He feels pain. He touches, touches even sin. He heals, he suffers, and he dies.[2]

            In his common life, Jesus taught us that even common gifts are channels for the expression of uncommon grace – when they are shared in community. And this is Paul’s point. There is a criterion for judging the spiritual person, but that criterion does not create a hierarchy, which corresponds to some quantity of God’s favor. The judgment is only “yes” or “no.” The criterion is only: Is the gift used for the common good?

Does the use of your time create community, or destroy it? Do you use your money to enhance the common good, or does your checkbook reflect a self-indulgent isolation? Does your chosen vocation foster relationships among people, or is it only a cog in the capitalist machine? Whether you have the gift of leadership or the gift of following, whether the gift of administration or the gift of gentleness, whether the gift of encouragement or the gift of patience, it matters not. But John Locke once noted that there are but two laws in all of the universe: Gravity, and the Golden Rule. And the expressions of your life, your giftedness, can lead in only two directions – drawing yourself, or someone else, down, in a gravity of gifts gone bad, or in your particular manifestation of the Spirit, your life can become an uncommon gift of grace, creating, building, enhancing community.

Michael Downey says, “there is in us a longing to be like God” (he affirms that this is as it should be), and he claims that the longing is resolved in this way:

Through the mystery of Incarnation, (which is) the language of God’s constant giving, the presence of the divine is to be found precisely amidst our feeding, washing, weeping, celebrating, listening, silence, traveling, teaching, working, growing, visiting, enjoying a good meal, resting, feeling pain, brokenness, and vulnerability, and healing. Precisely there, among us always.[3]

Let me suggest one clarification, for those tempted to misunderstand the “spiritual life.” Look at the list of gifts, which Paul compiled for the Corinthians: wisdom, knowledge, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning the spirits, tongues, and interpreting tongues. This is a rather pious list, we might all agree. But I omitted one gift. Did you miss it? One commentary suggests that, of course, all Christians really have this gift. But I’m not so sure. If everyone is given the gift of faith, then why does Paul include this in his list? His diversity of gifts, given to some…? (To some, he says, the gift of faith…)

I think we need not protect Paul, or candy-coat our spirituality by so hastily conferring the gift of faith to all who gather in the name of the Christ. For if Paul were half the observer of the Church that Jesus was, then he knew… some of you don’t have it, yet, do you? Maybe the gift of “faith” doesn’t come to all – at least not easily.

I guess we could get on our orthodox high horse and denounce those who cannot believe. We could discipline them: put them out of the community. Or at least we could place them on the old “mourner’s bench,” under the preacher’s wagging finger until they’d seen the light.

Or, we could take our spirituality as earthly and as paradoxically as Jesus did, who, without casting judgment, heard the Praise of one father who, even in the presence of the miraculous claimed, “Yes, I believe. Can you help my unbelief!” We could think of spirituality as that mark which makes people pious and devout, above everyone else, or we could take our spirituality as Paul did, who, later in his letter to the Corinthians, affirmed that all things pass away – sometimes even faith, sometimes even hope… all things pass away – even for the truly spiritual, except, that is, for that greatest gift of all, that gift which is God’s most Uncommon Gift for the Common Good.

The gift of love, and love alone, will never ever pass away.

True spirituality, you see, is not about being connected to the next world or the next life, for Jesus has shown us that the most spiritual persons are the ones who are grounded to this life, in costly love. In such earthly love, even the most common gifts, become uncommonly good.

 “Each one of you has already been ‘caught in the act’ of sharing God’s spirit, which creates community.” The issue is not whether you’ve been gifted. You have. Your name is not “Forsaken.” It is “God’s delight.”

So, stand in front of the family, and claim your giftedness, with joy. And with humility give thanks to God.

There’s one last thing. Truly spiritual people, they hardly ever know it. Oh, they  do accept the joy of God’s giftedness, but they may never know what the gift really is. For, “In the Christian community, it is not your place to find your gift – that is the community’s responsibility. Your gift is no gift, until it has impacted someone else’s life.” And in the mystery and beauty of God’s economy, the smallest gifts, the commonest grace, can make all the difference.

So we gather, in praise, to give thanks to God who grants every good and perfect gift, and here, to recognize and call out those Un-Common Gifts – in one another.

May it be so!

PASTORAL PRAYER

Giver of every Good and Perfect Gift

Call us by name today,

            Remind us that we are not forsaken,

            But gifted

                        Beyond our ability to know.

Give us Christ’s mind

            And Christ’s compassion

That in this world, we might

            Stoop to the least of these

            And find our blessing there.

And that in this community

            We might celebrate

            The Common Good

                        And the Uncommon Gift

In one another.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.