Many Gifts – Second Sunday after the Epiphany (1 Corinthians 12: 4-11)

After I graduated from college, and I was back in my hometown, I really didn’t look forward to running into old friends, or extended family I hadn’t seen in a long time, or even going back to my home church regularly. The reason was that if I went to those places or saw those people, I would get asked a specific question that I dreaded having to answer. That question was, “So, what do you do now?” I hated answering that question because I didn’t have a very good answer. Now, admittedly, I may have been projecting my own insecurities, but it seemed to me that the subtext to this vague-sounding question was, “So, what do you do to make money?” or even, “So, what are you doing with the rest of your life?”

My insecurities around this question had to do with my fear that people would judge me based on my answer. That they would put me in a box and mark it successful or unsuccessful based on my job. That may have been an unfair assumption on my part, after all many of these people that asked the question cared about me and were genuinely curious about my life. Still, that can be how the world is sometimes. What we do to make money or what skills we use or knowledge we have tends to be used to put us somewhere in the social hierarchy. We see that certain skills, certain jobs, are valued more than others, and that can lead to the unfortunate and untrue assumption that some people are worth more than others simply based on their salary (and their skills, but usually it’s the salary that turns heads).

This way of looking at the world creates conflict. We see this in the perpetual debate over the salary of teachers. Advocates will say they should be paid more because of the value the work they do has for society. On the flip side, many people criticize professional athletes for making millions of dollars to play a game. This just shows us that we place a high value on being entertained. While it is important to talk about what we value as a society, and it is also true that certain skills are more valuable in particular situations, this line of conversation and way of thinking can become harmful when it leads to a belief that certain people are less valuable based on what skill they may or may not have.

Of course, as with most things, this is not a new issue. It was one of the issues the Apostle Paul tried to address in his letter to the church in Corinth. Corinth was a large city in the Roman Empire, and it was also a very diverse city. This led to the church there becoming very diverse as well. Especially economically speaking. The church included wealthy people from the higher classes and poorer residents of the city. However, these differences were creating some division among the congregation. These divisions were interfering with the church’s ability to live into their faith and embody what the realm of God looks like in the world. Paul writes his letter with the intention of convincing those in the more elite social class to set aside some of their status so that the church could be one. Specifically, Paul is trying to reframe for them the way they look at spiritual gifts.

The particular gift that was creating problems for the Corinthians was the gift of speaking in tongues. Speaking in tongues was an experience of ecstasy that overflowed into sounds. At this time, the ability to speak in tongues was associated with high social standing. So, those in the congregation who believed they possessed this gift also believed they possessed a higher status within the church. Higher status meant closer to God. Paul’s letter reminds them that speaking in tongues is just one of the many spiritual gifts that humans possess, and they are all blessings from God. Because of that no one should consider themselves better than anyone else based on which spiritual gifts they have.

In his letter Paul lists several spiritual gifts that he observes in the world. This list includes wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, and tongues, both speaking in tongues, as well as interpreting those who speak in tongues. Notice that Paul puts tongues last on his list. This is likely intentional, as a way of letting the elites know that they cannot claim as high a status as they think. Paul also lists the interpretation of tongues alongside speaking in tongues. This is Paul’s way of saying the ability to speak in tongues is a spiritual gift, but it must also be understandable to be truly fulfilled. The community must be able to understand what is happening. This is the thrust of Paul’s message here. Naturally there are differences within a community, and that includes what gifts the spirit has allotted to each person. These gifts are unique and should be used, but they should be used to build community, not to create a hierarchy that favors one over the other. After all, we cannot claim status over others based on our spiritual gifts, because these gifts do not come from anything we have control over. They are all gifts from the same spirit.

Recently, former President of the United States Jimmy Carter passed away, at the age of 100. In the weeks since then many people have shared memories of him and tributes to his life. President Carter has been held up as a man who had a well lived life. People admired him as a man of strong Christian faith, who let that faith guide him in all he did, including when he held the most powerful job in the world. In his life and in his work, one could identify many spiritual gifts in the life of Jimmy Carter. Wisdom and knowledge, he was a Sunday School teacher after all. Perhaps prophecy as part of his legacy was seeking to make peace for Israel and Palestine, and he was also one of the first presidents to take seriously the threat of climate change. However, his what he might be most well known for is his involvement with the organization Habitat for Humanity. After his presidency he became involved in building houses with Habitat and quickly became the face of that organization. Now, I don’t know if carpentry specifically, is a spiritual gift, but it was a skill that Jimmy Carter had and he put it to work in service to others.

Jimmy Carter’s life is an example of a man who sought to use his gifts for the community, to break down division and bring people into the type of unity that Paul envisions for the young church. For instance, Carter viewed his work with Habitat for Humanity as something that breaks down the things that divide us, and brings spiritual gifts and real-world skills together to work for a common goal, a bigger purpose. People should not be separated by their ability to buy a house, or having the skills to build one, but they could be united in the common effort to provide housing for those who need it. Carter provided these words as reflection on his life, “So I’d say peace and human rights and treating everybody the same has been what I hope will be my legacy, along with Habitat proving that I wanted to help other people.”

At his funeral, Carter requested the singing of the song “Imagine” by John Lennon, which talks about the breaking down of barriers and divisions and focuses on the unity of us all, and within that unity our spiritual gifts become evident. I think Jimmy Carter and John Lennon, like Paul, realize and acknowledge that there are many differences in this world and that should be respected, even appreciated, but it does not have to separate us. They are things about all of us that are unique and different. From the way we look to the things we can do. These differences might create some natural divisions, like a high school cafeteria at lunch time, the kids tend to sit with their friends and the people they have the most in common with. The athletes, the band kids, the cheerleaders, the artsy kids. Unlike a high school cafeteria, these divisions do not necessarily have to come with social stratification. Our divisions do not have to create disunity. Instead, we can look at it from Paul’s perspective, shared by Carter and Lennon, that our differences can be real, and acknowledging them can be appropriate, but that doesn’t have to tear us apart. God gave us our gifts, and they can be used for the common good. The guiding principle of our spiritual gifts should be striving for the common good, not the elevation of one’s status over another.

Jimmy Carter is an example of someone whose gifts, spiritual and otherwise, were revered and viewed favorably enough that he reached a level of high status in the eyes of society. On the other end of that spectrum of societal status and respect, however, are inmates in prison. These are people who have broken laws, or at least been accused of breaking a law, and they may have caused harm to other people. Now they find themselves paying for their mistakes and unfortunate circumstances by being locked up. These individuals are considered to have very low status in the eyes of the community, and many people think that looking down on these individuals is justified, that they have earned that low status, because of the choices they have made. In other cases, these prisoners are not judged or looked down on, but instead, simply forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind. Some might believe that they could only do harm to the community, that they have nothing else to offer. That would be a mistake, because even those in jails and prisons, have been given spiritual gifts. Different gifts, but the same Spirit that touched Jimmy Carter. Because of this even those who are looked down on or forgotten have the potential to work toward the common good.

As the wildfires rage and destroy parts of California there are currently 900 California prison inmates helping to fight those fires. They are part of a program that has been in operation since the 1940s that trains inmates to assist in fighting wildfires and forest fires that are common in the state. This program has of course been in the news lately, and to be fair, it is drawing a lot of criticism because it is deemed exploitive. The inmates who do this work are only compensated between $5 – $10 a day. Not an hour. A day. So, they are vastly underpaid for the dangerous work they are doing. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is common practice for prison laborers in general, not just the ones who fight fires. It should also be pointed out that even though being a part of the fire fighting program can take time off one’s prison sentence, once they get out jail it does not guarantee work as fire fighter. They are held back their criminal record and lack of formal, recognized training.

Now, all of that is true, and that kind of exploitation is wrong, it should not be supported, and such an exploitative system should be stopped. That said, hear what some of the inmate firefighters have to say about the work. One man said, “It’s way better than” being in prison, he said. “I was in the prison yard, I’m seeing guys get stabbed, get jumped, get beat up. Cops treat us like s—. But here we get better treatment. They talk to us like humans. We got a job. We’re underpaid, but we got a job.” Another inmate wrote this, it “the best prison job I ever had.” “We were only paid $1 an hour when actively fighting a fire, but the money didn’t matter to me because we worked as a team. Sometimes we would stay at a fire for two or three weeks, and when we left, people would hold up thank-you signs. People would bring pastries, sodas or sandwiches to us. No one treated us like inmates; we were firefighters.”

The stories of these firefighters remind us that the gifts of the Spirit are not just about skill or talents, they are also about the way we relate to God and to one another. It is about how we contribute to the common good of all creation. Jimmy Carter had many spiritual gifts, because of the status he had in society he had the privilege during his life to explore those gifts and put them to use as he saw fit. We remember and give thanks that he endeavored to use them for unification and the good of God’s creation. The inmates in the California prison system also have spiritual gifts, but their status and their circumstances prevent them from exploring them in the same way, which is why some of them are so thankful for the opportunity to work as a firefighter. They are able to connect to the community in a new and helpful way, and show people that even though they are in prison the spirit has still given them gifts to share. The Holy Spirit gave many gifts, to all of us, because the world God created has many possibilities, and it is not for us to judge. We are not given gifts of the spirit in order to serve our own self-interest. We use our gifts for the common good. So, let that be our answer, whenever someone asks us, “What do you now?”

Amen.

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