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A FEW weeks ago, we discussed
spiritual gifts in our Bible Study. We looked at verses 1 –
13 of this passage one week, then went on to verses 13 –
31. I found the talk fascinating. Today's sermon is a reflection,
not a point-by-point exposition. I hope that doesn't make note-taking
too hard!
In I Corinthians, Paul talks
of the church as a body. Does that make sense? We don’t
think of ourselves as parts of a body. We think of ourselves
as individual bodies, making contact with each other from time
to time. Paul’s sees a community of people so closely linked
together that they act and think as one.
That Friday night about two weeks ago, we thought about the different
parts of a body. We had a written exercise to do. We listed the
parts of the body that Paul mentioned in his letter. We found
the hand, we found the foot, we found the ear and the eye. We
also found the nose and head and parts that Paul didn't list
by name.
We talked over what these things meant.
For example, we though about how Jesus touches the world today.
He is in heaven. His Spirit is in the world, but his physical
touch is not. How does he touch lepers and blind people these
days?
Are you a hand by which Jesus touches people?
Friday was a sad day for me, because the coffee shop near where
I work changed hands. Some of the staff are staying, but the
two main people I have dealt with are going, Zoe, the owner,
and Chris, who is the morning manager. I got on well with both
of them.
Zoe is Greek, a bit loud, sometimes rude to customers, but basically
a nice person. If she was rude to me, I would tell her, “You're
so Greek, Zoe!” and she'd laugh and say, “Don't take
it personally: you know I love you.” And I’d say, “I
know it, Zoe, that’s why I can give you as good as you gave
me.”
Last year, we all prayed for
Zoe's cousin, Denise, who had a very serious car smash in Greece,
and has become a paraplegic. Do you remember? I called in every
few days to check on how she was going and to check how Zoe was
doing, and to let them know we were praying for them. You know
how it’s done. You’ve done it yourselves.
On
Friday, I was passing the shop on my way home. Zoe was there,
all dressed up, with bunches of flowers, and old customers all
there farewelling her. She came straight out to hug me. “Thank
you for caring for us when Denise had the smash!“ she said.
Jesus reaches out when you and I reach out in his name. It was
Jesus’ touch that touched the lives of Zoe and her cousin,
Denise, and Denise’s sister, Gina, who used to work there
in the mornings.
There’s an old poem that
says something along these lines: “Jesus has no other hands
but my hands, no other feet but mine.”
Paul takes it one step further. I might be the hand, but I might
not be the feet, you might be the nose, and the person next to
you might have no sense of smell at all. But, together, we make
up Christ in the world.
Yesterday, we had some shopping
to do. While I was waiting outside the shops for Naomi to come
from one direction and Chris to come from another direction,
a little boy was playing in one of those ride things. When he
tried to get out, he fell and landed on his arm. He was in quite
a bit of pain at first. And his mother was nowhere to be seen.
Three women and I came to the rescue. One woman was probably
in her 30s and had children with her. She did the mother things,
helped the boy onto a chair, checked for injuries and so on.
The other was more a grandmother, and did a lot of soothing and
calming stuff. The third was a big sister, who found some tissues
so that the boy could blow his nose and wipe his tears. And I
thought about getting his mother and what needed to be done to
get him looked after when we moved on.
So I asked the boy his name and his mother's name, and where
she was; the granny lady went to the service desk and had his
mother called. I acted as a go-between to see what was happening
with the mother and to tell the boy and the other ladies what
was going on. And, when the mother arrived, I also made some
suggestions about what she could do to make it easier if anything
like that happened again.
That is something like what we mean when we talk about being
the body of Christ. Those three women and I worked together like
a body. We had a single goal. We didn’t need to do a lot
of negotiating: we each saw something to do, and slotted in.
The granny lady became the feet, the mother became the hands,
I became the ears and so on. We acted as a body to minister to
a needy child.
I want to challenge you: where
do you fit into the body of Christ? What is your role right here
where he has put you?
I have the kind of personality which sticks with something, which
is tolerant up to a point, which generally fits in with what
others are doing. It has helped me to stay through the nearly
20 years that I have been here.
So sometimes when people say, “Are you still at Marrickville?
I couldn’t have stayed that long!” and they act as
though I were something special, I have to pick them up and say,
“Well, it’s partly just that I have that kind of personality.”
And many of you have been here
a long time, too. And maybe it's just your personality. And you
make yourself useful around the place, just like you would if
you stayed over at a friend’s place. You'd wash up after
breakfast and probably shake the table cloth and straighten your
bed and so on.
I want to challenge you about
where Christ is directing you to be in this body... what is his
Spirit saying to you? We need to move beyond the infantile notion
that we don’t have an active role in the body, that we are
just around to stay happy and pick up after ourselves.
I was talking to Rachel at work one day. I don’t know how
it came up, but I asked her whether she felt like an adult or
not. It sparked off an interesting conversation. I can’t
remember how she was feeling, but we both certainly know what
it is like to have passed all the right birthdays, 18 or 21 or
whatever, and still feel like a teenager, and not really grown
up.
Too often people in the church are still like that when they
have been around for 20 or 30 years or more. They still haven’t
learned to minister in their own right, to follow the promptings
of the Holy Spirit as he says, “There’s your place:
fit in there, and do what has to be done, the way I show you
to do it.”
On that Friday night we were
talking about the parts of the body and how they are all necessary
and how the body doesn’t work properly if even a small part
doesn’t work. And I asked everyone to add some extra parts
to their list of body parts and to think about some of the people
in our Bible study group, or in the church, and think who fits
against which body part. Who in this church acts mainly as a
hand? Who acts mainly as the mouth? Who is feet? Who is a joint
that holds things together and allows movement?
What are you? Which body part?
Something that fascinated me that night was that there was one
recurring theme.
Now today is a special day, because it is Gloria’s 70th
birthday today, and we are having lunch after the service to
celebrate with her. And one of the traditions of birthdays is
that we like to embarrass the person having the birthday. We
get them to stand up. We sing — we serenade her with Happy
Birthday. Sometimes we even add,
Why was she born
so beautiful,
Why was she born at all?
Because she had no say in it
No say in it at all.
So, in the great tradition of
birthdays, I am about to embarrass Gloria, and tell her that
she was the most constant theme in the discussion.
I won't embarrass anyone by naming names. But, Gloria, someone
said that, in the body of Christ manifested here, you are a hand,
because you are always reaching out to people. Someone else said
maybe you are more of a foot, because you go to people.
Then someone said that, in the body here, you are a nose, because
you sniff out things that need tidying up or cleaning up. They
didn’t just mean that you are good in working bees. What
that person said was that you spot problems, spot where something
isn’t going right, and you rally people around to get something
done.
Someone else said that you were the foot, not because you go,
but because you give people a bit of a boot when they need to
get moving. I said, “It’s the gift of Auntydom.”
And I think everyone must have had an Aunty Gloria at some time,
because they all nodded.
You know, Gloria, you've been part of this church for many more
years than I have. You came here when you were in your 30s, I
think, and have been here ever since.
And today, you have hit your three score and ten years. You've
been a believer in Jesus Christ for almost as long as I’ve
been alive — 55 or so years as a follower of Jesus.
I think that we can all say that you are a gifted person and
a gift to the church, a gift to friends and family, a gift to
humanity.
Sometimes you have been rather on your own in what you do. But
you have still done it. Yes, personality counts for some of it.
But so does an ear to hear what the Spirit is directing you to
do.
Many of us remember how you cared
for Denis at your work. He was strange in many ways, and not
very popular at work, but you stuck with him, sometimes the only
friend he had. When you could see that he wasn’t coping
well, you put him in touch with me, and I put him in touch with
people who could help him with some of the problems he was facing.
Not only our kids -- Luke and Joshua and to some extent Naomi
and Hannah -- call you Aunty Gloria and remember how you kept
some sense of Youth Fellowship going for them for many years,
but George Bozinovski and George Binios also think of you as
Aunty Gloria, and remember you fondly. They ask after you and
are pleased to see you.
I don’t know how many people have received tracts or Bible
portions from you. We have all heard when you were excited that
someone had given you feedback, that they had read a tract and
found it valuable at that point in their lives. And, every now
and then we have heard from someone who said, “Who is that
lady in the church with the curly hair? She gave me something
to read, and it helped me.” You might not be an evangelist,
but you have that evangelist’s desire to bring the gospel
to people, using the tools that make sense to you.
One of the lessons I have learned through the years is that there
is a lot more to that old saying of the Architects than they
ever understood. Architects often have to deal with very difficult
problems. Sometimes you have a building site which is too steep,
or has a big rock right in the middle, or you have to add to
an existing building which just never was designed right in the
first place. Architects say, “If you can’t fix it,
feature it.”
Well God, in his grace, goes even further.
The stone which
the builders rejected has become the capstone.
God often takes our worst features
and, when we give them to him, he uses them for his glory.
Gloria, not everything in your life has gone the way you imagined
it when you were young. You probably have deep scars and hurts.
You lost your mother at an age when most girls are really looking
for a mother if only to fight with. You had to become mother,
in a sense, for your brother and all your sisters. And, in a
way, you still are mother and aunty. But those experiences also
brought restrictions and limitations.
Yet you have learnt to feature even some of the scars, and make
beautiful art out of them.
I could mention what was said about some of you others in this
congregation that night, but I won’t, because it’s
not your birthday. I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.
I want to point out a few things.
A hand isn’t much good without an arm. If Gloria reaches
out, someone else has to gather in. A nose isn’t much good
without legs. If Gloria sniffs out a problem, other people have
to be ready to take the garbage out. A foot isn’t much good
without a bottom to kick. If Gloria sees that someone needs moving
along, that someone had better turn around and face the road!
That is, no spiritual gift stands
alone, otherwise it will fail. We need Gloria — we have
needed Gloria through the years. She is part of the Body here,
part of God’s forever family as it appears in South Marrickville.
From a personal perspective,
I’d also like to mention a gift of giving. I want to draw
attention to it, because I think it illustrates a point about
spiritual gifts.
Gloria, there have been many
times when I have seen you give selflessly, generously and at
personal cost. On a number of occasions, I have been a beneficiary
of that giving, and I appreciate it. Chris said when we were
getting you something for your birthday, “You don’t
mind giving to someone who has been good to us in so many ways.”
I want to say that I have also seen you giving in other circumstances,
and I have wrinkled my brow and thought to myself, “Why
on earth did she do that? That was a strange thing to give someone.”
I don’t want to go into details, because I don’t want
other people making mental lists of what you do, and I don’t
want you to change what you do because of how I reacted. That
was my response, not what you did.
What we must grasp is that spiritual
gifts don’t always work the way you and I imagine.
Using the very same gift, a person
might do for one person exactly what you would have done, too,
and, for another person, exactly what you would not have done.
It’s not up to us to judge, because each person stands or
falls to his or her own master, who is Christ.
I have used Gloria as an example,
because she shows us how to use our gifts. She sees the need,
she slots in, and she does it. If you have seen how much energy
Gloria puts into trying to whack a piñata, just think:
that’s the kind of energy she puts into using her gifts.
What’s your gift? Where
do you slot right in? Ask Jesus to show you, let his Spirit guide
you, and then do with all your heart what he has shown you to
do.
And many blessings will come to you and to those whome the Lord
touches through you. AMEN |
