Tending and Releasing the Fire Within
A sermon on the Holy Spirit, Spiritual Gifts, and Building Beloved Community
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. ~ 1Corinthians 12:4–13 NRSV
When ministers get ordained, they go through an interview process with an ordination council. At the end of the process, The council votes to decide whether or not the candidate can ordained as a minister. The process can be terrifying. There’s only so much one can prepare for their interviews because candidates often aren’t told what questions the council will ask. They can ask anything from practical ministry questions like, “How would you handle this sitation?” to tricky theological questions that are impossible to answer well and are designed to make the candidate squirm.
Somebody told me that, during their ordination process, they were asked to describe how they would explain the Trinity to a child. Now, there are some pat answers for that, but the reality is that that’s one of those gotcha questions. I don’t even know how to adequatly explain the Trinity to an adult! In fact, when I was in seminary, I took a doctoral level class on the Trinity, and we ultimately concluded that all language used to describe the Trinity falls short because the Trinity encompasses the fullness of God, and the fullness of God is way too vast to be confined to words.
I mean, how do we really wrap our heads around God being three in one? While the concept of the Trinity may be confusing, it does reveal some wonderful aspects of the nature of God to us. For example, if God is three in one, then God, by God’s very nature, is relationship. What can that say to us, as beings created in God’s image, that God is so interwoven with others that they are also one? In addition to that, there is no hierarchy in the Trinity. What can that say to us about how we should live with one another as beings made in God’s image?
While there’s no hierarchy in the Trinity, churches oftentimes act like there is. For example, predominantly white mainline and evangelical churches don’t usually talk about the Holy Spirit a whole lot. We give the Spirit our attention on Pentecost, and then we tend to tuck Her away until the next year. I guess we do this because we like order, and the Spirit is unpredictable and impossible to control. We associate Her with speaking in tongues and exuberant worship and so we leave the Spirit for more charismatic faith traditions. Should it surprise us at all then that the Pentecostal church is one of the only Christian traditions that is actually growing right now? We might associate Her with snake-handling, but Spirit is what animates our faith, what makes it vibrant and alive.
According to Paul, it’s the Spirit that bestows and unleashes our spiritual gifts, the unique gifts that we are given so that they can help spread Christ’s love and build the world as God desires for it to be. Paul says that there are many unique gifts, but it’s the Spirit who gives them all. There are all sorts of different ways that we can use our gifts to serve others, and it is Jesus who directs us to do so. There’s an endless array of activities that churches can do as ministry. They are all energized by the same God. This passage about spiritual gifts is about the closest we get to a statement about the Trinity in the entire Bible. Our gifts are from God and are meant to help us create a world that reflects the interconnected relationship and equity that is God.
The Corinthian church is arguing over whose gifts are the most special, and Paul tells them to forget that nonsense. Everyone has something unique to contribute and by bragging that our gifts are the most important or by feeling insecure because we doubt our gifts can make a difference, we are wasting precious energy that the Holy Spirit wants us to use building beloved community.
Paul tells the Corinthians that what’s important about our gifts is not which are better but that we use them all for the common good. You see, we can’t pick our gifts or trade them for ones we’d rather have. We can’t do anything to earn them. They are not gold stars that we get as rewards for our faithfulness or our impeccable rule-following. What we can do is receive our giftedness, accept that uniqueness as ours, and release our gifts into the world to create love and justice and mercy for the common good.
The world needs more love and justice and mercy right now, doesn’t it? Church, the Spirit is undoubtedly calling us to engage. How can you use your gifts to create justice and goodness for Black lives? For trans lives? For children still being detained at the border? For poor people who are suffering even more than usual because of the pandemic?
Not everyone is wired to be an organizer or an activist or to engage in civil disobedience. You may be, but don’t feel like you have nothing to contribute if you’re not. There are roles for policy-makers and artists and letter-writers and nurses and teachers and clergy and financial backers and musicians and lawyers and sign-makers and farmers and pray-ers. What gifts do you have to offer for the common good? How can we, as a church, use all of our gifts to do ministry that builds beloved community in this moment? The Spirit has ignited the fire. She is stoking the flames. We just have to surrender and, as Barbara Holmes said in the video we watched, “release the fire” that is already burning.
We need to take action, but I also want to caution us. There are fires that make way for new life, and there are fires that devastate. Because God is a God life, we know that the Spirit’s fire is regenerative. We also know that fire burns hottest at its center. The only way that we can trust that the fire we’re unleashing is of the Spirit is if we tend to the flame in our center. If we neglect our center, we can unintentionally release fires that cause further damage instead of those that create life.
Those of us who are white need to work for justice and goodness for Black lives, but doing so will require us to do our own inner work. We must acknowledge and then repent of our own innate racism. Whiteness is a way of seeing and being the world, not a race, so we must acknowledge and repent of the ways in which whiteness shapes us. And it does. There’s no way around it. All of this is so embedded in us, we will have to repent of it daily in order to use our gifts for the common good. Men who want to work for justice and goodness for women must tend the flame at their center. Those of us who are cisgender and who want work for justice and goodness for our trans and non-binary siblings must do the same. It’s incredibly hard work, but it’s necessary to make sure we’re using our gifts to build beloved community instead of to serve ourselves. I think that might be what makes the difference between a talent and a spiritual gift. When we tend the center, we invite the Spirit to fan the flames.
When we are willing to do this hard inner work for one another, we become a church on fire. Paul describes this kind of church as being a body. We each make up different parts. A body needs different parts. It is the Spirit who brings us together and knits us into one body, as Paul says, no matter our heritage nor our status, no matter whether we’re an insider or an outsider, no matter if we are free or oppressed. Like a foal just learning to walk, the kind of church will be awkward and messy at times. But, as Mary Hinkle Shore writes, we’re not called to be a tidy church; we’re called to a loving one. We can do this. Let’s invite the Spirit to refine and release the fire within each of us. That is our gift to the world.
