The Gift of the Holy Spirit
Jesus’s followers were again all together in Jerusalem. It was the Feast of Pentecost. It is helpful for us to understand the Jewish holidays to understand the new thing that God is doing. Let’s go back to the night before Jesus’s arrest. Jesus and the disciples celebrated Passover together – a night of remembrance and hope. The remembrance of God liberating the descendants of Jacob, whose name became Israel when he wrestled with God, from slavery in Egypt, and the hope that God would liberate God’s people again.
After escaping from Egypt, the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years. During that time, they were formed into a people and God gave the 10 Commandments. After Jesus was arrest, crucified, and raised, for 40 days, he appeared. During that time, he taught them about the Kingdom of God, gave the Great Commission, and promised them the gift of the Holy Spirit. Then, on the 40th day, Jesus appeared to them in Jerusalem, led them out to the Mount of Olives, and ascended in a cloud.
10 days later, 50 days after Passover, there was another Jewish feast, Pentecost, to offer the first fruits of the winter harvest at the Temple in thanksgiving for the end of Israel’s 40 years of wilderness wandering as God brought them to “a land flowing with milk and honey.” That is why Jesus’ followers were all together in Jerusalem, when something beyond our imagining happens. The best way to describe it is that all of a sudden the wind starts to rush in the windows, sounding like a freight train, carrying sparks of fire bursting to flame as they settled upon each person. It is their new beginning, marked by God again appearing as fire that does not consume…an allusion harkening all the way back to God appearing in a burning bush that was not consumed as God called Moses to go to Pharoah and demand the release of God’s people from slavery in Egypt. So they are both beginning a new life and being sent to proclaim God’s liberation.
The power that makes that new life and proclamation possible is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Who has the gift of the Holy Spirit, and how does a person know whether or not they have that gift? Richard Hays, who was a New Testament scholar at Duke, argued that what Paul is saying to the church at Corinth is that anyone who affirms, “Jesus is Lord,” is “living in the sphere of the Holy Spirit’s power.”
The ways the power of the Holy Spirit manifests in each of our lives is different. Our spiritual gifts can change over time to meet the needs of God’s call for us. Here in I Corinthians 12, Paul lists 9 spiritual gifts. Other places in the New Testament list additional ways the Spirit gives us power. All spiritual gifts are for one purpose, though. The manifestation of the Spirit is for the common good.
That is the test of whether a giftedness is from God, or not. Does it benefit the common good, the one Body? Presbyterian pastor Rev. Jim Capps summed it up this way, “If gifts are used properly they should move us from comparison to community; from being spectators to being participants; from being competitive to being cooperative.”
Remember that Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, and there are some issues in Corinth with people’s understandings of “spiritual things.” They have pagan worship and their worship was highly emotional, and they would go and just feel so good and excited! Corinth was a major city for trade in southern Greece. Ships came from the Ionian Sea on the West and the Aegean Sea on the East and were dragged across the relatively short distance of land. While these folks were there from all over the world, they shared worldly, immoral, idolatrous ways. In fact, in the 1st century, if you wanted to label someone who was living a wild life of debauchery you would say, “Well, aren’t you just a Corinthian!” or “He’s such a Corinthian!” The Temple of Aphrodite was in Corinth…the same word we get aphrodisiac from…and the Temple of Aphrodite had 1,000 women slaves, whose work “entertaining” earned money for the Temple. A “spiritual experience” was quite different for the people of Corinth than what Paul was describing.
John Proctor of the United Reformed Church in London writes that “…pagan worship could evoke strong emotional experiences, and some of the Corinthian Christians had been involved in that scene. Now that phase of their lives is over. Strong feelings are not a reliable way to detect the Spirit.”
The reliable way to detect the Spirit is that the Spirit draws the community together. The Spirit gives us the power to forgive and get the things that might keep us from being united out of the way. And the Spirit gives us the power to embody God’s hope for the church, to be part of what God is doing in the world. No one gift is greater than any other, all are given to work together.
So, how do you know what your spiritual gifts are? The best way is to notice the ways that serving brings you joy. Paula Patterson and Merry Bonner were honored last Sunday for their service in the church…they have the spiritual gift of hospitality – making people feel welcomed, appreciated, and wanted. When we were returning to worship in person after COVID, Paula came to me and said our church family needed to gather around tables, to be fed by breaking bread together, and that she would make sure it happened. Before COVID, we had fellowship every Sunday and it was provided by different people each week. As we wind down this ministry program year, we begin asking six years later, what is God leading us to next? What does the body need? Over the next few months, I encourage you to pray about what gifts God is giving you and how you will offer them in the coming year.
If you are interested, and you want to take a spiritual gifts inventory, I am happy to share one with you. They really are individual and require prayerful conversation to discover how God is leading you to use your gifts because spiritual gifts are not about ability. I think that is one of the greatest mistakes we make in the modern church. We think that what you are educated to do is what you should offer the church. If you are a teacher, people tend to think you should teach Sunday school or lead a Bible study. If you are a financial advisor, people tend to think you should be Treasurer or on the Stewardship team. And that’s not to say that you can’t or won’t be called to use the same skills you use at work with the church, but that is not the way we determine how the Spirit is gifting you. Your spiritual giftedness might be in an area you’ve never really considered before. The way we discover our calling is by paying attention to what gives us the fruits of the Spirit. When I am asked to serve in a new way, the two questions I ask are: does imagining myself in this work bring me joy, and does imagining myself in this work give me peace…the other way to think about it works too…and sometimes is clarifying…does imagining myself not doing this work upset me, make me agitated?
That’s not to say that when we discover our spiritual gifts we are ready to go. We also have to develop them. If you are drawn to administration, you might research how to set long-term goals with short-term markers, or you might take a class in budgeting. If you are drawn to teaching, you might research best practices for group formation before you get started.
One pastor tells about serving a church in a neighborhood that was experiencing a wave of refugees. He says his wife could always tell when he was talking on the phone with one of their refugee neighbors because he always talked louder and slower, even though he knew better. One day, he was talking with his best friend, Bob, who did a wonderful job working with the refugees, taking them shopping, to the movies, teaching them to drive. He asked Bob, “You know how I’m not very good with our refugees?” And Bob said, “Yeah, I’ve noticed.” Then, the pastor shares that he almost triumphantly, basically excusing himself from his responsibility, offered, “It’s because I do not have the gift of cross-cultural communication.” And he says that after a long pause and a pensive look, Bob responded, “Neither do I.” The need was great, so Bob was joyfully filling a role out of his giftedness – he was serving. When we are met with a community concern, we find our place to offer our unique giftedness. Bob was called to serve – so he provided transportation. Perhaps the pastor wasn’t called to cross-cultural communication; maybe he was given the gift of administration to organize the ministry or given the gift of exhortation to encourage others to volunteer, or maybe he was given another gift to discover, to develop, and then to dedicate for the building up of the whole Body of Christ.
The gifts of the Spirit mean nothing if we discover them. I’ve done spiritual gifts workshops before where people have been so excited that their answers added up to being gifted in leadership or wisdom or prophecy. They felt so special!!! An aside, if we aren’t honest in answering the spiritual gifts inventory, we discover nothing about what God is doing in our lives. The gifts of the Spirit mean nothing if we only discover and develop them. Having the gift of mercy and taking training on how to visit the sick will accomplish nothing if you don’t go visit the sick. Dedication of the spiritual gifts we receive is everything. It is through them that God works in the church and through the church in the world.
As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “If the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong,’ that would not make it any less part of the body…If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?…But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each of them, as he chose…Now you are the body of Christ.”
May we affirm that Christ is Lord and receive the Holy Spirit, discovering, developing, and dedicating the gifts of the Spirit so that together we may we live as Christ. Amen.