"Varieties...but the Same" (Second Sunday after Epiphany)

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. 2 You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. 3 Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Let Jesus be cursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. 4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 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. 11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

             When I was growing up, there was a lot of talk in my hometown about the possibility of kids wearing school uniforms (it came up about as often as the lottery coming to Alabama). There were all kinds of arguments for it: parents wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not what their children wore was appropriate; kids wouldn’t get in fights about silly things like name brands, gang colors, or team logos; there would be a sense of uniformity and order to classrooms, and students could focus more on what they were learning than what other kids were wearing. Of course, there were also arguments against requiring school uniforms, but none of them really come to mind, because as a kid who often got made fun of for his clothes, the thought of having a uniform was a bit of a relief.

            I’d look the same as the rest of the kids. It wouldn’t matter what brand of shirt I wore, or whether or not I had worn the same pants the day before, we would all have to wear the same thing every day; we’d all be the same. No one would look any better, worse, or different than any of the other kids. That made sense to me, for all of us to be the same, because, well, deep down we all were.

            As an adult, however, I’ve learned that while uniformity in the clothes children wear to school may be a good thing, uniformity in life is impractical, implausible, boring, and contrary to the way God has created us. Of course, this lack of uniformity—of sameness—in life is also complicated, messy, and problematic. It leads to tension, frustrations, fighting, war, and all kinds of confusion and conflict in between. So it shouldn’t surprise us at all any time a number of different folks, with all their differences of opinions, styles, backgrounds, and perspectives gather together in an attempt to be one body, a church, that there is sometimes tension, frustrations, confusion, and conflict. Wouldn’t it be easier if God had just made us all the same, without all these differences that can cause us such problems?

            I suppose it would be easier, but where’s the beauty in such sameness? Does anyone really want to see a grey rainbow? How about a choir of strictly baritones, or a hymn played with a single note? Would it still be a good team if all the players were skilled in the same way, a team full of quarterbacks, a lineup full of right fielders? Sure, things would be predictable, problems easily averted, traditions quickly learned, but who would really want to live in such a world of monotonous uniformity?

Then again, I suppose if everyone is on the same page, doing the same thing, thinking the same way, then achieving a common purpose would be a whole lot easier. Just imagine it: elections years would be election hours because everyone would agree on who should be elected; there would be fewer sessions of legislative bodies as they came together to simply cast the votes on an already agreed upon outcome; there would be fewer churches because folks wouldn’t leave and congregations wouldn’t split over silly things like the color of the carpet, the building of a Sunday school wing, or the time of worship (and, of course, everybody would like the preacher!). I wonder sometimes if such uniformity would be worth giving up the messiness of God’s diverse creation, if it would be worth the boringness, the flatness, the greyness, to have everyone get along with one another, to see eye-to-eye, to keep the peace. There is, however, something to be said for the beauty of God’s risking the complications of our differences in order create a world filled with the potential for wonder, grace, and love.

            When I read the apostle’s words before us the morning, I read words that speak about that riskiness on God’s part, words about the diverse ways in which God has gifted each one of us with unique gifts of the Spirit, how each of those unique gifts come from the One and Same Spirit, and (how he writes in verse seven) “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good…”

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good; now that may be the most important phrase in this text. You see, it would be easy to get bogged down in trying to decipher what each of these gifts is, how they actually manifest themselves among the people of God, and if they’re still prevalent among the Church today. It would be easy to create our own list of gifts, to draw up some sort of “spiritual gifts inventory” and go down the list checking off those we possess and those we do not. And I suppose such efforts would be the result of trying to discern whether or not we possess such spirited giftedness in order to be better Christians, to outline those places in our own lives where we can be more like those in the first century, more like those spiritual heroes of yesterday, more in tune with the spiritual world. I suppose such efforts in and of themselves may be noble—as any attempt to be more spiritual may be, but if our giftedness stops just shy of what Paul calls, “the common good” are we truly any more spiritual?

Can I tell you something? This is where my peers in the “spiritual but not religious” crowd lose me. Sure, they may say things like “I see God in the beauty of a sunset,” or “I find God when I’m all alone in the quiet with my own thoughts,” but if that’s where it begins AND ends, I have to ask, is that the point of spirituality? Is that the reason God has given gifted us all with unique gifts from the One Spirit, or is there a purpose behind our spiritual lives, something more to even the spiritual life to which God has called us? Paul says “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good,” and I just can’t shake that. You see, I know Paul is speaking to a congregation on the verge of division. I know Paul is speaking to a congregation with members who think higher of themselves than they do of others. I know Paul is writing to a specific church, with specific issues, in a specific time, but I just cannot shake the notion that God has gifted us all for more than our own spiritual peace and well-being.

Why couldn’t Paul just say that God gifted us all differently and those God gifted “this” way should get together over there and have their own gatherings, and those God gifted “that” way should get together over here and have their own gatherings? Why couldn’t he have said something like, “In order for you to all get along I’m writing to you a list of ‘approved gifts for the practices and spiritual edification of the church’ and should any of you deviate from such a list you will be disciplined or set outside the fellowship?” Why couldn’t Paul just say, “If one can’t have the same gifts as another, then no one ought to have any gifts at all?” That, in my mind, would be so much easier than having to live with the reality of God’s diversity in giftedness. To have everyone give up what makes them who they are so that the life of the church could continue uninterrupted, so that the threat of division and conflict would be eliminated—that would be so much easier than trying to make one body of believers ought of all of these different people…but that’s what God does.

God creates us—messy, broken, prideful, differently-gifted people—to share in this life, to serve “the common good” together, in spite of our differences. We are NOT all the same, but we are all gifted by the same Spirit of the same God for the same purpose, and the reality is, truthfully, though we may all be gifted differently, though we may all look different, think different, go about our lives in different ways—down at the core of who we are, we are the same. We are daughters and sons of God, for when all our differences are burned away, when all the lines we’ve drawn are erased, when all the labels we’ve made have been peeled off and thrown out, all we are left with is the reality that we are in fact all the same: children of God in need of love. That’s why I believe Paul doesn’t just leave his discussion of spiritual gifts here in chapter 12. No, he brings it all to a perfect point in the first verses of the next chapter:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;  it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

            We can have every gift, every blessing bestowed upon us. We can have every bit of knowledge, knowing the Bible backwards and forwards. We can have the kind of faith that shows others that we don’t worry about a thing. We can speak in tongues, walk on water, pick up mountains and cast them into the sea. We can give away every dime in our account, take the shirt right off of our backs, pray the sweetest prayers, and wear a whole in the pew cushion. We can add jewels to our crowns, rooms to our heavenly mansions, and gold pavers to our divine driveways….but if we do not have love—we are nothing!

            Friends, everything in this world will fade away—even the ink on the pages of the hymnals and bibles in your hands and the pew racks—everything, except love. When you look around this room, when you around this world, you may see differences, you might see reasons to distance yourself from someone or some group, but what Christ is calling us all to see when we look at each other is a brother or sister—not an opportunity for noticing difference and divisions, but an opportunity to love. Amen.