Sermon preached at Christ Church
Greenwich, Connecticut
January 20, 2019 / Second Sunday after the Epiphany
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11
Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak.
It was a long time ago that Paul wrote those words. But “there is nothing new under the sun,” as another famous passage of Scripture tells us, and here in 2019, I do not want you, my brothers and sisters, to be uninformed.[1] Because we know that – even here and even now – idols that cannot speak are still present to lead each and every one of us astray.
William Wordsworth rather famously wrote a poem on this topic, which begins thus:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon![2]
Paul tells us how to know when we encounter an idol, something that would cause us to “lay waste our powers”: no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says “Let Jesus be cursed,” he writes, and that distinction covers more than just the militant atheist or casual agnostic. The Name of Jesus is cursed by anything that draws our attention and our loyalty away from the love of God and toward small and selfish ends, toward getting and spending, using the “gifts God gave us” chiefly for our own private thrills or personal aggrandizement – a “sordid boon.”
When I was a child, my parents would often ask during one of their dinner parties if I would play something on the piano. My answer was NO. I’m not a circus act. I would always gladly play a recital, and I would be glad for anyone to hear me play on such an occasion, which was of course – to my mind – the only correct venue and hour for performance.
In this morning’s second lesson, we hear the same sort of thing from Jesus, don’t we?
When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come."
"I’m not a circus act."
What happens next, it seems to me, is that that Mary somewhat forces Jesus’ hand. She doesn’t cajole him or reason with him. Instead, she says to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you,” putting the ball squarely into Jesus’ court. What was he going to say? Nothing? “Go away”?
Instead, and perhaps even with a godly frown toward his mother, he sends the servants to fill the jars with water, and we all know what happens next. The water is changed into wine.
The Prayer Book’s marriage service reminds us that this is the “first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee,” and the symbolism here is not incidental. The water jars used by Jesus were intended for the Jewish ritual of purification, part of the Old Testament’s ceremonial and devotional regime. But Jesus repurposes the jars, and in transforming the water, the glory of Christ is manifested for all those with eyes to see. The wine – and good wine at that! – is a clear sign that in Jesus, something new was happening, that the old order in religion was being superseded by a new order, that as the Evangelist writes in the first chapter, “the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”[3]
In his letter, Paul lists the classic spiritual gifts of the New Testament: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophesy, discernment, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. Some of these surely seem esoteric – particularly the gifts concerning miracles and tongues – although I will say that even as hard-headed a Protestant as your preacher has known individuals with the gift of tongues.
The others however, are not esoteric in the least. Wisdom. Knowledge. Faith. Discernment.
I wonder which of those gifts you have been given. Paul is very clear: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit.” No one is left out.
These gifts are not – in the end – for our own private enjoyment. Every gift of the Spirit is given, as Paul tells, us “for the common good,” and therefore must be exercised for the sake of that common good. This is not to say that it is not a joyful thing, for example, to play the piano alone in one’s own room: take it from me… it can be a delight. But we have all seen the ways in which treating gifts as private goods can corrupt those gifts, making them the stuff of petty rivalries or individual conceit.
I remember, on one particular occasion, being at the house of family friends, and my mother took me aside and asked me whether I would play something for our hosts, on their piano. NO, I said. I’m not a circus act.
“Now you listen to me,” my mother said. “It would mean a lot to Ted, to hear that silent piano of his brought to life. Could you give him that?” I had to conclude that I could, and so I grudgingly went to the piano.
For the Christian – Christian literally means, “little Christ” – the exercise of his or her gifts for the good of the church and the world is a sign of the coming of Christ, a sign that the dour logic of getting and spending is not the final word in our humanity. In exercising your gifts – whatever they may be – you are making a difference in the world, even if you are doing what may seem to be a small thing, for only a single person.
The human being’s reflection of the “image and likeness of God”[4] is not seen finally in the disposition of our bodies, but in the development of our character. With God’s help, the human being learns to be merciful as the Father is merciful, to exercise his or her gifts in the Lord’s service and in his most holy Name. “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit,” Paul writes, and it is by that same confession that we can be sure our gifts are being used toward the purposes for which they have been intended, for “all such good works as [God] hast prepared for us to walk in.”
In my case, the spiritual gift was not playing the piano. The spiritual gift was the willingness to be generous, to swallow my pride and play something for the delight of the group, and that of our host, who loved music and seldom heard any played in his own house. That was wisdom, and faith, and even healing, and it took no more than playing a short piece I already knew how to play.
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.
AMEN.