Day of Pentecost

What do you think of when you hear the words charisma or charismatic? Maybe it’s a movie star, like John Wayne or George Clooney, Elizabeth Taylor or Cate Blanchett. Or perhaps a popular singer like Taylor Swift or Jennifer Lopez. Maybe a sports figure like Magic Johnson. It might be a leader, like Barack Obama or Queen Elizabeth. How about Oprah or Ellen DeGeneres? If you’re like me, some people who don’t come to mind are yourself, your family members, and most of the people you see around you when you come to church on Sunday. After all, we're just ordinary people, aren't we?

This reaction is not unlike the one the crowd had in the reading we just heard from Acts. The people who were speaking were just ordinary bumpkins from Galilee, after all. But they were speaking all kinds of languages, and everyone heard them in their own native tongue. It was incredible! “All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’” In other words, they thought the disciples were drunk.

Even the other disciples must have been surprised at what Peter did. It wasn't that he spoke up. After all, he often opened his mouth and promised to do something, only to have his fears get in the way. Think about that incident on the Sea of Galilee. Peter got out of the boat, walked a few steps, and then went down like a rock. And then at the Last Supper, Peter claimed that he would never desert Jesus, that he was willing to die for him, but then he denied knowing him, not once but three times. Yet now, less than two months later, here was Peter boldly speaking – no, preaching – in public to a crowd of thousands. “What does this mean?” A very good question indeed!

Well, Peter knew what it meant. In his sermon, he pointed to what the prophet Joel had prophesied: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” This event was also the fulfillment of Jesus' promise that the disciples would receive the Spirit. Our Gospel lesson this morning included one of the first instances of this assurance. Jesus said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” Just so no one would miss the point, the evangelist added an explanation: “Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive.” Jesus repeated this promise in his farewell discourse to the disciples:

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you. … But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (John 14:16-17, 26)

It was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit given to the disciples on that first Pentecost which enabled their message to be understood by people from “every nation under heaven”. Just a few verses later in Acts 2, we learn that, in response to Peter's message, three thousand people were baptized and added to the church that day. But the work of the Spirit did not end then. Things also happened in Corinth roughly twenty years later.

The church in Corinth was founded by Paul around the year 50 CE. The letter we know as 1 Corinthians was written several years after that because Paul had heard that the congregation was being torn apart by all kinds of disputes. Many of these were occurring because the Corinthians were transferring their struggle to improve their social status into the church. This was even true in the area of spiritual matters, such as speaking in tongues. Apparently, some of the Corinthians had decided that such things were signs of spiritual maturity that they had earned. They also thought that there was a hierarchy of these abilities. This led some people to boast and claim to be better than those with “lesser” talents.

In the passage we just read, Paul challenges this thinking in several ways. He begins by pointing out that no one in the Corinthian church became a Christian through his own powers. He says, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” All of them, Paul included, have been dependent on the Spirit since the very beginning of their lives as Christians.

Paul says that this dependency also exists in regard to spiritual abilities. He first hints at this through the words he uses. The Corinthians have been referring to these abilities using the word pneumatikos, which means spiritual things or matters. Paul uses this word to introduce his discussion in the first verse of chapter 12. But in the rest of the chapter, he uses a different word, one which you will recognize: charisma. This is the Greek word for something that is freely and graciously given without any merit on the part of the recipient. Paul’s choice of this word would have surprised the Corinthians. It should also have given them a clue about what he was going to say. Paul’s point is that the abilities that the Corinthians are so proud of are not the result of something they have done. Rather, they are gifts that have been given to them by the grace of God through the Holy Spirit. They have not been earned, and, therefore, they are not reasons for boasting or for claiming higher status.

Furthermore, Paul says, each and every believer receives gifts from the same Spirit, “who allots to each one individually as the Spirit chooses.” Where spiritual gifts are concerned, there is no such thing as “haves” and “have-nots” in the church; everyone has at least one. And no one can claim that one gift has a better “pedigree” than another, because all come from the same source. The Spirit gives each gift its own particular value when it is distributed to an individual believer.

Finally, these gifts are not for the personal glory or power of individual believers. Paul clearly states that they are “for the common good” (v. 7). All of the gifts, no matter how small they may seem, come from the same source for the same purpose: the common benefit of the community. Using them as status markers is not consistent with the confession that Jesus is Lord.

Like the believers of the first century, we Christians of the 21st century have also been blessed with the gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised his disciples. Most of us have not had the experience described in Acts, where “suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind” and “divided tongues, as of fire, appeared … and a tongue rested on each of them.”

But we have had the same experience as the Corinthians: “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body … and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”(v. 13) At our baptisms, we were called by the Holy Spirit and, as Luther says, “enlightened with his gifts”. The first gift that we all received is the gift of saving faith. Because of this, we, too, are able to confess “Jesus is Lord” and receive the blessings that God has promised: forgiveness of sins, redemption from death and the devil, and eternal salvation.

Baptism also made us part of the community of believers and empowered us for ministry within that community and in the world at large. To help us do this, each of us received spiritual gifts, one or more abilities which are to be used for building up the body of Christ and for bringing others into God's Kingdom. So we all have charisma! Now look around you at all the charismatic people you know! I’ll bet there are a lot more than you thought there were just a few minutes ago!

The interesting thing about these gifts is that there isn’t a complete list of them. Paul mentions some in the passage we read from 1 Corinthians: wisdom, knowledge, miraculous faith, healing, miracle-working, prophecy, discerning spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpreting tongues. Some things in this list, like healing and miracle-working or wisdom and knowledge, seem to overlap. Other things which would seem to be useful in the Church are missing. For example, teaching is not included in this list. But it is in two more lists which Paul includes at the end of this same chapter of 1 Corinthians. There are also lists of spiritual gifts in Romans, Ephesians, and 1 Peter. No two of these lists are identical.

This may seem strange at first, but when you think about it, it makes sense. The world today is different from the world in the first century. The Church today is different from the Church in the first century. And the community we call Calvary Lutheran Church in Mt. Airy, Maryland, is not the same as the community in Corinth that Paul was writing to. Because Christians live at different times and in different places and communities, the Holy Spirit gives us different gifts for ministry. But every gift is important! The gifts we have fit the needs of the community and God’s Kingdom at this time and in this place.

This is one thing we've learned from the pandemic. For example, if I'd been preaching on this text on Pentecost in 2020, I don't think I would have thought that knowing how to stream videos on YouTube was a spiritual gift. But today there's no doubt that it is. A spiritual gift is any ability that the Spirit gives us for service in the Church. Yes, there are spectacular, extraordinary gifts, like speaking in tongues and healing. But they are no more important than those that seem more mundane and less spiritual, like hospitality, teaching, taking care of the property, and using technology.

This means two things for us. The first is that we should not do what the Corinthians were apparently doing. We should not try to rank spiritual gifts. We should not look on some of them as better than others because they all come from the Holy Spirit, and they all matter. In Romans, Paul makes this clear: “I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment.” (Romans 12:3)

But sober judgment also means that no one should fall into the trap of thinking he or she is insignificant. Everyone has been given at least one gift by the Spirit. Everyone has something to offer that the community needs. No one is unimportant, regardless of race, gender, age, social status, income, talent, or other things we use to distinguish people. In your own way, each one of you is a gift from God for the Church as a whole and for the community we call Calvary Lutheran Church. We have all been blessed by the Holy Spirit and we all matter. Together we have everything our community needs.

Now at this point, you're probably expecting me to hand out a spiritual gifts assessment form so that you can take it home, fill it out, and return it next week. But I'm not going to do that. Even with a form and time to give prayerful consideration to discernment, we are often blind to our own gifts. We tend to be better at identifying our weaknesses than our strengths. And this is a problem because recognizing a gift is just as important as having it. After all, if I give you a present and you don't open it, all you have is a nicely wrapped box; you miss out on what's inside it. Sometimes we need help with seeing our own gifts. Now where could you find a friend or two who could do that? How about starting with the folks right here? Every week you sit with people who know you and your abilities; they would be great resources. And maybe you could suggest to someone else that they would be a good person to work in a particular ministry here. Or if you're a little too shy to talk to someone directly, bring the idea to a pastor or a ministry leader so they can talk to the person.

I challenge you to look for spiritual gifts in yourself and others this week. Pray that the Holy Spirit will direct you as you evaluate your gifts, open your eyes to the opportunities you have to use them, and make you willing to participate. And ask that God might help you recognize the gifts in others in the community and help you to suggest how they might be used in the ministry here.

God’s Spirit has been poured out on everyone here at Calvary just like it was on the disciples on the first Pentecost. May God cause that Spirit bubble up in us and flow far and wide to spread God’s love and power.

Amen.