to each is given

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Pentecost Day, Year A, 2011 – Acts 2, 1 Corinthians 12:3b- 13,
A story to start with: one day in a big city – the streets department comes by and systematically digs a hole in the terrace. The hole sits there until the end of the day, when a truck comes by and fills the hole up. This goes on street, by street, block by block, Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. One woman in the neighborhood notices this interesting pattern as she walks her dog. On Thursday, she stops one of the hole-digging workers and asks – what in world are you doing? Well – we’re on the urban beautification crew. What’s so beautiful about putting holes in the grass? Well, you see, the man who puts the trees in the holes is on vacation this week!

To each is given a gift – and that gift is important. At Pentecost we read this great story about the start of the church and think – wouldn’t it have been a wonderful thing to experience? Wouldn’t it have been a great time to hear all that great preaching, been caught up in the development of a new movement with its great hopes and expectations?

It’s always easy to look back and suggest there was a golden time that was so much better. I’m sure in the third century they looked back 50 years and said – those were the days. Sometimes I suspect that now in the 21th century we are dis-advantaged because we follow such a prosperous time in the church.

But, even in the 1st century – the church had its issues. It wasn’t all fiery ecstasy and preaching. By end of Acts 2 we have gatherings and organization. They were meeting for meals and prayers, and you can be sure that someone was complaining that they weren’t told what door to go in by. By Acts 4 we have trouble with the city officials, but also we learn that stewardship was becoming important within the community, and stewardship issues caused the first scandal. And by Acts chapter 6 we have clear evidence of church troubles and complaints, and establishment of systems to deal with that. Maybe there never really was a golden time when all was smooth and easy and everything turned on all cylinders.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church is written in the midst of these two elements – great excitement at the wonderful things God is doing by the Holy Spirit in the Name of Jesus – and great distress at the conflicts that have arisen in that very community of Jesus. Paul is speaking by and about the Spirit of Pentecost, and in a very deliberate way to his church and to all of us – says that it is the here-and-now – not the there-and-then, or the even by-and-by – where the Spirit of God is doing God’s work. Paul tells his church their energies should not be directed at creating factions based on who evangelized them, no, for that is in their pasts. It is how they treat each other now that is important.

In the church in Corinth, there were people who thought they were better than others – they had more significant talents, more wonderful gifts, more powerful expressions of the Spirit of God in them. They had groups that supported each other – I am one of Apollos’ converts – so, I have the gift of such and such! I am one of Paul’s converts, so I stand for this and that! Preaching is most important – no – speaking in tongues is most important – back and forth they went.

But Paul points the back, not to the gifts, but to the Giver. “No one can say: ‘Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.” That is where all the gifts begin. That is where all church organization begins. That is where we all begin in our lives of faith – as children being given a precious inheritance – the knowledge that Jesus Christ is our Lord. It’s a dramatic leveler. We all start at the same place in faith. “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him;” Small Catechism – Apostles Creed, 3rd article.

But starting in the same place does not mean we all have the same talents – that is also clear that Paul, and Jesus as well – recognized the beauty of the diversity of the followers, and saw that the Holy Spirit would bless us each with unique and significant powers. Yes, powers.

Pentecost is really a story about baptism of the Spirit, baptism into gifts and abilities. Baptism is not only about being named in the sight of God, and being claimed as a child of God, but also about being commissioned as a worker for God. And a worker does his or her work through the power he or she is given. In the Pentecost story we hear of gifts of speaking in other tongues, and perhaps also the gifts of preaching – but as we learned – the church developed so it needed more and different talents – stewardship, organization, communications, support, love, charity, cooking. To each is given . . . do we believe that? For the common Good . . . do we believe that?
Technology – numbers – friendship – speaking to strangers – steadiness – pray without ceasing – argumentation – delight in the movement of the body – music – calmness in stress – compassion for those who grieve – gift of teaching children.

Pentecost isn’t for looking backwards – not backwards to some golden age of the first century, when all was new and shiny – or backwards to the 1960s – when there were plenty of people to do everything. Paul warns us that basing our lives in anything other than the Life of the Holy Spirit in us today is wasteful. Remember that story I began with – what if the person whose gift is planting trees is always missing? Has the Spirit dwindled? I don’t think so – in the church the tree-planting person will be there – we, all of us, need to be open and supportive.

We are the new Pentecost people. We are new every day, in the life of the Spirit. We are the inheritors of the Holy Spirit here and down – and we can say and believe it: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Let us open our hearts to that new wind of the Spirit, blowing through us and discover ways to give ourselves away for the common good.
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