A Motley Crew

Text: 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Martin Luther was against the practice of serving the Lord’s Supper in private. Wealthy parishioners would ask the priest to come to their homes so that they could eat the body and blood of Christ without have to journey to the church, or to take the time, and without having to associate with the riffraff. Luther wrote that the essence of Holy Communion was not just in the words of institution—this is my body, this is my blood—but in the gathering of the people who come to hear those words and to share the meal together in one place. When Jesus said “do this,” he did not just mean say some words, as if they were magic; he meant the whole event of the Last Supper at which he spoke: the assembly of the people, called together, hearing the Word of God together, reflecting and praying together, and eating together.

The apostle Paul had the same issue with his congregation at Corinth. The people were not eating together. Some ate ahead of time, some went hungry, Paul says, and some came in drunk. “Do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?” he asks them. It’s a rhetorical question. They do.

A church is a congregation, a word whose root means to collect into a flock. There is no such thing as a congregation of one. Can you imagine a church with only one person? A preacher, but no one to hear. A person adding a prayer to the prayers of the people, but no one to share his or her concerns and celebrations. Some one sharing the Lord’s Supper, but no one to share it with. A colleague in a dwindling church once told me that sometimes there were only four persons present on a Sunday: “The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and me,” he said. That might be a fine and worthwhile experience, but it was not church.

Paul writes this, his first letter to the church at Corinth, because the church is full of dissension and division. Some people evidently think themselves to be better than others, more valuable, more deserving, or more essential. Some think of themselves as too good for the others. Paul writes this letter to correct them. “I do not commend you,” is his polite way of putting it.

A church is made up of all sorts of people. They are an odd assortment. They are odd for two reasons. First, the only thing they have to have in common, what unifies them, is their confession that Jesus is Lord. Second, within that one common thing they are a motley crew. Not shabby, but variegated. These two things: unity and diversity, define the church.

The church is a place of unity. Unity is essential. We are not just any old odd assortment of people. We are a particular odd assortment of people who see God’s presence in our lives and the life of the world, and who try to follow Jesus.

We can see that we are each recipient of gifts of the Spirit. But the gifts are the work of the Spirit, Paul writes, not our work. We all have different gifts, but we see that they come from God. It is the same God for all of us. “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit,” Paul says. The same Lord. The same God. These gifts are given to us through God’s grace (grace and gift share the same root).

These gifts of the Spirit are not something to be hoarded or displayed on a shelf. They are given to us for the common good, Paul says. They are given in context of the church community. They appear not as a private skill, but as a public offering, to be shared and enjoyed—and admired—by all. In that sense, gifts are a calling. They are given to us not just for us to take, but to help us serve others.

The church is a place of diversity. Diversity is essential. The gifts are allotted to each of us, Paul says, just as the Spirit chooses. This does not mean the the Spirit blesses some more than others. All gifts are blessings. They are all manifestations of the Spirit. It does mean that what we get does not depend on who we are or what we have accomplished. Paul’s point is that no gift—no ability, we would say now days—is better than the next; his complaint with the Corinthians is that they think the opposite—and act accordingly. As we often do.

Both the unity of the church and diversity of the church come from God. They are essential in the sense that without both, an institution is not a church. But this does not mean that God assembles us like different Lego pieces into some pre-designed finished project. We are called here, but not because some gift we have is needed. It is the other way around. We are called here because we are. And the resulting church is the church that emerges from our gathering.

The church—this church, Faith Lutheran Church—is what it is because of the gifts we all bring together now, in this moment in history. The church cannot exist as a monolith—unity without diversity. But the particular way it exists depends on the particular flock collected here by God. We are all needed in common because this church would not be this church if even one of us was not here. It would be some other church.

Hospitality, tradition, and doctrine create a framework on which we construct the church, just like the scaffold in the pictures you see around here of this building being constructed one hundred years ago. We read a common scripture, and we sing common hymns and pray common prayers. These things are important and good and influential, but they do not define this place.

The church is not without history. Its unity and diversity extend back in time, to include all those who came before us and forward to all who will come later. (Because we have such a rapidly changing membership, we can see that in the small even now; as people come and go, you can see the church change.) Those who sat in these pews before us also make the church what it is now. And we make it what it will be decades hence. That realization is a big part of why the Building Faith capital campaign even exists. It is our turn.

We are calling today Commitment Sunday, because today we begin to record people’s promises—their commitments—to help repair, maintain, and improve this building which is the center of this church’s ministries. But what we do today is a small part of a larger reality. It is an extension of a commitment you and everyone who is part of this community of Faith has already made. We are all in this endeavor just in the way Apostle Paul described it. We have been given gifts of the Spirit—a variety of gifts—and the interplay of those gifts makes Faith what it is. By just being here today, you are a part of what the church is and will be.

These gifts are manifestations of the Spirit. It is a good word for this season of Epiphany. When Paul writes, the word he uses for manifest shares the same root as the word epiphany. Like epiphany, manifest means to reveal. The church is not just a beneficiary of the gifts of the Spirit. It also reveals them. Sometimes only God can see at first what a person’s gift is. And sometimes people in a church can see the gifts of others that the others do not recognize in themselves. And sometimes, as in Building Faith, the work of the church calls out—reveals—astounding gifts that have up until now remained hidden to us. God gives us gifts, God sees the gifts, God reveals the gifts.

Today especially we give thanks for the variety of gifts of the Spirit that makes us who we are. Today especially, as we all hear the Word of God, pray with one another, and share in Holy Communion, we celebrate our life together in this church.