Gifts

Pentecost 11A, 8/24/14
Romans 12:1-8

Jesus, Messiah, Son of the living God, guide us as you guided your disciples. Help us to grow in faith, and to grow closer to you and to one another. Amen.

There is an art to good camping.

If you’ve ever been camping in the wilderness – not car camping, where you just drive up to the site and pitch your tent, but real backwoods camping where you have to carry everything in that you’re going to need for your whole adventure, and you end up a day’s travel or more away from pavement and refrigeration and hospitals – if you’ve ever been wilderness camping, you know that there is an art to it.

A good camper can find dry wood in a forest, even the day after a rainstorm. She knows what to do when you run out of toilet paper. He can read the wind and know where to stash all the gear so that it stays where it’s supposed to all night long. A good camper knows whether the plants along the side of the trail are wild strawberries or poison ivy or something else.

When I led camping groups into the Boundary Waters, we had a system when we got to the campsite each night. There were jobs that needed to be done. There were usually nine people in a group, so we’d delegate out the jobs among the group.

Two people would set up the tents.

Two people would take a canoe out on the lake, and fill up all the pots with water for cooking.

One person would find somewhere to hang a rope so that we could hoist the food pack up on it at night to keep it away from the bears.

One person would secure the rest of the gear around the campsite – throw the paddles and lifejackets under the canoes and put the packs with clothes and whatnot over by the tents.

Two people would go gather firewood for the evening.

One person – usually me – would start preparing the food for dinner.

It was important that you picked the right person for each job.

If you sent out two people in the canoe, and neither of them knew how to steer, you’d eventually have to send out a rescue party to bring that boat back in.

If the wrong person was setting up the tents, you could end up trying to sleep on a hill, or in a puddle.

Depending on who you sent to get firewood, you might end up trying to cook dinner over a grass fire – I don’t recommend it! – or a camper might end up with a hatchet wound in his leg. Yeah, the camp changed its policy regarding who could use a hatchet on trail after that incident.

If you had anyone other than the guide as the primary chef, the group usually ended up going hungry for the night.

We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.

Some of us have a knack for knowing about the plants and animals we might encounter in the wilderness.

Some can light a fire with one match, every time.

Some are better at cooking over an open fire than over a kitchen stove.

Some of us are really good at steering the canoe while others are really good at tipping it over.

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

We used this passage from Romans a lot with groups from camp.

Every person in the group was important to the success of the camping trip.

But not everyone had the same role to play during the trip.

I remember one particular group of high school campers. There were two tall girls, who were both in track and field at school. They carried the canoes on every portage, and they were also good at helping with food prep. There were two boys, Eagle Scouts, who always set up the tents… and taught everyone else everything they had ever learned about camping. There was one younger, smaller boy who basically served as the comic relief all week, and kept everyone in a good mood.

Our small group of campers had to function together, like a single body. But each one of us had our own gifts to offer. And where some of us had weaknesses – like the time I freaked out because I had somehow ended up with a mama leech and 100 of her babies stuck to my leg – someone else’s strength was able to shine through, like when the comic relief boy yanked mama leech off my leg and made some funny comment about no one else going swimming in that part of the lake.

It is similar in the church.

God has given all Christians the gift of faith, which is what allows us to believe in Jesus and follow him to begin with.

But the ways in which we live out our faith vary widely from person to person.

Some of us are good at reading in front of a group of people. Some of us have gifts for keeping things organized. Some are good listeners and some are good writers. Some of us can look at a project and see every step that needs to be completed along the way. Some can look at a person and read their emotions and guess at what’s going on in their life.

Not everyone is good at all of those things.

But all of those things are necessary functions of the body of Christ.

We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

So when we need to recruit a new lector to read the lessons in worship, it’s not a matter of looking around the sanctuary and saying “who hasn’t done anything to contribute to our worship service lately?” It’s a matter of paying attention to how people communicate, and finding the articulate one in the group, and asking them whether they might consider serving the congregation in a new way.

It’s important that people understand the words of Scripture – those are the words of our faith.

But people will never understand the meaning of Scripture unless they can first understand what the actual words are.

So we need lectors who are lips and tongues and mouths.

We don’t want to have the big toe trying to scrawl something in the dirt for us to read – we need the mouth to proclaim the words of our faith.

The big toe is important! The entire body would be off-balance without the big toe! But the big toe simply wasn’t made to read things in public.

Is the analogy working for you? Do you understand what Paul was trying to say in the letter to the church in Rome?

Each one of us has something important to contribute to the life of the community.

But none of us should try to do something that God never created us to do. There are certain things that we just aren’t good at – and that’s why God keeps us in community with one another, so that we can cover each other’s weakness and learn from each other’s strengths.

The church isn’t a perfect representation of what humanity ought to be.

Many of us have experienced that first-hand.

The church is full of sinners. We were created in the image of God, but we have strayed from that image and      we’re not so impressive sometimes.

The only reason why the church ever has anything to offer each other and the world is that we sometimes, in our best moments, by the grace of God, we figure out how to work together and compliment one another’s shortcomings and work together as the body of Christ.

Each of us has been granted a spiritual gift or two – or three if we’re lucky – and when we recognize those gifts in one another, and when we help each other to thrive, then we are living out God’s purpose for our lives as the church.

Actually, I’d like to take some time in worship right now to reflect a bit on our spiritual gifts.

Like I said, things like finding a lector for worship, or a person to serve on Council, or a choir member or a Sunday School teacher, is not dependent on just whoever might happen to be available. It’s all about finding the person with that particular spiritual gift.

So I’m going to ask you all to do a little project with me.

I have a Spiritual Gift inventory here.

And I’ve got enough copies for one for everyone.

There are 60 questions. It’s not meant to be a high-stakes test, just a tool to help us figure out what kind of spiritual gifts we might have been given by God, that we can share with a community of other Christians.

So the ushers are going to pass out this inventory now. I’m going to ask you all to fill it out as faithfully as you think you can.

If you’re a member of this congregation, or if you worship here regularly, please put your name on the inventory.      I’ll have our new secretary figure out the results for you, and we’ll discuss them sometime later this fall.

See, this is one of the nice things about having a secretary on staff who isn’t a member and who can help with some of these confidential projects!

If you are not a congregation member, please still complete the inventory. You can figure out your own score on the website for the ELCA, our denomination, just by searching for spiritual gifts on their homepage. Or if you want a copy of the entire inventory, please see me after worship – I have a couple of copies printed out.

Now congregation members – if you complete this inventory, it doesn’t mean you’ll be recruited to be a Council member next year, or an assisting minister or a Sunday School teacher.

It means that we will try to help you find a way to use your spiritual gifts for the benefit of the entire body of Christ. So we can help you do those things that you find life-giving already – and we can help you avoid those things that are draining and that suck the life out of you.

Everyone has those things, you know.  

Just because you don’t like something, doesn’t make you a bad person.

In fact, it’s entirely possible that when you don’t like doing something – even in service of the church – it’s because God simply didn’t grant you that spiritual gift. You weren’t made to do that particular task.

But you were made to do something else. And I’m hoping that today, we can each get a better picture of what God has called us to do as individuals, and how to use those gifts to serve the community.

So take a few minutes, fill out this inventory, and place it in the offering plate when you’re done. The organist will play a little music, and then we’ll move into the hymn of the day. We’ll stay seated for that one today, in case anyone is still finishing up their inventory.

And we’ll spend some time later, this fall, figuring out who is a mouth and who is and ear, and who is a big toe. And we will find a place for each person to serve, sharing the gifts that God has given to them.

Amen.