Scripture
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Today, we hear from the letter to the Corinthians, the start of the two best-known chapters of the book.
The church in Corinth is a fledgling community, built of new Christians trying their best to best one another at faith. They are Gentiles, perhaps wealthy ones, used to jockeying for status in every facet of their lives.
Paul writes to them, concerned, trying to ease their conflicts and reorient their perspectives. You are a community, Paul reminds them. And not just any community, but a church of God, bound together by the One who created us all and loves us all. And more than that, he says, you are not just any church—you are the church here, in this place, in this time, called to the work of God in this moment, led by the Holy Spirit.
And then Paul offers them advice on their day-to-day work as Christians together, calling them to remember that there is always more to bind them together than there is to separate them.
In today’s passage, he zeroes in on spiritual gifts.
It’s been one of the points of contention in the community. You see, they’ve been arguing with one another, each claiming their gifts are more important, more worthy of respect, more qualifying for leadership.
But they’re all from God, Paul says. All these gifts are from the same God.
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Tomorrow, our country will celebrate two federal holidays that are at once united and conflicting.
On the one hand, we will elevate a new president to the highest office in the land. On the other, we will honour the work and the legacy of a man who spoke truth to those in power in this land.
In some ways, it’s oddly appropriate that these days should coincide. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that Christian life should mean active work in the public sphere, work to make our world align more closely with the world of God—the “Beloved Community,” he called it, in which all people are truly free, truly welcomed, truly loved.
And so, a day which celebrates the ordinary workings of our public life is a good match for his legacy.
Of coursse, in other ways, the days are in tension. On an Inauguration day, we uplift a human person to lead us—one whom many in our nation have hoped could take complete power to fix our problems, solve our crises, make us great. Indeed, many others hoped the same of the other candidate.
But the truth is that no human power, no human person, no human polity can fully live up to God’s Kingdom. We are all imperfect, always. And remembering that is part of King’s legacy, too. God’s sovereignty is the one that matters.
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When I was little, we would spend every Christmas Day at my grandparents’ house.
Every family slept in their childhood bedrooms, now with their own children also sleeping in cots and on the floors in the corners of the room. On Christmas morning, we would wake up—all the kids usually first—and we would gather in the living room, eating breakfast, finding snacks in our stockings, and impatiently waiting on the latest sleepers to awake.
When everyone was finally awake, we would all gather, family by family, in a ritual procession to the den, where the Christmas tree was lit and the presents were arranged. And every family had to pause for their annual photo in the doorway, and then we would take our place in our spot—always the same spot every year—where our presents were arranged.
And when everybody was seat, we would finally get to open our gifts.
And it was exciting—as Christmas often is—though it wasn’t as suspenseful as it might’ve been. You see, my grandmother cared very deeply about fairness. She wanted everyone to be treated equally, to feel equally loved, and she believed that the best way to guarantee that was to give everyone the same present.
So when my cousin unwrapped her shiny, new, purple winter gloves, I knew the box in my hand contained the same shiny, purple winter gloves.
When my dad’s brother unwrapped a trouser press, my family giggled because my dad would never use his—but he sure did get one because everything had to be equal.
And it makes sense, right? We want our gifts to feel fair. Some of us make them equal by spending the same amount, or by giving the same type of item, maybe picking things we think they’ll use equally. Or, if you’re my grandmother, you just get everyone the identical item.
We want things to be fair. Because humans love comparing. It’s one of our greatest sources of stress. We’re always comparing. We always want to make sure things feel fair—and if they’re not, at least we come out ahead.
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Dr. King spent his life—and his death—trying to make the world more fair for more people. He wasn’t perfect. None of us is. But he tried. He did the best he could with the platform and the resources and the life he had, to make a difference. That’s all that can be asked of any of us.
And Dr. King did what he did because of his faith. As a Christian minister, he believed in the promise of God’s Beloved Community, deeply. This Kingdom for all, this family for all, this love for all.
And so he fought for a world where all are truly free. He used to say, none of us is free until all of us are free.
This world that he worked for was a world where the image of God meant something more than just an abstraction—it was a call to action, and a promise. A call to live like a piece of the presence of God in this world. And a promise that each and every one of us deserves to be seen as a reflection of God’s own face.
In other words, it’s a Community that we can only build together.
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We spend so much of our lives comparing. Does he read faster than me? Can she jump higher than me? Will they speak better than me?
When I was little, I invented a sleeping contest where imaginary opponents would race me to fall asleep faster.
We love comparing. We love to best one another.
I think there’s a primal part of us that feels safer when we know we’re better. Our farm makes more food, our horse runs further, our legs can outrun the bear.
And it’s not a bad thing to want to improve at our skills.
But that kind of primal contest is not how God works.
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So many of the gifts mentioned in this passage from Paul are the ones that we like to fight over. Is knowledge better, or wisdom? You know, book smarts or street smarts? Or—which superpower would be best to have?
If you think about it, these are icebreaker questions. These are how we get to know each other at corporate gatherings, class meetings, weekend parties.
They’re ways we try to build relationship with each other—and yet comparison and contest are baked right in. Which one is better? Which one of us is better?
That’s not the point of the Spirit’s gifts, Paul argues.
Sure, it might be simpler if we were all given the same gift from the Spirit like we were from my grandmother. And it’d be a lot easier to think of each other as equals, a lot harder to use our gifts as reasons to fight over status and power.
But, at least where God is concerned, it wouldn’t build the Beloved Community. Not completely, anyway.
See, we’re meant to be different. We’re meant to live in the Spirit, together.
We don’t choose the gifts we’re given from the Spirit, which means that we can’t earn them either. They don’t run on our own power or authority or skill. Not completely.
They come from God, they belong to God, and they are given to us for the common good of all. We are blessed to be a blessing. That’s been the promise since Abraham.
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In the next chapter of this letter, that famous one we hear at weddings—you know, the “love is patient, love is kind”—Paul will go on to say that even these gifts he’s discussing will come to an end.
They will play out their part, and then they’ll be done. We’ll live our lives, and then our children’s turn will come. New gifts will arise. New methods, new theories, new ways of being Church. And then those, too, will fade.
And so it will go until the end of all things, Paul says.
Through it all, though, love will remain. Faith and hope and love, carrying us through to the end of days. Because these are the essence of our faith. These are the core of that Beloved Community. These are the work of the people of God.
Faith, hope, and love.
Faith that God is here, working among us, and that we humans are better than we let on.
Hope that what we see now doesn’t have to last forever, that a better world is possible.
And love, for God and from God, for each other and from each other, guiding us and driving us home.
The Kingdom of God may not be fully complete, but it is partly here. And every step we take in love draws us nearer and nearer to that Beloved Community.
So no matter how you feel about the inauguration tomorrow—or about any new office of a human being—our mission as people of God is the same: Take the next step in love, in the one Spirit who unites us all.
As the hymn says, “let us march on till victory is won.”
Amen.