Here is the shortened version of Sunday 18th’s reflection. We explored Numbers 11:24-30 and whether we might be jealous or protective of others gifts. Hence why we say ‘it’s the ministers job’ or why people might hide their gifts for fear of jealousy or standing out in the crowd. Our main focus was on 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, exploring how the Holy Spirit gifts us more than love, kindness, empathy, strength...
Next week we are exploring what it might mean to live empowered by the Spirit...
I want us to have a closer look at this passage from 1 Corinthians 12:1-11. Paul, who we know is an intelligent man, trained as a Rabbi and very focussed in his calling then and later as a missionary for the Lord, believes in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Firstly, Paul is dealing with a church that is firmly set in a pagan culture, where miracles of healing, of alternative forms of worship, and massive data dumps of knowledge and philosophy happened all the time. It wasn’t so much a secular society as a society where actually anything was possible and divine influences were common place. The Christian church was one in hundreds of religious thought, and given that Corinth was key trading location, variety was most definitely the spice of life. If anything, the church in Corinth, was counter-culture because it was such a self-less way of living, in a predominantly hedonistic society.
So Paul is keen for them to understand what is of the Holy Spirit and what is not. A common fear even today for Christians, and an underlying reason why we avoid too much Holy Spirit stuff. How do we know what is of God and what is delusion or self-belief or indeed of the devil?
He tackles the key problem by talking about ‘Jesus is Lord’. This was an early creed in the Christian Church. The Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed that we use nowadays built upon this simple creed. To say that Jesus is Lord is to give Jesus the supreme loyalty of your life, and the supreme worship. In Paul’s time this was said of Caesar, and so people understood that to say Jesus is Lord was to make Jesus even greater than Caesar. To curse Jesus was to recant your faith. Yet to truly mean it when you say Jesus is Lord, you must have the Spirit of the Lord within you. It is through the grace of God that we can know God.
So Paul brings to life the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but he doesn’t see them as owned by individuals but given to the body of Christ. These gifts are not for the glory of the individual member of the Church for the good of the whole. We are not just strangers gathering once a week to worship God – we are family and we are disciples. Nor are these gifts just intellectual but they are practical as well, all to be used for God’s service. So whether you are a Professor or a plumber, an accountant or app builder, a journalist or a jack of all trades, you are valued and part of God’s ultimate team.
So, lets look at the gifts Paul talks about here–
Wisdom – the greek is sophia – wisdom comes from communion with God. It is wisdom that knows God, hence how the Holy Spirit is also called the spirit of wisdom as we looked at last week.
Knowledge – the greek is gnosis is much more practical. It is knowledge that knows what to do in any given situation, plus puts wisdom into practice.
So although wisdom and knowledge are connected there are differences. A wise person is a knowledgeable person, but somehow their wisdom is beyond simply knowing something.
Faith is the ability to believe God for something that is otherwise impossible. That is how Joyce Meyer puts it. The gift of faith could be given for special circumstances, but faith also produces results. Faith the size of mustard seeds can move mountains. So it is more than intellectual conviction – the evidence I have found proves Jesus is real! Faith is the passionate belief that makes one put everything you have into it! ‘Faith steels the will and nerves the sinew of one into action, turns vision into deeds’. (Barclay).
Healing is a hard one today because we are not so sure how real it is and there has been such bad press around it. Too often the accusation has been passed about that a person hasn’t been healed due to lack of faith. I am not going into healing as a gift too deeply at the moment, but I do believe it is a gift of the Spirit that exists today. And we do have a duty and a desire to pray for healing for others. But I want to give you a little context for it from Paul’s time. Acts of healing was a natural part of religious life in his time. Indeed a Jewish person would ordinarily go to a Rabbi than a doctor for healing, and be healed. In the early Church we know there were healing miracles –
Remember the story and song:
Peter and John went to pray, they met a lame man on the way…And he went walking and leaping and praising God…
The gift of healing is being rediscovered in the Church, as we see body and soul as one, rather than seeing the soul as the important element.
The gift of healing leads us nicely into what Paul means by ‘miraculous powers’ – which is exorcism. Now for some of you the film the Exorcist is in your mind, but I promise no pea soup as I remember Leslie Nielsen using in his comedy re-take of it. In Paul’s time all illness, and in particular, mental illness was attributed to demons and a continuing function of the church is to exorcise them. Not many volunteers for this gift I suspect but as Paul reminds us there are more powers at work that are seen by human beings…
From there he goes into prophecy. Barclay suggests that this should be interpreted as preaching, but to a point both translations work. A prophet has to be close with God, as should anyone brave enough to preach, as both prophet and preacher must listen and share. However, some messages are for the future but need to be heard in the now, and some are for now. Prophets lives so close to God that they know the heart, mind and will of God and can make it known. Prophets and preachers bring rebuke and warnings from God and they also bring advice and guidance. The Church has long ignored prophets and boy are we paying the price for it!
In his long list of 9 he talks about distinguishing between spirits – when something is beyond our normal, how do we tell the difference. We have to understand before we condemn. Interestingly that leads into speaking in tongues.
Like the gift of healing, or exorcism, the gift of speaking in tongues is readily dismissed or feared. Even in the Church in Corinth it caused a lot of perplexity. It was highly coveted because it was supposed to be due to direct influence of God’s Spirit. I guess because it is an obvious one, and makes it look like you are very close to God. It is the language of the Holy Spirit, and it unintelligible to the human ear, unless someone is given the gift of interpretation. Paul believed in it and other texts throughout his letters suggests he values it, and embraces the gift. However, it can be the gift of private prayer, where the Holy Spirit speaks to God through you. Joyce Meyer believes that this is open to anyone and everyone who is filled with the Holy Spirit. Others would say it is no longer relevant. I have heard the language of heaven, and it is beautiful, but I haven’t heard it translated!
‘All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.’
These gifts are not a shopping list or indeed items on a shelf to be purchased. They are gifts and not burdens. The challenge is – are we putting the gifts of the Spirit in a cupboard unopened because we are scared of what might be? I love the fact that are gifts are meant to work together in the service of God, and we are not meant to carry the mission of God by ourselves. We are, dare I say it, in this together. Even with our brothers and sisters in the Baptist Church, the Catholic Church, and more.
We can let him know that we are open to his giftings and that we will honour them. Next week we will look at what it means to live empowered in the Spirit. But this week know that you are gifted by the Spirit – perhaps you just need to take the bow off!
God bless…
Live and Love in the Spirit of Jesus Christ to the Glory of the Father. Sx
No comments:
Post a Comment