2 Epiphany Year C 1/19/2025
Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 36:5-10; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
Our second reading today comes from St. Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth.
As in many of St. Paul’s letters he is writing to a church that is struggling.
Struggling with sin…
Struggling with doctrine…
And struggling with each other…
The relationships in the church.
Our bit from chapter 12 begins a whole discourse on spiritual gifts…
Charismatic spiritual experiences that the Holy Spirit imparts in God’s people.
But in the midst of these gifts, the church has gotten off track…
Making the gifts more important than the people.
St. Paul emphasizes that the purpose of these gifts is for the building up of each other.
For the building up of the body of Christ.
St. Paul writes:
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;
and there are varieties of services,
but the same Lord;
and there are varieties of activities,
but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.
You see we all have gifts…
Some gifts God activates in our lives…
Some may be personality driven by the way God created us.
But we all have gifts…
And they are not all the same.
And as a church…
As the people of God…
The Holy Spirit gives these gifts to us for the building up of each other.
For the common good.
As Paul writes:
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
And this diversity of gifts is one of the things that defines the church.
Different people doing different things.
Serving in different ways.
Impacting the lives of other people in ways that some of us don’t have the skill set to do in the same way.
We complement each other.
And when we will all serve and working together in the ways that God has designed us to serve, it is a beautiful thing.
It is the beauty of the church.
But when we look at each other with envy of each other’s gifts…
When jealousy creeps in…
It can get nasty.
Or when we compare gifts, gossip about each other, put each other down…
We do the opposite of the beauty of the Gospel…
We turn the good news into a turn off.
Into something repulsive.
Paul encourages all of us to lift each other up…
Encouraging the body of Christ to work together in the variety of gifts we have.
This weekend we celebrate our civil rights in the United States…
Tomorrow, of course, being Martin Luther King Jr. Day…
As I was contemplating this special day in our nation,
I came across this sermon by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
On February 4, 1968, he preached “The Drum Major Instinct” from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.
It was adapted from the 1952 homily the Methodist preacher J. Wallace Hamilton.
But this part stood out to me, and it goes with the lesson we have in our reading today.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr preached:
And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness.
If you want to be important—wonderful.
If you want to be recognized—wonderful.
If you want to be great—wonderful.
But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness.
And this morning, the thing that I like about it:
by giving that definition of greatness,
it means that everybody can be great, (Everybody)
because everybody can serve.
You don’t have to have a college degree to serve.
You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve.
You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve.
You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve.
You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.
You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.
And you can be that servant.
Martin Luther King was right…
Everybody can serve.
And when we are all serving…
When we are impacting others because of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are operating in our life…
It’s a beautiful thing.
Another civil rights leader, one of my heroes, is Jackie Robinson.
He is famous for saying:
A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.
The impact we have on others.
A life focused on others.
A life that is dedicated to impacting others.
As St. Paul said:
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
The greatest example of this is of course our Lord, Jesus Christ.
He came not to serve himself.
In his own words Jesus said:
…the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
(Matthew 20.28)
Jesus Christ came to seek and save the lost.
He came to impact the world, freeing his creation from the curse of sin.
Jesus came to live, die, and rise again in victory.
And for those that believe in him…
They receive eternal life with him because of the sacrifice that he made on the cross for our sins.
Jesus lived his life for others.
This is the role of the Christian too.
In a world that so often implies that the most important person is yourself…
That your desires…
Your wants…
Your career…
Your talents…
Your finances…
Your church…
Your diet…
Your life…
Is about you.
Jesus declares that our life is to be lived for others.
The greatest is the servant of all.
He has given us gifts and talents…
Blessings and treasures…
So that we become a blessing to others…
When we all serve each other…
When we all use the gifts given to us by the Holy Spirit for the common good…
It is a beautiful thing.
There is a story about a pastor who was meeting with a few parishioners for breakfast.
The pastor asked one of the parishioners to say the prayer before their meal.
The parishioner, was a farmer, he was decked out in bib overalls and smelled like the farm he came from…
But he began to pray and say grace for the morning breakfast.
“Lord, (he said) I hate buttermilk.”
The pastor opened one eye to glance at the farmer and wonder where this was going.
The farmer loudly proclaimed,
“Lord, I hate lard.”
Now the pastor was growing concerned.
Without missing a beat, the farmer continued,
“And Lord, you know I don’t much care for raw white flour”.
The pastor once again opened an eye to glance around the room and saw that he wasn’t the only one to feel uncomfortable.
Then the farmer added,
“But Lord, when you mix them all together and bake them,
I do love warm fresh biscuits.
So Lord, when things come up that we don’t like,
when life gets hard,
when we don’t understand what you’re saying to us,
help us to just relax and wait until you are done mixing.
It will probably be even better than biscuits. Amen.”
When we let the Lord mix all our gifts and talents together without complaining about all the different parts…
We get a church that smells as good as a nice warm fresh biscuit.
May we remember the words of St. Paul to the church in Corinth…
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
Let us pray.
Thank you, Lord, for making us different…
Giving us gifts as you see fit…
Help us to use these gifts to impact others…
So that you will be glorified as we bless each other.
Amen.
