“One Spirit, many gifts, glorious service”.

I’ve never enjoyed playing football – or team sports in general. I have no ball sense and when I was at school the captains choosing the two teams used to fight for the privilege of not having me on their team! When play actually started I could only see what was going on through a haze of short-sightedness; and if the ball dared to come anywhere near me I saw it as my duty to kick away this brown and muddy object as rapidly as possible – in whatever direction I could.

One thing I did pick up about football is that it’s supposed to be a team game. In those distant days there was nothing so sophisticated as a 4-2-4 formation or whatever the latest formation is. You had five forwards: one in the centre, two on the inside left and right, and two wingers. There were three half-backs, two full-backs (which is where I was usually placed, as it’s where I could do the least damage) and, of course, the goalkeeper. Then as now, in any team with a semblance of decency, the players each had their role and didn’t all rush madly after the ball. After all, a goalkeeper going onto the attack would leave a gaping void in defence for their opponents to exploit.

This idea of different players having different talents and tasks is a familiar one in the world of team sport. From football to cricket, from basketball to curling, even in more exotic activities as rowing and bobsleighing, each person has their specific task. It’s therefore quite acceptable for a fast bowler to score only a few runs (although the designated England batsmen in Australia just now don’t seem to score many, either!), you’d never expect a front-row rugby forward to substitute a fly-half. Those things aren’t what they are good at; each player has been selected to play according to their strengths.

The Christian Church is not a sporting or leisure activity (even though the “Church Times” does sponsor a fiercely-contested Cricket Cup each year!) And while the legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly claimed that football was much more than a matter of life and death (and, I may add, is sometimes followed with near-religious devotion), I believe that our faith and the Church are far more important still. Nevertheless there is a similarity between being a member of a church and of a sporting team, in that everyone has their rightful task to fill. Granted, a football team can only have 11 players (not counting substitutes) while a church can be any size without needing to push anyone out. But all churches, large or small, depend on the concerted efforts of their members working together properly, using the gifts or talents which God has provided for them.

The New Testament church in Corinth was one whose members did not work together properly! (We’ve actually benefitted from that confusion as our Bibles contain two of the letters which Paul wrote as he tried to sort out their problems – not that they wanted to take much notice!) Now this church, situated in Greece, was different to many of the other early churches as most of its believers came from a pagan, rather than a Jewish, background. This meant that they didn’t have the understanding of God (and, for that matter, of traditional morals) possessed by their Jewish colleagues: so, when they became Christians, they would have had a lot of “relearning” to do in order to change their religious mindset. I’m sure that was one of the reasons for the difficulties in the church; another was the very wide social and educational range encompassed within it, from upper-class merchants to slaves. This undoubtedly led to some people, without even noticing, thinking they could ‘rule the roost’ while others must have felt that they had to shout loudly if they were to make their voices heard. This church was enthusiastic about its new-found faith, but immature.

One area where this all came to the fore was in worship. Not to put too fine a point on things, their services were noisy and chaotic as a number of people gave alleged prophecies, or spoke out in unlearned languages, or started singing a song, with no reference to anyone else – in fact it was a bit of competition to see whose voice could be heard above the hubbub! The church was showing clear signs of spiritual oneupmanship: “I speak in tongues more than you do”; “My prophecies are better than yours”; “I can do greater miracles tha you can”. This – as we go on to read in chapter 14 – was giving the church a bad name as visitors would come in and exclaim, “You’re barmy, the whole lot of you. If this is what Christianity is, I want none of it”. Paul, who had founded the church, was appalled and wanted to (lovingly!) bash the Corinthian Christians’ heads together; he did not mince his words.

Now, many people get a bit spooked by the phrase ‘spiritual gifts’ as it smacks of charismatic or Pentecostal Christianity. And if you were thinking that this subject has often been linked with one section of the Church which goes in for loud, lengthy and emotional worship, led by bands with guitars and drums, you’d be correct – although we must be careful not to caricature sincere and spiritual Christians whose devotion to God may well put us to shame. However if you’ve realised that the word “charismata” is a Biblical one which simply means “gifts given by grace”, then you must agree that every Christian should be enthusiastic about using the gifts God has given them for service in his Church and, I think, beyond. The style of worship is irrelevant.

“Hang on”, you might say, especially if you’ve got some theology under your belt, “All this talk of weird gifts such as doing miracles, speaking in tongues and uttering prophecies is a bit ‘over the top’; I prefer my faith to be predictable and ordered”. Well, I have both good and bad news for you. The bad news is that Paul repeatedly mentions those gifts in his letters so we can’t pretend they’re not there. (And the fact that they were being misused in the Corinthian church isn’t an excuse for us to say, “In that case we won’t use them” but, rather, a good reason to say, “We will use them – correctly”). Those are valid and God-given gifts which can be very useful in certain situations and – contrary to what you may think – they have nothing to do with going into trances or giving up our minds or losing control. (If you want to know more about what I think these gifts are, feel free to ask me later).

But the good news – and this is the important thing – is that these particular gifts are merely a small segment of the entire spectrum of abilities with which God endows his people. For people can be gifted in many ways: they may be good at preaching and teaching about the Christian message, they may have abilities in leading and organising the church, they may be a dab hand at doing the day-to-day practical tasks, they may be great at communicating with children, they may have a gift of “hospitality” (for don’t some people have a real knack for making others welcome?), and so on. There’s even a gift enigmatically called “helps” – possibly a willing person who is available at any time!

In any case, I don’t think the lists of gifts we have here in 1 Corinthians and elsewhere in the New Testament are anything like complete. For many of the things we may take for granted in church life – such as doing the accounts or teaching the children or playing musical instruments or mowing the lawn – aren’t even mentioned (although music does figure strongly in the Old Testament). My belief is that every church needs people with its own spectrum of gifts so it can do God’s work in in its specific time and place. In other words, the gifts that Christchurch needs to serve God in Llanedeyrn will be different to the gifts needed in (say) a church set in a posh part of London or one in a Brazilian favela. One hopes both that every church realises this (for what’s relevant “there” may not be relevant “here”) and pray for God to send along the right people for it to carry out its mission.

Up to this point I’ve been talking about people serving God within a church, and this is indeed the thrust of what Paul is saying. But, at the risk of taking liberties with the Bible’s text, I wonder if I can spread the net wider and apply his principles to the whole of society? In fact, I’m not now even specifically thinking of Christians but of all people: for if we believe that we were created by God and are social beings, then we must all possess God-given gifts which should be used, as Paul says, “for the common good”. I actually think that we saw a bit of that happening at the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. For a time, at least, communities pulled together to support people who couldn’t get to the pharmacy or to provide hot meals and food boxes for those who were unable to get to the shops. A lot of dedicated volunteers did many wonderful things which they may have never imagined themselves doing, and many businesses discovered new ways of working which could benefit their community. Covid has been a trial and a tragedy (and certainly wasn’t sent by God!) but people did discover huge amounts of creativity which they used selflessly and for the good of others. Sadly that spirit now seems to have decayed.

Yet we Christians do believe in society and in the “common good”. John Chrysostom, the celebrated Bishop of Antioch and Archbishop of Constantinople who lived back in the fourth century, had quite a lot to say about this. In one of his sermons he said, “Let us contribute wealth, diligence, protection and all things for our neighbour’s advantage … Nothing pleases God so much as to live for the common good”. He also said, “This is the rule of most perfect Christianity, its most exact definition, its highest point, namely, the seeking of the common good … For nothing can so make a person an imitator of Christ as caring for his neighbours”. It’s clear that Chrysostom believed that every Christian should use whatever gifts they possess to serve others. This principle strongly critiques a world in which many people seem to be more concerned about feathering their own nests than in making a contribution to society as a whole, and where politics seems so often to be more concerned with scoring points off the other parties than with working towards the well-being of the entire nation.

There’s a lot more that I could say on this subject, so I’ll be continuing next week as we look at the next part of this letter. I simply want to finish today with a challenge, which is for us to have a good think and ask ourselves, “What abilities and gifts has God given me? Am I using them to serve others?” In fact I’d go further and ask you to pray, “Please God, help me discover talents I never knew I possessed” and “Please give me the courage to use the gifts I know I’ve been given but have never dared put into practice”. For, as I said last Sunday, none of us is a “nobody”, every one of us is a “somebody” – created uniquely by God and given precious abilities which he longs for us to use, for the good of the Church, of society and, of course, for his glory.