I can’t imagine that St Paul had much of a sense of humour. Jesus clearly did, as he gave us the slapstick comedy of one blind man leading another into a ditch; and the man who could see the speck of dust in his friend’s eye but failed to see the plank sticking out of his own. Then there’s the tiny mustard-seed which could make huge mountains leap into the sea; the wordplay of calling indecisive Peter a “rock”; the preposterous thought of a laden camel – complete with its hump – trying to squeeze through a needle’s eye; and the person who thought it was a sensible idea put a basket over their lamp. We may not find these sayings or stories very funny: but Jesus’ listeners did.

But Paul? To me he seems a very different sort of person: a man who was single-minded and obsessively driven, who found it hard to get on with people who didn’t see things his way and who didn’t suffer fools gladly, who used his fine intellect to run rings round his opponents, and who could be scathing in his criticism. We can admire Paul for his dedication to Christ and the early Church, and we can thank God for his writings. But I don’t think we’d have wanted to take him to the local comedy club for a night out: he just didn’t do “funny”.

Except, perhaps, once (if you can think of other instances, please let me know). For here in 1 Corinthians he gives us the ridiculous picture of the different parts of the human body not only talking to each other but each claiming that they are more important than the others or even able to exist quite happily without them. Paul is having none of it: “Don’t be daft”, he says, “The eye can’t say that it doesn’t need the hand, nor can the head say that it doesn’t need the feet”. He goes on: “If the whole body were an eye, how would it hear? If the whole body were an ear, how could it have a sense of smell? Our organs may be different but they’re all important and they must function together if we’re to stay healthy. That even includes the ones we don’t usually mention in polite conversation!”

Hopefully Paul got a smile for that; he was using humour to make a serious point with the Corinthian Christians as sensible arguments and stiff talking hadn’t got him very far! For this church was highly dysfunctional. As I said last week, most of its members had been pagan Greeks which meant that they didn’t have the religious and moral understanding which Jewish converts would have possessed. Added to this was the fact that this church was made up of people from a broad social spectrum; that meant that the ‘posher’ Christians looked down their noses at those they felt were inferior (surely that never happens today?!) A final factor was that people were bragging about their “spiritual gifts”, abilities and talents which they believed the Holy Spirit had given to them: it’s clear that folk who had some gifts, such as “speaking in tongues”, “prophecy” or the ability to heal felt that they were higher up the pecking order than those who were “merely” (as they saw it) good administrators or kind and hospitable. Paul wants to show them that the pecking order simply doesn’t exist as everyone, with their varied gifts, is needed if the church is to carry out its God-given ministry and mission.

Now I don’t think that this principle only applied to one church, 2000 years ago – I’m sure it still applies today. And, as I again said last week, this must mean that every person in every church (except those who have served in the past and are now honourably retired) should be saying to themself: “Given the constraints of my family life and my job and my health and my time, and knowing who I am and what I’m good at: how can I serve Jesus within my church community and his world? How can I do something useful with the gifts he’s given me?” Paul’s vision of the church doesn’t see the Minister and Deacons doing all the work while others just come along on Sundays and sit in their pews: that’s actually a recipe for decline and, ultimately, closure.

I do wonder if one problem we have with this notion of “spiritual gifts” has arisen because of the way we use the English language. For often, when we say that someone has a particular gift, what we really mean is that they have a very special aptitude, especially when we talk about “gifted children” who have talents which go well beyond what is ordinary. Hence we talk of people who are gifted in the fields of music, art, carpentry, football, or whatever; thus Michael Sheen is a gifted actor, Shirley Bassey a gifted singer, Dan Biggar a gifted rugby player, Dylan Thomas a gifted poet, and so on.

That’s fine; but muddies our thinking. For, if we think that someone with a spiritual gift means that they have an exceptional talent in the church – whether that be in preaching or music or organising things or doing things with the children or whatever – and if we then start comparing our modest talents with theirs, we soon start thinking, “They’re gifted and I’m not; they can do things really well and I can’t”. The danger is that we may go on to say, “What’s the point? I’m pretty average at everything, so there’s no point in my getting involved”. But, while some people obviously do have outstanding gifts in particular areas, that doesn’t mean that others with more modest ones should feel they aren’t needed! Indeed, they may be absolutely vital in what you might call a supporting role, just as a ballet or opera company needs not just its star performers but also the ordinary dancers in the corps de ballet and the singers in the chorus.

What’s true in the church is clearly true in society as a whole: all of us have a part to play, we can’t just sit back and leave it to “them” – whoever “they” may be! Margaret Thatcher famously said that “there is no such thing as society” (although I think her words were taken out of context); but 400 years ago John Donne, the poet and Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral wrote: “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main”. We’re connected to each other, we are all part of one system, we need each other.

My newspaper had an article this week about the hospital workers who may have been overlooked during the Covid pandemic. It quotes one lady, a chaplain, as saying, “The thing that irritates me most is the term ‘frontline workers’. We were dealing with a virus which doesn’t know such boundaries; it doesn’t know a front line. Of course, the doctors and nurses have been rightly applauded. But there are so many other people who work in hospitals who keep putting themselves at risk and going above and beyond … The pandemic has relied on so many people to keep the cogs turning – from the security and IT personnel, to the porters and cleaners, to the paramedics and those who order the PPE. I suppose I just want people to remember they all exist – that they are all what makes the NHS”. Equally an operating theatre orderly said, “I know the surgeons and nurses work hard but I reckon I should be given a knighthood for what I do. I help prepare the equipment for the surgeons and help out in theatre. I look after patients before their surgery and am often the first face they see when they wake up. I’m good at reading whether they are anxious or stressed, and I try and make them laugh and have a good chat”. He believes that he’s important, and I agree.

So Christians need to recognise what gifts God has – and hasn’t! – given them. Indeed Paul, in his letter to the church at Rome, asks every Christian to carefully evaluate their talents. Personally I doubt if someone whose eyes blur and whose brain goes into a spin whenever they see numbers should apply for the job of Treasurer; and I suspect that someone who can’t say “boo” to a goose is unlikely to be called to be an evangelist. I’d question if a person whose house has documents and papers scattered everywhere would be the best candidate for Church Secretary!  Nevertheless sometimes people in churches do put themselves up for tasks to which they are quite obviously not suited. For instance, someone who is tone-deaf might want to sing in the choir; or (as I have seen myself) an elderly deacon with no rapport with young people might offer to take on the youth group, usually for the reason that, if he doesn’t do it, there is no-one else who will!

It’s in situations like these that church leaders must be very tactful as they inform the eager volunteers that their gifts aren’t quite what are needed for the particular task in hand. It is always hard if you offer to do a job but then find you are not wanted; some folk get very miffed when this happens and feel that they’re being rejected when that isn’t the case: what they are really doing is discovering that they made a mistake in discerning their God-given abilities. Those good folk need to get rid of any sense of grievance and ask God to show them what talents they really do have. The leaders are left with the tricky task of encouraging people who do have the right gifts to come forward and use them. They may be reticent to do so, but they’ll often find that their gifts mature and develop as they are used.

I don’t know how many of you watch the TV show “The Repair Shop”, where the team restore and refurbish people’s treasured but battered heirlooms. I have a love/hate relationship with it, as I admire the craftsmanship being displayed but dislike the sentimentality. Anyway, one of the experts is Steve Fletcher, a horologist who fixes old clocks, watches and other mechanical devices such as music boxes. The first thing he has to do in any restoration is take the item to pieces: so he places all the “bits” in different containers, cleans them, realigns any bent pieces, creates one or two new ones, and eventually rebuilds the device. His work is incredibly finicky and quite amazing.

Just imagine, though, for a moment (and I’m sure this would never happen) that he loses one tiny and irreplaceable part of the clock. It might be a tiny screw, or a little gearwheel, or a miniature spring: the kind of thing that can easily drop through a crack in the floorboards. Well, I think you can see where I’m going with this: that piece might be one of hundreds, it doesn’t look much, it’s normally hidden away deep inside the clock – but without it the clock simply won’t go. That one insignificant-looking part is actually vital if the clock is to work. “The dial cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you’, nor the pendulum to the escapement, ‘I don’t need you.’ On the contrary, the parts of the mechanism that seem to be unimportant are vital, and the parts that we never even think about must be treated with care and respect”.

Would Paul have talked about clocks rather than the human body if he’d been writing to the Corinthian church today? Probably not: his illustration is universal and works for every person in every age. Was he successful in getting across his point, so that the church started behaving an a more responsible and adult manner? I have no idea, but I hope so. Do churches today face the same difficulties as this congregation of long ago? Well, some do and some don’t – though for most the problem lies in finding enough willing people “to keep the show on the road”. Have we all worked out what our particular gift is, and offered it to God? It may seem humble, it may seem insignificant – but it might very the very one that is needed to fill a gap or complete a jigsaw of talents. Paul may not have had a great sense of humour: but his words still challenge us and make us think.