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If you were snowbound on Friday, you might have had some extra time to read one of the editorials in the Knoxville News Sentinel. Ellen Goodman wrote about the concept of personal responsibility and how that concept has been taken to ludicrous extremes in recent times. She had written an earlier column wondering why there wasn’t “more political pressure for child care in a country full of stressed-out working families.” Her email responses to that earlier column included one by Amanda who spoke the Personal Responsibility mantra: “If you decide to have a child, it is your responsibility to shoulder all the costs and responsibilities. Period. Why should I have to pay for someone else’s luxury.” Another reader compared having children to having pets: “It’s my choice to get them and I can’t expect the taxpayer to pay for their needs.”

The implication of this code word “personal responsibility,” according to Goodman, is that if you can’t foresee a way to manage the cost of any decision you will make, including having children, then you are irresponsible if you choose to go ahead with the decision, anyway. Of course, that definition of personal responsibility is easy enough if you are rich, or at least upper middle class, but what if you didn’t open up a 529 College Savings Account the day your child was born and make regular contributions or what if you are just struggling to stretch the monthly paycheck to cover the necessities like food, rent, and health insurance?

Ellen Goodman, being a good Boston Democrat, takes aim at this misuse of the notion of personal responsibility and the way that the Republican administration has turned that notion into a political tool of the wealthy to denigrate the poor. She writes: “I’m uncomfortable when people who don’t have enough money are re-categorized as personally irresponsible. I’m uncomfortable when people who are stretched on the rack between work and family are labeled as morally flawed.” She concludes by writing, the comment that really caught my attention: “We are, after all, in this together. For the new year, we just have to take some personal responsibility – for each other.” (Sentinel, 1/9/04)

St. Paul, or any other preacher for that matter, couldn’t have said it better. “For the new year, we just have to take some personal responsibility – for each other.”

This passage from Corinthians is about the responsible use of spiritual gifts for each other, a responsibility always framed within the context of communal accountability.

The church at Corinth had been founded by Paul during an 18 month stay in the middle of the 1^st century. Although the church included some high born individuals, it was composed mainly of ordinary people such as artisans, freedman, and slaves. About 4 years after the founding of this church, Paul received word that some people were engaging in unacceptable behavior and that the church was dividing into factions. Some members, perhaps the richer or more influential ones, were claiming superior wisdom, superior spiritual insight, and superior status. This “special knowledge” was apparently leading them to engage in immorality and idolatry, and they had even begun to ridicule the less-sophisticated believers as being foolish and weak in their faith. Some of these factions in the church were even falling out so badly that they were taking each other to court. There were some scenarios and intrachurch squabbles in Corinth that, no doubt, could have aired in our day on Judge Judy or the People’s Court.

Anyway, perhaps the main problem in Corinth was that private pleasure and a misguided sense of personal responsibility had become distorted at the expense of collective or communal behavior and accountability and ethics.

So Paul wrote to them, asserting his right as the founder of this Christian community in Corinth, to vigorously oppose the unethical practices that had arisen there. In broad strokes, his message in the whole of I Corinthians is that, for Christians, true wisdom and divine power are to be found not in the arrogance of human wisdom and superior knowledge, but in the apparently weak and foolish message of a despised and crucified Savior.

And so, across the 16 chapters of this long letter, Paul goes into great detail about how the Christian should behave – both personally, but more precisely, personal responsibility carried out in the context of communal accountability.

Faced with a distortion of the Gospel and the lack of discipline in Corinth, Paul turns to the idea of spiritual gifts to illustrate the true nature of the Christian calling. He turns, especially, to the unifying function of the Holy Spirit in giving those gifts in the first place.

Paul’s four word introduction: “Now concerning spiritual gifts . . .” contains more than one meaning. The Greek word translated “spiritual gifts” can be translated either spiritual gifts or spiritual persons. So, we should consider the two terms interchangeable. Or in Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase version: “What I want to talk about now is the various ways God’s spirit gets worked into our lives.” This translation suggests that our spiritual gifts are incarnational, but that they are also there for communal expression.

Varieties of gifts – but the same spirit
Varieties of services – but the same Lord
Varieties of activities – but the same God who activates all of them in everyone.

If you think grammatically of singular/plural in that three-fold poetic foundation for the Christian life, you hear the singular – spirit, Lord, God – but you hear also the plural – gifts, services, activities. Unity in diversity. These three manifestations of the Spirit describe the way God is at work in the church and in the world. And what it says is that the diversity of the whole is more than the sum of its individual parts. Or, as Paul summarizes it in verse 7: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” There is a double force at work here: to each and for the common good.

What was the common good in Paul’s day? What is the common good for our day? What would God view as the common good for the world right now? Certainly, cultures change, and perceptions of the common good change as well. Habits of the Heart? But that’s really the wrong question to ask of this text. If the creator God gives us gifts to exercise for the common good, then more to the point, we have to ask, what is the common good, right now, for which God calls us to work?

Certainly, thoughts like redemption, reconciliation and hospitality to those who are outsiders or different would receive an eager theological nod as that which God desires. But what about a healthy ecological environment, being good stewards of the earth’s resources, even challenging political administrations that seem to be doing only that which enhances economic growth instead of that which promotes sound ecological wisdom and decision-making? Could that also be what Paul means when he calls upon the church to work for the common good? Or, what about health care access for all? A chance to learn to read for all? The protection of the right to free speech, for all? Could these also be ways to work for the common good?

Well, if you are a careful reader of biblical texts, you will inform me that Paul is really talking about life in the Church in this passage – not about social or ecological or political questions, as we might use those terms today. And, in a sense, you would be right. But if we look elsewhere in scripture, for example, the oft-quoted verse John 3:16, “for God so loved the world” we know that we are supposed to believe that God does not love some of us apart from others, not just the Jews, or the Americans, or the Presbyterians, or whatever other group we would want to add. And the spiritual gifts we have or the spiritual persons who we are form the identity, not just of the church in here, but the church out there, as well.

There are a lot of spiritual gifts, by some counts as many as 24 specific ones mentioned in scripture. This passage from I Corinthians 12 mentions nine gifts as diverse as being wise and having knowledge to speaking in tongues and performing miracles. But the point, I think, is that each of us has to ask ourselves, what is my spiritual gift that I can use for the common good? A test of any spiritual gift, according to St. Paul, is that this gift be used for the good of others. A spiritual gift is not necessarily a warm glow within or a positive attitude toward life. A spiritual gift is a gift that builds up the body, it is a gift that edifies the congregation as a whole. And I would want to add, it is a gift that also finds a way to edify even beyond familiar church borders.

One of the greatest challenges for you and me is to be the sort of people who discover, claim, and cultivate the spiritual gifts of one another. It might very well be the most important question we can ask: How well do we as a church discover and encourage the exercise of the spiritual gifts of all within our congregation? How well do you use your gifts and affirm gifts in others?

A couple of you have reported to me your uncertainty about what we have meant by the third ministry initiative that came up during our visioning process: “A Congregational gifts-discernment program to enable each member and friend to discover and serve according to his or her special gifts, rather than exclusively according to Bethel’s needs.” One place to begin, in implementing that initiative, would be to study what scripture says about spiritual gifts, here in Corinthians and elsewhere, but then also to design a process, maybe even a spiritual gifts inventory, that would facilitate helping one another to discover and share our spiritual gifts, gifts that have, perhaps even unintentionally, remained hidden from view, un-activated in the life of this community or the greater community where we live and work and volunteer.

Barbara Brown Taylor, a pastor in the Atlanta area, once wrote: “I will never forget the woman who listened to my speech on the ministry of the laity as God’s best hope for the world and this lady said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be that important.”

Taylor then adds, “like many of those who sit beside her at church, she hears the invitation to ministry [or substitute use one’s spiritual gifts] as an invitation to do more – to lead the every member canvass, or cook supper for the homeless or teach vacation church school. Or she hears the invitation to ministry as an invitation to be more – to be more generous, more loving, more religious. No one has ever introduced her to the idea that her ministry [her gifts] might involve being just who she already is and doing just what she already does, with one difference: namely, that she understand herself to be God’s person in and for the world” (The Preaching Life, 34)

Certainly, I would affirm that the ministry of the Holy Spirit defies easy categorization. The Spirit blows where it wills. But I also affirm that the work of the spirit happens in community. These gifts are not private possessions, but they are given to enhance the ability of the whole body to do that which it has been designed to do, that is, to help us understand how we are God’s people in and for the world. It is, therefore, crucial to remember that Paul’s discussion of these spiritual gifts occurs in the broader context of his marvelous image of the community as the body of Christ – many different parts, many different functions, but one body.

Paul’s comparison of the church to the human body may very well be the most familiar image we have of the church. One commentator has written: “The day Paul was inspired to compare the church to a human body, he gave us an image of ourselves that we are still growing into.”

Each of us knows about bodies. Most of us take our body parts for granted most of the time. But we know that the different parts of our bodies must work together or we are in trouble. And it is the same with our spiritual gifts. There has to be diversity for the body to function, but also a unity of purpose within that diversity.

Sometimes, of course, the church fails to recognize the diversity of gifts among us. We fail to see that characteristic of someone in the congregation whom we feels is a nuisance is, in reality, a great gift of the Holy Spirit.

I close with the story of a church going through the process of reading application letters to fill a ministry position:

A member of the Official Board undergoing this painful process finally lost patience. He’d watched the Pastoral Relations Committee reject applicant after applicant for some fault, alleged or otherwise. It was time for a bit of soul-searching on the part of the committee. So he stood up in the congregation and read a letter purporting to be from another applicant.

To whom it may concern: Understanding your pulpit is vacant, I should like to apply for the position. I have many qualifications . . . I’ve been a preacher with much success and also had some success as a writer. Some say I’m a good organizer. I’ve been a leader most places I’ve been.

I am over 50 years of age. I have never preached in one place more than three years. In some places I have left town after my work has caused riots and disturbances.

I must admit I have been in jail three or four times, but not because of any real wrong doing.

My health is not too good though I still get a great deal done.

The churches I have preached in have been small though located in several large cities.

I’ve not got along too well with religious leaders in towns where I have preached. In fact, some have threatened me and even attacked me physically.

I am not too good at keeping records. I have been known to forget whom I have baptized.

However, if you can use me, I shall do my best for you.”

The board member looked over the congregation . . . “Well, what do you think? Shall we hire him?”

The good church folks were aghast. Hire an unhealthy, trouble-making, absent-minded, ex-jail bird? Was the board crazy? Who signed that application? Who had such colossal nerve?

The board member eyed them all keenly before he answered . . . “It’s signed, The Apostle Paul.”(Pulpit Resource, vol. 32, # 1, p. 15)