March 2008
Numbers 11:24-30
Preached on 3/30/08
David Endriss
THE GIFTS OF GOD
Introduction
Happy Birthday! What? It’s not your birthday? Are you sure? That’s odd. Hmmmm, I’ve got a gift here for you, it even has your name on it. Well, suit yourself.
The apostle Paul makes it very clear that every believer has been given a gift. “to each, he says in verse seven, is given a manifestation of the Spirit.” There is no Christian who has been left out. However, there are a lot of believers out there, who have had the birthday, but have failed to open their gift. It is just sitting there. Peter Wagner, says this may be the chief cause of many of the problems in the church today. If every believer has been given a spiritual gift, this has several immediate implications:
1. The role of leaders within the church is to help individuals discover their spiritual gifts and find ways in which they can be used.
2. Individual believers are challenged to work to find what their gifts are and to use them. Just as important as knowing what gift God has given you is knowing which gifts God hasn’t given you. Many Christians try for years to function with gifts they never had in the first place, and this doesn’t do the Lord’s work much good. It’s like trying to hear something with your knee or throw a ball with your nose. Knees and noses are better off doing other things
The author Max Lucado made this observation: Someone can be a good third baseman, but not a good pitcher. If I’m called to play third base, I’m going to be the best third baseman I can be. It was a liberating moment when I realized I didn’t have to be great at everything. Each believer needs to discover their spiritual gift.
3. A third implication is that spiritual gifts are gifts given by the Spirit of God. As such no one can take credit for their gift or brag about their importance.
4. Finally, as Paul makes abundantly clear, spiritual gifts are given in the context of the body of Christ. The community of faith needs the individual gifts of its members and the members needs the gifts of the community.
So why learn about your spiritual gift? First, because it will help your own spiritual journey. Secondly, it will help others. And finally, and most importantly, in the exercise of your spiritual gift you will glorify God.
The Need for Spiritual Gifts
One of the great tragedies of church history has been the tendency of both the clergy and the laity to place the task of ministry into the hands of those who have been “professionally trained.”
We often see the pastor or priest as the possessor of all the gifts necessary for the growth of the people of God. In so doing we funnel the Spirit's ministry through the relative size of the minister's ecclesiastical collar and consequently, restrict the potential for growth. The laity become nothing but spectators both in worship and in ministry. Certainly, this is not what God intended for the church. We often have in our church’s newsletter and today you can see it in your bulletins. At the bottom of the staff page you have this reminder: “where every member is a minister.” If you are a Christian, you have a ministry. If you have a ministry, you are a minister.
Often believers have held on to a distorted concept of what the church should be and look like. Two thousand years ago, the Corinthians had a messed up idea of the church and Paul used the metaphor of the body to help them understand the church needs to be diverse in order to be healthy. Just as the human body is a unified whole, composed of millions of different parts, so it is with Christ and his body.
Take a moment to stop and think about how miraculously complex our bodies are. Although it is impossible to accurately estimate there are at least 10 trillion and possibly as many as 100 trillion cells in the human body. The average heart may beat 40 million times in the course of a year. For an adult, if you were to take all of your blood vessels and line them up end to end, it would stretch for about 100,000 miles! That’s about 4 times around the planet! By the time this worship service is over you will have replaced just in this one hour about 120 million red blood cells!
The human mind cannot begin to fathom the complexity of the body of Christ, anymore than the human mind can imagine the 100,000 miles of blood vessels in one’s own physical body. Our minds cannot comprehend the wonderful intricacy of God’s church. Christ is a living body, composed of billions of parts, miraculously complex, with billions of members, located in millions of different settings, with thousands of different languages, with thousands of unique cultures and billions of expressions of the true faith…throughout all the centuries of recorded time.
Although Paul and his contemporaries didn’t have the scientific knowledge that we have of human anatomy, his use of the human body to describe the church of Jesus Christ is very, very accurate! With that kind of diversity involved in the body of Christ we need every member: young, old, men, women, boy, girl, conservatives, liberals, disabled, healthy, and yes, even the clergy.
The Nature of Spiritual Gifts
Okay, so we understand the need for diversity in the church and the need for all believers to discover and use their spiritual gifts. But what are they? Before we talk too much about what are spiritual gifts, let’s first talk about what they are not. First, let’s not confuse spiritual gifts with our roles as faithful Christians. For example, one of the spiritual gifts is evangelism, but we are all called to be prepared to share our faith with others. Another spiritual gift is that of giving, but we are all called to give. Just because your spiritual gift may not be giving, that doesn’t mean that you can throw away your pledge envelopes and stop giving to the work of the church. Because your spiritual gift is not evangelism, doesn’t mean that you can ignore sharing your faith when the opportunity is placed before you.
But perhaps an even greater confusion comes when we fail to differentiate between spiritual gifts and our natural talents. Every human being, believer and unbeliever alike, because we are made in the image of God, has talents. Some are good athletes, others are talented artists, still others understand machinery and mechanics, another has a wonderful ear for music, and another can speak in front of others. Part of this confusion comes because we often call such people “gifted”. In one sense they indeed are, because ultimately, these talents do come from God. But every person, regardless of whether they believe in Christ or not, have some talents.
But the apostle Paul makes it very clear, that for believers, God has given some very particular and special gifts. Sometimes a person’s natural talents may compliment their spiritual gift, but not always. Just because a person is a teacher in a public school, does not necessarily mean that they have the spiritual gift of teaching. Just because a person is an intellectual and a scholar at work does not necessarily mean that they have the spiritual gifts of wisdom or knowledge.
So, if spiritual gifts are not to be confused with either the role that we all have as Christians nor are they the same as our natural talents, then what are spiritual gifts? Let’s try this as a simple working definition. Spiritual gifts are Spirit given abilities for Christian service. As I mentioned earlier, one aspect of spiritual gifts is that they are given to us by God. Time and time again Paul pounds this truth home to his Corinthian friends in the passage I read earlier:
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
There are several passages in the Bible that list some of the spiritual gifts. You find them in Corinthians, Romans, Ephesians and also in 1 Peter. The list includes those that I read earlier like: wisdom, knowledge, faith, prophecy, miracles, and the ever controversial speaking in tongues. Other lists include things like hospitality, teaching, pastor, leadership, giving and administration. If you were to count up all the lists, depending upon how you do it, you might come up with 20-30 different gifts. But is this list meant to be only suggestive of God’s gifts or is it a final and exhaustive list? Personally, I believe this list is meant to be suggestive and that God can and does use these gifts and others to further the kingdom. Still, those that are listed have found prominent use in the life of the church and we would do well to look at these closely and ask ourselves, “Is this my spiritual gift?” “Is God calling me to use this gift in my church and life?”
With those very questions in mind, over the next several weeks we shall be looking at many of these gifts and unpacking what the Bible has to say about them, and how you might be able to exercise these gifts in your life and in the life of this church.
Conclusion
Are you sure it’s not your birthday? Oh, perhaps your spiritual birthday was years, even decades ago. But for some reason, you have never opened up your spiritual gift. There is no time like the present, to open this present. I invite you over these next few weeks to begin taking off the ribbon, unwrapping the paper and discover God’s special gift for you!
Texts: Matthew 28:1-10
Psalm 118:14-24
Preached on 3/23/08 - Easter
David Endriss
EASTER PHOBIAS
Introduction
The last couple of weeks has seen a stock market in a high state of flux. If our country isn’t already in a recession, it is very close. A war whose rising cost of human lives seems to keep spiraling upward. Natural disasters seem to be occurring with an ever increasing regularity. There are so many different things that could make us afraid. This last week I Googled the internet and discovered a web site dedicated to listing different kinds of phobias and found hundreds including: panophobia - the fear of everything!
Certainly those early disciples had much to be afraid of after that dark Friday. For them, it seemed that their future, once bright, was now only darkness. And there was the quite natural fear for their own lives. Would they be the next to be arrested? Little wonder that many of them went into hiding.
We have often applauded Peter’s boldness, or Paul’s emphasis on grace. But what about Mary Magdalene’s loyalty? She was one of the few who remained at the foot of the cross. And she was one of the brave who came out of hiding to visit the gravesite that Sunday morning. Magdalenic fidelity should be remembered and celebrated.
Earthquake!
But as Mary Magdalene and that other mysterious Mary made their way to the tomb there was a great earthquake. The stone was rolled away by the ruckus of an angel who, in an act of impudent defiance at death then sits upon the very same stone! But that angel rolled away that stone not to let Jesus out, but to allow them women to look in.
Verse four has a wonderful irony within it. For fear of the angel the guards shook and became like dead men. The man who was inside the tomb was suppose to be dead but is now alive and those outside the tomb who were supposedly alive are now acting as if they were dead! And for them, there was something to be afraid about. Everything that they understood about their world had suddenly been shaken to its very roots! Your average earthquake normally takes place primarily on the surface, but this earthquake shook deep down - to the very foundations of people’s understanding of how things should be!
The German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche has been credited for announcing that God is dead. But here God reverses the tables and declares that Nietzsche is dead.
Do Not Be Afraid!
Although the presence of the angel terrified the guards, the angel turns to the women and says to them, but don’t you be afraid. They certainly had something to fear though. An earthquake, rolling stones, and angelic visits! But the angel’s command is to encourage them with the news that although the guard’s world may be falling apart, yours is falling together. This command from the angel was not just informative, it was also performative. That is, it not only told them not to be afraid, it gave them the strength to not be afraid.
For most of my life I have lived in earthquake country; first in California and then in Alaska. It’s only been the last 15 years that I have exchanged earthquakes for tornadoes and blizzards. For those of us who have grown up on the west coast, the average earthquake creates only mild interest. One visiting pastor from the mid-west however was in the middle of his sermon in Alaska when an earthquake hit. The church shook, but for that small congregation it was just another day at the office. The only response was one woman who said, “How about that, the light fixtures didn’t fall this time.” The pastor however, was so shaken that he ended his sermon immediately. He was even more shaken by the nonchalant attitude of the Alaskans. Later, at lunch with the congregation’s pastor, the visiting preacher observed, “What the heck would it take to get this congregation’s attention? I would hate to have to preach to them every Sunday!” Some of us may be in need of a seismic shake up to wake us from our lethargy.
He Has Risen!
The angel’s announcement to the women is four words in English, but in Greek it is one. And without that one word, the whole of Christianity would come tumbling down into a pile of broken and shattered beliefs: ἐγείρω “he has been raised”. As if to help convince them of what seems impossible, the angel tells them this not once but twice.
But the angel goes even further. Come, see the place where he lay. Don’t just take my word for it, look for yourselves! You don’t need to take it simply on faith - use your eyes. Gather empirical evidence! God does not ask us to give ourselves a spiritual lobotomy in order to believe. Use your God given intelligence, reflect and consider. Yes, faith is involved, but faithful believers do not have to give up the use of their brains.
The angel tells the women to go and tell the disciples the good news. Scripture tells us that they did just that, hurrying off with fear and great joy. That seems like an interesting combination of emotions: fear and joy. Are not those conflicting emotions? At a pastor’s conference where this passage was being discussed, one young man declared with confidence that fear and joy are very much compatible. After all, he just got married!
On their way to meet the disciples, the women now are met by Jesus himself who greets them not with an austere and formal greeting, but in a very simple, casual way. He met them in a way very similar to how you probably greeted others this morning as you came into the sanctuary, “Good morning”, “Hi”, “Greetings”. No doubt, this salutation was meant to disarm and to relax the women who were understandably startled by the presence of the risen Lord. And so, like the angel before, Jesus says to the women, “Do not be afraid”
During the difficult days of the Great Depression, half of all Americans were out of work. There were bread lines, even riots in the streets of Washington. But in the face of it a new voice was heard on the public stage. It was the voice of Franklin Roosevelt as he spoke in his first inaugural address in 1933. He stood on braces, a cripple leading a crippled nation. But he spoke with reassurance and gave the fearful nation a new hope when he said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The word of a president dispelled the panic of America. But we can listen to one who is infinitely greater than any president and who is capable of dispelling all our fears.
There is so much in our world that can engender fear. The economy, an uncertain future, continued violence both abroad and here closer to home. Hanging over us are ominous voices of doom: global warming, pandemic plagues, and international terrorism. It might be so easy to go into hiding, to lock the doors, and try and to sit it out in the relative security of our homes and among our loved ones. But Jesus says to us, “Don’t be afraid - go and tell others what you have seen and heard. Don’t be afraid, your world is not falling apart. In fact, it is coming together!
Someone once took the time to discover that the words, “Fear not”, can be found 365 times in the Bible. That’s once for every day of the year. You might think that God was trying to tell us something!
Conclusion
During the last several weeks on Sunday mornings we have been looking at how God called particular people to very special tasks. We looked at the lives of Samuel and Jonah in the Old Testament. We saw how Jesus called blind Bartimaeus in the New Testament. In every case, the call was personal and specific. The call was not always easy, in fact, the call of God is often quite hard. But with God’s call, comes the strength to obey and to fulfill that call.
You may have noticed a rather unusual cross in the front of the sanctuary today. This cross is made from a bunch of LEGOs. That may seem a little odd, but here is the reason. The Greek word for call is λέγω. Jesus answered God’s call and because of that, we have been given a lego-cy. Because he has risen, we no longer need to be afraid. And that lego-cy that we have now received, that call that has now been given to us, is to go and tell the others. Jesus gave that call to the women who came to the tomb and now he has given us that same message.
Texts: Matthew 21:1-16
Psalm 8
Preached on 3/16/08 - Palm Sunday
David Endriss
OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES
Introduction
Children have the most remarkable ability to mimic and imitate. This is an ability that comes instinctively. When my grand-daughter received her first play phone, she was only barely walking. But she knew exactly what to do with it. A couple of weeks ago I was watching her play with her purse. She filled it up with several toys and then put the strap on her shoulder and began walking around the house. It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Our children and grandchildren are watching us.
And I suspect, on that day when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the children were watching and listening. The crowds around Jesus were shouting and singing, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” Then, just a few verses later, we find Jesus is in the temple area and the children are now singing the song that they heard out in the streets, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”
Offended Traditionalists
The behavior of the children in the temple precincts offended the religious leadership. It says that they became angry. The 18th century commentator, Johann Bengel observed, “to hypocrites everything which is not commonplace and traditional is excess.” Well, certainly the behavior of these children was excessive. It was out of place. It was, at least by their standards, irreverent.
“The child psychologist and popular Christian radio personality, James Dobson once said that. “A world without children is a world without newness, regeneration, color; and vigor. An anonymous individual noted that, The Lord made Adam from the dust of the earth, but when the first toddler came along, God added electricity!
But these scribes and priests in the temple didn’t want electricity! They wanted the things to remain as they had always been. Although the actual phrase was coined in 15th century England, I’m sure they would have concurred, “Children should be seen and not heard.” Indignant and angry, they look to Jesus to fix the problem, “Do you hear what these are saying?”
Jesus Responds
I can imagine Jesus turning to watch the children as he answers the question. He smiles and says, “Yes”. I do hear them. I hear their voices and their praise. I hear their enthusiasm and their joy. God hears the voices of children. God hears them and acknowledges them as a legitimate and proper expression of praise.
Then he turns and faces the so called religious, “Have you never read...” Even before he quoted the text from the Psalms, Jesus knew their answer. Of course they had read this passage. It was a regular part of their temple liturgy. Not only had they read it, they had it memorized. But reading it and knowing what it says are two very different things. Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself.” Jesus didn’t go on to quote the rest of the verse from Psalm 8. He really didn’t need to, because he knew that they knew the words. Psalm 8 goes on to say that out of the mouths of babes and infants you have silenced the enemy.
The opening verses of this psalm, one of my favorites, speaks of how all of creation in its own way is singing the praises of its creator. Even the smallest of children, infants are expressions of praise to the Almighty. Jesus, in quoting this verse is applying the song that the children are singing in the temple, to himself. It is an audacious move, claiming the same praise attributed to God in the Old Testament, to himself in the New. He is either a blatant blasphemer, or he is in fact, God.
Out of the Mouths of Babes
Some of you may remember a program that started out as a popular radio show and later became a TV show. It was hosted by Art Linkletter. The program was called “House Party”. One segment of that show was called, “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” This show began in the late 40’s and ran until 1970. Linkletter would interview small children often with surprising and unexpected results.
Most of us can recall stories of our own children or grandchildren where they have surprised us with unexpected wisdom and insight. One of those times in our house came when we still lived in Alaska. It was a gorgeous Sunday morning. The mountains stood out on the horizon with breath-taking clarity. The sun was shining brightly and there were some beautiful clouds in the sky. On the way to church, Paul, who was perhaps five at the time, said, “Isn’t God great that he made clouds?” Indeed, that was a profound thought, but he wasn’t done yet. “And isn’t God great, that he made tires black?”
A little girl was once having a difficult time with her math studies. But she had heard that her neighbor who lives at number 112 was a very important mathematician who was also a very nice man. She asked him if he would help her. He was very willing and explained everything very well. He said that she could return whenever she found a problem too difficult.
The girl’s mother, shocked at her daughter’s boldness, went to the mathematician to apologize. It was then that Albert Einstein said, “You don’t have to excuse yourself. I have learned more from the conversations with your daughter than she has from me.
Like you, I enjoy the pageantry and beauty of Palm Sunday. I like to see the children waving their palm branches and singing. But if all we do is label the experience as “cute” we are in danger of setting them aside with the same kind of irrelevance that those religious leaders did. And we are no better. And Jesus says to us, “Have you not read....”
I quite literally stand in something of a unique place in this congregation. With perhaps the exception of the choir, who enjoys part of the service up front, I get to see your faces during much of the service. One of the highlights is during the singing. I love to watch parents and grandparents help young people with the hymnbook. To watch Katie Porter holding a hymnbook and trying to follow along is a real joy. She is not simply learning how to worship - she is worshipping. I love watching the children come forward to play the percussion instruments during the Celebration Service. They are not just having fun, they are worshipping!
You might wonder, “How can such a small, inexperienced and unlearned child really make a difference in worship?” If that is what you are thinking consider this, If you think someone is too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.
Many of us are familiar with C.S. Lewis and in particular his famous Narnia series that are so popular with children. But what you may not know is that Lewis credits one of his mentors, George MacDonald, as an important source of his inspiration.
George MacDonald was a clergyman, poet and author, but he is probably most famous for his children’s stories. MacDonald once said that he placed no value on the alleged Christianity of a person at whose door, or at whose garden gate, the children were afraid to play.”
Conclusion
In Luke’s version of the Palm Sunday story when Jesus is rebuked by the Pharisees for not quieting the cheering crowd Jesus says that if they were quiet, the stones would take up the shout. God can and indeed does use the stones, the heavens, the stars, and yes, even the smallest child to sing God’s praises.
Can we do any less?