Sermon Notes — January 19, 2025
January 19, 2025
Dr. Craig Goff
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
The Gift of the Worshipping Community
As we heard when our text was read, and as we have experienced through participating in the life of the church, different people have different gifts, and that is a good, good thing.
Some people in the church have the gift of teaching, some have the gift of giving and generosity, some have the gift of encouragement, others have the gift of leadership and service and so on and so on. There are many gifts God gives to us and that is a good thing. No one person has all the gifts, but everyone has at least one gift and that’s a good thing.
Everyone has a gift, and all the gifts, each and every gift, is important.
Back some time ago, just after I had finished high school, I worked as a welder down at the Nashville Bridge Company on the Cumberland River building barges right across from First Avenue where the Titans now play football. Back then we watched barges slide into the river for entertainment.
While I was there, I came to appreciate a good weld every bit as much as I appreciate a good piece of music; even the music of a beautiful Symphony. You might say symphonic music is far more sophisticated than a good weld, but a really good weld that keeps a ship floating down the river or a plane up in the sky is a beautiful thing, just like the music of a symphony can be a beautiful thing.
One of the difficulties, Paul faced in his correspondence with the church of Corinth, which we see reflected in his letter, is that some people considered their spiritual gifts to be far superior to the gifts God gave to others. Paul wanted the church to see that all the gifts are important. It was important for all of the Christians in the church of Corinth to use their gifts and it is equally important for all of us to use our gifts in the church.
Down a little further in verse 15 Paul says:
Now, if the foot should say, “because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact, God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is there are many parts, but one body the eye cannot say to the hand, I do not need you and the head cannot say to the feet I don’t need you, on the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable….
All the gifts God gives to us are important.
All Christians have gifts that contribute to the health of the body, and that is equally true of Christian traditions and denominations.
I’m sure you have noticed Christian denominations are not the same.
Presbyterians aren’t like those who attend Assembly of God congregations. Roman Catholics aren’t like Baptists, Lutherans aren’t like those who attend Eastern Orthodox Churches. Different church traditions have different personalities and different gifts they contribute to the overall body, to the universal church.
Whenever I teach confirmands or a new member class, I always stress how every denomination started out of a desire to accomplish something good and to contribute positively to God‘s work in the world.
They are often launched out of a concern that something has been overlooked or neglected in the church.
For example, Martin Luther, John Calvin and Zwingli, the early reformers were concerned that the priority of scripture was being overlooked and so Protestantism was born. (And one of the gifts of faith we will be looking at in this worship series is the gift of scripture). In the Baptist and Pietist tradition it was felt that the importance of a personal relationship with Christ was being neglected, so the Baptist tradition came about to address that perceived need.
John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and other early Methodists came along and emphasized the importance of growth and grace. The Salvation Army emphasizes the importance of ministry with the poor, which they saw being neglected in other churches.
All the denominations have a personality and have things that they contribute to the body.
However, I have noticed something that occurs not only among individual Christians, but among Christian denominations. If we are not careful, each group tends to begin to believe that our way of doing everything is the best way.
I have worked for three different Christian denominations. I have worked for the Presbyterian Church as a Children’s and Youth pastor at Overland Park Korean Presbyterian Church. I’ve worked as a Youth Pastor, Associate Pastor and Senior Pastor in the Church of the Nazarene. I’ve worked as an Associate Pastor, Youth Pastor and Senior Pastor in the United Methodist Church. I have definitely seen that we tend to be led into thinking that the way that we do things is the best way.
We all tend to believe that our polity is the best polity; our administrative structure is the best. We all tend to believe that our approach to missions is the best. For example in the Presbyterian Church in which I served they often wait until they can identify what the real needs are before they respond to natural disasters, like tornadoes or floods or fire. Some people would say that’s good because then you can put your efforts in the right place. Others say, “No you have to respond quickly and immediately or you’re wasting precious time.” Is there a correct or best response? I don’t know, maybe it’s good that we have different church traditions that respond in different ways and at different times to disasters, maybe one response is not better than another.
It is OK to disagree which is a good thing because we do disagree about a lot of things in the church.
One area of disagreement in the church of course is worship styles. Sometimes we are led to believe that our preferred worship style is the best. For example, some might say: “we are contemporary. We want a contemporary worship style.”
That is fine – but if we’re not careful, we can label those who don’t worship in a contemporary format as “outdated,” as if the opposite of contemporary worship is outdated worship.
Of course, there are other styles of worship than just “contemporary” and “outdated.”
There is traditional worship, those who think it is important to honor our heritage.
Traditional worship is an important expression of worship, but sometimes those who love, traditional worship, think that everything that is not “traditional” based on their definition of tradition which varies widely is “fluff.”
In recent times, there has been another approach to worship that has led some people to believe that it, and only it, is the way to worship. It’s called the emerging church movement. To be clear, I don’t have anything against the emerging church movement. I’ve read books about the emerging church movements.
Those who are proponents of the emerging church have some really important and helpful things to say, but I would utter a word of caution; when you brand yourself as “emerging,” it can lead the impression that you are of the belief that other churches that aren’t like your own are “non-emerging” churches.
In reality, every church from the day of Pentecost has been an emerging church so you have to be careful with language.
We obviously have differences and preferences in worship. How do we decide what is good and what should be included in a worship service?
Let’s take a look at what Paul does in this text. He very carefully tries to help the church at Corinth understand that although they may have different gifts and different skills and different interests; no one gift is “better “ than the others.
So if one spiritual gift isn’t superior to another than maybe one worship style isn’t super superior to another….maybe the criteria for determining what is good or authentic is not what takes place outwardly, but in what takes place in our hearts.
Let’s go back a couple of weeks in the church calendar and reflect on an early, early Christian worship experience. The magi have seen a star. They have been “called to worship.” They have saddled up their donkeys and camels and arranged for an entourage to travel hundreds of miles to see the newborn King in Bethlehem. They have brought gifts, maybe they had a musician or two with them. (a little drummer boy?)
There is a lot we don’t know, but what we do know is it when they arrived there in Bethlehem their experience could not have been what they expected. The baby was not born in a palace. They weren’t in a temple. They were in a barn. They had to modify what they expected to do when they met with the baby Jesus; but they did kneel before him, they presented their gifts. Their focus was on Jesus and not on their own personal preferences and desires. Maybe that is the key to authentic worship. Maybe authentic worship isn’t determined by the music or the liturgy or the form of the message or the lack there of but maybe authentic worship is about presenting ourselves to God and not in identifying one worship style as preferable over another.
Epiphany is the season of light throughout the season of Epiphany, we pray that God‘s glory will fill all the earth and build us into a community that draws strength from God and shine light into our world.
Maybe that’s what being a community of faith is all about.
When Will Willimon was the dean of Duke University; he was leaving worship one day after a service at the Duke Chapel. The person he was with said to him, “I didn’t get much out of that service at all. That didn’t do much for me. Will‘s response to him was, “maybe the service wasn’t for you maybe it was for God.”
Imagine a community that exists first and foremost to glorify God and worship. What gift that community would be to our world in such desperate need of the light of God‘s love and presence.