"There Are Different Gifts, But One Spirit"

Sermon for Second Sunday of the Year, cycle C, Jan 17-18, 1998

by Most Rev. Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Presiding Bishop, United Catholic Church

Isaiah 62: 1-5

Psalm 96: 1-3, 7-10

1 Corinthians 12: 4-11

John 2: 1-12

Back in 1832, a young frontiersman in the U.S. Army went to war against the Fox and Sauk Indians in what was known as the Black Hawk war. (The war was named after the leader of the Indian tribes.) At the beginning of the war, this young man was a captain. Now war is a terrible thing. But there is one thing about it that soldiers love — promotions. If you go to war and survive, you were pretty well assured a rapid rise through the ranks. Sure enough, by the end of the war, he was no longer a captain, he was a private. Now, how a soldier can go from captain to private without committing treason is beyond me, but he did. He was undoubtedly the worst Indian fighter in history. As a military officer, he was an abject failure. And by what we know now, he must have been pretty miserable as an enlisted man, too, for his fall through the ranks didn’t end until he was on the very bottom.

Can you imagine the humiliation he must have suffered? Well, at war’s end, this skinny, awkward, funny-looking young man looked for other things to do. Eventually, he found his niche, and even achieved a measure of success. His name was Abraham Lincoln.

The moral of this story is that just because you’re a failure at one thing, that doesn’t mean you’re going to be a failure at everything. Different people have different gifts. Evidently, Indian-fighting wasn’t one of Lincoln’s.

I can sympathize with Abe. I’ve failed at plenty of things in my time. And in a way, the military was one of them. Yes, I rose through the ranks to Lieutenant Colonel. But that was a huge disappointment to those who believed I was destined to be Chief of Staff. With my IQ, I was supposed to get at least four stars. As a young captain barely out of my twenties, I was already filling positions calling for the rank of full colonel. Like Abe, I survived a war, and 101 combat missions in Vietnam.

Yet twice I was passed over for promotion. Keeping my mouth shut was definitely not one of my gifts. So in 1978 I gave up and decided to give private industry a try. With my experience, managing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts, and my PhD from Cal Tech, I was a sure thing. Right? Wrong! I soon discovered I had less freedom of speech in industry than I’d had in the military. After some spectacular successes and a few catastrophic indiscretions, I was unemployed. My industrial career had lasted three turbulent years. I had failed again.

Undaunted, I immediately began a career as a part-time public speaker and full-time trouble-maker. This third career as an itinerant peacenik preacher was more successful. Audiences liked me. My lectures still command an honorarium of three thousand dollars. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as good at the business side of it. Most of my talks were to churches and peace groups who couldn’t afford the honorarium and got me more or less for free. Expenses always outran income. So for the last twelve years the nonprofit organization I founded hasn’t been able to pay me a salary.

Along the way, I began mixing in sermons. Eventually, the preaching became more frequent and more important to me than the lectures. And now, here I am in the midst of yet a fourth career, that of a parish priest and unpaid bishop of a church designed to serve people who are just as eclectic, unorthodox, and rejected as I am.

After failing at everything that ever provided me with a paycheck, I am now the successful pastor of a bankrupt church.

But I’ve found my niche, my gift. I have been able to touch people, and change lives. It doesn’t take many to make it all seem worthwhile. Two days ago, Maggie and I did a memorial service for John Capo. Some of the people there obviously hadn’t been to church in a while. But we touched them. I don’t know for how long the Lord will give me the privilege of doing this before I’m forced to go back to working for a living. But I’m grateful to for once be doing something that makes a difference. For this brief moment in time, I’m using my gift.

Have you found your gift? You have one, each and every one of you. The reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians tells us that God gives spiritual gifts to every member of the body. Every one of us is equipped to perform an essential task for the building up of the Body of Christ.

My gifts are very limited. I am a total failure at dealing with the established elements of society. I have had limited success in increasing our numbers. I don’t speak in tongues. I can’t raise money for sour apples. I haven’t even found us a suitable place for Sunday morning. But then, God isn’t expecting me to do those things. That’s not my gift. That’s why the body is made up of all of us.

I do my part, Maggie does hers, you do yours. "There are different gifts but the same Spirit; there are different ministries but the same Lord; there are different works but the same God who accomplishes all of them in everyone. To each person the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good."

Note that it doesn’t say, "To each priest" or "To each ordained minister." It says, "To each person."

When a church has a billion members or a parish has a thousand families, maybe they can afford a certain amount of dead weight, hangers-on, fungus in the pews, the frozen chosen. But a church as small as ours needs each person to use their gifts.

Do you have the gift of healing? We have people who need you to lay hands on them. Do you have the gift of leadership? We have committees that need forming — outreach committee, finance committee, activities committee. Do you have the gift of prophecy? We need to hear God’s will from your lips.

Do you have the gift of music? We need you to share it with us in our worship. Whatever your gift, we have need of it. We need lay readers. We need a parish council. We need subdeacons to carry the Eucharist to the sick. We need deacons to proclaim the Gospel at Mass. We need priests to minister to God’s people. God has given you gifts to be used for the building up of the body. Discover them, and use them.

For all too many in our society, church is a place they go and spend one hour a week as part of an audience. They spend that hour sitting and listening. A great chasm divides them from the clergy, choir, etcetera "up there" who are performing for their benefit.

It cannot be that way with us. Church is not a spectator sport. It is not something clergy people do because they get paid to do it, and everybody else watches.

My ordination gave me the power to turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. My consecration as a bishop gave me the power to ordain clergy. Beyond that, we are all the same, a royal priesthood, members of Christ’s body, recipients of various gifts from the one and the same Spirit. If I have gifts you lack, they were given to me by God to use in your service. If you have gifts the rest of us lack, they were given you by God to use for the building up of this body.

What is your gift? Whatever it is, discover it, nurture it, and for the love of God, use it. Let us pray.

Almighty God, we thank you for having blessed us with spiritual gifts. We thank you for bringing us together in this place, each with his or her unique set of gifts, to serve each other. We believe that you have arranged it so that between us, we have all the gifts necessary for the building up of the body. None of us can do it without the others. But together, with your help, we can do anything. Help each of us to do our part. Amen.

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