|
The Rev. Frank
Logue
Discover Yourself I have some gifts to share. Before I dig into my sermon, I want to share these with a few people in the congregation. [Distribute three gift-wrapped boxes in the congregation] Now don’t open your gifts yet. Just hold on to them for now. I know it’s unfair to hand out only a few gifts, but they are symbolic and before we are through, I trust everyone will have been able to share. Now to the sermon, and the problem is that sometimes people steal my best material. I got good stuff to preach and teach and someone goes and raids my preaching pantry so to speak. Case in point—The New York Times ran an article last Sunday called Happiness 101. The article didn’t just tell how to find happiness, but it also pointed the way to a meaningful and rewarding life. Now if that isn’t poaching on my territory, I don’t know what is. Why couldn’t The New York Times stick to telling us about the news, and leave me the olds. After all knowing how to be happy and have a meaningful and rewarding life is not news, its old. And that’s the reason why people are always stealing my material—my best material is all about 20 centuries old or older. So the article told about Positive Psychology classes which are all the rage on college campus across the country the Universities of Pennsylvania, Illinois and Michigan and many others like Harvard, where with 855 students Positive Psychology is the universities most popular class. And what they teach comes off to me as just biblically sound basics. For example, they teach to focus on good things that have happened rather than the negative as optimist living longer, happier and more fulfilling lives than pessimists. They also teach that doing something good for others, especially something that is difficult to you or comes at some cost to you, makes you feel better. Of course, being happy and fulfilled isn’t that easy. After all the saying goes, “If money could buy happiness; There would be Happiness Stores on every corner.” So while you can’t buy it, there are things you can do to be both more happy and more fulfilled. One key area positive psychology teaches is to use what they call signature strengths. This means you find out the things you are both good at and enjoy doing and then you do things, maybe even new things that rely on those strengths. One researcher, Dr. Martin Seligman offers free tests at his site authentichappiness.org to help you evaluate yourself. I took his 240 question test and found my top four gifts to be: spirituality, humor, enthusiasm and creativity. The problem is, what sort of job can someone find that allows them to use strengths of spirituality, humor, enthusiasm and creativity? I guess that explains why I am standing here this morning. The thing is, I thought my best skill was dinner party conversation and that I had taken that about as far as it could go. Seligman’s test with 240 questions to determine which of 24 strengths you have is what is really poaching on my territory. You see I have a 100-question survey that evaluates you on 20 gifts. I have used this evaluation before and was hoping to offer it again at King of Peace. And this is where we turn back to the Bible and see the scripture and Christian theology that supports some of what pop psychology is trying to teach. The second reading for this morning was taken from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. That letter to another church which we overheard this morning was written sometime between the year 53 and 55. Paul is writing to a specific circumstance. Some of the Christians in Corinth have found their spiritual gifts of prophecy, healing and speaking in tongues as cause to be spiritually proud and to think of themselves as better than others. Paul uses this situation in the church to teach a deeper truth, one which helps us sort out more than the problem that church faced. Paul writes, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” This is absolutely essential and underscores a couple of underlying dynamics that the positive psychologist don’t mention. Paul teaches that in the variety of gifts, variety of ways to serve and variety of activities, that there is the one Holy Spirit behind them all. This acknowledges both that each of us is different and that God gives each of us gifts for service and various activities. Paul is certainly speaking of spiritual gifts here and he will go on to enumerate things much discussed and often practiced in worship in the Pentecostal church in which I grew up. Paul says, “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.” Paul then makes the point the Corinthians need to understand and that is that the Spirit determines who gets what gifts and that the variety of gifts are needed. This means that no one should feel high and mighty because they can pray for healing and someone is healed and someone else can’t. It is God’s doing as God does the healing and no one should feel proud about it at all. But Paul continued to write on this to the Corinthians and as he did so, it becomes clear that his point about gifts is broader. Paul goes on to describe the Christian community as being like a body with many parts and each does important work, but none is better than another. This is yet another way of underscoring that one gift is not inherently better than another. To apply the image of gifts more broadly as Paul goes on to do, it isn’t right for me to say that a gift for preaching is better than a gift for music or a gift for taking care of the finances, because the church needs all three equally. So the one who stands out front in a worship service only does so because of the others who make that possible. This is something that the positive psychology stuff misses as far as I have read as it is interested in the individual. And while God is interested in you as a single person, the teaching in the Bible about spiritual gifts is clear that it is not about the individual. Spiritual gifts and other gifts and talents are given by God for the needs of the community. The gifts that God has given you are not for you. We call them gifts because they are activated as you offer your strengths to others. Rather than focusing on you and your own needs. You look to the gifts that you have and then see how to offer those gifts in service to others. This is where the positive psychology comes in again and says that there is good scientific data to show that as you use your strengths to serve others, you will boost your own happiness. I know this is because it is how God made you and it is the way God has given you to have a meaningful and fulfilling life. Yes, you will still face problems and difficulties, but part of the gift you receive back is that the whole process gets you actively engaged in a community that can then be a support for you. This is God’s design for community: each person doing the things they are built to do for the good of others. In this way of discovering and using your gifts, you operate in the way God hard wired you to operate while others get the benefit of those gifts God has given you. And there is yet another truth for us to know as a church. God never gives all the gifts to one person. This is clear in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Paul emphasizes that there is variety of gifts, variety of service and variety of activities. Within that variety, no one has all the gifts. This means that we absolutely need one another. No community can make it on the gifts of one person. And this church can not make it on my gifts alone. We need one another. We need the variety of gifts each person brings to the variety of service and activities. God has designed us for community. And in so doing has not given each of us the gifts we need. Rather God gives the community the gifts we need. And so now is the time to open the gifts. Will the three people I gave packages to open them now. [The three gift-wrapped boxes each have a piece of paper. One says “Helps” another “Hospitality” and a third “Evangelism.”] Read the words on the paper in your box. You see not everyone has the gift for working behind the scenes or in greeting others or in sharing the Gospel. But our church needs all of those gifts and more. I know it was unfair to only pick three. But trust me. I can look around and see many more gifts in this congregation, gifts that have already been shared with the community. But I want to offer you a way to discover yourself. Discover the you God made you to be. So I have today the 100-answer questionnaires that will help you rank yourself in 20 spiritual gifts. [online here at http://kingofpeace.org/spiritualgifts.pdf ] After taking the survey, the areas with the lowest numbers totaled are the places of strength for you. I then challenge you to use those strengths in old ways and new ways to build up both this church and the community we serve. Yes, the positive psychologist stole my thunder. It will make you happier and more fulfilled in life to do this. But they missed the larger point that this is so because it means that you will be working to become more fully the person God made you to be. Amen.
|
|
