THE COMMON GOOD
A Sermon by Rev. James D. Brown
Market Square Presbyterian Church
July 20, 2008
1 Corinthians 12
I’m going to tell you a story about a lawn mower. Our summer cottage at the St. Lawrence River has a small, rustic yard around it. A couple of years ago we bought a 20” power mower from neighbors who had sold their cottage. It was like new, and we were happy to acquire it.
The last few summers it has run wonderfully. We mow the
grass maybe five times a year, starting with a major cleanup in the spring. Not
so long ago I was at the St. Lawrence for a few days and while there decided to
mow the grass. I was nearly finished when I cut the engine to talk with Nina
for a few minutes. And thus the saga of the mower began.
When I pulled the cord again, it wouldn’t start. I pulled and pulled. It just sputtered and died, sputtered and died. I went down the street to get advice from one of the handiest men I know. He said, “I’d start by checking the spark plug.” It was pretty much fouled, so I set off for the auto parts store on the mainland, got just the right plug and put it in.
Still no luck. My advisor from down the block suggested draining the gas and putting in a fresh thank. I did it. Still no luck. I just yanked and yanked on the starter rope, and all it did was sputter and die.
The next thing I did was call the department store in Watertown where the mower had been purchased, with my plan being to take it in for repairs. I say I called the department store. What I really did was call the 800 number in the phone book listing (that’s the only number there was!), and thereby began a half-hour journey through a maze of automated phone connections.
The artificial voice—always a woman’s voice it seems—started telling me what to do. Please give me your phone number, starting with the area code. I responded, and then heard the laundry list of options. I quickly told the disembodied voice that I wanted to speak to an operator. No way would she (it!) allow this to happen. Over and over I got the same laundry list—and all I wanted to do was find out the procedure for bringing in the mower. At one point I held the phone aside and muttered something to Nina, and the “voice” told me that this was not a valid request!
By now I had lost it. Then I had a burst of insight. Forget the phone book. I’ll call 411 and get the real number for the store. I did just this and the automated response gave me a 315 area code number—not an 800 number. I quickly dialed it, relishing the fact that I had outsmarted the gremlin of the 800 netherworld.
Alas, when my call went through I got the same smarmy voice giving me the very same list of options. This time I stayed at it long enough to get through to a person—not in Watertown but in some far away place. She asked for my phone number and then the serial number of the mower, and in a flash she challenged me: “We don’t list you as the purchaser of this mower so the warranty probably won’t be in effect.”
By now I’m getting testy again. “I’m not interested in the warranty. I just want to get it fixed.” “OK,” she says, “you’ll have to bring it in to one of our service centers. Where is Thousand Island Park?” “It’s about 30 miles north of Watertown.”
“What you’ll need to do is take it to the service department there. I should tell you that there will be an upfront fee of $65 to diagnose the problem. Depending on what’s wrong, part of the $65 may go toward the cost of repairs.” I wanted to tell her that I only paid $60 for the mower in the first place, but instead I thanked her for her help, hung up the phone, and exasperated Nina all the more with my moaning and whimpering.
Now we come to crux of the story. Not satisfied with heading to Watertown, I turned to the Yellow pages in search of a North Country fixit-man. I called one who asked me the brand of the mower, and when I told him he quickly replied, “I don’t work on those. The parts are too hard to come by.” “Do you know of anyone who might?” “Yep, there’s a fellow over in Redwood.” Now this is only 10 miles or so from our place! “He’ll do it. His name is Nate Frost.”
I got his number and left him a message and he called me right back. I told him my story, and he said, “Bring ‘er in. I can get to it early next week.” I asked directions, and he told me that his shop was just beyond the ice cream stand on the main street in Redwood.
Off I went. Just past the ice cream stand I saw the sign: Frost Small Engine. I walked into the shop, which was a place of pure delight. Mowers and chain saws and trimmers and snow blowers were everywhere, and there Nate sat right in the midst of them, working on a mower.
He got up and the two of us lugged my mower into the shop and found a place for it. “What’s the problem?” “Won’t start.” “Does it sit around a good deal between mowings?” “Sure does, sometimes as much as a month.” “It’s gonna be the carburetor. The gas gums up after a while. I’ll give it a good cleaning. Should be ready next week.”
With that he asked me for my name and phone number and wrote them on a tag he attached to the mower, and went back to work. As I was leaving I asked him for his card so I could call ahead when I was ready to pick up the mower. I stuck his card in my pocket and headed home to Harrisburg.
When I got home I took out his card and looked it over.
Frost Small Engine
Nate Frost, Proprietor
ATV’s, Chain Saws, Mowers
Snow Blowers and more
Hours
Monday-Friday 8 am to 5 pm
Saturdays by chance or
appointment
The address, phone number and email followed, and then this: Proverbs 3: 5 & 6.
I quickly did what you would do, I looked these verses up. Here’s what I found:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not rely on your own insight.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
I smiled. How profound those words seemed. I even wondered if there might not be a bit of whimsy in his choice of Scripture, a hint of God guiding me on a straight path behind my mower! I felt I knew Nate. I felt a common bond with him. I trusted him to use his gifts, and he trusted me to pay him when the time came. I felt we were on the same page, that some common good united us. I’m a preacher. Nate’s a genius with small motors. Our gifts are on a par. All gifts are.
This is Paul’s very theme in the 12th chapter of 1st Corinthians. Paul says it just as plainly as can be:
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;
and there are varieties of service, 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.
It doesn’t take much scholarly unpacking to make sense of what Paul is saying. The Greek word he uses for gifts is charismata. Our word “charisma” comes from this Greek word. We tend to think of the Greg Normans and the like when we use this word. We don’t often apply it to ourselves.
Paul wants us to know that we each have our own particular charisma, each and every one of us are gifted by God. Our gifts are to be used for the common good. That is, our gifts are not our private possessions, but are part of the mix we call the common good, the community of the church and world.
Paul uses the analogy of the human body and the interconnectedness of all its parts—hands and ears and eyes and even our private parts—stressing that all are essential to the well being of the whole being, the entire body. All matter equally as parts of a human body. So too with the gifts of all the members of the house churches in Corinth.
As seems to be the case throughout this letter to the Corinthians, Paul is setting the stage for dealing with yet another of the crises bedeviling the small house churches in Corinth.
To make sense of chapter 12, we need to sneak a peak at chapter 14. Here’s the rub.
There are members of the communities who have begun to speak in tongues—in the Greek it’s called the display of glossolalia.
From movies and television and perhaps personal experience in a Pentecostal church, you’ve gained a glimpse of persons caught up in the Spirit and talking in what to the listener is a kind of emotional gibberish. In chapter 12 Paul lists speaking in tongues as one of the gifts of the spirit, along with healing and teaching and prophesying (by which he means clear, sober language describing the life of a faithful community—not telling the future). But glossalalia is not a gift to be lorded over others.
In chapter 14 we discover that those in the community who are prone to speak in tongues are exhibiting a holier than thou attitude. All of a sudden the gift of speaking in tongues has become proof positive that these persons are spiritually superior to everyone one else. A hierarchy has emerged, and for Paul this is the kiss of death to a community purporting to be grounded in a theology of interdependence and mutuality. Elitism has reared its ugly head.
Paul is doing everything in his power to reacquaint the Corinthians with the basics of their faith. In our own day Presbyterians have done the same in our Brief Statement of Faith with these telling words:
In sovereign love God created the world good
and makes everyone equally in God’s image,
male and female of every race and people
to live as one community.
Note that this does not say that our gifts are all equal or the same. Most of us can’t hit 325 yard drives like Tiger Woods. Some of us are better singers, some are poets and some not, and some are better cooks than the rest of us. The point is that all of us reflect God’s image equally, and all of us are destined for life together, seeking to do our part for the common good by sharing our unique and special gifts.
This brings me back to the saga of the mower. People in Paul’s time desperately wanted to escape the alienation of a world broken into to competing tribes and interest groups with their hierarchies of all sorts. They were seeking genuine companionship along life’s way, honest camaraderie, deep and lasting fellowship in Christ.
So are we. Just like the Corinthians we need caught up short about the incipient hierarchies in our own life together. We need to strive after the same goals Paul set for the Corinthian house churches. We also need to advocate for changes in our society that mirror Paul’s vision.
We are living at a moment in time when a smaller and smaller number of people are controlling more and more of society’s resources. Hierarchies of all sorts are booming. Coupled with this are people-less voices that drive us more and more into the isolation of our own private spaces. Sitting at the phone chasing after answers about mowers and computers is part of our lot in life. But we need always to be envisioning and shaping communities in which our gifts and the gifts of brothers and sisters like Nate Frost are celebrated for what they are—charismata that are allotted to each and every human being by a loving God.
Next week we will look at what Paul calls a still more excellent way—the glue, the mystery, the miracle that makes all this possible. I urge you to read chapter 13 at least once every day this week!