1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

Pentecost - Year A

The variety of gifts given is too large to count. Go ahead - just try to count the ways in which folks are gifted.

While we appreciate the variety of gifts among us, we have a more difficult time comprehending that all these gifts have been held in whatever G*D might be. One of the ways in which this has shown up over time is not understanding mothering to be a gift given and yet retained within G*D. The divine feminine is a weak spot in our Christian doctrine.

Until we can affirm a larger common good than getting our own way we won't be able to affirm a more expansive image of G*D. In speculative fiction this would be the movement from a moment of creation to a continued expansion that at the same time moves to a singularity – and beyond.

Imagine an intersection of these symbols > < [remember to extend them past these truncated versions and put them in motion in regard to one another] and a progression from <> to < > [imagine connecting curved lines] to <, while > to < > was just as mysteriously real, leading to <> and finally . and taking all that experience to an even livelier expression of common good.

While yearning to see this under light, in motion, I am only as far a noting elements, not their interaction. May you aid us all in re-viewing the many gifts yet available, the strengthening of those present, and the letting loose of those needing to be put down for the benefit of a current and next common good, a once and future steadfast love.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html

 

There are a variety of gifts but the same Spirit. There are varieties of languages but the same Spirit. With things equal to the same thing defined as being equal we can note that the variety of gifts is revealed as the variety of languages.

This is a helpful reminder as we sometimes get it into our heads that particular gifts require a particular language. This can be equated to judging that the gift of ordination can only come through nouns of masculine gender.

Gifts come in a variety of languages and languages provide us with a variety of gifts. When we lose this interplay we lose heart, Spirit.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/may2005.html

 

 

Through a Spirit of Christ we are all baptized (acknowledged participation in and desire of creation) into one body -- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free. This Spirit moves where it will and does not stop at our usual boundaries of believing this or that, classifying you or me.

Everyone who calls on this Spirit will be made whole with everyone else. (Now, they may not acknowledge this and try to subdivide our wholeness, but from our perspective it, we, and they are still whole.)

This is paradigm-shifting stuff that points to the presence of Paradise, a healing of Paradise Lost, right where we are. As we attempt to live out of this perspective we find ourselves calmed and gentled. Peace be not only to us, but to all.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/may2005.html

 

 

How manifold are G*D's works! So many languages, so many gifts, so many prophesies, so many locked doors walked through, so many "Peace"s, so many breaths, so many rivers of living water.

This is a time to remember how these have been loosed in the past, to talk about how they are currently ebbing and flowing all around us, and to anticipate more blessings than can be counted.

While we can get caught up in the mechanisms of all this we are basically dealing with a song of hope and faith and love all mixed up in its themes and meters and keys.

A part of our task is to stand and proclaim, "What you are experiencing is real - don't deny it by blaming it on excess of one kind or another." More is going on than this world knows.

- - -

languages speak what they know
today is a day to focus on what we are saying
how we are saying what we are saying
going beyond whom we usually say what we say
there is a drive to communicate
we will even learn another language if need be
we will talk with our hands and our eyes
until our tongue connects with an ear
in camp or out of room
we will join gift to gift
forgiving past separations
calling Peace where there is none
until there is

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html

 

 

"The old labels we once used to identify ourselves - labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free - are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive."

We also need something beyond our new labels. In the scope of church history those who go by the name "evangelical" (with a limited number of meanings to that word) so it would keep out those they identify as "liberal" (even if that liberal would want to self-identify as a person with good news, an evangelist) - this is recent.

Likewise the term "progressive" being used on this conversation place - even though it would hearken back to prophets and social holiness of John Wesley and social gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch and liberals of recent years - it, too, is relatively new.

Regardless of what term we use at what time in church history there is danger in regarding it as something carved in stone. We are always in need of something larger, more comprehensive.

This tension between the way we know ourselves and the way we know others has been with us all along the way. In our own United Methodist tradition it has been the Calvinistic Methodists of Whitfield early and "evangelicals" lately versus the Arminian Methodists of Wesley early and "progressives" lately.

As important as these distinction are we still need something larger. Without losing the importance of our particular Arminian gifts how do we enter into conversations with those who would dismiss or annihilate our gifts?

May the Spirit of G*D not only be thanked for giving us the gift to use free will to love G*D and neighbor and aspire to perfection in this life, but be appealed to that we be set free from overly defending this basic life-orientation and simply live the gift we are given.

Now apply this to Israel and Palestine; Republicans and Democrats; Badgers and Wolverines; and more.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/may2002.html

 

 

To say “Jesus is Lord” without using that phrase “for the common good” is a misuse of the affirmation.

That same process needs to be in play when it comes to claiming a vocation. If you see “Jesus is Lord” standing behind the building of community, it also stands behind an individual’s participation in that community.

For a moment consider that every vocation has aspects to it regarding: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, and interpretation. Every vocation can help build the common good and some folks will even say every vocation reveals that “Jesus is Lord” when that common good is actually built.

This is built on the understanding:


http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/06/1-corinthians-123-13.html

 

 

Folks in a Pentecostal room went out to talk about the “power/presence of G*D” and now, a generation plus later, we find what is being talked about is a talking with one another about a literalized title. All talk of how “Lord” is a challenge to the contemporary political/power talk of the Roman Emperor being Lord, is of less import here than the requirement to have a shibboleth and talk to one another instead of those of another language or life-experience group.

Our recommendation is to delete the partial verse of 3b and begin with the Spirit reality that there are varieties of gifts and services and activities that can all work together whether they can agree on “Lord” terminology or not.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with our appreciation of Jesus—our expression of relationship with Jesus will be many and also one. If we cannot honor both the variety and the interconnections, we are most to be pitied and will soon enough become a caricature of what it means to be partnered with Jesus.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/06/1-corinthians-123b-13.html