Gifted and Talented

Romans chapter 12, we are on page 1123 of the red bibles if you would like to have a look at the passage we're looking at page 1123 Romans chapter 12. A bloke I know by the name of George told me about his soccer team and this is a modern-day parable. Once upon a time there was a soccer team. They were blessed with an extraordinary amount of individual brilliance. They were the team to beat. The trouble was it was individual brilliance plus a lot of attitude.

Usually when a player got the ball they would assume that they were the only player on the field. They would never pass the ball. In fact, this team had one goalkeeper and 10 strikers. That's what they thought. If you don't know anything about soccer, football they call it these day, the striker is the one who scores the goals. They all thought they were strikers except for the goalkeeper. Whenever they got a corner, the goalkeeper was the only defender because everybody wanted to score.

Then there was the training. No one really turned up to training. In fact, it was much the same with some of the matches. Sometimes only seven or eight people would turn up and if you have seven or eight people against 11, it's going to be very ugly. They were hammered game after game. Then there were the fights. On one occasion the center back thought he'd be a forward and tried to dribble through the whole opposition. He was dispossessed and the opposition scored 1 nil. Everyone started getting stuck into the center back, "What are you doing, you idiot?" Next time the center back got the ball he thought, "I'll fix you guys." Whack! He kicked the ball into his own net, a deliberate own goal.

The captain was irate. The captain said to the center back, "Get off the field." The center back said, "I'm not leaving." The captain said, "I'm leaving, who's coming with me?" Someone said, "I am." Someone else said, "I am." "Me too." And so half the team left the field. They lost 9-0. It would be the absolute pits to play in a team like that: a group of individuals. They had a bad attitude, self-interested. Really, it was no team at all. I hope over the winter months you have been warmed by the amazing grace of God. We've been looking at Paul's letter to the Romans.

How do you live under the grace of God? Romans chapter 12 is the turning point. That's where we are today, Romans chapter 12. He says in verse one, "Therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is—His good, pleasing, and perfect will." He says "therefore," because it's the turning point. He says, "offer yourselves as a living sacrifice." This is your spiritual worship. Don't be conformed to the patterns of this world, as we saw last week, but be transformed. It's an inside-out word. So this is the "so what" part of his letter. This is where the rubber hits the road. This is where we think to ourselves what is right and appropriate for me to do in response to God's grace.

It's so interesting that the first thing Paul talks about after his "therefore" is the church. Verses 4 to 8, he's talking about ourselves, he's talking about how we relate one to another as most helpfully put at the beginning. Now I'm going to say something which even as I say it, it sounds very trite and almost banal, but I'm going to say it anyway: if you've joined Jesus' team, it's not a game for individuals, it's a team sport. Western culture is very individualistic. There are reasons for this; there are philosophical reasons, there are historical reasons why we live in a very Western individualistic culture. Because individualistic culture, we think very much about ourselves, our personal beliefs. That's the most important thing that matters, and there's some truth to that, of course, it's our personal beliefs. But we're not great at hanging together as a community, and so it's very easy to say, "I don't need to come to church, I can stay home, I can pray." I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that amongst the baby boomer generation the amount of nominalism is very high because people call themselves the name Christian or the name Anglican but it doesn't in large numbers convert to actually turning up.

Gen X is very similar. So it's our individualistic culture that is working against us. But Western culture is also very consumerist. We want to say to ourselves, "Is this a good product I'm buying into? Will this meet my needs? Will this church give me value based on the amount of time I put into it? Does it have good payoff value?" You might have heard the story of the family who are driving home from church in their car, and the father's driving and he says in the car, "That sermon was so long," and the mother says, "And the singing was terrible," and the teenage daughter says, "And the people were so unfriendly," and the 12-year-old boy says, "Yeah, but it was pretty good value for just 10 bucks, Dad." So we can get into that mode, can't we, of it's just about me and it's about my individualism.

But the brilliance of the almighty God is that He's not given any one of us all the resources we need to go forward; rather, He has spread them around His people. I'm going to say that again: God has not in His genius given us all the things we need to grow. He's spread all these things around His people. So you do not have everything you need to go forward with Jesus. God has spread it amongst the people here of Christ Church Lavender Bay. So following Jesus is not an individual event, it's a team event. It's interesting that when Paul says, "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind," the next thing he speaks about is how we live with each other. Be transformed in your thinking as far as church is concerned, how we live with each other.

Now you think to yourself, preachers, they're always going on about church, aren't they? It's like accountants are always talking about money, and doctors are talking about being well or being sick, and mechanics are always talking about cars. It's their topic. You're expecting the preacher to talk about church, but I'm not doing it for that reason, and I'm just doing it because it's Paul's topic, and we're trying to understand what he is saying, so it must be ours as well. I have two points essentially this morning. I was trying to come up with two points that start with the same letter, but I thought it was all too corny, so I'm just going to say two points. The first is the body, and the second is the gifts. Body, gifts. That's all you have to think about this morning.

First of all, the body here is one of the Apostle Paul's favorite illustrations, and it's a brilliant analogy. We're so used to it, we don't realize how brilliant it is. He also uses it in 1 Corinthians 12, a great analogy, great imagery. Chapter 12:4: "Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others." So just look at what he talks about. He says "many" and "one," "many" and "one," "each," "all." See the relationship there? So the Apostle Paul uses this example of the body. You've got two arms, you've got two legs, you've got a head, just one of those. They don't have the same function.

You think to yourself, "This sounds familiar, I have heard this before." But think about it, you can't run on your hands, not with any ease. It's difficult to hold a cup of tea at morning tea just with your feet or your toes. But they are all essential. They're all different, but they're all essential and all have a distinctive role to play. So, unity, one; diversity, many. One, many; unity, diversity.

I was reading a very helpful commentary on Romans by a person called Paul Barnett. You might have heard of him, and a very helpful comment I read there: the Apostle was really writing about 25 years after Jesus. It's extraordinary that there are Christians in Rome just 25 years after Jesus, and quite a number of them. So many of them that just a few years after that Nero tried to pin the fire of Rome on them. They were significant just 25 years later. That's an amazing thing. However, the point that was made is that it was probably at Paul's time, it was probably just a loose affiliation of house churches dotted around the city. People of different ethnic backgrounds, different religious backgrounds, slave, free, different social backgrounds. The church of Rome was probably just a loose affiliation of house churches and home groups.

It's interesting. At the beginning in Chapter one Paul says, he doesn't say "to the church in Rome," but he says "to all in Rome who are loved by God." So you get that idea that it doesn't cohere as one particular group. We begin in our thinking with morning church here at Lavender Bay. Here we are at 10:00 a.m. Lavender Bay, and we say to ourselves, "What are the little subsets of that? What are the home groups and the other groups that might meet as little satellites who are part of the whole?" But Paul goes the other way. He begins with the home groups and says, "How can this be a church?" I used to teach Year Seven mathematics and we teach them fractions. You've got a pizza and you're going to divide it up into quarters, and it's one quarter and one quarter, but those four quarters make up a whole. Demonstrate how that all works. It's always very fun being in my math class.

But Paul's saying it the other way. He's not saying, "How do we divide this up?" He's saying, "It's divided up, how is it a whole? How does it come together?" So the body is one, and he's speaking of the unity of the body. As you look around at each other, you say, "Yes, we are the body of Christ." True, we are the body of Christ. We sometimes say it in the communion service: "We are the body of Christ, His spirit is with us." But the people at 5:00 p.m., they're also the body of Christ. You sometimes say "one church, two congregations." We are all the body of Christ. But then the people who meet just down the road at Kirribilli, they're the body of Christ, and Neutral Bay, and St. Thomas's, they are also the body of Christ.

In corporate speak and strategic plans and things like that, they talk about point of difference, they talk about competitive advantage, but that's not what is on view here. It's not the idea that we are different, but that we are one. There are very young children, and they are part of the body of Christ. There are people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, they also are the body of Christ. People of different political persuasions, people of different social persuasions, people with different preferences to me are also part of the body of Christ. Last week in church I read a little section from the Book of Common Prayer 1662.

I did that because I wanted to underline the fact that we are connected to something very ancient. Believers through the past two millennia, they too are the body of Christ. I'm part of the body of Christ, and so is St. Augustine, and so is Anselm of Canterbury, and so is Martin Luther, and just the everyday average Christian, everyday believer over that period of time. But also it's the people of the future, they are the body of Christ as well. The Christians that will come after us, they belong to us, and we belong to them. How do we minister to the church of the future? It's a big question to think about how we express and exercise this unity. So that's the first point.

But then the second point is the interdependence of the members, that is the diversity. Can a body survive without its parts? Can a body thrive without its parts? Can you survive without your heart? Hardly. Can you survive without your brain? Of course you can't survive without your brain. They can possibly be kept alive on a machine, but it's not really in existence, is it? In fact, if you just block off an artery for about 20 seconds, you're in big trouble, just to block off an artery to your heart or your brain. I have two kidneys, that means I've got one spare. I can function with just one, but I can't function with none. We've got two eyes, and you can cope with two eyes, but it's difficult; you lose your depth perception, for example.

We have two ears, but if you lose the hearing in one ear, again, it's very difficult to work out where sound's coming from. I can get by, you could say to yourself, "I can get by without a fingernail." However, when I want to open a can of tomatoes, I need someone in my household who's got a fingernail. You might think to yourself, "I can get by without my little finger," but actually your little finger is super important. Ask Louie, he's a physio, but your little finger is really important for your grip strength; most of it comes from that just little finger. And you might say to yourself, "What about a toe? Do I really need a toe?" But toes are crucial for balance. Or red blood cells? I got lots of those. You can lose a few of those, and it's okay, but if you lose too many of them, you're in big trouble. What about my immune system? Can I get by without that? What about if I can get by without a piece of skin? If you get by without a piece of skin, you very quickly find you've got an infection because it's one of the most important barriers to you.

We need every part of our body. Every part of the body is important, and that's Paul's comment here. That's what Paul's talking about. Every person here, every person here has a role to play. We give thanks for every single person, 10:00 a.m., 5:00 p.m., we are one. We give thanks for everyone, but not everyone has the same function. Hence, we move to the second part of Paul's teaching, which is about the gifts.

So we talked about the body, now we're going to talk about the gifts. If you're panicking, I will not take as long on the gifts as I did on the body. We have different gifts. Look at verse six: "If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith. If it's serving, then serve. If it's teaching, then teach. If it's to encourage, then give encouragement. If it's giving, then give generously. If it's to lead, do it diligently. If it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully." So you've all been given some gift, all of you. Some of you have been given many gifts. Some of you are extraordinarily gifted. The word here for gifts in the original language is the word charismata, and it's related to the word grace. So we're talking about living under grace, and we say grace is a gift from God.

But we've also been given these gifts, charismata, and we've been given them for the health of the body, for the growth of believers, that people would be added to the group of believers and that those believers would grow. This word charismata is from which we get the word charismatic, which has connotations. However, if it's true that all churches are given gifts, charismata, and we are one of those churches, and those gifts are necessary, it must mean that Christ Church Lavender Bay is a charismatic church, as are all churches. All churches are charismatic because they all have been given these gifts.

He's speaking here about gifts, he's not speaking about funny church names like "rector" and "wardens" and things like that. The word "warden" seems like incarceration. But it's not about offices or titles or names like that. It's talking about the gifts that God has given to every person, and they are to function to make the church stronger. The list here is not exhaustive.

During the week, or over the last couple of weeks, I actually discovered a series of talks online which you can find that were done by Dick Lucas at St. Helen's Bishop's Gate way back in 1970. I was barely alive in 1970, and he had this fantastic ministry, and there is a talk on this passage which I found incredibly influential, and I'd encourage you to go and have a look at it and listen to it. I always come away thinking, "I wish I could speak like Dick Lucas," with his beautiful English accent and so quaint, and also so penetrating.

So let's have a think about this giving. I'm actually going to talk about the latter ones first because the former ones are often spoken about. So he talks about here, "If it's contributing to the needs of others," verse 8, "let them give, let the person give generously." So this is the person who has the means to be generous and also the attitude of generosity. The person who has extra, the capacity to be generous, has a charismatic gift. When I say that I am the minister or the rector of Lavender Bay, it sounds so affluent to be that. Many of you are, but many of you are not. Our area, the Lower North Shore, has a great amount of wealth, and certainly in Paul's day, if Paul could look at us, he would say, "You've got a great amount of wealth.".

But also those who do not have a lot to spare, there are those who rent houses, don't own their own house, those whose jobs demand a lot of their time, those whose disposable income is low. We know in our area there are numerous single parent families. So it's wealthy and not wealthy at the same time. And wealth is also a gift that can change with season. So you might be younger and have a well-paying job, you might be older and you're on a fixed income, or you might be younger and you're battling to make ends meet and you're battling to get on top of the things you need for life.

But at some stage in your life, you might make a good business decision or a good investment decision, or you might come into an inheritance, and now suddenly you have means. So this gift is the means and the attitude, and when they come together, you have this perfectly. There are some people who have more means than others, but whatever your situation, cultivate the attitude of generosity is what I would say.

He talks about leadership. Leadership often, you hear the phrase, "such and such is a born leader." I don't think that's really true. Leadership comes through your experiences, through your learning, through your opportunities. That's how you develop skills and abilities as a leader. A person who has wise judgment or experience comes over time. As a leader, you need zeal, you need energy, you need diligence, so you're not just telling people what to do, but you're actually doing it as well. You need to be a doer.

There's the gift of mercy. You can see it there: someone who's got the time and strength to be big-hearted, the energy to be merciful, and the time to do it. The people who might help those who are burdened, provide a listening ear, maybe the person who visits people, maybe the person who just makes a phone call just to check in and see how people are going. But if you do it, do it cheerfully because if you are someone who shows mercy, it can be a lot to carry.

Then of course, these often get a good run when these talks. There are the word gifts: the gift of prophecy, the gift of serving, gift of teaching, the gift of encouraging. They're all crucial so that God's kingdom grows through the word. It's an important ministry. That's the ministry that you've called me to here, it's the word ministry. That's the thing that I've got to do if I don't do anything else because that's crucial for the health of the body of Christ. Paul says, "So if it's your responsibility to serve, then do it. If it's teaching the word of God, then do it." Verse eight: "If it's to encourage others, help them go forward to keep them sharp, keep them on the job, do it. If it's leadership, be diligent. Don't be slack. Have a go, do it, just do it well." Let me draw a couple of implications.

First point here, implications: if you're going to offer yourself in service, it's going to have to be more than just Sunday. It's got to be bigger than that. When he talks about your spiritual worship, he can't be just referring to Sunday. We have about 10 to 12 things to do here each Sunday, 10 to 12 jobs. And that means that there's a lot more than 10 to 12 people here. So if that's all, it would mean there's a lot of people going to be idle. I was talking before, someone mentioned to me just before church, "Oh, there's not too many people around, don't worry, they're Anglicans, they only arrive 5 minutes after everything starts." I went, "Okay." And they never sit at the front. I said, "I thought I just had an incommunicable disease or something, people didn't want to get too close in case I breathed on them." I was somewhat lighthearted, but that's a great opportunity chatting to people before church begins. But we need to think outside of just Sunday. It's got to be bigger than that.

Point two: Paul says, "Renew your mind." So it's something we probably need to give our minds to, to think about. It's probably not just going to be a snap, "Oh, this is the answer," but we need to think about it continually, rethink what's my place, what are my gifts. Find out what you can do, start doing it. And if you've got the gift, people will ask you to keep doing it, and do it more, and people will say, "You're really good at doing this and I'm glad you do it and thank you for doing it.".

Then he says lastly, "do it soberly." Look at how he begins. I skipped this, but I'm going to go back to it right at the beginning. Verse three: "For by the grace given me I say to every one of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you." So the key to unity is humility. Don't think of yourself more highly than you ought. A great barrier to fellowship is pride and hubris, that if I think that my part is more important than anybody else's, if I think my gift is more important than anybody else's, that's what Paul is warning against.

But don't think of yourself more lowly either, because that is a great barrier because you won't do anything if you think you're no good at anything. Don't think of yourself too highly, don't have too high an opinion of yourself, but also the opposite: don't think that I haven't got any talents or gifts at all, that false humility that says "I'm terrible at this" when often people know you are very, very good at it. Paul says, "Stop this, make a sober assessment of yourself.".

So, team sport. It's a funny expression, isn't it? You sometimes hear it in the post-match interviews where the captain says, "We really turned up for each other." Of course you did, you were there at the game, but you know what he means. We turned up for each other, we were there for each other. The body in its parts, in its whole, the gifts, the charismata, we need to use them. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the words of the Apostle, familiar. I don't think any of these words are unknown to us, and yet we pray that you'd help us in renewing our thinking so that we might work out how to apply them and do so for the good of the people around us and your kingdom. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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