The manifestation of Christ to the world through us

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013 (Second Sunday After the Epiphany, Year C) at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN. (Isaiah 62:1-5, Psalm 36:5-10, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, John 2:1-11)

The theme of the season of Epiphany is the manifestation of Christ to the world – the revelation of Jesus’s identity as the Son of God and the Messiah. The passages from the Gospels that we read during this season all describe events that revealed Jesus’s identity to those around him.

We began with the Feast Day of the Epiphany, when the star of Bethlehem made the birth of Christ known to the world and drew recognition from kings in the East. We then moved to Jesus’s baptism, which in all of the Gospels is a significant turning point in Jesus’s life, the moment when the heavens are opened and God declares Jesus to be his Son. Following Jesus’s baptism, we hear stories about his healing and teaching ministry in Galilee, with an emphasis on the “firsts” – his first teaching in the synagogue in his hometown, his first healing, the calling of his first disciples – the things that first revealed who he was to the people around him and began the movement of his followers that eventually became the Church. The story we heard today is of his first public miracle, according to John’s Gospel: changing the water into wine at the wedding in Cana.

The season always concludes on the Last Sunday of the Epiphany with the story of the Transfiguration – the ultimate revelation of Jesus’s identity on the mountaintop, with bright light and clouds and a booming voice from heaven proclaiming, “This is my Son; listen to him!” The season of Epiphany is “book ended” with two great divine revelations of Jesus’s identity: God speaks and declares Jesus his Son at the beginning of his ministry, at his baptism, and right before the end of his ministry, at the Transfiguration. The Transfiguration is the last major event of Jesus’s ministry in Galilee, before he heads to Jerusalem for what will be the last days of his earthly life and his journey to the cross – the themes we shift to exploring during Lent.

But the season of Epiphany is not only about remembering the ways Christ revealed his identity and made himself known during his earthly ministry. It is also about calling us to consider the ways we make Christ known in the world today, through our lives. The collect for today asks that God’s people “may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that he may be known, worshiped and obeyed to the ends of the earth,” and the Epiphany blessing at the end of the service says, “May Christ the Son of God be manifest in you, that your lives may be a light to the world.”

The number of people in history who had a chance to actually encounter Jesus in the flesh and receive revelation of his identity directly from him is incredibly small in comparison with the number of Christians who have lived and died in the thousands of years after his earthly ministry. All of those Christians had to encounter Christ not directly in the first-century person of Jesus of Nazareth, but in the lives of those who sought to follow him in their own day. And until Jesus comes again and we have another opportunity to experience him directly on this earth, we will continue to experience him primarily as he lives in the lives of his followers today.

Of course, the Scriptures do serve as another primary vehicle through which Christ is made known, but for many people who do not read the Bible, our lives will be the only thing they have to reveal Christ to them. As the saying goes, “Be careful how you live. You may be the only Bible some people will ever read.” Or, as the 16th century mystic Teresa of Avila put it, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours, yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion is to look out to the earth, yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now.” In other words, it is up to us, the church, the body of Christ, to manifest Christ to the world, to make him known and call others to love and to follow him.

This task can seem daunting or stressful if we do not remember the wisdom that the Apostle Paul left for us in his writings on spiritual gifts, such as our passage from 1 Corinthians today. Paul says that “there are a variety 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” (1 Cor. 12:4-6). In other words, we all have gifts from God that we can use to make Christ known in the world. Our gifts may be different – in fact, they will be different – from the gifts of our neighbors, but that is ok – in fact, it is part of God’s great design. Later in chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians, Paul uses the metaphor of the body to illustrate this. The church is the “body of Christ,” and going with that metaphor, he says, “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?” (1 Cor. 12:17). We need all the parts of the body to be whole, and each part contributes something different but essential to the well-being of the body.

So how can someone figure out what his or her spiritual gifts are? Paul gives us a list in this passage of some spiritual gifts: the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, working miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. In Romans 12, he lists other gifts as well: ministry, exhortation, giving, leadership, compassion. There are a variety of “spiritual gifts assessment tools” out there, tests that you can take that will try to help you place your particular tendencies and preferences into one or more of the biblical lists of spiritual gifts, but it’s important to realize that the biblical lists of “spiritual gifts” are not exhaustive; people do have other gifts that do not appear on any lists in Scripture, and those gifts can also be used for the purpose of making Christ known to the world. The spiritual gifts inventory that we use in the Faith Leader program here at St. Paul’s adds in several gifts that are not explicitly mentioned in Scripture, but which the authors of that program felt are certainly gifts from God, such as the gift of administrative skill, artistry, music, and even humor. Spiritual gifts inventories can be limiting, though, and perhaps the best way to discern what your spiritual gifts are is to think about the things that come most easily to you and bring you the most fulfillment.

Though our popular culture places a higher value on things one has to work hard for or struggle for, the things we are gifted in are precisely those things that are not difficult or onerous for us to do. We often downplay these skills in our lives, either because we think they must come easily to everyone, or because we think they are not valuable if we haven’t had to “work hard” on them. “Oh, that’s nothing,” we’ll say when someone compliments us on a skill that we have. “If I can do it, anyone can do it.” But that is not necessarily true!

I remember when my eyes were first opened to this truth. During my second year of college, I was feeling a bit guilty for becoming an English major, because it seemed too “easy” and “fun” for my whole “job” to be reading great literature and writing papers on it. I thought the science majors were all working much harder than I was. And then one day I was having a conversation with one of my good friends who was a biology major, and she said, “I just don’t know how you English majors do it. I can’t imagine writing all those papers all the time.”

“What?” I said. “But that’s no big deal. That’s easy stuff! You’re the one slaving away in the lab and doing math and working with numbers and stuff! That’s the really hard work!”

“Easy??” She replied. “I hate reading, and writing papers is a chore for me. I’d much rather do a problem set in biology any day than write a paper on a piece of literature!”

It was the first time I realized that what came easily to me and brought me enjoyment did not do so for everyone. And it helped me to feel less guilty for doing what came easily to me, because I realized that in doing what I enjoyed, I was using the gifts God had given me – just as my science-major friend was using the gifts God had given her.

After we have discerned what our spiritual gifts are, it is important to remember the purpose for which they are given to us. In our passage from 1 Corinthians, Paul says that spiritual gifts are given “for the common good” of the church (1 Cor. 12:7). The author of the letter to the Ephesians elaborates on this by saying that spiritual gifts are given “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12-13). In other words, our spiritual gifts are given to us for the purpose of making Christ manifest in the world, and we should use them in accordance with that purpose – not for building ourselves up, but for building up the body of Christ.

During this season of Epiphany, I invite you to take time to look around you and observe the ways in which your fellow parishioners, friends, and family are making Christ known in the world through using their gifts, and let them know that you notice. That last part is key – don’t just make silent observations in your head, but actually tell them what you see! This is a twist on the usual call for self-examination, but instead of asking you to think about your use of your own gifts, I’m asking you to notice them in others precisely because of how difficult it often is to acknowledge our own gifts. My prayer is that as you begin to notice how others are using their gifts and hold that up for them, those around you will notice the ways you are using your gifts and hold that up for you. In this way, we can join together in “building up the body of Christ,” in supporting one another in our work for the “common good” of the church: to manifest the light and love of Christ to the world.