Enflamed Weakness

Sermon by Carrie Eikler
Pentecost – June 12, 2011
Acts 2:1-21, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

A couple months ago I spoke about the concept of “don’t think about pink elephants” the joke being once someone tells you that, that’s exactly what you think of. Here’s another elephant allusion: the elephant in the room. This refers to a topic that is so big, so laden with anxiety, that no one wants to talk about it.

So I’m going to call out the elephant in the room when it comes to 1 Corinthians 12. The scripture about gifts. In service to God. In building up the community. You think I’m going to go on for 15 minutes about how you each have a gift and you just need to find that gift and then sign up for the appropriate ministry team, and by the way, would you like to be Leadership Team chair next year (Cindy’s smiling at that one)?

Whew! I named it. Now that’s out of the way, I’ve done my obligatory speech to the standard interpretation of the text. Now, elephant-be gone!

But even if I’m not going to guilt you into signing up for a ministry team ([whisper]which you should…you really should), this scripture has a common effect on most of its hearers. It gets us thinking about our gifts, and by gifts we mean talents, and by talents we mean what we’re good at.

Maybe this hit the Jesus people of Corinth in a powerful way, but really, our culture isn’t bereft of opportunities to explore and discover our talents. High School students often take tests to magically reveal to them their strongest attributes. Churches, like ours, do “gift inventories” to help us see what God has given us to work with. Even colleges and universities base their conversation in this light: major in what you’re good at so you can get the type of job you love (and will hopefully make you some money…at least to pay back your college debts).

We are a culture that loves to identify, compartmentalize, and capitalize on what we “can do.” Our talents-- our gifts--have just become one more commodity in an economy of trade. I’ll give you my gift, if you give me a paycheck. Wherever else I put these abilities to use are either “hobbies” or “diversions” or “extracurricular activities”, and usually they are the first things to go when stress goes up and time gets crunched.

I even think the church has been co-opted by such a consumer mentality of “gifts.” Too often I feel like when we talk about finding one’s vocation we are essentially asking “how will you use God’s gifts to help you make a living, and be a productive consumer in our economy?”

So no, as a culture, I don’t think we’re overly anxious about finding what we’re good at--which doesn’t mean we’re satisfied with our lives. Far from it.
(pause)
But this understanding of gifts isn’t what’s happening in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, by the way. It wasn’t even figuring out which one of those rowdy Corinthians should be on the “speaking in tongues commission” or the “wash the feet of the guests” ministry team.

And let me say before I go further, what I have learned about the church in Corinth…I have to say I’d really like to have met these people. Corinth was a city about 40 minutes south/south-west of Athens. And as cities sometimes do, they get a…reputation. You know, you associate a certain ethos with a city. Think: Las Vegas, Portland, New Orleans. Corinth also had a personality.

The reputation of Corinth was one of wealth without culture. Think: Nuevo-riche. Think: Beverly Hillbillies. They had the cash without the class. These seem to be things that should go together, like manicured hand in white glove. But not in Corinth.

Yet most of the people in the Corinth church were believed to be poor, with probably a few of these Beverly Hillbilly type folks thrown in—you can imagine the tension that could cause. They were banded together by Paul primarily based on his word and charisma. These were people who lived a generation before any of the gospels were written: no Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

Just imagine that for a moment, trying to fashion a church in the way of Jesus before they had the gospels that we feel are so indespinsable. These people, if they made any money, were simply doing what they could, or what the trade that was passed down to them. They didn’t need to hear about gifts so they could find job satisfaction.

They were hearing about gifts because they wanted to build the church. And certain people thought some gifts were better than others. And Paul says no. If you are building a church, it’s about God. All about God. All from God. All for the glory of God. This ain’t about you. What you do, you do for God.

Paul’s letter was to relieve anxiety. To tell those who didn’t speak in tongues that that’s OK. And to ask those who did speak in tongues, “why are you doing this?”
When it comes to gifts, we still have a lot of anxiety, and not, as I said, necessarily identifying what they are. What I experience and see around me is an anxiety born from unrealistic perfectionism of our gifts--preconceived notions that say what success means, what some who has true talents at X,Y, or Z should look like.

And if you think you’ve never felt this before, ask yourself:
Have you ever been jealous about the accomplishments of a colleague in the same field as you?
Have you ever thought a woman was a better mother than you, a man a better father?
Did you ever have a sports or school-nemesis (as Torin admitted to in a sermon recently) who’s focus for your rivalry was simply based on who could be better?

I’ll admit it. I have those. All three of those. And then some. And I would guess you have them to.

I think one part of struggling with gifts is facing the parts that don’t quite shine the brightest. Those parts that aren’t ablaze with the spirit. And it’s wrestling with those qualities we feel we need in order to be the best —whatever we are: parent, professor, musician, pastor, friend, spouse. It’s wrestling with the feeling that no matter how hard we try, we’ll just never be good enough.

[pause]

This year, Americans have been more exposed to British Royal life than we have been in a few decades. With the wedding of Prince William to Princess Kate we have gleefully immersed ourselves in the pageantry and the gossip, the splendor and decadency of a royal wedding.

This was a far cry from the humility and fear and anguish we were presented with earlier in the year. In the Academy Awared winning film, The King’s Speech, unaware generations (myself included) witnessed the vivid portrayal of King George the 6th in his unwilling rise to the British throne

Prince Albert, later to be crowned with the name King George the 6th, was Britain’s King during the turbulent years leading up to and during WWII. Albert’s brother, David, was the rightful heir, but because David wished to marry a divorced woman he stepped down from the throne, leaving it to his brother, Albert, or Bertie, as his family called him.
Bertie was a painfully shy man, with a dramatic stammer. He was deathly afraid of public speaking and on the occasion his father, King George V had him speak publicly, he was a dismal failure. The movie casts the coming of World War II as a confrontation involving public speaking: Hitler’s polished elocution is a dramatic contrast to the king’s quavering, high-pitched voice.

Bertie’s wife, Elizabeth, “slyly sets up a visit with Lionel Logue, the oddball, self-trained Australian speech therapist. With humor and wisdom [during the countless voice lessons in in Lionel’s dingy office--a place no respectable king would be caught dead in--Lionel] goads, cajoles, threatens and berates the king, gradually finding a way to intrude into [Bertie’s] personal life, enticing him to relive the pain of growing up with a blowhard father and a taunting brother. He put the king through a series of vocal calisthenics; he teaches him to curse and sing [even dance] in order to overcome his stammering.”

[pause]

One night, portrayed in the film, King George looks at his engagements for public speaking, something a King should be able to do, something that Kings have always been able to do—but on this night, King George breaks down crying in the arms of his wife under the mere stress, sobbing “I’m not a king. I’m not a king!”

On the eve of King George the 6th’s coronation, Lionel reflects with the anxious king about how he started helping people. Lionel recalls Australian soldiers coming home from WW1, shellshocked by what they had seen and experienced. They stammered. They couldn’t speak. Lionel reflected “My job was to give them faith in their own voice, and let them know that a friend was listening.”

[pause]
The two were a pair for the rest of King George’s life. Whenever the King made a public appearance or a radio broadcast Lionel was there. Lionel edited the King’s speeches in ways that would help a stammerer overcome the tripups, he would direct the King as if he was conducting an orchestra because a musical flow helped move him through the difficult parts. He knew what his friend needed in order to live into his weakness, so he could do the job before him. So he could live in the confidence in his other strengths.


The relationship between Logue and King George isn’t one of transcending difficulties in order to reach perfection. After years and years of training, no one would say King George was a magnificent orator.

No, I think this lesson by this master teacher, Paul included, is about boldly showing our non-gifts. This voice lesson is about opening our awareness up to what we do well, and, with a large measure of care and grace, to what we don’t do well. Because, as Paul points out, it’s all part of the work of God—not just the strengths, but all of who we are.

[pause]
The spirit will help you find your voice. Not by dramatic tongues of fire falling on you. But by guiding you, marking your scripts, moving you through the difficult dance steps—something we don’t rely on much when we’re working out of those places that come naturally, do we? Where we know we’re doing what we’re really good at. Spirit urges you to know that even in those things you are called to, joyfully or reluctantly, you won’t be perfect. Because it’s an economy like no other, a realm unlike any earthly kingdom.

But it requires the first step,
out of our high palaces of perfection
into the dingy room of a master teacher.