"By One Spirit"

 

"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body – whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink."

 

            I like to have a story to read at the end of the day. Patrick O'Brian has written stories about sailing ships in the 18^th century, when the English and French and Spanish would chase each other up and down the coast of Africa and into the Mediterranean and along the coast of Europe. They would shoot great guns at each other and blow holes in the sides of the ships or knock down their masts until one would give up and be taken as a prize. It makes for good bedtime stories. What has caught my interest is the skill of the captains in using the wind to catch just the right sails in order to either pursue or escape. The captain must understand how to position the ship to maneuver to take a shot, or how to raise the sails and achieve maximum speed quickly. There were no engines to call upon. It all had to do with the wind, with the sails catching the wind.

            The Holy Spirit is described as wind or breath. We are to allow the wind of God to fill our lives and move us into the purposes of God. Craig Blomberg writes about the gifts of the Spirit in our lives that such gifts are always bestowed freely by God's grace (which is like the wind that comes and goes as it wills) and that the gifts are intended to be used in a Christ-like attitude of service (which is like the sails that have to be set just right to catch the wind properly) and that the gifts are the result of God's powerful working in a person's life.

            Pastor Willie Jemison died this past week, and he and his church, Oakdale Covenant, are good examples of the gifts of the Holy Spirit working powerfully and to good purpose in a life and in a church. In his life we see a picture of what can happen when the wind of the spirit fills the sails of our lives. I met Pastor Jemison in 1973, when I was at North Park Seminary for the year. He was taking the 8 a.m. Covenant History class, and serving Oakdale at the same time. We enjoyed having him in class, as he was older and more experienced than we were. One day he mentioned how tired he was; as he said, he had been "getting up with the chickens and going to bed with the owls."

            President Gary Walter stated, "Dr. Jemison's contribution to the community, church and the Evangelical Covenant Church is immeasurable. He was a giant among us of faith, vision, brilliance and persistence, traits common among genuinely transformational leaders." When he was called to pastor Oakdale Covenant, it was an all-white congregation on the south side of Chicago. Its membership had fallen from 200 to 25 in a time when its neighborhood had gone from 95 per cent Swedish to 95 per cent African-American. But rather than move the church to the suburbs, the congregation decided to stay and to call an African-American pastor. By the time he retired in 2000, the congregation had grown to more than 1,200 members with more than 50 ministries in the community including the Door of Hope Transitional Home, the Oakdale Christian Academy, and the Academic Excellence Ministry. One of the needs the church saw in the community had to do with education. This was a neighborhood where more than half of the high school students dropped out before graduation. Under his guidance, over 99 percent of Oakdale students graduated from high school, and most went on to college. Pastor Darrell Griffin, the current pastor at Oakdale, said "His love and interest in youth have saved an entire generation. The number of kids who went off to college because of Pastor Jemison literally is in the thousands." In so many different ways, Pastor Jemison was a man whose sails were filled with the wind of the Holy Spirit.

            Paul wrote to the Corinthian church and gave them a picture of the Holy Spirit at work. They needed a picture, because it was hard for them to see. Their years of idol worship had formed their souls at the cost of vision. Idol worship is always about an individual gaining favor in the universe, gaining power over people, often for immoral purposes. It was not easy for these new believers in Christ to leave all that behind. The Corinthian church had particular problems caused by the consequences of idolatry. So Paul shows a clear picture to those struggling to see.

            The blindness caused by idolatry made it hard for them to discern the difference between magic and miracle, between licentiousness and Christian freedom, between powers of persuasion and godly wisdom. So they tended to seek and value highly a few of the gifts of the Spirit that could be misused to exalt the individual. They did not see the importance of affirming the great variety of spiritual gifts that could be used for the common good.

            Paul tells them clearly in the beginning of chapter 12 that the Holy Spirit was among them in order to lead people to confess that "Jesus is Lord." The Spirit was in their lives in order to distribute a variety of gifts that could be used in doing God's will. The Holy Spirit always worked for the common good and not to benefit a select few.

            This is what we must understand today. Some churches ignore the Holy Spirit and pridefully try to do God's work in their own strength. They become spiritually dead churches, open for worship each Sunday and with programs during the week, but spiritually dead. Other churches value the gifts in individuals very highly, but they neglect the Spirit's work to build up the common good. In these churches love gets lost. These churches might in many ways be very successful, but the love of Christ is hard to find.

            So Paul teaches the Corinthians that there is One Spirit and many varied gifts, given for the common good. When the Spirit is active in the church, power and love are found together. The picture of such a church is that of a body. Here we find the phrase that Karl Olsson used as the title of his book on Covenant History, "By One Spirit." The church is baptized by One Spirit, and the church is given One Spirit to drink, or more literally, "is watered with the One Spirit." So the Spirit forms one body that includes many different types of people, people who would not normally associate with each other. Jews and Greeks did not get along with each other. Slaves and free people did not talk to each other. But one Spirit creates one body, and in that body provides a great variety of gifts. Not all in the body are prophets or evangelists or helpers or healers or speakers in tongues. But there is in the body a mixture of gifts, fit together for a purpose.

            The Holy Spirit then gives a variety of gifts to fit the needs and the situation of the church. The gifts listed here for the church in Corinth are different from the ones listed in Romans. There we find prophecy, serving, teaching, encouraging, giving, leading and showing mercy. Craig Blomberg writes that "Any combination of talents, abilities and endowments may qualify as spiritual gifts, if a believer uses them for God's glory. A talent or ability becomes a spiritual gift only when it is used by a believer for the common good."

            If Paul was to visit our church today, which gifts do you think he might list that would fit our situation best and help us minister to he needs in our community? Take a moment to write a few down.

            What did you come up with? I wrote down evangelism, faith and peacemaking. Let's pray for the gifts we wrote down.

            The gifts come to us from the Spirit like a farmer sprinkling seeds in a field. The seeds are scattered, and then they will grow in good soil, if they are nurtured. The gifts that the Spirit gives us are for the purpose of bringing people to faith in Christ, and doing God's will in a variety of ways, and building up the common good in the fellowship. They get expressed as we affirm the gifts we see in one another, as we encourage or draw out the gifts and calling in each other, and as we all work for the health of the church. But most important, we are to make sure that the sails are up and in place in the church, so that we might catch the wind of the spirit whenever it blows.

            Amen.