Sermon - ML King Weekend

2nd Sunday After the Epiphany - Year C     

I Cor 12:1-11                  

On the Use of Spiritual Gifts

Of all the courses I took at the seminary, the one which had the most dramatic effect on me was the one I took in order to learn the life-story and the theology of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I had always known that he was a “preacher.”  But I was unaware of the ways in which his life-story emerged out of his faith experience.  He knew that he was a man, blessed by God, with certain gifts.  And he knew that God gives us gifts in order for them to be used.  His sermons and essays instilled in me a tremendous appreciation for God’s insistence that we assess our spiritual gifts, and then use them for the common good.

  I grew up in rural south.  I supposed I had heard something of the earlier work of Pastor King, but it was his assassination in 1968 that I remember most vividly.  I remember being in my fifth grade classroom; listening to the comments, shouting at my classmates and friends.  Those are painful memories.  It is really the first time I remember thinking, “I want to go somewhere else.”  “This isn’t where I belong.”

Moving to Chicago, eleven years later, didn’t make me feel more at home.  Neither did enrolling in Seminary.  And then I took that course on ML King.  While we were still reviewing his life-story, before we had ever gotten to his sermons and books, we read of his struggles upon graduating from Crozer Theological Seminary.  King had left the south, with it’s Jim Crow laws and its “white’s only” signs.  He had moved to the north – where there was racism for sure, but not the kind that was likely to get your house bombed.  He had opportunity to remain in the protected halls of academia and tolerance.  But he realized that no place would feel like home unless it was the home that had birthed him and nourished him.  He returned, writing that the only hope for the south was her native sons (and daughters.)

He knew that he had been blessed.  And he understood that blessings are not given in order to elevate the recipient.  They are given for the common good of all God’s children.

ML King accepted the call to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.  In 1955 events began to unravel the illusion of normality which permitted segregation and racism to go unquestioned and unchecked.  He was one of the pastors, but he was only one of the pastors.  And, in 1955 he was not the most well-known pastor in Montgomery nor was he the pastor to which the black community would have looked for a word.  In C. Eric Lincoln’s account of what happened, it is suggested that King was chosen to be the speaker not because of his great gifts of oratory, not as a result of his understanding of the history of the issues, but because he was lesser known than many of the others and therefore less likely to be ignored or dismissed before anyone heard what he had to say.

This moment had come in King’s life as a result of someone else making use of their gifts.  Rosa Parks remained in her seat when asked to move to the back of the bus.  The earliest reports quote her as explaining her actions by saying, “My feet were tired.”  But the story is more complex.  Ms. Parks had competed her training at the Highlander Folk School where she had learned about civil disobedience.  She had gone there because she was tired, tired of giving in.  That day, on the bus, it was exhaustion which motivated her – she was tired of never feeling at home in the place that was her home.

The Highlander Folk School is still in existence.  They continue to prepare individuals for activist lives.  It is quite an impressive place; and there are many notable persons who keep it moving forward.  Miles Horton was one of the founders.  He, like Clarence Jordan of Georgia, refused to accept the status quo that persons of African descent and folks with European blood lines could not and should not live together as God’s children.  Their spiritual gift was the ability to see a new home, a home in which all of God’s children are recognized as brothers and sisters; a home in which no one is made to feel unwelcome or desire to run away.

All sorts of folks – each one doing their part.  And as a result the world is a better place than it was in 1954.

All sorts of folks – each one doing their part.

This is the message of today’s reading from I Corinthians.  Paul is addressing the issue of spiritual gifts.  He reviews some of these gifts and he celebrates their being offered for the common good.  ML King, Rosa Parks, Miles Horton and the Highlander School – all examples of those who upon realizing they had received a gift began to look for a way to use it – for the common good.

The list of gifts, shared in this brief reading, is not intended to be exhaustive.  These are but examples which Paul uses in order to make the point that to each of us God has given some abilities.  These skills, these traits, these abilities are not ours for the hording.  They are given to us so that we might be of service to others.

The text would also remind us that no one of us receives all the gifts that are to be given.  We are typically only given one, maybe two.  Just because an individual has one gift to offer, we should not assume they have them all.  This is why someone who is wonderful in teaching might not be such a good example of doing.  Or why a person who can bring about healing is totally incapable of getting anything organized. 

The gifts are spread around.  And sometimes one gift is totally useless unless it is coupled with the gifts of those around us.

When we use our gifts, in service to others, the world is changed.  It is changed by the results of our sharing; it is changed by the very act of sharing.

What are your gifts?  Are you too modest to name them out loud?  The greater tragedy is that you probably haven’t been challenged to identify them.  Maybe, in one of those career builder workshops you were forced to refine your three-minute self-presentation in which you rehearsed the phrases which are most likely to get you an interview.  But when have you sat with another servant of God and identified the things you are able to do and willing to do for the sake of God’s people?

What are your gifts?

Sometimes gifts are discovered in the moment.  King’s gifts were revealed when he was picked for reasons other than his keen intellect.  And he had a lot of help refining his gifts as the years passed by.

What are your gifts?  And what are the needs or the world which call upon you to offer those gifts?

I want to challenge you to hear in the messages of this ML King Weekend the examples of how various individuals (not just King himself, but so many others) offered their gifts for the common good.  I encourage you to see the ways in which their willingness to offer their gifts made it possible for others to do the same.  And above all, I want you to start to see the blessings which God had given you as an invitation to contribute to the common good.  It is a start to sit with a career builder and answer “What am I good at doing?” but it needs to move beyond that to an understanding that these are gifts God has given you and God has given them to you for a reason.  It is God’s intention that these gifts be used to make the world the home that it is intended to be for all of God’s children.

Amen.