Sermon for January 19, 2025
Epiphany 2 C
1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
There’s a popular show you can stream called Ted Lasso. It tells the story of a (fictional) soccer team in England, and as you might imagine the show delves into the highs and lows of the team on the field, as well as giving a behind-the-scenes look at the lives and exploits of professional athletes. But the center of the show is Ted Lasso. Ted is a folksy, motivational, championship-winning college football coach from Kansas, who is hired to coach a soccer team in England even though he knows nothing about the sport. When Ted is interviewed by a newspaper reporter about his new job, he drops a bombshell: He could care less about winning or losing; his true goal is to help his team become the best versions of themselves as human beings.
Ted has unconventional methods for accomplishing his unconventional goals. For example, he tries to identify the talents of people who are overlooked or ignored. One of the characters is named Nate. Nate is the “kit man”—we might call him the water boy; he’s the guy who does the grunt work for the team so the players can focus on practicing or playing the games. Nate is short and not athletic at all, he has no self-confidence, and the team members either pick on him or don’t bother to learn his name. But Ted dubs him “Nate the Great” and learns that Nate actually has a brilliant mind for soccer strategy. So Ted, who’s a great motivator but terrible at soccer, lets Nate develop the team’s game plan. Ted recognizes that someone who seems insignificant to others and who believes he is insignificant himself, actually has a valuable gift to share—a gift that can make everyone else’s giftedness even better.
This relationship between Ted Lasso and Nate the Great is a metaphor for the spiritual gifts that St. Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 12. “Now there are varieties 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. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
Similar to Ted Lasso’s philosophy about coaching soccer, the spiritual gifts that God has given us are not about winning or losing—after all, Christ has already won the victory for us, defeating the powers of sin and death by going to the cross and being raised again. The spiritual gifts God has given us aren’t about making comparisons of who’s better or worse, either—because with Jesus by our side, every failure to follow him in his way of life becomes an opportunity to turn and ask forgiveness, and rely on his grace to get a new start, and try again.
But what are spiritual gifts, anyway? Are they just for people who are the holiest, or most religious, or most faithful? No. And the key to understanding them is found in verse 7 of 1 Corinthians 12: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Now, the first thing to realize is that everyone has their own unique combination of spiritual gifts, given to them by the Holy Spirit. St. Paul lists the gifts he observed in the Christians in Corinth, to whom he wrote this letter. Paul recognized that some were good at speaking words of wisdom, while others possessed an abundance of knowledge. Some were pillars of faith, while others had a gift for healing. Some could work miracles, while others could speak prophecy and interpret God’s will for a particular situation. Some had the ability to evaluate what those with the gift of prophecy said. Some could speak in tongues—strange words unknown to the speaker yet given by God; while others were able to interpret what those strange words really meant.
This was quite a diverse and special collection of spiritual gifts—but the most important thing to realize was that no one person possessed them all, and no one person needed to possess them all. Everyone had a different gift, given to them by God—but whatever gift one person had, it did not become effective until it was paired with the gift another person had. We all need each other. We all need to get to know each other, and to work together, and support one another—because in order to use your spiritual gifts, you need to rely on other people using their spiritual gifts. And with this exchange of gifts, that is how you build up the common good, with the goal of giving glory to God and serving our neighbors in love. It’s kind of like Ted Lasso and Nate the Great: Ted’s gift of motivating others only became effective when it was paired with Nate’s gift of devising soccer strategy.
But how do you know which spiritual gifts you, or others, have? Well, you begin to see them through faith. Going back to the Ted Lasso analogy—Ted saw a gift of soccer strategy in Nate, and his faith in Nate’s ability opened Nate’s eyes to recognize this gift in himself, which also gave him the confidence to put it to use for the common good.
It takes faith to realize that the gifts you possess, and the gifts your brothers and sisters in Christ possess, have been given by God. Perhaps the measure of faith God has provided to you allows you to recognize these spiritual gifts easily. Or perhaps you are struggling in your faith, and are having a hard time recognizing God’s gifts. That’s why God calls us to be part of a church—a community in Christ—so that when you are struggling, you can turn to someone else who can share their gift with you, or you can turn to someone who can see God’s gift within you and help you gain the confidence to use it for the common good.
Again, spiritual gifts are not about winning or losing—because Christ has already won the victory for us. They’re not about being better or worse than anyone else, because your gifts need to be paired with someone else’s in order to become effective. Spiritual gifts are not even about success or failure as people of faith, because in Christ even our worst mistakes can be forgiven, and in Christ we always have a chance to start anew.
Yet even as God calls us to offer our gifts with a sense of humility, Jesus works great miracles through them! Miracles of abundance. Take today’s gospel story, for instance, The Wedding at Cana. The wine ran out in the middle of the wedding feast—a big social faux pas. Jesus tells the servants to fill the empty jars with water. These servants are the “water boys” (so to speak) for the wedding; their job is to do the grunt work so everyone else can enjoy the party. It seemed like a very small gift the servants offered, simply pouring water into the jars. But what happened next? What happens when Jesus told them to draw some out, and take it to the chief steward to taste? The water becomes wine. When the miracle happened it was very simple, nothing fancy, hidden in the ordinary action of drawing a dipper from a jar to give someone a drink.
The servants’ simple offering turned into something greater than they could have imagined or accomplished on their own. Their humble gift became great because it was offered in faith to Jesus, for building up the common good. Jesus loves to take our simple gifts and turn them into miracles. Amen.