A
Reflection for Pentecost Sunday All Saints Episcopal and Immanuel
Lutheran Churches June 4, 2017 Thomas E. Wilson, Preacher
The
Given Gift
Did
you ever have a gift given to you that you didn’t know what to do
with? You know it is a gift given with love that somebody thought you
would like but you aren’t really sure. You don’t want to hurt the
giver yet it is not something that you are used to. What would you
do?
I
can think of several choices:
Option
one:
Try the gift out a few times out of love and thank them for the
opportunity.
Option
two:
Thank the giver by writing a note and place the gift in your closet
until the giver actually asks about it and then out of love you use
it or wear it and then it goes back in the closet.
Option
three:
You thank them for the thought and the love behind the gift, then
apologize and ask if they can make someone else happy with their
generous gift.
Option
four:
You take the sales receipt and exchange it for something that you
feel would really work for you being upfront with the giver thanking
them for the opportunity to use the love behind the gift.
Option
five:
You approach the giver, thank them for the love and then ask what
were they thinking and have a good laugh about it.
I’m
sure there are other options but these are the ones that I have had
some history with as either the giver or receiver throughout my life
when a gift has been given or received out of love. The older I get
the more I see that I live in a universe of loving gifts without
number. From the morning when I get out of bed and take the dog for a
small constitutional before I do my exercises the gifts keep coming.
I leave the house where I know that I have been gifts of love the day
before. There is gift of the breeze that comes from the ocean, the
sight of the stars and moon, the sound of the animals in the dark
woods, the songs of the birds as dawn breaks, the fact that I am in
the Outer Banks, the neighbors and friends and ministry. If there is
a storm I know of the gift of the house that Pat and I are buying and
the fact that we were able to find it. All day long I see gifts. Some
gifts are better than others I have gotten out of bed and so the day
is a gift and my task is to find the gifts I can give real thanks
for. I can echo the psalmist’s opening line from the selection for
today. I am going to use the Robert Alter translation where he
follows the King James Version: “How many are Your deeds, O LORD,
all of them You do in wisdom. All the earth is filled with Your
riches.” The Hebrew word for “creatures” in the Prayer Book
translation also means “acquisitions”, which I see as gifts
shared.
I
can be a prisoner of my own ego, held captive to my own agendas,
living in a mental and spiritual gulag as my own warders keeping me
away from Grace or I can see all the world as Grace and say; “Yes
and thank you.”
I
think of the disciples in John’s Gospel how they are afraid of the
day and loaded down with guilt and in the middle of the fear so that
they are locked in and they hold the only key. But the Risen Lord
comes in, needing no key, and breathes on them, giving the strength
to meet the day ahead without fear, to no longer be their own
prisoners by giving the gift of the spirit to forgive as he has
lovingly forgiven them. There is a joke about guilt that it is the
gift that keeps on giving but I think that it is forgiveness that is
the gift that really keeps on giving in a richer life.
When
Paul writes to the Corinthians he is telling them that there are many
gifts that God has showered on the community and all of the gifts
have in common the opportunity to build up the church of faith. But
the Corinthian community has been prisoners of their own egos as each
one is in competition to see which has the best gift. Paul suggests
that their gifts were not given to them to hoard as ransom for their
low self-esteem by the Spirit had given these gifts so also they are
to use by them to put into play the greatest gift; love. The
importance of the gift is not what it does for the recipient but for
how it might be used to build up the community in love which
underscores every gift. He is telling them this in the 12th
chapter of his letter and he is leading up to the point of the
letter, the 13th
chapter which begins:
If
I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have
love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic
powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have
all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am
nothing. If
I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I
may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
I
think of the apostles locked in their room in the reading from the
Book of Acts. Jesus, in the time between the resurrection and
ascension, had sent them out into all the world and what did they do?
They gathered together to figure out what to do next. I think they
are praying to God asking God what did God think she was doing, for
they were prisoners of their own timidity; afraid of making a
mistake, afraid of failure. The spirit in the midst of their
uncertainty gives them the gift of setting them free so that whatever
is said is said with love. The gift they needed was love which was
there all the time; all they needed to do was to act on that love.
The gift that was given, the marvelous gift of tongues, was probably
not a gift they asked for or knew what to do with, but it was the
love behind, in, under and through was what was the miracle, as it
still is for us today.
We
gather together today as two communities of Lutherans and
Episcopalians, we have different gifts, we find many things that
divide us yet there is one thing that unites us; the realization that
we were all given the gift which we did not ask for nor deserve but
makes all the difference; the love which God showers on us and which
we can best use by using it to feed our souls in order to be set free
so that we will give freely that love to this broken world.
The
Given Gift
Thanks
for the gift God. Now what do with it
during
the time after I did not ask to be born
til
unable to avoid dying; of my breath shorn
and
the last line of my obituary is finally writ?
Don’t
turn the question back to me! You chose
that
gift when another could have done better
to
give me more of power, prestige and worth.
Now
supposed on special occasion bring it forth
to
show how good you are,? Or just write a letter?
Why
don’t you, like the others, just stroke my ego
or
send me some money to buy my heart’s desire?
Instead
you give it to me to build up people higher,
closer
to you, instead of stranded on archipelago
of
gulag of our own construction and design
we
set up to hold the idols of our own shrine.
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