“Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.” Romans 12:6-8
Last Sunday I discussed what we mean when we say that the Christian life is best understood to be our participation in Christ; and as I said then the main reason for discussing what we mean by the word participation is to situate what we refer to as the gifts of the Spirit into the context of participation. There are two senses in which that occurs: one is that the gifts will only flow into the Body through our sacramental participation in Christ, that is that the Messiah is the fount of the gifts and the other sense is that participation in Christ necessarily issues in our conscious, intentional, and responsible participation in the life of the Body as a whole as well our conscious, intentional, and responsible participation in one another’s individual, personal life. We will explore the meaning of the concrete gifts, but first it is important us remember the purpose of all of God’s gifts:
“And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ…” Ephesians: 4: 11-13
That is a description of the Church’s journey through time and memory and space. But every journey has a destination which Paul reminds us of in Romans 8: 19-24 where he writes:
“For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”
The upshot is the apostolic teaching that the restoration of all things is the destiny of creation and creation’s destiny is tethered to humanity’s destiny and humanity’s destiny is tethered to the destiny of the Body of Christ. It is important for us to remember our destiny as the Body of Christ because God has willed to bring about the restoration of all things through us. The gifts are intended for equipping the Church to fulfill her destiny. The Church is in the world, for the world, but she is not to be of the world. Prayer and labor is our destiny, our life long labor of love, diligently and responsibly performed in the Church till Jesus returns and restores all creation. As I said last week, some of our labor is immediately satisfying while much of labor is unsatisfying, but being satisfying or unsatisfying is finally of no importance. What is important is our destiny that is root and branch a matter of our participation in Christ.
The Promise God made to Abraham was a Promise made to his seed and by this Promise God enlisted Abraham and his family to begin reversing the disaster that Adam’s sin had brought upon creation. That is the Abrahamic covenant; what Paul refers to as the Promise. Jesus is the Seed of the Promise and thus the perfect fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant. Through his own faith in God the Father Jesus established the New Covenant. We who believe in Jesus are members of God’s covenant family and children of Abraham, siblings of Jesus Christ, who are being saved by the faith of Jesus.
“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?” Romans 6
Through baptism into Jesus the Messiah we are born into the family of Abraham and the God of the New Covenant take hold of our life and thus our mutual destinies are bound to the destiny of Jesus Christ. This creates a new relation between Christ and the baptized, thus baptism is the instrument by which we participate in Christ. And remember that I said last week that this participation is not merely psychological, but it is also sacramental, which is another word for reality or even ultimate reality. The whole life of the Body of Christ, in particular the sacraments and the gifts flow from our participation, our baptism into Christ. This is why I have said that what we generally call “spiritual gifts” or the “gifts of the Spirit” are Christological gifts, specific gifts allotted to the members of the Body of Christ for the building up, enlivening, and unifying the diverse Body of Christ.
What are the gifts? St. Paul lists 7 gifts in Romans: prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving, ruling, and mercy. Paul’s other lists in Ephesians and 1st Corinthians begin with the Apostolate as first in importance, but he does not mention it in the Romans’ list. Why? Because there were no apostles in Rome and in fact it seems that one of Paul’s chief reason for visiting Rome was to impart to them the spiritual gift they were lacking and it seems reasonable that gift was the Apostolate.
“For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established…” Romans 1:11
There is some sense in which the Christians in Rome could not be thought of as established as in planting an olive tree or a grape vine; that is a tree or a vine may be planted but not established, not fully grounded and rooted. Paul indicates that is the case for the Roman Christians, they are like an olive tree that is yet to be established, and he meant to fix that for the Romans by bestowing upon them a needful gift.
But lets get back to our text for today. The gifts have properties that we can state: Each gift takes a form and content, mystery and matter. Each gift is experienced concretely in the Body of Christ. All of the gifts may be understood. Some gifts are given to members to enable other gifts. The gift of Knowledge, which is listed in 1st Corinthian, is the intellectual gift of some members of the Body to grasp, retain, and organize/formalize the truths of the Apostolic Church and so a member who has the gift of prophecy or the gift of teaching is equipped to perform those gifts because he or she also has the gift of knowledge.
The gift of knowledge, as well as the gift of prophecy and the gift of teaching took the form of narratives, of liturgies, prayers, hymns and sermons. How do we know that? Because the meaning of words prophecy and teaching is similar – they both have to do with communicating the Gospel of Christ but with some difference in form. Prophecy, which Paul gives primacy of place to, is what we all know today as preaching and we know from the Gospels as well as the epistles of the New Testament that the Apostles first and then followed by those we may call New Testament prophets, used narrative, portions of liturgies, prayer, and hymns in order to communicate the Gospel of Christ to the world and to instruct Christians. There is something else here concerning prophecy that we must note:
“let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith…”
Although the translation of phrase that conditions how prophecy should be actually performed – “according to the proportion of faith…” – gives the impression that Paul is commenting on the prophet’s amount of personal faith he really is not doing that at all. A literal translation of the verse would be more like this:
“let us prophesy according to the analogy of faith…”
The Greek word here mean analogy or standard while the word we translate as “faith” is probably best translated “belief” in the context of the whole sentence. Thus what Paul is saying is that the prophet’s or as we would say, the preacher’s preaching, must be not contradict the apostolic standard or what the Church Fathers came to call “the rule of faith” or “the analogy of faith.” Let’s look at the next gift in the list.
“Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering…”
The second gift Paul mentions we have translated as “ministering,” is the Greek word “diakonia” which is where we get the word “deacon” which mean literally “service.” I do not think Paul is referencing the office of the deacon or the deaconess here, but he is rather using familiar language to speak of concrete care of the members of the Body of one another. Paul does not go beyond his use of the word “diakonia” to explain what concrete service or services he is specifically referring to and so it is reasonable to assume he has in mind the forms of service the Church would have been familiar with such as waiting on tables, caring for the orphans and widows, being attentive to those in need within the Body and taking care of their needs. Remember that all the gifts are meant to build up the Body whose local expression is the concrete parish in a specific place. And of course the building up of the concrete community is to the end that the community may fulfill her destiny to be God’s instrument for the renewal of all creation. Next Paul writes:
“or he that teacheth, on teaching…”
The teacher is the one who instructs in catechesis or in the interpretation of the Scriptures. Like prophesy, or preaching, the skill of the instructor, according to St. Paul, is far more important to the life of the Body of Christ than flashy, attention grabbing manifestation of miracles. For example while Paul acknowledges the possibility that some Christians in Corinth spoke in the unknown tongues of angels, he was still quite eager to draw their attention away from potentially dangerous and self-centered activities like speaking in tongues. Glossolalia, speaking in the language of angels was known in Corinth well before the Christians were there since it was common among the Dionysian worshippers of the city. St. Paul frankly sees very little use of such flamboyant manifestations even if they are authentic and he makes this clear in passages such as this one in 1st Corinthians 14:
“Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.”
The phrase that Paul ends with literally would go something like this:
“O he that teacheth, let him use it for instruction…”
That last phrase, “let him use it for instruction” probably has an equivalent meaning to the phrase Paul used to modify prophesy and we should take it to mean instruction that is in accord with the teaching of the Apostles. Paul holds preaching and teaching in higher regard than even the working of miracles.
That is enough for today. We have looked at three spiritual gifts – prophesy, service, and teaching. Remember that I said at the very beginning today that there are two senses of participation in which we have to situate the gifts: one is that the gifts will only flow into the Body through our sacramental participation in Christ, that is that the Messiah is the fount of the gifts and the other sense is that participation in Christ necessarily issues in our conscious, intentional, and responsible participation in the life of the Body as a whole as well our conscious, intentional, and responsible participation in one another’s individual, personal life. It would be a natural assumption, but still a fallacy, to think of this second sense of participation in terms of what we call participation versus non-participation as in sports where we speak of “participatory sports” as opposed to “spectator sports.” Some folk would say that when it comes to ACC basketball this distinction falls apart. But not really. Even when it comes to ACC basketball we all know the difference between sitting in the bleachers and cheering or crying as opposed to being a player out there on the basketball court. We are watching the participants; the participants are not watching us. The participant, the player on the team, is either making the basket or failing to make the basket. Not us. Being a player on the team out there on the court is participation, while watching, even passionately watching, is what a spectator does, it is passive in its relationship to the basketball itself. But here is a difference: when we are worshipping the Messiah in the mass standing at the Altar or kneeling in the pew we are in Jesus in the in the most perfect manner possible for any of us in this life till he return. In fact this is the one perfection, the one perfect action that we all may participate in repeatedly every time we celebrate the Holy Communion. And from our participation in the sacramental life of the Messiah the spiritual gifts flow into the life of the Body of Christ and all her children.
“Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.” Romans 12:6-8