Manifesting the Spirit

During Advent I spoke of Superman being considered by many to be a Messiah-figure dreamed up by 2 Jewish boys. Indeed his being bulletproof seems like wish fulfillment on the part of Jerry Siegel whose father died during the armed robbery of his shop. So an invulnerable man, off of whom bullets bounce, would be the coolest hero in the world to a boy who lost his father in that fashion. But what if he tried to make a religion out of Superman instead of a comic book? He wouldn't get very far. Because he'd have no physical evidence of the guy, no eyewitness accounts, no people saved from speeding trains or super villains, no manifestation of him, nothing other than a cool story. And just having a cool story wouldn't be enough to make people believe.

There is an oft-repeated idea that Jesus never existed, that he was just a made-up person and his story was cobbled together from a whole bunch of mythological gods, like Osiris, Horus, and Mithras, who shared characteristic elements such as being born on December 25, having 12 disciples, dying and rising again to life. The problem is that these shared elements are also made up. None of the gods usually said to have these things in common with Jesus actually do. In fact, the one who comes closest, Mithras, comes after Jesus and it looks like that religion borrowed from Christianity rather than vice versa. In fact, most modern scholars suggest that there was no such category as dying and rising gods because most do not actually return to life or do not return in a permanent manner as the same deity.

And there is the telling point that none of them were historical…except Jesus. We have better historical evidence that Jesus lived than we do most ancient historical figures. In fact we know surprising little about Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, the English astronomers who marked out the famous line that bears their names. The contemporary mentions of Jesus only seem slim by modern standards, where everything and everyone, no matter how relatively unknown, leaves a documentary footprint. And as more than one historian pointed out, it's really hard to explain the exponential growth of faith in one of many self-proclaimed messiahs without Jesus' resurrection, a manifestation which is attested in 1 Thessalonians, the earliest Christian document we have, written a mere 20 or so years after the crucifixion.

Epiphany means "manifestation" in Greek. More simply it means a showing. In this season we celebrate the various ways in which God showed or manifested Jesus to be his Anointed One to the world. (Easter might be considered the greatest of all epiphanies but it has its own season.) During Epiphany season, we consider Jesus' manifestation to the Gentile magi who follow his star, and to John and the people at Jesus' baptism. This week our gospel recounts Jesus' first and least spectacular miracle. (Most of the folks there don't realize it happened.) He saves the honor of a young couple who run out of wine during the weeklong wedding banquet. This seems trivial to us, and to be honest, Jesus hadn't planned on being an emergency back-up sommelier. His mom asked him and so he did this little thing, which, in the culture of the Ancient Near Ear, was quite big thing to the family. No one's life, health or safety was on the line. In that sense, it is the most gracious of his miracles for it was the least necessary.  

But the key word "manifest" shows up in our New Testament reading as well. Paul is writing about spiritual gifts. "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 a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." Notice that Paul lists not only gifts but also services and activities. Like similar lists elsewhere I don't think Paul meant us to take the list as exhaustive. There are lots of skills and abilities that the church needs and which the Spirit provides that Paul doesn't mention here (like gifts having to do with creating, selecting and preparing worship music, and administration which Paul mentions in a list in Romans 12.) The real point is that everyone has at least one such gift, service or activity and that they are to be manifested for the common good. They are not given as toys or to be used for personal pleasure alone. They are used for everyone's good.

We live in a culture that really emphasizes the individual over the group. So we tend to forget that were it not for groups of people acting harmoniously we would not have much of what we enjoy today. Every item we use, whether manufactured, harvested or digitally created, is made, marketed, advertised, packaged, shipped, transported and payment verified due to a host of people we never see. Yet if they, and the people whose jobs support their work, did not do things cooperatively and systematically, you would never enjoy fruit out of season, or experience a movie, TV show, video game or book made thousands of miles away, or enjoy electricity, water, or telephone communications.

Even relatively small groups need different people to accomplish different functions. I have to laugh when people debate whether Paul wrote the Pastoral epistles and give as a reason that they mention--OH NO!--church officers, specifically bishops, elders and deacons. Given that these are written at the earliest in the last years of Paul's life, 30 or more years after Pentecost, when he is in prison and the original Twelve are being martyred, just who do these critics think kept these churches organized and running for most of that time? Any Star Trek or Doctor Who or Sherlock Holmes or even Laurel and Hardy fan club I've belonged to has always had at least a president, vice president and secretary. The larger the group and the more elaborate the arrangements they make for meetings--special celebrations, guest speakers, etc--the more positions are needed to keep things running. Whether you call the leader a president or a bishop, (and in the Didache, a very early church handbook, the person who presides over the Eucharist is called the President) you need someone to head up the group. You need a very loyal person to do a lot of the work meeting the needs of a group, whether that person is called a deacon or a secretary. Someone has to take over when the president or bishop is away, or if the head guy is also overseeing a whole region, you take the next senior elected guy, an elder or in Greek, presbuteros, which over time became the word priest.

In fact, the whole thing developed very practically. The deacon was the first of these 3 positions to be created, as we see in the book of Acts, chapter 6, to take care of food distribution to poor widows in the early church. The deacon was probably modeled after a very similar position found in the synagogues at the time. These people took up a weekly collection to help the poorest member of the congregation. As for church leadership, Paul, an apostle, founded churches, got them running and then had to leave to plant new churches. So we see him in Acts 20 praying with certain elders put forth by the local church, again rather like the elders in a synagogue, giving them the day to day responsibility of overseeing these small house churches in his place. These elders no doubt wrote letters to Paul asking him what to do about the various problems they were having. The letters which we read most Sundays are Paul's responses to those lost letters from the local churches. The churches collected, copied and shared the Apostle's letters of wisdom. As the original apostles approached martyrdom, they appointed successors. As houses churches grew, and needed multiple meeting sites in the same city, and as they spread through entire regions, parish overseers or bishops needed to start acting like regional managers. The local elder in charge became the local priest or pastor, representing his parish before the bishop and representing his bishop before the parish. Nobody made up these titles for themselves. The positions arose organically.

But within parishes we have needs as well. Positions and committees arise in response to needs as well as, one hopes, to gifts given by the Spirit to members of the parish. And the fanciness of the title does not signify the perceived need for the position. If I was still as sick this Sunday as I was much of last week, a lay person could still lead a prayer service. But if someone wasn't around to pay the electric bill or take out the trash or print the bulletin or to unlock the door or make the coffee for after the service, I'd bet you'd feel that person's absence more acutely than mine!

So everyone has a gift or a service or an activity given them by the Spirit and they are all important, just as an airline maintenance worker is as important as the pilot, because even Chuck Yeager can't fly a plane whose wings are falling off.

But unlike in a secular organization, in the church those gifts, services and activities are to be a manifestation of God's Spirit. They are to reflect the God revealed in Jesus Christ. At first, that sounds absurd. You can preach in the Spirit but how can you pay bills or take out trash or make coffee as a manifestation of the Spirit?

As a student in acting class, you learn that emotion is not just expressed by face but by your entire body and by how you move and the tone of your voice. And we've all detected this as we've been served by an angry waitress or checked out by a disgruntled clerk or, conversely, helped by a low level employee who made the simplest task a delight. How the person felt about you or about their job was communicated non-verbally by how they interacted with you. At a recent medical test, the receptionist shook my hand and told me I was a most entertaining patient. I have no idea if that is true or if she tells everyone that, but it made me feel good and it made me want to return there for any future tests.

Paul wrote in Colossians 3:23, "Whatever you do, work at it wholeheartedly, as if you were doing it for the Lord and not merely people." He is addressing slaves. Now we should not confuse them with the sort of slaves we had in America. In Rome, slaves could be teachers or doctors, could collect fees for their work and could own property. Still they were not free so there were times when in addition to the regular irritations and problems of any job, there was the fact that you could in no way say, "Take this job and shove it."

But Paul says, in effect, "Remember that ultimately the person you serve is God, so use that as your motivation." Paul also reminds masters that they have a Master in Heaven and that their slaves are their brothers and sisters in Christ. And we all know what Jesus said about how we treat the least of his brothers and sisters. (By the way, the early church did make some slaves bishops!)

Not every job, task or assignment is glamorous, or fun or easy. But it can be done either with indifference or with diligence, with resignation or with enthusiasm, with resentment or with love. I remember a Haitian CNA at the nursing home who frequently and beautifully sang hymns as she did her duty, which could be cleaning up after incontinence or helping a patient eat. And everyone who heard her was lifted out of the stress of the place, if only for a few minutes. Still it needn't be that overt. Simply showing empathy, really listening to others, putting in a little extra effort that will be appreciated can be a manifestation of the Christian love put in our heart by the Holy Spirit.  
             
I'm from Missouri, the "Show Me" state. Today it seems most people have adopted that attitude, especially when it comes to Christians. And it's reasonable. Jesus said that our love for one another would be how the world would recognize us. When the world sees hatred or indifference instead of love, how is it to know that the we indeed are indwelt by God's Spirit?

"To each is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." If this is true, what is your manifestation? Are you expressing it or suppressing it? Are you restricting the parts of your life in which you allow your God-given gifts or service or activities to be manifested? Why? Jesus said, "Freely you have received. Freely give." There is a world out there that is not so much looking for miracles as for people who truly live like Jesus and demonstrate his love. If they saw us consistently manifesting his Spirit in all we think, say and do, they would as amazed and attracted as we are by Jesus, God's Anointed Son.