The text for the sermon comes from the epistle:
“There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all.”
The problem is not, however, the absence of gifts. Interestingly, St. Paul nowhere doubts the validity of the Corinthians’ spiritual gifts — he affirms them as genuine instantiations of the Holy Spirit’s work. Indeed, the church at Corinth seems full of spiritual gifts and power — but these gifts are being used not for the good of the Church but for self-aggrandizement, and they have created a culture of ingratitude and envy. It is chillingly ironic that spiritual gifts from God become the occasion for the primal Satanic sin of pride — but this is precisely what St. Paul means when he warns in 1 Corinthians 13 that, without love, prophecy becomes a noisy gong and mountain-moving faith amounts to nothing.
St. Paul reminds these Corinthians that, in an ultimate sense, no Christian is an individual but is rather a member of a Body, animated by a single Spirit, and defined by love. And, as our Collect and Gospel texts indicate, we learn to live this reality out in our lives by becoming, individually and corporately, a house of prayer.
Let’s turn to the Epistle text:
“Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant.”
There’s an important nuance to the Greek here that gets lost in translation. The noun “gifts” is not actually present in the Greek. The word used is an adjectival noun, pneumatikon, which is literally “spiritual things.” It is not until verse four that St. Paul shifts from pneumatikon (“spiritual things”) to charismata, “gifts.” The root word of charismata is charis — which means grace. With this shift, St. Paul subtly reminds them that these “spiritual things,” which have become for them sources of pride and envy, are not their possession by right or by merit but by grace, as a gift. God’s gifts are only rightly enjoyed when the credit and glory that they bring passes through the recipient to the Divine Source of the gift.
St. Paul also reminds the Corinthians that spirituality per se is not enough, because not all spirits are of God. The Corinthians had been plenty “spiritual” before their conversion:
“You know that you were Gentiles, carried away to these dumb idols, however you were led. Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”
Being “carried away” in idolatry is probably a reference to ecstatic experiences in pagan worship. Those spiritual experiences may have been quite real, but they were not of God — and the test is whether a spiritual experience conforms to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And, whereas in paganism a variety of spiritual experiences would have indicated a diversity of gods, St. Paul notes that the spiritual gifts of God, however diverse, all stem from one Spirit, one Triune God:
“There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all.”
Christian gifts, ministries, and activities communicate the grace of God to a dying world. In turn, Christians must constantly point the world back to Jesus Christ. In this way, we act as images and icons of Jesus, channels through which God both acts and receives glory and honor.
The Corinthians’s spiritual gifts were real, but they seized the praise stemming from these gifts for themselves. They became not icons of Christ but living idols. And as each Corinthian claimed the Creator’s glory for himself, the unity and complementarity of the Spirit’s work was obscured, and envy arose. Instead of working for the good of the whole and for the glory of God, the Corinthians sought their own glory and poisoned their community. Obviously, this is directly contrary to the very purpose of spiritual gifts!
“But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.”
It is probably best not to try to read too much into the particular list of gifts which follow. In different places in this and other of his epistles, St. Paul varies his lists of spiritual gifts. They appear to be illustrative rather than exhaustive or systematically outlined. St. Paul’s focus in our text is not on the particular gifts themselves but rather the unity of one Spirit animating all of them. The remainder of 1 Corinthians 12 beyond our text describes the Church as Christ’s own Body, with each member of that Body providing a different function; with all functions harmonious, organic, and symbiotic; each crucial to the health and well-being of the whole Body. Every spiritual gift proceeds from “one and the same Spirit” at the Spirit’s discretion and “for the profit of all.”
That the Corinthians were able so to misuse the gifts the Spirit that they became occasions for destructive pride and envy is startling. Something like this Corinthian dynamic seems to be what our Lord had in mind when, in Matthew 7 (verses 21-23, ESV), he warned: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”
The antidote for this poisonous and apparently damnable pride is loving attention to the Body of Christ rather than selfish pursuit of our own ends. Our Gospel text teaches us how to do this.
Just as the Corinthians manipulated spiritual gifts for selfish ends, in our Gospel text we find that the Temple — God’s dwelling place with man — has become a “den of thieves.” Literally speaking, Jesus was decrying the profiteering that debased the sacrificial system in his day. But we know something Jesus’ original audience did not. The dwelling place of God with man was no longer the Temple complex in which Jesus stood but rather the very body of Jesus himself (see John 2:21). Moreover, as St. Paul explains throughout 1 Corinthians, Christ has consecrated the Church as his mystical Body, and by extension the very body of every Christian becomes at baptism a temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 6:19).
The Church fathers, therefore, rightly drew profound and sweeping theological conclusions from Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple. Indeed, the pairing of today’s Epistle and Gospel texts, which dates back to the fourth-century Lectionary of St. Jerome, was predicated on making this connection between the Temple of Luke’s Gospel and the Temple that is the Body of Christ. We must ensure that our Body — the Church corporate and each of our lives individually — does not become a den of thieves. We do so by making our Body instead a house of prayer.
Living prayerfully is the solution. St. John of Damascus defined prayer as the lifting up of the mind to God. This is exactly what the celebrant asks the people to do in the Sursum Corda: “Lift up your hearts.” “We live them up unto the Lord.” This is harder than it sounds. It requires not merely effort but also training and formation. First and foremost, this happens Eucharistically, as we feed on Christ’s sacramental Body and are thereby more fully united to his mystical Body. The common prayer of our liturgy — particularly Holy Communion and the Daily Office — teaches us how to pray as members of a Body. Even when I pray alone in my room, I pray to our Father and not my Father. Holy Eucharist and the Daily Office should be the basic building blocks of every house of prayer, but as we grow in spiritual discipline we should add contemplative, personal prayer, which helps us understand how our membership in Christ relates to each of our particular situations and circumstances.
In these ways, we learn how to consecrate our whole selves to Christ’s service, to bring all our gifts into right relation with our membership in Christ, and to live a filled life of humble love and ceaseless prayer.
“There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all.”
