"Everyone is Special. No One is Special." (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday January 16, 2022

Scripture Reading:  1 Corinthians 12:1-13

 

This is possibly a controversial opinion, but I think that some of the best movies ever are the ones made by Pixar… feel free to argue with me in the comments section if you disagree!  They are animated films, but they have this ability to not only create deeply relatable characters, but the story lines tend to hit you in all the feels.  Movies like Toy Story (and especially Toy Story 3), Finding Nemo, WALL-E, Up, Inside Out, and so many more.

 

One of the earlier Pixar films was The Incredibles.  This is about a family of superheroes who, for reasons, have to hide their superpowers away.  The father, Mr. Incredible, has superhuman strength and stamina.  The mother, Elastigirl, has superhuman elasticity and is able to stretch out any part of her body.  Violet, their daughter, is able to both make herself invisible and generate force fields.  Dash, the middle child, has superhuman speed.  Jack-Jack, the baby, seems to have a multitude of powers by the end of the movie, including shapeshifting.

 

So they are living as an ordinary family, their superpowers a secret known only within their family.  And nobody is happy with this situation.

 

Dash, who is ten years old, is frustrated that he has to hide away his superhuman speed.  His mother doesn’t let him play any sports in case he blows their cover.  He gets in trouble when he uses his speed to prank his teacher.  At one point, he is complaining to his mother about needing to hide his superpower, and he says to her, “I thought our powers made us special,” to which his mother replies, in the way that mothers tend to do, saying, “Everyone’s special.”  Dash rolls his eyes to this response, and mutters under his breath, “That’s just a way of saying that no one is.”

 

Everyone is special.  No one is special.  It’s an interesting tension that I think relates to the reading that Ross shared with us today from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.  Paul was addressing a very specific concern in the Corinthian church in this passage.  The church was gathering together, but some members of the church were being valued more highly than other members of the church because of the gifts that they had been given.

 

And Paul is trying to correct them, telling them that each person in the church has been gifted, and even though the gifts that one person has might be different than the gifts that another person has, they are all valuable because they all come from God, given to us by the Holy Spirit.  Everyone is gifted; everyone is special.  But no one is more special than everyone else.

 

Last Sunday we were talking about baptism, and how we are baptized into the family of the church.  At the end of this week’s reading, Paul picks up the language of a body – he writes that “we were all baptized into one body.”  And I think that this is important.  The gifts that we have been given by the Holy Spirit aren’t given to us for our own sake – they aren’t given to us so that we can puff ourselves up with pride, or to show off our superhuman speed like Dash wants to do in The Incredibles.  Instead, the gifts that we have been given are for the sake of the whole body, the whole church.  And likewise, the church doesn’t contain all of these gifts for its own sake, but rather contains all of these gifts working together for the sake of loving and serving the world around us.

 

A recent example here at Two Rivers Pastoral Charge might be our Mission and Service fundraiser that happened back before Christmas.  Ross and Josie brought their gift of leadership and enthusiasm to a group of artists in the pastoral charge.  This group of artists were then able use their artistic gifts to translate a vision into an actual design, and then Cathy scrambled up on the scaffolding to create the outline of a tree on the wall.  Another group of people then contributed their gift of conversation and compassion and sat down and made phone calls to everyone in the three congregations; another group of artists shared their artistic gifts to paint all of the leaves, and then all of you shared your financial gifts for the project.  One person alone couldn’t have completed this project alone – it took many people sharing their gifts to make it happen.  And the church – we weren’t doing all of this for our own sake, even though anyone who enters this sanctuary will be able to enjoy the beauty of the mural that was created – instead we were able to raise $5274 for Mission and Service, money that will go to spread love and caring and hope across Canada and around the world.

 

The new mural on the wall of Westfield United Church

 

God has gifted you – you are special.  Maybe you have been given one of the gifts that Paul has listed in 1 Corinthians – wisdom, or knowledge, or faith, or healing, or the working of miracles, or prophesy, or discernment, or speaking in tongues, or the interpretation of tongues.  Or maybe your gifts aren’t listed here – the gift for music or art or leadership or prayer or service or finances or loving others.  Or maybe you are part of The Incredibles and are hiding away your superhuman speed or your ability to become invisible.  But whatever your gifts are, they have been given to you by the Holy Spirit, and they make you special.  But because everyone is gifted, you aren’t any more special than anyone else – everyone is special, as Dash’s mother told him.

 

Right now, we are going through an incredibly difficult couple of years.  I don’t think that any of us asked to live through a global pandemic.  I’m sure that most of us would prefer to be gathered together in-person this morning rather than virtually.  And even for those of us who are introverts, who enjoy our own company, these lockdown restrictions are hard.

 

But rather than thinking of our gifts, and how we can use them for the church once things are back to “normal”, whatever that might mean, instead I might suggest that the gifts that the Holy Spirit has given you, these gifts have been given to you exactly for this time that we are living through.  You have been gifted so that we, as the church, might continue to do the work that God calls us to – the work of loving God and loving our neighbours.

 

In a few minutes we are going to be joining together to share communion, and when we do so, even though we are scattered into so many different physical locations, we will be sharing this meal as one community, as one family, as one body.  The same Spirit who has gifted you and who empowers you to share your gifts with the whole community will be drawing us together through this meal.  We will be reminded that God loves us, and our bodies and our spirits will be strengthened so that we can share our gifts with each other and with the world, even as we have to stay physically separated for now.

 

And so the question that I leave you to ponder today is – how will you share your gifts with the church and with the world in this time that we are in?

 

And may it be so.  Amen.