If there is one thing that the Bible passages about spiritual gifts make clear, it is that whatever gifts we have are given to us for purposes outside of and beyond ourselves. By the grace of God I am able to make a living by using the gift of preaching that God has given to me. But I was not given the gift of preaching in order that I might make a living. I was given the gift of preaching in order that others might hear the Word of God.

Both the best and the worst part of Christian faith is that we are supposed to live it out with other people. To be a Christian is more than just a personal endeavor. Christianity is a social faith and an embodied faith. It is not about what we think in our heads so much as it is about how we live it out with each other. As we apply that to the notion of spiritual gifts, that means that before we can do anything helpful with the gifts we have been given, we have to realize that they are given to us for God's purposes in the community of faith and not for our own devices.

Paul says in Ephesians that Jesus gave various gifts, "to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up." When you really take that seriously, it means that most of the gifts I receive have been given to others to give to me and not given to me directly...and the gifts that I have received directly are not for me, but for others. It's like God has played a huge gift-swapping game where the only thing we can be sure of is that the gift we have is for someone else and that someone out there has our gift.

That is God's ingenious...or maybe insidious way...of forcing us to figure out this community thing. Remember that right back at Creation, the very first thing that God called "not good" was Adam being alone, and from then on out, the blessing and the challenge was to live in community. God saved everything on the ark in twos, but then when people began to work together for their own glory and power, God steps in and splits them apart in the story of the Tower of Babel. We have the twin lessons in Scripture...we are to live out our lives and our faith in loving community with others, and we are to forge the goals of that community around the glory and purposes of God.

I probably don't need to tell you that such a project is not easy. Whether you are talking two people in a marriage or friendship or a group of people in a club, church, or nation, the minute we add even one other person besides ourselves, things start to get hairy. There are certainly things that we appreciate, but living in community with even one other person means that there are times that we will not get our way, which is something we all fight with all our souls.

When I first got divorced, I was devastated by the loss but also terrified of living on my own, which I had never really done before. But I will never forget the feeling of setting up my first apartment on my own. There was no argument about whether the rifle or the covered-bridge painting would hang above the sofa. I could put on whatever music I wanted and know that it would not suddenly turn into Hank Williams, Jr. singing "There's a Tear In My Beer." If I wanted Chinese food for dinner, I could have Chinese food. Let me tell you that singleness is not all bad.

But let me also tell you that if I do not have the option of learning community in a marriage, I had better be out there learning it somewhere or I am neglecting one of the foundational pieces of my faith. Yes, you can worship God by yourself under a tree. But we cannot call ourselves mature Christians if we have not learned how to live in community. That has been part of it from the very beginning.

We don't have to go very far with the notion of Christian community before we discover why this is such a problem. By some cruel twist of fate, Christians...even committed, sincere, devout Christians...continue to be human beings. To be blunt about it, even the best of us still is capable of sin and a group of Christians can behave just as badly as any other group out there. If you've been in the church...and especially if you have been active in church life for any length of time, this is not news. It is also not news to any number of people who have left the church because of such experiences. We expect the community in a church to live by a higher ideal, to be above certain human pettiness and ugliness. When it is found that we have feet of clay, disillusionment sets in, and many leave.

On Christmas Eve, I said that the church was not the place where we come to see different things. It is the place where we come to see things differently. I think that applies to the notion of community as well. If you come to a church expecting to find groups working together without politics, to find individuals without personal agendas or people without the slightest trace of either sin or neurosis, you will be disappointed. There's an old bumper sticker that says, "Christians are not perfect, just forgiven," and in that simple bumper sticker lies the truth of Christian community.

Christian community is not wonderful and fulfilling because it never has the pitfalls and sins of other groups. It is fulfilling because it is a place where we are allowed to belong fully, despite our own sins and failures. Remember Groucho Marx saying he wouldn't want to be part of any club that would have him for a member? Well, that's the glory of Christian community. There is a place where there is no requirement beyond the sincerity of our heart to become Disciples of Jesus Christ. We don't have to have achieved any level of goodness or perfection at all. We simply have to want to become something beyond what we are.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who was executed for Nazi resistance during World War II speaks wonderfully about this in his book Life Together. The language is dated, but I will read it as he writes it, "God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

"Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by his call, by his forgiveness, and his promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what He does give us daily. And is not what has been given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of His grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day? Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together -- the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship."

Do you hear the wonderful thing Bonhoeffer is saying? The sins and failures of Christians around us are precisely the reminder that we are in a place that is ruled by grace and not law. The failings of others remind us that we have finally found a club that is willing to have us as a member, warts and all. This is the place where we are finally loved for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health.

No, God is not happy about sin in the church. But God manages to turn that sin to good by using it to remind us that we are here by grace. Bonhoeffer says a little later in that same passage that Christian community is not "an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate." Let me say that again. Christian community is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. It is the club that will allow us to be a member...even us...even me.

And the Bible bears that out...Old and New Testaments both. When you really start reading your Bible, one of the first things you discover is that most of the heroes of the faith had major flaws and failures. Abraham lied and said his wife was his sister and allowed her to be taken into the king's harem to save his own skin. Moses was a murderer before he led the slaves out of Egypt. King David committed adultery, got the woman pregnant and then killed her husband as a cover-up. Or let's look to the New Testament. Peter is a coward who denies even knowing Jesus in his hour of greatest need. James and John spend Jesus last days arguing about who is the greatest. Paul has imprisoned and executed many, many Christians before his own conversion, and even after that he remains difficult and cantankerous.

Christian community is not a human construct. It is God's gift of a place where we can take off our masks and be ourselves...for good or for ill...for better or for worse...and still be loved as we are. Why? Because God knows what any good therapist knows...if we are ever to get any better, we have to strip away the falsehood and get down to the truth...the truth that we are created good by a loving God who calls us to a life beyond ourselves. We sin, but sin does not define us, and we embody that in community by accepting and loving each other as we are.

So Anne, are you saying that sin doesn't matter? That we just ignore it and let people do what they will? No, no...that has never been Biblical teaching, and is not what grace is about. Remember the goal in the Ephesians passage down in verses 15-16: "Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work." Grace is not an excuse to do bad things. Grace is simply the atmosphere of loving acceptance that we need in order to make the necessary changes in our lives.

And that's where the spiritual gifts come in. We are given spiritual gifts for use in such a community of acceptance so that we can all become better people together. We simply cannot open ourselves up in the way that is needed for spiritual growth until we have a secure and safe community in which to do that. The church is that safe community...not because no one will ever sin or do hurtful things, but because each one of us is welcome to learn and grow in that community even when we ourselves sin or do hurtful things. The sin of others is a forceful reminder of the grace that welcomes us.

It is in that setting that Paul tells us God gives different gifts, "to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." This is not the place to see different things. This is the place to see things differently.

Amen.

(c) 2001, Anne Robertson