A Sermon delivered on January 19, 2025 by Rev. Dr. Patrick H. Wrisley.

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

^12.1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. ²You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. ³Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says “Let Jesus be cursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. ⁴Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;⁵and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; ⁶and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. ⁷To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. ⁸To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, ⁹to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, ¹⁰to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. ¹¹All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.^[1]

This morning, we are going to be visiting one of Paul’s churches located on an isthmus and served as a crossroads for both sea and land traffic. Paul spent roughly eighteen months in the city of Corinth working as a tent maker with a couple named Priscilla and Aquila in the city’s marketplace. It was a bustling town of culture, wealth, and full of traders from all over the ancient world. Paul went to Corinth because he knew this city was a crossroads and would be the perfect place to reach a wide variety and number of people. Paul did his market research and knew Corinth would be a great place to get the gospel message out.

As a city of trade and commerce, Corinth was home to wealthy business owners and travelers as well as poor working-class stiffs that kept the wheels of commerce moving. As a melting pot, it was full of all types of pagan religions influenced by beliefs from all over the ancient world. Can you imagine trying to start a new church plant in that type of environment?

Starting a new church is tricky business. When I started a new church development in Disney’s town of Celebration, I got a taste of what Paul experienced in Corinth. Everyone in the world knows about Disney and when they decided to build a new town on the edge of the parks, it attracted worldwide attention and appeal. Over 5,000 people bid to buy one of the first 350 homes in the town when it first opened in November 1996. My family and I arrived and at once was overwhelmed by the rich diversity of people from struggling cast members renting apartments to wealthy business owners who could afford multi-million dollar mansions. There were people from all over the world. Business execs from Germany, England and India. A retired NYC firefighter and his family. Young aspiring schoolteachers from Alabama and Tennessee. Actors relocating to central Florida. There were Catholics, staunch Southern Baptists, American Baptists, Lutherans, pre-churched folk, non-denominational folks, and a handful of Presbyterians. The people moving to Celebration saw an opportunity to build a town and community from scratch and each had their own ideas on how to do it.

The Presbytery of Central Florida had the foresight to buy the land set aside by Disney for a church location. Originally, Disney wanted to build a white-clapboard church in the center of town that had Baptists meet at 9:00, Methodists at 10:30, Presbyterians at noon, Catholics for afternoon mass, and Jewish folks Friday night or Saturday morning. The problem was none of the religious bodies wanted to play nice together and complained about their off-hour worship times. So, Disney threw up their hands and sold the property to the people who really wanted to be there. We Presbyterians were the only ones who bid on it. Already that was causing problems among the new residents.

I arrived in mid-November of 1996 and began worshiping two weeks later in the AMC theater. I held the town’s first Christmas Eve service with a pageant in the golf club’s bar and restaurant just weeks later. It would have all been idyllic except for the fact there were members in the community who didn’t want the Presbyterians to be building a church because it should not be a Presbyterian Church but the community’s church representing everyone in the town (as if it wasn’t!).  That first Christmas Eve, I had to be a scab and literally walk through protesters standing outside the golf club complaining it was a Presbyterian service.

Building a church from scratch attracts all types of people. There are those who simply want to have a faith community to take part in. There are those who are upset with their former churches and see a new church as a way to make the church comply to the way they think it should be. Then there are those who see a way to exercise their ego and power for leadership of the new church because they want to be in charge. Everyone had an opinion on how to start and build a church and it took everything I had as a Presbyterian pastor to navigate these opinions of the spiritual know-it-alls and still plant a church “decently and in order.”  I fully understood what Paul went through in Corinth: The church was not even formally founded, and factions were developing on what type of worship we should have, what type of theology should be espoused, and who should serve as the church leadership. I had retired UCC, Lutheran, and Baptist pastors telling me how I should do things and whose wives were most vocal in expressing their opinions and stirring up gossip in the fellowship and community. All these behaviors showed themselves within the first 6 months of my moving there!  Everyone was out to build their Disney church in the image they saw fitting their wants and needs.

Somehow, people were forgetting the church is to be built in God’s image and designs, not theirs. People began to think this is MY church which in fact, it is not; it’s God’s church. As we sit here this morning, this isn’t your church nor is it mine: It’s God’s and when we forget that basic fact and start complaining about this or that, what you like or don’t like, what type of worship or instruments are best, we then move subtlety onto the fast-track of demise because God has left the picture. As soon as God and God’s ministry is removed from the equation, the devil begins meddling in the details and wins. 

This is what was happening in Corinth. The ones with the money felt they had the power and could call the shots. Those with certain spiritual gifts, particularly those who could “speak in tongues” thought themselves spiritually superior to others. The one place in a stratified community and culture where there should be equanimity there were divisions and cliques. This is why Paul spends three whole chapters in 1 Corinthians addressing these divisions: the people and their superior spiritual gifts took precedence over the reconciling work of Jesus as Lord. A not-so-subtle shift occurred from being a third person “We” to a community built on a bunch of segregated “Me’s.” This is why verse 7 is the key to our text today.

Paul writes, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” The ancient word used for ‘the common good’ is symphero, the Greek word we get our word symphony^[2]. Paul is saying the Spirit gifts each person in the faith community with a spiritual gift to bring the community together, to carry a burden together, to use one’s gift to help the benefit of all. Just as each instrument and the conductor of a symphony works together to create beautiful music, so members of a faith community weave their gifts together for the common ministry of Jesus Christ. It’s all about the ‘we’ and not about the ‘me.’

The late pastor/preacher/scholar Eugene Peterson translates verse 7 this way: Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. Today’s scripture is not so much about what spiritual gifts are as it is about what their purpose is. The focus is not on my gift of preaching as it is showing who God is through my preaching. The focus is not about your gift of hospitality or being able to give liberally to the church’s ministries with money or investments as it is how that hospitality, how that financial giving is showing who God is.

Over the next two weeks, we will be unpacking Paul’s thoughts on spiritual gifts as we work through chapters 12 and 13. In the meantime, spend time reading those two chapters in 1 Corinthians and ponder on what spiritual gifts God has given you. Specifically, how does your spiritual gift show others who God is?

© 2025 Patrick H. Wrisley, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls, NY 12801. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls, New York and may not be altered, re-purposed, published or preached without permission. All rights reserved.

^[1] New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

^[2] See symphérō, soom-fer’-o; from Strongs G4862 and Strongs G5342 (including its alternate); to bear together (contribute), i.e. (literally) to collect, or (figuratively) to conduce; especially (neuter participle as a noun) advantage:—be better for, bring together, be expedient (for), be good, (be) profit(-able for). See at https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g4851/kjv/tr/0-1/.