Sunday's Sermon: Not Yours But Yours

Not Yours But Yours

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Well I think I’ve seen it all now. Yep. I’ve seen it all. I have now discovered that if you type the word “overachievers” into a Google search line, the second prompt to emerge from below is Overachievers Anonymous. That’s right – Overachievers Anonymous. The same prompt emerges as number two on Yahoo search engines. Overachievers Anonymous. Interesting, right?

Of course, a group with a name like Overachievers Anonymous must be patterned upon the many incredible, life-altering 12-step programs that have helped more people than can be counted: Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous – the list is a long one. But Overachievers Anonymous? Really? Second prompt? Really? Interesting, right?

You know what else is interesting? Though Overachievers Anonymous is the second prompt on Google and Yahoo, I couldn’t find a national group called Overachievers Anonymous. I tried searching many times with different words! Now granted, there may be one out there in existence somewhere. One article that emerged from my search stated that an author named Carol Orsborne is the founder of Overachievers Anonymous, but I realized quickly that the she founded such a group to be a bit humorous. There are no meetings, no classes, and no fundraisers. There’s no real national group or national 12-step program for Overachievers.

But you know, maybe there should be! There are probably a lot of overachievers in the world who need help these days. And clearly, there are enough people out there to search for Overachievers Anonymous – enough to make it the number two search prompt when you type the word “Overachievers” into a search engine. Maybe there’s a market for this. Maybe Carol Orsborne should have gotten serious!

Because isn’t that an issue these days – overachieving? After all, the majority of us in this room were born into the Millennial Generation, the generation of people born from 1980 to the present day. And if there’s ever been an overscheduled, overachieving generation, I think it would have to be this one. I just wonder. . . how many of us – and how many children today – are shuffled back and forth from this activity to that activity, from this opportunity to achieve to that opportunity to show our stuff? If there’s ever been a generation that was taught to go, go, go – push, push, push – fill up the calendars – and achieve, achieve, achieve, I think it’s the Millennial Generation. We’re all adults now, so we’re not quite shuffled off to piano lessons, soccer, dance, and basketball, but we probably do know very well what it means to face the pressures to achieve. It wasn’t long ago that many of you applied for college or graduate school. And some of you have applied for jobs. I’m sure you felt the pressures of being that well-rounded individual – the one who could achieve and do just about anything. Maybe sometimes you felt up to the challenge. And maybe at other times, you felt like you’d never be good enough - you’d never make the cut.

I wonder how all of this has affected our understanding of our abilities? And how does it determine what we think about our sense of worth? Do we determine our worth by grades or by what we can put on a resume? Do we feel confident – displaying our talents for everyone to see us and praise us? Or in the process, do we sometimes feel unconfident? I mean, even if we’re pressured to be overachievers, aren’t there always over-over-achievers? Can we measure up to those people? And if we’re afraid we can’t, do sweep our abilities under a rug because we don’t think they would be valued or important? And an important question emerges: If we think our abilities are about us - how good we are or how not-good-enough we are - do we recognize our gifts as well. . .gifts?

That is a good question, isn’t it? Do we recognize our gifts as the gifts they are? If we’re a generation of overachievers – if we’ve been taught that value comes in and through achievement, what we can do and how well we can do it – doesn’t that make our abilities about us? I mean, when we’re on top of our game – when our grades are stellar and our resumes polished – we might begin to see our abilities and talents as possessions, things that we own. We might begin to see them as tools for our own self-promotion. Or instead of using them outwardly, we might simply use them inwardly. We might begin to lean on them for ourselves to build an understanding of self-worth that’s based what we can do rather than who we are.

That might work for us for a while, until we fail. And we’ll all apt to fail at some time or another. When I was in college, on the verge of graduating in a matter of weeks, I failed at something – miserably failed at something - and it affected me for a good while. I went to music school at the University of Louisville. I was raised to be an overachiever. I had an impeccable transcript as far as grades were concerned. I was a leader among my classmates. Sounds pretty good, right? But when I went to sing in my last jury ever (By the way, A jury is a performance final for musicians. In my case it was singing in front of a bunch of vocal teachers) I had felt confident that day as I was rehearsing my music. But then I got a phone call ten minutes before I had to perform. It was someone calling from my restaurant job. “Do you know you’re supposed to be at work right now?” I panicked. Though I never, ever worked during the day (who knows how I got on the schedule?) I freaked out. It wasn’t my fault, but I’m an overachiever right? I have to be perfect, and I wasn’t at work!

So in my state of being freaked out, apparently I was just barely under the pitch for my whole jury. Ouch, right? I didn’t even know it! But I found out that I had failed my jury a few days later. Literally, completely failed it! Thankfully, instead of giving me an F on my transcript, they decided to give me an S for satisfactory. They didn’t want to ruin that impeccable grade average. But that experience really affected me!

Do you know how it affected me? I then convinced myself that I was a terrible singer. For a good while, I was terrified to sing solo in any situation. So you know what I did? I swept that gift under the rug for longer than a year. In the overachieving pressures that affected me, I probably did look at my gift for singing as a possession. I wouldn’t have thought about it that way at the time, but I used my ability to promote myself. And then, in moment I failed, I threw the gift away . . . as if it were mine to through away.

It wasn’t. It isn’t. That gift – and all of our gifts – are simply that, gifts! David Roth, my surrogate father, used to say something to me from time to time that always stuck with me (He was actually quoting the Apostle Paul). He would ask: What do you have that you have not received?

Wow. Good question. What do you have that you have not first received? This life – these abilities, these talents, these moments, they are all sheer gift to us. We don’t own them. We’re fortunate that they flow through us. But they don’t stop with us as if they were our possessions. They flow through us – through us and beyond us, because that’s the point. Your gifts don’t belong to you. But they do belong to you, or if you don’t mind me being a bit colloquial, they belong to ya’ll.

So what does this have to do with the Corinthians? A lot actually. The Corinthians weren’t Millennials, but they were caught up on overachieving, though perhaps in a different way. If you read Paul’s entire letter to the Corinthians, you can see that there was a lot of division, infighting, and one-up-ing within this 1st century community. Some of the Corinthians had come to see themselves as experts on spiritual matters, especially some who seemed to be spiritual overachievers. In several places in the letter, we read that certain members of the community were speaking in tongues, and this ability seemed to be so highly regarded, that the speaking-in-tongues-people seemed to move up in the hierarchy of respect and power. Now if a 1st century Corinthian walked in this door and started speaking in tongues, it would probably give us the willies, you know, freak us out a little bit. But in the Corinthian community, it was a sign of deep spirituality. They weren’t speaking human languages at all (not like the apostles and Christian leaders did on the day of Pentecost). It seems that they were speaking a language to God that was purely spiritual in some way. Paul called it “the tongues of angels.”

Paul had some things to say about this situation. First of all, he starts out this portion of the letter with a bit of irony. He says, “Now concerning spiritual things, I don’t want you to be ignorant. . .” These people who were speaking in tongues probably saw themselves as the Corinthian overachievers who knew all about spiritual matters. He goes on to tell them that all Christians are blessed with gifts that are needed – not just these super-visible overachievers. In fact, it’s a gift to even be able to say, “Jesus is Lord.” All Christians are gifted even in a simple confession that is really anything but simple. We can’t even take credit for what we believe. The Spirit is behind that too. We’re gifted more than we know.

And so Paul seems to be saying to the Corinthians, “These gifts aren’t possessions. They aren’t yours.” He writes, “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.” They come from God. They aren’t yours. But by the grace of God, they are yours. They belong to you collectively. Paul writes, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Hmm. . . common good. Stop worrying about being overachievers. Your community and your world need your gifts. Stop being overachievers. You need the gifts of your community and your world.

So in his letter, Paul tells these people who are gifted with the ability to speak in tongues that they shouldn’t speak this way in worship unless there is a person who is gifted to interpret what they’re saying. This gift is for the common good. What do you have that you have not received? And what do you have that should not be shared to build up everyone?

So let’s get back to us: What do you have that you have not received? And what do you have that must be shared to build up everyone? How can you use your gifts this semester in ministry at Austin Agape – for us, and for the world? How can you receive the gifts of others this semester – for us, and for the world?

Good questions. Let’s do something a bit ‘hands on’ tonight. We could probably sit around here tonight, and each one of us could say, “Hi. I’m So-in-So, and I strive to be an overachiever.” And in our meeting of Overachievers Anonymous, we’d probably respond, “Hi, So-in-So.” But instead of getting in that rut, let’s make a sermon together. Up here, we have a long sheet of paper. There are markers too. I’m going to invite all of us to come up here and write down the gifts you see in this community. You can write down your own gifts. You can write down the gifts you see in others. What does this community have that it has not first received? We has received a myriad of gifts. What does this community have that must be shared to build up everyone? Again, a myriad of gifts. How is the Spirit here? Let’s take about three minutes to write them down. . .

-Renee Roederer, Campus Minister, and the Austin Agape Community