In the life of the larger church, pretty much at least once a year, the Christian family focuses on these scripture texts that have to do with one body and many different gifts. In part because it’s true. And the larger church thinks it’s important enough to guide our attention back there. But also in part because it’s very functional to us in a practical matter. In the installing into office elders who are beginning a new term of service, even as we thank those who are going off. And I think it’s a very important time for us to remember, as a whole body—ears, eyes, hands, whatever your particular function may be—that in the body we all have different gifts. That the point of our gift may not be apparent to us at any one particular moment, but nevertheless, the Lord knows how the Lord is going to use it. And that our gifts are meant to build up the body as a whole, and the Lord can use those in ways that we may not be aware of or may not be privy to or may not be expecting.

 

I want to start with the first. I want to affirm to you what you have heard before. But I say it again, because it’s important, the redundancy, that brings us back to it. God has gifted you for a particular work in the larger body. There is something that God has equipped you, particularly, to do. Not just one thing, I suggest to you, perhaps it’s more accurate to say a number of different things. But you are able to do something that I cannot. Geoff has talents that I don’t have. Nicole is going to be positioned in a particular place where I’m not going to be. And the same is true of you. There is something that God is equipping you to do, many things in fact, to help build up the larger body.

 

The church has had three easy tools by which we’ve worked to discern what those gifts may be. One has been the inner calling of the Spirit in our hearts and minds. We talked about that some last week, about the nudge.

 

Whatever nudge was at work in Nancy Callahan’s life early on that made her think ‘maybe a church musician.’

 

The pull of the Spirit, or whatever was at work in your life, Chris, that said to you, ‘Somehow the ministry of compassion in nursing’ was a part of what God maybe was calling you to.

 

You know the giftedness, Shane, that gives you the ability to ride a bike like nobody else I know.

 

What’s the giftedness that you feel the Spirit tugging you toward? That’s a part of how we discern it.

 

A second way is the apparent physical or personal gifts you have. I’ve used the illustration before, but it’s so true for me. I always felt an inner call to be a professional basketball player. But it turns out, I’m clumsy. And as a result, I can’t make a living doing that. So in some way, your giftedness is revealed to you in the particular things that you actually have aptitude for, in addition to that inner call and tug of the Spirit.

 

The third one is what the community affirms for you. What the family around you, what the neighborhood around you, what your friends and neighbors say to you. That’s why I had the children say to the singers, “We thank you.” Because we want to say to them, We think this is your gift. And we neglect that, I think, that third task, in terms of helping people discern. We neglect to say to one another, “Beverly, you’re a great clerk of the Session!” I’m not sure we’ve told you enough, but you slam-dunk are the best clerk of the Session, and you have a gift for it.

 

Do we say to one another what we appreciate about our gifts as a way of encouraging each other and understanding what that giftedness is?

 

Second point: God may use your giftedness and may use it to bless the body in a way that is beyond your ability to ever fully see it or understand it. David and I had the privilege of going with the other members of the organ task force about two weeks ago on a rush, like twenty-four trip, up to Montreal to see the Casavant Organ Factory, where they had finished building the pipe organ that will be arriving here this spring. We flew up to Montreal to the organ factory, which is over a hundred years old. It’s out in the countryside of Montreal (you know, the average temperature in January in Montreal is thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. No wonder they work in warm rooms building organs.) But there in that organ factory, they had rooms that looked like the kind of workshops that I remember my grandfather working in in his garage. Rooms with large benches. Dusty rooms. Rooms with people wearing aprons. These were working men and women. They had both male artisans and female artisans, working at their stations, building these organs.

 

For about a year, they had been working on building the 2,620 pipes that make up the pipe organ that’s coming here. Each of those artisans had some particular task in the construction of a pipe organ that was their job. Somebody had the job of melting the metal, the metal alloys that they put together to make the pipes. Somebody else had the job of fastening the pipe pieces together to make each pipe the right length.

 

Then we went to a room where there were people who were called “voicers.” We got to talk personally with one fellow, a small man physically, of diminutive stature. He had little gold-rimmed glasses on that he kept looking over, and like everybody else there, he spoke French. He had a little English, too, and his English was much better than my French. But it was something just charming about the accent, and being in a place where they spoke a different language. There he was at this organ bench, and he was the man who voiced the flute pipes, which are smaller pipes in the organ, that make the sound kind of like a flute. In fact, he particularly was the man who voiced the flute pipes that make the “A” note. Think about that. One particular note, out of one particular pipe, that he is working on there. You know people like this, George, who have worked with their hands all their lives.

 

He seemed glad to see us. He had a pipe there, and the way he does it is that he actually picks the pipe up (the flute pipes are small enough where he can do this), and he blows through the end like his lungs are the organ, and he listens to the noise the flute pipe makes, the “A”, and his ear is good enough to hear a perfect “A”. If the “A” wasn’t the right pitch, he took out what looked to me like an Exacto knife and just cut the hole a little bit bigger, and then blew again. We watched, and then he cut it a little bit bigger and blew again. And David said, “Now that’s a perfect ‘A’!” And the man said, “Oui, oui!”

 

I guess it was right, because the two of them seemed to know it, and I wasn’t sure. And we talked with him. He has been working at this, voicing the “A” note on the flute pipe organs for thirty-seven years. Thirty-seven years.

 

He seemed so glad to see us, to meet us, because he typically didn’t get to meet the people who were going to receive the organ. And he typically doesn’t get to hear the pipe in the conjunction of all the other pipes making the organ play. We were sort of the personal connection at the end of his work.

 

Now think what that’s like, to spend your life making a pipe, and it really was a labor of love for him, making a pipe for an instrument that you never get to hear play in the full symphony of its sound together. He had such a call to it. Such a, I think, a giftedness for it. But to go through his whole life, only on rare occasions, hearing the end product of what the pipes sound like in the symphony of his noise.

 

I think that’s like our gifts. We may never get to hear the full symphony of how God is using your gift at some critical moment in the music that flows out of the harmony of the full body of Christ, the people of God. Nevertheless, how critical is your role in it?

 

Finally, we may never know exactly when the moment for our giftedness comes forward, or when we’re supposed to be at a particular spot. But sometimes it is clear to us. Not always, but sometimes. And those windows Bill and I were talking about earlier this week, those windows in theology are called proleptic  moments. They are a taste of the kingdom to come. Bill said they are like a grape given to us at the heavenly banquet that we are going to enjoy together.

 

We sat Tuesday morning at the staff meeting, and Linda Beckham was sharing with us in pastoral concerns about Claudia Franks’ father and Susan Thederford’s father, Cliff Cheatwood, that he was very ill and in the hospital. I didn’t know Mr. Cheatwood, so I was kind of listening to some stories that I wasn’t that familiar with. But Linda knew, and I was sort of hearing something that I didn’t think was going to involve me except in terms of my prayers. And I learned what I should have known, and that is that Susan Thederford and Claudia Franks were sisters. You know, I think I’ve known them since 1983, and I didn’t know they were sisters until this moment. Here, both members of the same congregation. And it’s scary, because I don’t know who else is related out there, in that same way. But heads up – Claudia and Susan are sisters. So I learned of that at that moment. And actually, it made me feel sort of removed that I didn’t know that. Their father, they said, was very ill and was in the hospital. And so we prayed for him.

 

Then we got up and I went out and got into my car and I got a call from Bobby Franks, Claudia’s husband. He said, “John, I’m calling you because Claudia’s father is very sick in the hospital.” I said, “Well, yes, I know.” He said, “We wonder if you would come pray with us, because the doctors have said they don’t think he’s going to live much longer.”

 

I said, “I will.” So I started driving, and I forgot to ask which hospital. I couldn’t get him back on the phone. I thought it was St. Joseph’s, but it wasn’t St. Joseph’s. So just on a hunch, I went up to the next one, which is Kindred Hospital up on North Armenia. I walked in, not exactly remembering the name of the person who I was looking for. And there was Kurt Ray, a member of our congregation who sits right there, right about where Sam is, every Sunday at eight-thirty. He came up in his scrubs, and he said to me, “John, you’re here to see Judge Cheatwood, aren’t you?”

 

I thought, “I guess so.” And he said, “Follow me,” and he took me up to the third floor, and there was Claudia, and Susan, and their family, their children. We gathered around Judge Cheatwood’s bed in what I call the Presbyterian version of The Last Rites. And I say that with solemnity because, while it’s not a sacrament for us, there is a place, isn’t there, for this moment in the human community where we give thanks to God together for a life that’s with us, but clearly passing over into the life to come. We read scripture, and I prayed with them. I was clear that they were deeply tied with this person that I didn’t remember having met before. I was just an instrument. And the Spirit said to me that day, “Now…. And blew me up to North Armenia and blew me into the lobby and blew me up to the room. It was clear at that moment that I was where I was supposed to be, doing what the Lord needed done.

 

Sometimes it’s like that. Not always. But sometimes it’s that clear.

 

Now in a moment, we are going to share in a ritual that is deep and old in the life of the church. It’s a moment where in churches that are governed with officers, we install. We’ll actually have them kneel and take vows. Officers who are now engaged in this new service.

 

But I wanted to include you. I don’t want it just to be about them. I want this now, this portion of the service, to be a time where you look into your heart and your soul, and you work at discerning what it is that God is equipping you to do. What God is calling you to do in the fuller body, to bless the body. And to pray that the Lord will help you to discern that, even as these children have put on robes. What is it that you need to be putting on to be available to do what God needs you to do to build up the body of Christ.

 

So we will devote the offering to that, so that it might be a time not only of bringing forward our financial gifts, but also your willingness, your openness, to serve with the other gifts and talents that the Lord has given you. And then at the end, we’ll share together in an affirmation of our baptismal vows and the Apostles’ Creed, as a way of taking our own vows in that service.

 

©John T. DeBevoise 2007