The Gifts of the Body

“The Gifts of the Body”

By the time you read this, I should be headed to the West Coast for a bit of R & R & R (rest, relaxation, and reading!). I am thankful to everyone stepping into my place while I am gone to help ensure that things keep chugging along back here at home. We are headed into a full fall season with Launch Sunday, resuming ringing our steeple bell, a new intergenerational Sunday morning Bible Study, the leadership retreat, and my installation. Some of you have asked how I am able to keep up with it all. Here is my secret: I’m not! This is way too much for one person, even one person who devotes all her working hours to it!

The work of the church is always more than the work of the pastor alone - else all y'all would be stuck with what just one person can imagine and produce! Scripture tells us that we are each uniquely and divinely gifted to be co-creators with God and to serve one another and the world as Christ’s body. Paul wrote in the letter of 1 Corinthians:

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. To each is given the manifestations of the Spirit for the common good (12:4-7).

Lest anyone think of their gifts as more important than others’ gifts, Paul points us right back to God who gifted them. All gifts are important, because their value comes from God and not from us. Above you see a picture of some fans one of our dear sisters gifted to us after suffering through those really hot Sundays in the sanctuary. Other folks have been getting ready for our Launch Sunday by researching curriculum and making plans for the spaces we will use. Some folks are planning ahead for our Advent season and others for our fall leadership retreat. Some are helping sort through old books and files and others are knitting items for the Christmas bazaar. Some are leading worship and others are pulling weeds. It takes all of us serving together as the full body of Christ to fuel this ministry.

Paul continued his encouragement to the Corinthians by reminding them that no matter their work, they are all needed and all important:

Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.…God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body….Now, you are the body of Christ and individually members of it (1 Cor. 12: 1, 18-19, 27).

Phillips is called to be the presence of God to one another and in this community - and it takes the whole body to do this, each one of us with each of our individual gifts and callings, coming together as Christ’s body to do Christ’s work.

What are your gifts and callings? What makes your heart sing and your soul come alive? What skills do you have that you can share? As we head into fall, I encourage each of us to think through these questions so that we might better discern together what it means to be this body of Christ in this place, sharing the work and carrying the load together. Perhaps you feel called to visitation or worship leadership. Perhaps your calling and skills are more aligned with hands on work, such as making coffee or organizing the pew racks. Each of these are divine callings. I pray for us all that we might hear God’s call to service, might value the service of others, and might be the body of Christ for one another and for this world.

Blessings,

Rev. Dr. Amy L. Chilton