This morning my Dad made a comment (we were discussing how the new greenfield house sites in Auckland and the intensification plans are still building homes priced at a level that is unaffordable) “The church has lost it. You see how much they care for the young when you see how much they support habitat for humanity — they say the words and they don’t”.
Today’s passage is about King Josiah cleaning out the idols from the temple & destroying the pagan places of worship in Judah. And about gifts. But most importantly, it is about Jesus as LORD, and how this works out in our lives.
1Now 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.
To say Jesus is Lord was revolutionary. It is a statement that can get you killed — both in ancient times and now.
Yet that’s routinely what media outlets do when it comes to outbreaks of anti-Christian persecution around the world, which is why the global war on Christians remains the greatest story never told of the early 21st century.
In recent days, people around the world have been appalled by images of attacks on churches in Pakistan, where 85 people died when two suicide bombers rushed the Anglican All Saints Church in Peshawar, and in Kenya, where an assault on a Catholic church in Wajir left one dead and two injured.
Those atrocities are indeed appalling, but they cannot truly be understood without being seen as small pieces of a much larger narrative. Consider three points about the landscape of anti-Christian persecution today, as shocking as they are generally unknown. According to the International Society for Human Rights, a secular observatory based in Frankfurt, Germany, 80 per cent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians. Statistically speaking, that makes Christians by far the most persecuted religious body on the planet.
According to the Pew Forum, between 2006 and 2010 Christians faced some form of discrimination, either de jure or de facto, in a staggering total of 139 nations, which is almost three-quarters of all the countries on earth. According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, an average of 100,000 Christians have been killed in what the centre calls a ‘situation of witness’ each year for the past decade.
To say Jesus is Lord is to understand that there is a structure in this world and the world to come, and that we do not run things, Christ does. That our ideas of equality are as idolatrous as the idols Josiah destroyed.
And to say that Jesus is Lord means we have to give up that which we find idolatrous, from money and possessions to social movements to the fleeting beauty we chase.
Now to gifts. I consider that the gifts do continue, but they can be faked. I’m fully aware they can be faked — my parents moved into Pentecostalism when I was a teenager and I’ve reverted to the Presbyterianism of my childhood, yes, but the gifts exist.
And I’d argue that gifts are there for a reason. I would rather be in a place that concentrates on gifts than one that preaches pop culture but not the gospel. Because most of the Pentecostalists, even in their error, preach the gospel. (This is pretty much the same position I take about the Roman Catholics, by the way).
But the gifts are not merit badges. They are given to us to build us up. They are not signs of spiritual progress — you measure that by how you influence for good. Gifts and the spirit? Seen them, use them (I pray that I use them more, and increase my righteousness, for when I turn to the word I have to consider, again, just how fallen I am).
But the gifts come from Christ for the building of the church, and not for us. They are for the believers.
And they should be used mutually. So, coming back to my Dad, we should be working with para church groups and using the financial equity to get land, sweat equity to build on the land, and accept a more modest way of living so that all can have a roof. We should be growing food so we can share. We can learn from the cultists, to our shame — the Mormons teach preparedness and communality, and on that (one) point they are correct.
We are moving into crisis. I pray that is a oppurtunity for the church.
