Common Holiness and Spiritual Gifts

2025-08 
Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA 
www.goodshepherdfw.org 
by the Mother Carola Von Wrangle 
Second Sunday of Epiphany, January 19, 2025 
Isaiah 62:1-5 ; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 ; John 2:1-11 ; Psalm 36:5-10

I almost never do this, but I have to start today’s sermon with a joke. It’s supposedly a true story, but I’m not convinced that it is.

There was the annual visitation from the bishop to the diocese and there were two young acolytes, much like the two of you (gestures to acolytes). The bishop was reading the worship service at the altar, and the taller of the two young acolytes was serving the bishop, and went to wash his hands, the Ablution, it’s called. And he poured water over the hands of the bishop, only he had picked up the wrong cruet, he had poured wine over the hands of the bishop! The bishop gave him a look, and the acolyte said ‘ah! It’s a miracle!” That was for you guys.

Today we have the wonderful blessing of the wedding in Cana. I told you all, several weeks ago, that there are three major themes of Epiphany’s season. The overriding theme is that the Gospel is made manifest, Jesus is made manifest to the gentiles. It comes in three forms. The first is the wise men, the three kings jumping over the altar rail and worshiping Jesus and then going back and telling where they came from about the Messiah, and that they had found the Messiah. That’s that call to evangelism. The second, you remember well, is baptism, Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, and His Glory was made manifest, especially in hearing the words “This is my Son, my Beloved, in whom I am well pleased”. And the third form is miracles, that in seeing Jesus perform miracles we see the Glory of God. That’s what our gospel says today, “And His Glory was made manifest when He turned water into wine”.

That was a whole lot of water that became a whole lot of really good wine. People said, “oh my”, and a really big line there is “and His disciples believed in Him”. One of the main purposes of miracles is so that people will say “Oh, I can’t do that, there must be something to this, this must be the Messiah, this is the Miracle Worker”. I’m kind of surprised that even our song said that changing water into wine was the greatest of the miracles. I don’t think so. I think it was a cool miracle, I think there were some miracles that were maybe more helpful, or blessed people more, but who knows! I wasn’t at that wedding.

But I have two sermons this morning, I will eventually learn to preach only one sermon on a Sunday. Half of this sermon is about changing water into wine, this miracle of Jesus. There is a hymn that I absolutely love, you are welcome to pull out those blue hymnals if you want, we are going to sing it during communion, it is called “Lord You Give the Great Commission”. In verse three it says “Lord, You make the common Holy”. It is the perfect hymn for this miracle at Cana, that Jesus took water, H2O, pretty common, and made it Holy. He churned, he changed the substance of that water. Does that remind you of anything? Those of you who grew up Catholic, it might remind you of Transubstantiation, that what was wine became the blood of Christ. Here, Jesus turns water into wine that then can be used, there’s this looking forward to the Eucharistic prayer.

When I am blessing the Eucharist, there is a sense in that. I say “Lord, send your Holy Spirit upon these gifts, that they may be the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ”. In those words, I’m saying “God, take this common wine, and let it be to us Your Body and Blood”. There’s a second part to that prayer, and I love this part, it is that I then say, “Let us be sanctified that we can be Holy as well”. And I’m not saying the words exactly right, but basically, I always cross myself here, and I don’t cross myself all the time. But I cross myself here, because I’m saying “God, you can take me and make me holy? Good luck!” but there is that deep sense that God can do that!

That’s a miracle. For each one of us, God can take common and make it holy. And we say, “The gifts of God for the People of God, Holy thigs for Holy people”. We really say that we become Holy. Holy has a meaning to it, not that we’re saints, and certainly not that we’re perfect, but that we are set aside for service to God. Isn’t that a cool thing? We are set aside, we’re special! All of us, we are beloved.

Then, in order for us to do this work that God has set us aside for, we need gifts. This is part two of the sermon, in case you were wondering. We have the reading from 1 Corinthians chapter 12, where Paul starts talking about spiritual gifts, he says, “I don’t want you to be ignorant about spiritual gifts, I want you to know about these spiritual gifts” and he lists nine spiritual gifts. I used to know them by heart, and I’m going to test myself on them now.

Wisdom, knowledge, tongues, interpretation, discernment of spirits, faith, prophecy… and two more. I made it to eight at the eight o’clock service. Oh well. Those are the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit, and he says something really important about gifts: Gifts are for the people to receive for works of services, it’s not that one person has more gifts, or that one person has all the gifts. Oh no. or, that a person is way more special than another because some gifts are more important. It’s simply that the gifts are given to us by the Holy Spirit, not because of, again, how special we are, but it’s God’s wish for us.

Now, the gifts are listed not only in first Corinthians, they’re also listed in Ephesian, in Romans. Sprinkled throughout the Old and New Testaments are various gifts. One book that I have says that there are 28 spiritual gifts, I have certainly not memorized all of them. Other books say there are 11, other books say 7 or 9, various numbers. But some of them are clearly in Scripture, like the gift of generosity, the gift of giving, compassion, prophecy. In Ephesians, the gifts are like surpassing your teacher, one is an intercessor, one is apostle, a prophet, and various gifts like that. Other gifts are gifts of service, boy is that an important gift. Intercession is one of my very favorite, prayer, comfort. Some of the gifts aren’t’ listed, but I bet you could come up with them, administration not one of my gifts, nowadays technology clearly not my gift. But there are gifts like listening, and gifts like pastoral care and worship, worship leadership. One of the wonderful things about gifts is that God seems to know us really well, and gives gifts that match us. If you ever were to ask me to be an administrator, I actually lost a job once, because they said, “What are you worst at?’ I said “administration”, and they thought that meant leadership, and I said “oh no, administration under the letter T for The annual meeting, The annual report, The budget. You name it, it’s T because I can’t tell you what the other letters are, I don’t do administration”

But God takes what we already do, and do well, and will add to that, often. On Thursday, we have Bible study, and one woman said “I write birthday cards for people here at church, and I don’t do it so I’ll get to heaven faster. I do it because it gives me so much joy”. Isn’t that a wonderful reason to serve God? I think that using our gifts should be life giving, not life stealing. And so, this person has a life-giving gift, she likes writing cards. I can’t even find the stamps and the envelopes, so you don’t get as many thank you notes from me as you should. But there are other gifts that you might want to explore “What is it that I love to do, and that I am good at, and where God has a place for?”

You all have done an amazing thing here, at Good Shepherd. When Pastor Josh first talked to me about being a Sabbatical Priest, he told me everything that you all do, and I said, “I’m supposed to do that in 20 hours a week”? And he said, “no!” and then he handed me a few months ago three pages that said all the things that you do, and who is doing them, and it’s not me. Mary’s name comes up at least 28 times there, Karen’s name is in capital letters and underlined. But we have people here who are coming forward and doing the ministry of this church and doing it wonderfully. You stepped in as a reader this morning, thank you! There’s a joy in that. I haven’t had anyone complain “do I really have to do this?” and if you did complain, I don’t know what my answer would be, I’d probably say “yes, for four months you really do!”

But the cleverest thing that I have found here that goes with gifts is these sheets, do you all know about these little sheets? They’re downstairs at the bottom of the stairs, on your way into coffee hour. I picked up one that says “Church of the Good Shepherd Pastoral Care Team”. But there’s about 20 different committees and ministries that have cards like this, and the first question they ask is “what is the spiritual connection”. If you think that washing dishes in the kitchen isn’t a spiritual gift, you’re wrong! You are providing community, fellowship, and many other things, cleaning. Wonderful! And then “What is it we do”, and then “How can I participate”, and finally “whom can I contact?” Carol, you are on this list for pastoral care committee. This is a gift! We had newcomers last weekend who got a stack of these and took them home all excited! This works, we can look for where are my gifts, God, and how do You want me to use them?

There’s a book called “What Color is My Parachute?” and the author of that book says that your gift is where the world’s greatest needs and your greatest joy intercept. So, it doesn’t mean you have to go to deepest, darkest, Africa to be a missionary. It might mean that; I’d love to do that. But where does your joy and the world’s needs intercept, and that giving of that gift.

We are a community beloved by God, with gifts to share in our community, within and outside. In 1 Corinthians chapter 14, two chapters after this morning’s reading, it says “Pray earnestly for gifts”. Are there gifts that you might have that you want to share in this church or in this community?

How will God be using us more and more?

Amen.