“Gifting, for a purpose”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Monday, April 25, 2022
Ephesians 4:7-8,11-16 (Forward, p. 86) CEV p. 1224
Quite a few years ago, I had a somewhat ‘painful’ learning experience, one that was painful to my ego and my pocketbook, but at the same time very educative. I had received a cheque for a rather sizeable amount for Christmas from a distant uncle and had put it to one side along with the card, intending to immediately send him a thank-you note. Well, as you might guess, that didn’t get done and it was literally months upon months before it came to light. And, ‘of course’, by this time the cheque was stale dated. I wrote to my uncle, thanking him for the gift, and apologizing, both at the same time, but you guessed it, there was no new cheque forthcoming. It was a gift, yes, but an entirely wasted one, because it was never put to use.
This little incident in my life serves as a useful segue into what the apostle Paul is talking about in today’s passage. He begins by saying that God, Christ Jesus, has generously given gifts to us, His people. But then he becomes a lot more specific by identifying five ministry gifts, five gifts pertaining to leadership in the church, apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers. (Scholars tell us, that by the way the passage is constructed, it indicates that the final two belong together.) Good gifts, yes, great gifts, but following my beginning thought, but what for? What are these gifts meant for? How are they to be used?
Fortunately, Paul immediately goes on to tell us. They are meant, not for themselves, to benefit themselves, but for the wider church—to equip or prepare all the people of God for the work of ministry, to teach them how to serve others, and, incidentally, to build up or strengthen the Body of Christ. And what will be the end result of all this? It will be that the Church, the Body of Christ, will grow up in every way into Christ, and into His control and direction, and become more knowledgeable about Him and more mature, more like Him. The end result will be that the Church becomes more unified and more able to work together in concert and harmony, with every part, every person, doing his or her share in the overall work of the Church.
So my question arising from this is two-fold. Firstly, are those five-fold leadership gifts, however they might be found or expressed in today’s church, doing their job? Are they preparing or equipping church members for the work of ministry? And, are they helping the church to grow and mature and work in harmony as it ought to? And, if not, why not? What’s the problem?
And secondly, what are our gifts? Paul says that all believers have received generous gifts from God, so there must be some gift or gifts that He has given each of us. So, what are those gifts? And, have we put them to use, and more particularly, have we put them to use for the benefit of the wider church or world? I would hate to think that any of us might fall into my unfortunate experience, being given a gift, and then, because I never used it, losing it altogether. I suspect that this very thing can happen with the gifts that God gives us. Here the old adage is more appropriate: ‘use it or lose it.’ I would hate for this to happen to any of us. Amen.
Forward notes: “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (verses 11-12).
“Each one of us is needed to build up the body of Christ. Too often, people in the pews—lay people like me—forget this. We give up our claim to be agents of God. We relinquish our power to build up the body of Christ.
“In the several years I have served as a youth minister at Episcopal churches, I have noticed how much authority I and other lay people invest in our clergy. At its worst, we give ordained people more responsibility than they can bear. In other cases, and almost as unhelpful, we give them more credit than they deserve. We provide them with credit that belongs to God and God alone. It is not their personal power or their particular piety that accomplishes the work of God in our communities and our world. It is God. And yet, we sometimes forget that God works through all of us, clergy and lay people, equally in effort and equally in impact even as it uniquely manifests in each of us.”
MOVING FORWARD: “Do you view the ministry of clergy and laity as equal but expressed in different ways? Or do you tend to elevate one over the other? Reflect on this dynamic.”