1 Corinthians 12:1-11 and Excerpts from the Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 16, 1963

January 19th, 2025
By Rev. Nicole M. Lamarche

Welcome again! I ditched my beautiful Sunday shoes today and I have got my boots on! It’s so beautiful, this blanketed white. Welcome again may you receive whatever it is that you need to today. As you are moved, I invite you to join me in this prayer from Psalm 19. God may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

I am very hopeful right now. I have so much hope that to some I am realizing it is coming across as ignorant, or naïve, or uninformed, as if I am one of those religious people that has given up entirely on facts. In fact this morning when I was getting some supplies coming here, my friend in the neighborhood stopped me and told me that everything will be different tomorrow and that he doesn’t really have hope.

Because as you know it is a moment of a dangerous concentration of power, a moment on display, showing what has actually been in the works for a while; it’s a moment of disastrous consequences of inaction due to climate change, where tens of thousands are without homes, without a place, and still, I feel hope.

Do you know why?

Well, in short, it’s because of you! The living body of hope in my life and in the lives of many. What I mean is that I have hope because of a love that shows up in ways that challenges my rational mind. I have hope because of an energy that was given the name God because no word could possibly explain what happens when we tend to deeper things. I have hope because I see how many are thirsting for meaning, because of our love of something beyond our little lives, our little egos, our need to maintain certain of illusions to avoid the truth or pain. I have hope.

I heard justice leader and Catholic nun, Sister Simone Campbell say that hope is a communal virtue, which I understand to mean that for some of us, hope needs to be put to the group and sometimes it’s too hard to hold on our own.

And especially right now I am seeing how one tiny fragment of hope, connected to the whole, to a group, to a body, is somehow magnified in ways I find difficult to describe, somehow hope can become exponential. Because it dares to leave isolation.
And I think maybe that is true for any good spiritual thing we bring to the world, or here to the church, or to our friends and family, something happens when we put what we have into “the common,” whether it be in our shared civic life or here in the body of Christ, something happens when we put it the group.

The more accurate translation of the phrase spiritual gifts, that term you heard here in Paul’s famous letter to the community in Corinth, it turns out that a more academically sound translation is a reference to anything spiritual we might offer. The Greek word is pneumatikon, which means “spiritual things.” So I think that what Paul is trying to say to the new movement as it gets going and the group hits points of tension and anxiety as they figure out how to do and be for one another and for the world, is that whatever spiritual thing you have to offer, bring it, it is needed! Whatever you have to bring, come forward and don’t judge what others are bringing too, it’s all needed. Whatever good energy you have or good song you hold or good talent you can share, we are incomplete without you, without it.

I think that the standard Christian framing of spiritual gifts has perhaps been too narrow, leaving some of us feeling unsure of what we have to offer, or whether it is needed at all. But if the invitation is to offer whatever good spiritual thing you have for the common, that is freeing, then any of us have something to bring. Come! If it will build the common good, bring it!

That might be the most important line in this whole letter, “To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good…” We sometimes miss that part. We get off track thinking that we show up here with spiritual things, like hopes and dreams that could be made possible by our talents, our luck, our connections, and that it’s for our own success or recognition or for a good reputation. But our faith tells us this: if no part of what we are doing, if no part of what we are sharing with the world is building up the common good, it is wrong, it is not connected to Spirit, to Love, to what is true and good and right. And if we are using our spiritual things, our hopes and dreams, to cause harm and discord, or to leave something out of balance or in an unsustainable place, we might even dare to say, it is a sin.

And even aside from the spiritual pain and internal dissonance this is creating for people, living disconnected from caring about the common good is not only scarring sweet Mother Earth, I believe that not caring about the common good is leaving people feeling lonely, angry, depressed and with fewer friends, and without hope or a purpose.

On this Sunday where we at CUCC are celebrating our ministry of social justice and on this weekend set aside to honor the teachings and writings and the leadership of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it feels important to take seriously what he said in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail in 1963 when he wrote of how our lives are connected and shared in common, that there is a common good between us. He said, “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states…. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny…”

We are living in a time when some of the narratives that have become mainstream include the idea that good Americans don’t need anybody else, that we shouldn’t need things that are in common, that we shouldn’t need to do things together that we aren’t really tied in a single garment. Have you noticed that? It’s as if the common good as a concept has been demonized. Because it seems to me that it is often more cost effective do things in common. So we are told the common good doesn’t matter, or that it is socialism or against what is Holy, when we see right here in one of our oldest pieces of sacred text for Christians that we are compelled to give ourselves, what we have, spiritual things to what is good for the group. But in America right now, the common good has been cast outside along with women, transgender people, immigrants, single people, oh especially single women with cats, poor people, kids, queer couples and on the list goes.

We are being sold the idea that saving a tech company matters more than saving the Department of Education or the Department of health. We are being told that banning one thing that steals our data to uplift other things that steal our data is a moral move. We are being told that believing in social security means we are takers or that it is a so-called entitlement when hello most of us have paid into it? It’s an earned benefit. It’s a common good.

We are being told that believing in someday having a healthcare option that isn’t only about making money is radical, but it’s not, it’s a biblical point of view! Today, let us all remember the truth, a truth that is ancient and abiding and speaks to us now too: we are called to care about the common good, not just so we are part of creating little heavens here on earth, not just so that we are building a just world for all, but also so that each of us have a purpose and feel less lonely and are more connected and alive. And here’s the other thing, I can promise you, it will give you hope, sharing your spiritual thing for the common good, whatever it might be will add more hope into the world, in your little world and in the big world.

I love all of the spiritual things that CUCC so special. I love how we live church in both old and new ways. I love how we are the Body of Christ here and now. It gives me and so many of us hope! I can’t say enough how diverse this church is. Not everyone is charged with holding the big picture like some of us are, so it feels important to occasionally remind you of what I see and to remind you who you are and what a gift that is, because you might not know it. So today I will end with a little letter to you, here in South Boulder. Consider this First Boulderites chapter 12:1-11.

Now concerning spiritual things, guys and gals and non-binary pals, people of faith and conscience, atheists and agnostics, spiritually inclined and religiously unaffiliated, exvangelicals, former Catholics and everyone else seeking mystery, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you believed in the myth of individualism and greed, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. Therefore 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 who Jesus really is except by the Holy Spirit, let us reclaim that Jesus is for us too.

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same energy underneath; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same Greater Love who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. Don’t misunderstand me: I am not saying to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the acquisition of goods, rather it’s for the common good. So to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to 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. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. Whatever spiritual thing you have to bring, come bring it. We ring in the new year with hope! To some are given the ability to measure Council agenda in 2.3MB. To others are given the ability to email mini-sermons about the goats and the Divine Feminine and inform others of things like the fact that December 15th is also Bill of Rights Day. Ratified on this day in 1791. Thanks to James Madison.

To some are given the ability to remain devoted to rearranging chairs in this space that are constantly moving. To some are given the ability to only sometimes come to worship but to emerge at an important event to wash dishes for hours. To some are given the orientation to detail and the gift of actually reading the minutes. To some are given the spiritual thing of being willing to drive to Fort Collins to bring our still living holiday poinsettias because we didn’t want to kill them. I have hope because of you! We are together in this inescapable network of mutuality, we are called to the common good, for the world we need the world we need and the world we know God wants. Perhaps we are called to be extremists for the common good?

Communal Reflection
What does it mean to you to “be caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny?” What does the common good mean to you?

Beloved of God, now concerning spiritual things, remember “To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good…” “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny…”whatever affects one, affects all, so the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Let us be extremists for spiritual things and goodness and all we can bring in hope, for the common good. May it be so. Amen.