St John of the Cross the ancient christian mystic once wrote,

that if you felt that you had been blessed with the presence of God

it was best to ignore it and to hope that it would go away.

He went on to write that the alternative -

paying the presence attention

could lead to two possibilities both of which would end you up at the devils door.

The first possibility was to get exultant and spiritually high on the experience 

which could then lead to arrogance and thus separation from God

and the second possibility was that it was not God at all that had come to visit you

but the darkness in disguise

and so of course if you get excited about such a gift

you would find yourself dancing with the demons.

In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians which we heard today

the words of warning ring out on a similar note:

Now about spiritual gifts (he tells his Corinthian friends) you know how easy it is

to get caught up in moments of Spiritual ecstasy,

why, even before you found Christ

you would had moments of transcendence and epiphany,

well, my friends, these moments all mean nothing

if they are not grounded in the reality of who Christ is and what he came to teach us.

They mean nothing

if they are not grounded in love.

One of the criticisms of the New Age movement has been

that the ground upon which it is built

is the ground of self rather than the ground of God.

This continuous focus on the needs and growth and development of the self

can mean that there is little space or time left over to focus on the needs of

the other, of the community, of the Cosmos.

But the same criticism could easily be made about many

within the great religious traditions of the book: Christianity, Islam and Judaism

because when followers of these traditions become obsessed with the minutia of their own literal interpretations

of who and what qualifies as the holy

there is little space left over to give to a world crying out for kindness.

The second part of this section of Paul’s letter then goes on to tell his audience,

to tell us, that there are many gifts which we humans may receive,

gifts of miraculous powers and prophecy

gifts of knowledge and faith and speaking in tongues,

and the gifts of faith and of healing

but that all these gifts come from the same source.

The inference of this passage based on what goes before it

is that while all these gifts are wondrous in themselves

and things for which we are to be grateful, we are not to get

‘holier than thou’ about them

not to get hung up on the importance of the gift rather than the giver.

By focusing on the giver, on God,

we are freed up to take the gift itself seriously and to not squander it in self-rejection

or dismissal. Often many folk struggle with what they have been given,

struggle with the true wonder and power and beauty

which they have inside them, often we might reject the truth of who we are

because it is much easier to live a life where we don’t feel we have to take responsibility for anything because

well, you know, we are not really up to it,

we are no good, we have no worth, we are without gift.

Christ tells us, in the Gospel of Mathew: 

No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel,

but on the lamp stand and it gives light to the whole house.

Every single person in God’s creation, every single person in this room,

every single one of you,

has been lit up by God,

has been gifted by God,

the gifts are all different and some gifts may appear louder or shiner than the others

but they are all from god.

Yours may be the gift of being able to listen,

to really listen deeply and quietly to another’s pain,

yours may be the gift of hospitality of being able to make the stranger welcome,

yours may be the gift of fiery passion, which inspires others to fight injustice,

yours may be the gift of logic, of being able to see things clearly

so that brambles are cleared and growth is possible.

Yours may be the gift of the artist, a gift with words or images or music

which enable others to ascend into light.

So many gifts.

Which one is yours?
Are you hiding it away, frightened to accept your power?
Or are you guilty of obsession with the gift and not the giver?

Or are you grounded in your gift, and thus able to give freely to others,

to give freely, in grace?

In the next chapter of Corinthians Paul speaks about the three greatest gifts:

Faith, hope and love.

Today you will be given one of these gifts, one of these gifts on a wee piece of paper.

In the contemplation time which lies before us,

I invite you to step into an imagining

of what it would be like to accept this gift into your life,

to accept it, embrace it and to share it with creation.

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