Sermon Notes — November 9, 202
Romans 12:1-8
“Harmony of Gifts”
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
November 9, 2025
You’ve probably already noticed this morning that we are circling back to this form. We rolled it out for the first time on Laity Sunday but apparently we did not make it very easy to turn in, so we’re going to try again, and this time we’ve put a giant church in the narthex next to the Thanksgiving Dinner sign up and you can drop your completed forms in there. It will be there for a few weeks, so don’t feel like you have to have this filled out when you leave the service – but also, please don’t take it home and forget about it. There’s also an online version of the form that you are welcome to fill out as well. It’s on the front page of our website about halfway down the page (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfAx07NJj0HkpgHJX8txsXqYI2c5_1Tv5pSRrsk_XVKchmt5w/viewform). It doesn’t matter how you fill it out; our concern is to help you make sure your gifts are being utilized in the ministries of Bethlehem United Methodist Church.
We’re back on the Stewardship train this morning – choo, choo. We started the Stewardship season talking about God’s generosity as the source of our generosity – that we seek to be generous to God and to others because God was first generous to us. We said that God is the creator of generosity – and so generosity is at the very heart of creation. Sticking with our theme,
We might also say that God is the composer of generosity.
And if God is the composer – the creator – of generosity, we join in the song by bringing our gifts in harmony.
Will you pray with me and for me?
During the COVID shutdown I met a woman named Sarah. Now Sarah grew up in Dyersburg but went to the northeast for college and graduate school, and she is now the head of the Classics department at a very posh private girls’ school on the Upper East Side of New York. We met because she came home to Dyersburg for Spring Break in 2020, and then she got stuck there because of COVID. Bad for her. Good for me. I don’t know what all she teaches, but I know all about Latin IV. In Latin IV, Sarah leads her students in the adventures of Cicero, the great Roman orator and rhetorician. Basically, her Latin IV class translates Cicero’s speeches – from Latin, obviously – and studies his rhetoric. And every year since we met she has invited me to be a virtual guest in her Latin IV class where I talk about what it’s like to be a contemporary rhetorician – a contemporary orator. And every year I have the best time and then to say thanks she sends me Lavain cookies or some school swag and everybody wins.
One of the things that I sometimes talk about when I visit her class is the Apostle Paul. Now, very few of the women in the class attend a Christian church, and Paul is challenging enough for those of us who attend church regularly, so I try not to get too far into the weeds when I talk about Paul with them, but I do bring him up to the class because Paul is sort of our own Christian rhetorician. In fact, he was a brilliant rhetorician in the Greek style. He knew how to write to appeal to his audience – he knew the right words to use to be persuasive. His arguments have an internal logic, and – this is especially true in his letter to the churches at Rome – he is masterful at taking his reader from point to point to point until he has made his argument and closed his case.
So when we get to chapter 12 of Romans, which is our text today, Paul has closed the first part of the argument that he made all the way through chapters 1-11. In chapters 1-11 he lays out the human problem of sin – everyone has sinned, no one is righteous, we’re all doomed – point 1 – and then he introduces Jesus as the answer to the sin problem – the death and resurrection of Jesus has the power to make us righteous in God’s sight – point 2 – and – point 3 – followers of Jesus can know God’s will for us through the Holy Spirit.
There are a lot of other points in chapters 1-11 but those are the biggies. If you want a great Sunday afternoon activity – besides a nap – pull out your Bible and read Romans from start to finish and follow Paul’s logic – see how he makes his points and brings them together into a compelling argument. And remember that that’s how the churches in Rome would have heard the letter. All in one sitting – following Paul from point to point to point.
So when we get to chapter 12 Paul has finished his basic argument. Now he’s going to tell us how to respond.
In the New International Translation, verse 12 begins with the word
Therefore
Since everything I’ve said up until now is true.
This is how you, church, should live together. It is so easy for us to fall into the trap of reading Paul as though he’s talking to individual Christians. In a few cases across his letters, that might be true. But on the whole, when we read Paul, we should always assume that he is talking to the community – the body of Christ. He is telling the church what their life as a church should look like.
He also knows that what he is about to say could be very divisive. He’s about to tell them about spiritual gifts. He’s going to tell them that God has given them each a different spiritual gift and that those gifts are meant to work together. And he knows how easy it is for humans to hear the word “different” and automatically think “better than” or “worse than.”
He knows this because he’s already been through the same thing with the church in Corinth. Some of them claimed that the gift of speaking in tongues was the best gift, and that all the other gifts were inferior to the gift of speaking in tongues. People who had the gift of tongues were spiritual superheroes and those with different gifts were spiritual nobodies.
And so he begins chapter 12 begging the churches in Rome to be humble. To consider their life together as an offering to God. Not to think of themselves more highly than they should.
And then he begins the list of spiritual gifts. It’s not a complete list, because if you read his letter to the Corinthians you’ll see a different list. And if you flip to his letter to the Ephesians there’s a different list there, too. Paul’s point is that whatever gift we have, we are to use it to serve God, to serve the world, and to serve each other. And whatever you do, don’t be fooled into thinking like the world thinks – that “different” has to mean “better” or “worse.” That’s not how it works in God’s kingdom.
Two appointments ago there was a woman in my congregation who was the most creative and crafty person that I have ever known. I don’t even know how to explain how adorably crafty she was. She would just get a cute idea in her head and then she would figure out how to do it. One day I was sitting in the hospital waiting room with her and her husband and her mother-in-law – we were waiting for her father-in-law to get out of surgery. She had dreamed up some adorable gift basket for him, but it wasn’t like she just threw some stuff in a basket and put cellophane over it and tied it with a bow, which for me would have exhausted my lifetime supply of craftiness. No, she arranged all the things in the basket in a certain way. Like she made a tower of the treats and drinks that he loved. We were sitting there and all I could look at was that basket and all I could do was wish I could be that crafty. I said that out loud and her husband looked straight into my eyes and said, “Mary Beth, we need you to stay in your lane.”
Crafty is not my gift. I wish it was my gift. Sometimes I wish I had many different gifts than the ones I have, but thank God for crafty people. Thank God for people who make beautiful things. Thank God for people who spend time thinking about what would be meaningful to someone else and then doing that thing for them. Thank God for the people who clean up when no one is looking and who make things look nice and inviting so that other people feel comfortable. Thank God for people who remember birthdays and send cards. Thank God for all those gifts we see and those that we don’t see.
Paul Achtemeier reminds us that each gift that God gives is an expression of God’s grace. God’s grace is so deep and rich and multifaceted, he says, that it takes more than one spiritual gift to express it. It takes all of the spiritual gifts to express God’s grace. Our job is to figure out what our spiritual gifts are and then use those gifts to express – to communicate – God’s grace in the world. That’s why we have them. So that we can share – can communicate – God’s grace with the world and with each other.
Achtemeier paraphrases Romans 12:2 like this, which I really love:
Do not let yourselves be shaped by what everyone else does, but rather let yourselves be transformed by a whole new way of thinking, so you can discern what conforms to God’s will – what is good, and pleasing, and perfect.
This transformation begins with understanding that all of us are not just important to the Body of Christ, but actually necessary to the Body of Christ. And then, when we begin to understand that, we begin to live together differently. We start to consider what we can do as the Body of Christ with all of these gifts – not so that we can feel good about ourselves or pat ourselves on the back for what we can accomplish – but what we can do that will be pleasing to God, what the good is that God wants us to carry into the world, what is God’s perfect will?
I am so grateful to have already been part of so many conversations where you are faithfully asking these questions together: What is God’s will for us? What is God asking us to do? How do we use our gifts to represent God’s grace and hospitality in the world?
This morning we get to welcome a new sister into the body of Christ, a new sister who, not long from now, will start to wonder where her place is in the church. How will she share her gifts? Her big sister is already an usher – what a testimony to a congregation making sure that everyone in the church gets a chance to help. How will she express God’s grace in the world? Thanks be to God that she is already part of a family – a big, loving, funny, church family – who will help her along the way, a church family that will remind her that she is important to God and important to us, a church family that will make room for her gifts, that will invite her in to our chorus of generosity.
In a few moments you will reaffirm your own baptismal covenant and you – y’all – this congregation will make a covenant with Rebecca and her whole family to be a living example of Jesus for her – each of us, yes, wants to be an example of Jesus for her, but it takes the whole church – all of us together – to show her who Jesus is. You’re gonna promise to show her what it means to love each other and forgive each other, and you’re going to promise to pray for her so that she will grow in her discipleship and find her home in the body of Christ.
By grace God has brought us together into a chorus of generosity, and by grace God has given us a vibrant community of welcome and wonder where we have the privilege of using our gifts to express God’s grace and hospitality in the world.
Thanks be to God. Amen.