Daily Devotional • October 11
A Reading from 1 Corinthians 12:27-13:3
27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 28 And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work powerful deeds? 30 Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31 But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
1 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Meditation
This passage continues Paul’s well-known motif of the church as the body of Christ. In baptism, we are one in the body of Christ: a body with many members, each one having unique dignity and purpose. As members of this body, each one has a spiritual gift, a “manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” allotted “to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses” (1 Corinthians 12:7, 11).
Paul’s list of roles within the church–apostles, prophets, teachers, healers, leaders, and so on–is not an exhaustive list and is not ordered by level of importance, but instead honors the diversity necessary to the flourishing of the whole. When he says to “strive for the greater gifts,” this might sound like a call to climb a proverbial ladder towards higher and greater positions, but such a reading would suggest that some members are more valuable than others, which is contrary to Paul’s message. Its meaning is made clear by a later verse: “strive to excel in [your spiritual gifts] for building up the church” (1 Corinthians 14:11). In other words, striving for greater gifts means to be diligent in discerning the gifts allocated to us, and zealous in the development and use of those gifts for the good of the whole body of Christ.
The spiritual practice of discernment is not a one-time exercise. It is a life-long process of listening, acting, changing and growing. Henri Nouwen describes the fruit of discernment as “a profound insight into the interconnectedness of all things, through which we can situate ourselves in time and space to know God’s will and do God’s work in the world.”[1] Although discernment is an intensely personal undertaking, by focusing on our interconnectedness–with other members of the body of Christ and with all of creation–we are reminded of our highest calling, which is love. The “greater gift” is the one we discern, develop and use in a “still more excellent way,” which is with great love.
Monica Coakley is an Assisting Priest at Luminous Parish in Franklin, TN and also provides pastoral care to men on Tennessee’s death row. She lives with her family on a small farm and hoards books and yarn.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Diocese of Paraná – Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil
[1] Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life. HarperCollins, 2015. (emphasis in the original)
