After she woke up, a woman told her husband, "I just dreamed that you gave me a pearl necklace for our anniversary. What do you think it means?” "You'll know tonight," he said. That evening, the man came home with a small package and gave it to his wife. Delighted, she opened it to find a book entitled "The Meaning of Dreams.”

Now here’s a joke for the ladies. What do you call a man with half a brain? Gifted.

As you can tell our theme today is about gifts. A gift is something one person gives to another, a picture, some flowers or a bottle of wine. Gifts usually have great meaning to the person who receives it, even if it doesn’t have great value. The thought is what counts we say. In my lifetime, it seems that women are better at remembering and giving gifts. On Wednesday, a group of women met for lunch at the church. The women had agreed to be secret sisters to each other. An unknown person would send a note or a card to one of the other ladies just to let that person know she was being thought of and prayed for. On Wednesday the ladies revealed who their secret sister was. And as you might have expected many of the women gave a gift to their secret sister. I was fortunate to be invited for the luncheon. As I mentioned already, the offering of a gift has great meaning to the one who receives it and on Wednesday there were several examples of that.

A gift sometimes can also refer to a unique ability or talent. You have a gift for music. Or, you have the gift of discernment. When we speak of a talent as a gift, we mean that God has given that person an ability and that is why we call it a gift.  Today’s lessons offer us examples of gifts of many kinds. It is a good day to be thankful for the gifts we have been given by friends, the gifts we have been given by God and to consider how we might share our gifts with others.  Let’s first listen to some gifts that are given by God. In Isaiah, we hear that God will call us by name, actually we will be given a new name. We have heard this theme on a regular basis over the past month. God knows us individually by name and God knows us collectively as God’s people.   Isaiah wrote about the Jewish people who had just returned from exile to the promised land. Isaiah wrote that the land of Zion will no longer be desolate but will now be God’s Delight. The people of Israel will be married to God.  

In the King James version of the Bible, instead of referring to the land as married, the bible refers to the land as Beulah land.   It is the Hebrew word for married. Over the centuries Beulah Land has come to have a special connotation. Beulah is a special and beautiful place. The slaves probably thought of Beulah land as a place of freedom. Others consider Beulah land to be a description of heaven. Some hymns speak of Beulah land meaning that God will show us into heaven, a beautiful and glorious place.

Just as God was able to change the people of Israel from the Forsaken into God’s Delight, so too was Jesus able to change the water into wine. Jesus’ first miracle is described in our Gospel lesson for today as his coming out, the start of his public ministry. It is the gift of Mary who encouraged her son to help people in need. What does the gift of wine mean to you? On Wednesday in our Bible study, someone suggested that it was a precursor, a preparation for us to receive the blood of Jesus in his crucifixion. What a wonderful gift. John Foley thinks the wine is a gift of abundance. He wrote that when Mary said to Jesus “They have no wine” it symbolically meant that the human race had no real life left in it. Water turned into wine is an image for anyone who is fresh out of hope and needs to drink of the promise that Jesus offers to us. “The full rich wine of life that we need is the love of God. That love was given to us in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus and is shown to us in the wine of Cana”.

Lindsey Trozzo, from the Princeton Theological Seminary, suggested that the miracle of the wine was a sign of our shared hospitality. Rather than taking the lack of wine as something the family shouldn’t have let happen, Trozzo suggests it was a community issue. She believes that guests usually brought the wine as a part of their wedding gift. Running out of wine was an indication that the community was unable to support this family during the wedding celebration. When Jesus offered the gift of wine, he lifted up the entire community. Changing the water into wine becomes a precursor of the abundant things we will receive from God. Trozzo wrote that “Jesus’ mission was to continue God’s work in the world that provides hospitality and a space of belonging despite the norms of society. Jesus heals our souls when we are in pain due to something expected of us by our societal norms today. In our thankfulness for God’s gifts, we are asked to consider the gifts that God has given to us individually.  

The reading from Corinthians reminds us that our gifts come from God, specifically given to us by the Holy Spirit. No person’s gifts are better than another. We need the gifts of the entire community to bring God’s kingdom to earth.  Many passages in the book of Isaiah come to fruition in our Gospels and Scriptural Letters. Isaiah spoke abut our gifts as well.   In chapter 11 we read, “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,

   the spirit of wisdom and understanding,

   the spirit of counsel and might,

   the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

   His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.”

If we consider the spirit of counsel to be similar to the gift of prophecy, then four of the gifts mentioned in Isaiah are repeated in the letter to the Corinthians. Paul also listed healing and performing miracles, speaking in tongues and interpreting tongues. The sad situation in Corinth was that people were comparing their gifts as if there was a rivalry between them. There was an opinion that some gifts were better than others. The point that Paul was making is that our gifts should not divide us but rather unite us. For the gifts we have been given are for the common good, not for us to hold back and use only for ourselves.

Paul’s letter speaks of how the three persons of the Trinity work together. Each of the gifts mentioned comes from the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit and the one we call God the Father are united in this gift giving. And the Spirit is connected to Jesus. For no one who has a gift of the Spirit will say something against Jesus. The Trinity is united in all things. No gift is better than any other because the Trinity has given each person special talents and loves each one of us.  Just as the Spirit of God has given us gifts, we turn and pray to the Spirit that we may be guided in what we should do, that we may allow God’s will in this place.

The people of this church have received many talents or gifts. We need the gifts of every person. Two years ago, we had a class led by Cathy Black from the diocesan office. It was a chance for us to consider our gifts and to identify our gifts for this place. We have so many gifts but I will always remember that we only had a few people who felt that their gift was leadership. In other words we have a lot of people willing to do the work but only a few who believe that they have a gift to lead a church project. We pray that we will find a few more leaders to help us finish the projects we are called to perform.

I ask you to consider the gifts that God has given to you individually and to us collectively.   Let us be thankful for all of God’s gifts, especially that God has chosen us and loves us. Let us reflect on the gifts that God has given us and how we might together use all of our gifts to do God’s work in the world. For this church is a wonderful place and we ask God to help us grow together spiritually and to share God’s love with everyone we meet. Amen.