You may have heard that an expert is someone from out of town who carries a briefcase. Jesus could never be an expert in Nazareth. The folks in Nazareth get the out of town bit: telling the truth is less offensive if you haven't played a part in it. When you're stuck with each other, truth is bound to break unwritten rules, which is where most of the offense comes. Just because the community is committed to life together, doesn't mean love is easy, so the conversation between today's texts implies that the use of spiritual gifts, even for the common good, may be seen as offensive.

What I'm told about the potlatch tradition of certain Native American cultures is that honor is the motivation for the giveaways. Potlatches celebrate big events, and the host often goes completely broke in the name of generosity toward the guests. Honor for person or family accrues through its generosity, never by what they've got. Our spiritual lives could benefit from the judicious application of the potlatch tradition of receiving and holding and giving away. We usually give away the things that are easiest to give. Time is more precious to most of us than money, so that gift comes a little harder. In fact, any volunteer organization will tell you it's easier to get folks to write them a check than to commit to (and carry out) the gift of time. Two hours a week to keep the church clean. An hour to take a non-driver to the doctor. Provide a half day of respite for a care-giver or parents of young children.

Other than time, our most difficult treasures to part with are the negative ones. We hold most tightly and keep in deepest secret the things we're most ashamed of, things we'd rather not admit to, characteristics for which we judge ourselves. For instance, no one likes to admit to being greedy, but I have a friend who reframed her desire to acquire stuff, not as greed, but as a love of being surrounded by beauty. That simple reframing made it possible for her to appreciate lovely things without needing to own them, freed her from jealousy of other people's stuff, opened her to expressing love of beauty more acceptably as gardening, doing liturgical art, enjoying art museums with young people.

Sometimes our negative treasures can be both bane and blessing. I hated my impatience as a child, but in construction, where time is money and productivity is its measure, my impatience found positive expression. In the ministry, however, those expressions are not positive. Ministry has no real "product." Interruptions are not what keep a person from getting her work done, they are her work. My mother criticized me as a child for being what she called a "Sarah Bernhardt"-a drama queen. But you can see where that and a puppet might be offered to church community as gift.

Potlatch puts possessions into the flow of community life: receive, hold, give. Receive like we breathe-taking in and letting go. One of my pastors saw spiritual life in a respiration model. Fed in worship and sacraments, sent out to serve; living in solitude, living in community. Everyone has gifts. As you receive yours, hold them in the same way we hold our children, giving them both roots and wings. Loving them by grounding them in values, equipping them to grow up and leave. Receive, hold, give again. Our spiritual gifts are not forever, but we do get to use them for a time, just as children leave home, each in their own way. In the act of giving away our gifts, we find what is valuable in them and in our self, contributing to community as we give our selves.

I often hear the perception that Springwater has too many jobs and not enough people to do them. I have been guilty of contributing to that situation. I have too eagerly embraced every good idea that came along, not critically wondering how it fit into who we believe we are as a church. The session reorganization based on cluster ministry is an attempt to do ministry without boundaries or limits to God's dreams for us, which is what got Jesus in trouble in Nazareth's synagogue-pointing to their limited understanding of God's kingdom. During the time and talent pledge drive which begins next week, we will explore the implications of session reorganization for our individual discernment of gifts. Any discernment begins by paying attention to dreams and hopes-both individual and corporate. The reason we pay attention to hopes and dreams is because they are often gifts from Holy Spirit. Especially when they are inconvenient, ridiculed, denied, and unimportant. Hopes and dreams pull us from treading water, urging us, as in the movie, Finding Nemo, to just keep swimming.

You will hear my dreams for the congregation at the congregational meeting after worship-my dreams so badly expressed by listening to distractions. Perhaps in the coming year, as a congregation we can help each other to "just keep swimming" as we listen to corporate dreams. This will mean a willingness to express our dreams with and to each other. It will require trusting each other enough to be vulnerable, negotiating a give and take of dream. It will presuppose commitment to life in common, valuing each other's gifts enough to just keep swimming together.

One of the more difficult challenges to Body Life has been and will continue to be an ability to bring our darkness to light. Not bring light to darkness, bring darkness to light. When we bring our darkness, when we give away our negative treasures, darkness gets loved into light. Because even darkness has to be loved (for God's sake). And it is for God's sake, because only God can make use of our darkness, only God can redeem it. According to 1 Corinthians, everyone has spiritual gifts, everyone has a part to play in Body Life. God's motive, to hear Paul, is so there will be no dissension. As if! Jesus exercises the gift of prophesy, does some truth-telling, and gets thrown out of town. Most of us avoid controversy like the plague! We'd rather be organ donors than look like we disagree with each other. Truth-telling, the gift of prophesy, is part of reconciliation. Only if there is reconciliation will there be no dissension. Can Springwater people tell the truth in righteousness, even knowing our own righteousness is flawed? I think we cannot tell the truth until and unless we know our own righteousness is flawed. Right now, this congregation is experiencing two complicated divorces. OK, so it's the couples who are separating, but if we think it only affects them, we are deluding ourselves. Our reaction to their situations refers back to the past of this congregation, to our own pasts, to their pasts as we know them. This darkness in particular needs God's light.

The reconciliation process that ended apartheid in South Africa is an example of reconciliation that works. Owing a great deal of its successful design to the Reformed theology of the country's church leaders, the process began and ended in telling the truth. Oppressors listened in detail, one by one, to how they had injured the black people. Their misdeeds were given names and faces, and they acknowledged the truth of that humanity as they heard the truth of their evils, even if they were institutional evils and not their own personally. As they themselves hurt and were pained for what they were not personally responsible for, they also had to receive the anger and forgiveness of victims.

The greatest challenge to any church community is to be willing to tell the truth to each other, to hear the truth, to love each other even without understanding or approving of what is said. The challenge is to face and accept the truth of one's own shortcomings reflected in those truths. Bringing the darkness to light is an essential but terrifying component of Body Life. Very few communities, very few individuals, willingly go there. But it's why the Holy Spirit, according to the apostle Paul, gives differing gifts. Sometimes those gifts are offensive. They are always labor-intensive, because human relationships are always labor-intensive. Human relationships always carry the potential for great hurt. The only thing that saves us is that human relationships also carry the potential for God's redemption. Bring your darkness to God's light.