Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian author, wrote this parable about a Russian Orthodox Bishop.

One day a Bishop heard about the great faith of three uneducated hermits who lived on a remote island in the Caspian Sea. Since they were uneducated, the Bishop decided to go teach them how to be TRULY great.

“No one can be truly faithful without the church,” thought the Bishop, and so he rowed his boat out to the island to meet them.

The three hermits greeted the Bishop and thanked him for coming. The Bishop then immediately asked them, “What are you doing to save your souls and how do you serve God on this island?”

The hermits looked at each other with puzzled expressions. After a minute or two, the oldest smiled and said, “We do not know how to serve God. We only serve and support ourselves as best we can.”

The Bishop scoffed at this. “I serve hundreds of hungry each day. I take confessions. I serve my community. You must do better. Tell me, how do you pray to God?”

Another hermit smiled and said “Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us.” And all three then repeated, looking up to the sky, “Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us.”

The Bishop smiled condescendingly at their simple theology. “You have heard something of the Trinity. But you do not pray right. You have won my affection, godly men, and I intend to teach you the right way to pray and how to serve God.”

The Bishop then tried and failed time and time again to teach the hermits to say the Our Father. All day long the Bishop labored, saying the words twenty, thirty, a hundred times over. He did not leave until he taught them the whole thing. Then he left and began to row back to the shore. He could still hear them reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

He was feeling quite satisfied. About half way back to the shore, he saw something coming across the water. “Is it a seagull? Another sail boat sailing after me? Is it the setting sun glinting off the water?” the Bishop wondered.

Then he saw something amazing.

The three hermits were running upon the water. When they reached the Bishop’s row boat they said, “We have forgotten your teaching, servant of God. As long as we kept repeating it we remembered but when we stopped saying it, we forgot. We can remember nothing of the prayer. Teach us again.”

The Bishop crossed himself and said “Your own prayer will reach the Lord for it comes from the heart. It is not for me to teach you, but for you to teach me. Pray for me, a sinner.” And the Bishop bowed low and the hermits turned and walked back across the water to their island (Epperly 10-12).

I’m often like the Bishop. I have my assumptions of how religious life is supposed to go. What knowledge and prayers everyone should know. I even once had the gall to say that certain denominations were completely devoid of the Spirit of God. This was my ego talking. This is what many pastors suffer from. There’s a theological term for this.

When a pastor looks upon the work of another church’s thriving small group ministries, or its sleek design, or the amazing music, or the updated building, or the social media following, or the lives changed because of people’s interactions with the church’s worship and mission… we can get “steeple envy.”

Just last month, Heartland church donated $70,000 to opioid recovery here in Medina.[1] Instead of rejoicing at the good work our brothers and sisters in Christ are doing off Route Three, I got steeple envy.

Oh geez, I wish we could have done something so abundant and great. Why didn’t I think of this? Are we really making an impact?

Then I recalled the story of the bishop and the need for humility in this walk of faith. Sooner or later, God will humble us. We will see that we haven’t been looking everywhere, and we don’t have all the answers. We will see that others are doing great work in the Lord, and we can become envious or feel depressed and inadequate.

And yet… often without our knowing… As we are doing something we feel is trivial or simple, others are envious of us. To them, we are the hermits who are running on the water. What we take for granted, others desperately wish that they could do. All the while we are desperately wishing we could do what others are taking for granted, or worked so hard to pull off and we are only seeing the results of the work, not the tedious behind-the-scenes work that had to have happened.

Yet, I do not want you to be uninformed, my brothers and sisters, about the spiritual gifts. For this steeple-envy is an idol that cannot speak. There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are a varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.

Take this scripture to heart. You might feel jealous of the another person’s gifts. They look like they have their life all put-together and you feel envious or inadequate. Some of us might be feeling like life is passing us by and we fear becoming more and more irrelevant.

My first call was to be the Associate Pastor of Faith Formation and Families. My call was largely to attract young families. Yet one woman on my search committee, when I set out my plan, asked, “When all these families get here, what will happen to me? What about my age bracket?”

I didn’t understand that feeling until recently. I decided to re-watch the movie Inception, which I thought just came out. Kate asked when it was released, and I said, “Just a few years ago, 2009 or something. Just a couple years ago.”

“Luke, do that math again. That movie is almost 10 years old.”

Date slippage is a real thing, it occurred to me. And some of us have a longer rate of slippage. For many of us, it was just 1999. Or 1989. Or ’79. And we might feel envious of some of these young families, and we might forget what it is like to have a fussy infant in worship. “What about me?”

That answer came to that woman later. We were working with the Syrian refugees who had come to Toledo. We heard of the need for English tutors. For English as a Second Language teachers.

Soon a new literacy mission began because of this woman. The church filled up once a week with church folk and our Syrian neighbors, each teaching one another. Then we also found some American neighbors who were functionally illiterate coming to be taught how to read. The church, which was full of teachers and professors, offered their gifts. And those gathered told stories of their lives and how they functioned in our world without the ability to read. Our “readers” as we called them soon developed friendships among each other. Some were Syrian Refugees. Others were local folks learning English. Yet the Spirit fell upon our community, each person of every nation.

This was a crown of beauty. No more was anyone termed forsaken. All had discovered a gift that they had all along.

If it weren’t for the wisdom of a woman who felt she was “too old” for this church, we would have never had a literacy mission. If it weren’t for the gifts of knowledge held by our church, we wouldn’t have had people for the work. If it weren’t for the gift of healing that so many of our readers had, their kind nature, their willingness to share their stories; we would have been missing out on what God was doing right next door.

We often can be like the bishop in the story, convinced of our own righteousness. Certain in our own gifts. We can get jealous because we feel that someone has been given a bigger piece of the pie. But gifts are not a pie to be cut up and divided. There is no limit to God. Gifts are a river, not a pie. We don’t have to operate as the world does with a scarcity mindset. We are called to trust the abundance of God. The limitless-God who is always pouring out gifts, always sending us gifts and people.

The Holy Spirit moves where she will and falls upon everyone differently. It is good to look out upon you today and to wonder what gifts the Spirit has given you. To some it is obvious. Some can sing. Some can teach. Some seem to always have a kind word ready, a word that heals or a word that helps us discern where the Spirit is leading us.

All of these are activated by the same Spirit. All of these are already within us. For some of us, our gifts seem a little more hidden. It will take some time. Maybe a meeting with your pastor. Maybe an online gift assessment. Maybe someone will suggest a small group or committee here for you to join, and you discover something you never knew you could do. There are so many gifts here that God has given us. So many gifts.

As the poet Hafiz wrote,
There are so many gifts still unopened from your birthday,
there are so many hand-crafted presents that have been sent to you by God.
The Beloved does not mind repeating, “Everything I have is also yours.”
Please forgive Hafiz and the Friend if we break into a sweet laughter when your heart complains of being thirsty,
when ages ago
every cell in your soul
capsized forever into this infinite golden sea.
Indeed,
A lover’s pain is like holding one’s breath too long,
in the middle of a vital performance,
in the middle of one of creation’s favorite songs.
indeed, a lover’s pain is this sleeping,
this sleeping!
When God just rolled over and gave you such a big good-morning kiss!
There are so many gifts, my dear,
still unopened from your birthday.
O, there are so many hand-crafted presents that have been sent to your life,
From God.[2]

Works Cited

 http://www.medina-gazette.com/News/2019/01/09/Heartland-congregation-unites-against-opioid-epidemic.html

 Hafiz. The Gift. Translated by Daniel Ladinsky. Penguin Compass, New York, 1999. Page 69