Sermon for Sunday, June 28, 2026 || Proper 8A || Romans 12:12-23

Today we’re going to talk about spiritual gifts. I know we read the difficult story of the Binding of Isaac this morning, but I preached on it the last time it came up in the rotation, so I can point you to that sermon if you’d like. We’re going to talk about spiritual gifts this morning for two reasons. First, in today’s second lesson, St. Paul talks about God’s “free gift of eternal life.” Second, I’ve been preaching a lot recently about walking in this fractured and fractious world, trying to hold on to hope, grow in grace, do justice, and live in the liberating light of God’s love. The practice of discerning, cultivating, and sharing our spiritual gifts guides us in this walk with Jesus Christ. And so today, I’d like to talk about giftedness.

But first, I have to talk about the newfangled word “rizz.” Since, as my children like to remind me, I was born in the late-1990s, I’m not allowed to use their generation’s slang, or else I will be “cringe.” But the word “rizz” is just too good a word not to mention in the context of today’s reading from Romans. “Rizz” is a modern shortening of the word “charisma,” taking just the second syllable and making a new word from it. (In fact, “rizz” was Oxford’s word of the year in 2023.) “Rizz” can be a noun or a verb. As a noun, “rizz” means charm, the ability to flirt, to have excellent social skills or what the kids call “game.” As a verb, “rizzing” is the act of flirting exceptionally well. You can “rizz” someone up; you can embody “rizz” as the “Rizzler.” If I were in high school right now, I would universally be known as someone with very little “rizz.” Whenever I wanted to chat up a cute girl, I would usually say a few indistinct words and then have to go away. The thing about “rizz,” it seems, is that it can’t be taught. “Rizz” is just something you have. 

So it makes sense that “rizz” – innate social magnetism – derives from the English word “charisma.” The English word “charisma” derives from the Greek word…“charisma.” (It’s the same spelling and pronunciation in both languages.) In Greek, χάρισμα is a “gift,” often translated as a “free gift.” Like you can’t learn “rizz,” you can’t earn a free gift. God does not wait for us to get enough stickers on our chore chart or the right number of W’s in the Win Column. God’s gifts are not rewards. They are not payment for a job well done. God’s gifts are the prerequisites to take on the job in the first place.

Our God is a God of superabundance. Each of God’s gifts flows from an unlimited supply. God lavishes giftedness upon us all the time. We have access to all of God’s gifts. The gifts that stick to us are the ones that resonate with our passions and with the hunger of our broken world. We start with the ultimate gift, the one Paul talks about today: “Now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The free gift of God – “The charisma of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Permit me to make my kids’ eyes roll as hard as they possibly can: “The rizz of God.”

Like “rizz,” God’s charisma is also a form of magnetism. God attracts us using the spark of God’s eternity that we possess. That spark is like a bit of ferrous metal feeling the pull of eternity. And so the charisma within each of us aligns us to the God who gives us the free gift of eternal life. When we are aligned with God – or you could say attuned to God, resonating with God – we recognize the gifts God has given us. And God grants us eyes to see how to cultivate and share those gifts with the world.

In another letter, Paul talks about the charisms – the gifts – of the Holy Spirit. These gifts sort into several buckets: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracle working, prophesying, discerning spirits, speaking and interpreting tongues. The most important parts of Paul’s teaching about spiritual gifts are (a) the Spirit gives them for the common good (not for individual self-aggrandizement) and (b) that the greatest gift of all is love, without which none of the other gifts would be worth anything.

As we align ourselves with the charisma of God’s eternal spark within us, each of us has an opportunity to discern how that charisma produces our charism, how that free gift shines a light onto our giftedness. Like “rizz,” our spiritual gift will innately be part of us; unlike “rizz,” we can cultivate our gift once we embrace it. My primary spiritual gift is teaching. In sermons and classes, I come fully alive when I to connect listeners to deepen their faith. I feel that charismatic, magnetic link to God when I’m engaged in my gift.

I have always had a teacher’s heart, but I have not always had the humility needed to listen to students’ needs. And so God has helped me cultivate my spiritual gift, finding new ways to teach, which involves a whole lot of listening and learning. Along with discernment and cultivation comes sharing of the gift. I get to share my primary spiritual gift with you all the time, and it fills my heart with love and gratitude to do so.

I wonder what your primary spiritual gift is? There are plenty of resources online, often called “spiritual gift inventories” to help with the work of discernment. But more fundamentally than that, I invite you to get quiet with God and listen to your inner yearning. What is your passion? How does that passion intersect with the hunger of our broken world? And what gift from God would most help you make a difference at that intersection? That’s your spiritual gift, and it might come with subsidiary ones too!

Your charism might fall in the bucket of healing and manifest with the patience of a hospice volunteer or the ear of a reconciler. Your charism might fall in the bucket of prophecy and manifest as an undaunted voice for justice; or the bucket of faith as a steady presence amidst lives that are falling apart; or the bucket of wisdom as a guiding voice for those doing their own discernment. Whatever your gift may be, sharing that gift further aligns the spark of God’s eternity within you to the magnetic resonance of God’s charisma, God’s free gift of eternal life. For eternal life is the everlasting embrace of God’s love. And our embrace of that love in the here and now happens when we share our gifts with others for the common good.

This week I invite you to meet the fractured and fractious world with stillness, with prayer, with the discernment of your spiritual gift. For when we come alive, embracing God’s giftedness, we will heal this this broken world, with God’s help.

---

Photo by Kostiantyn Li on Unsplash.