Sam Bush, “Practice Does Not Make Perfect (Jesus Does)”
I remember sitting in the back of my mom’s Volvo station wagon when I first realized that all rock ‘n roll bands were not created equal. On the bottom tier were the one-hit wonders, the “My Sharonas” and “Spirit in the Skies.” Then, there were the steady constants like The Guess Who who delivered a solid number of hits. The third tier were those so prolific you wondered how so many songs could come from one source - the Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival. At the top of the echelons stood the ultimate singularity: The Beatles. If God was a sower scattering seeds of inspiration, it was as if the bottom of the seedbag had fallen out right over John, Paul, George, and, by God’s grace, even Ringo. Ever since the Fab Four burst onto the scene, we have been trying to make sense of their genius.
Talent, which is what I want to talk about this morning, is one of the mysterious coincidences of life. It’s not the same as a skill. We’re not talking about computer coding. A skill is learned over time, but a talent is what people, even non-Christians, often call God-given. The writer Fran Lebowitz once said, “Talent is randomly distributed throughout the world. You cannot buy it, you cannot learn it, you cannot inherit it. It can come up anywhere. People are looking for explanations for success other than talent because it’s infuriating.” Lebowitz hits a nerve by pointing out the major controversy about talent: its lack of fairness.
As a culture, we often insist that hard work is the key to success because it suggests a sense of fairness. Fifteen years ago, Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers (which sold over a million copies) introduced the “10,000 hour-rule,” which was his theory that famous success stories like The Beatles were not simply a matter of giftedness, but sheer determination. The real reason for their success, he argued, was due to their four years in Hamburg, Germany, where, in dark and mostly empty nightclubs, they played well over a thousand concerts. People loved the 10,000 hour-rule. It was empowering to think that success was available to anyone who was willing to put in the time and effort. If time was money, success was something that could be purchased or earned.
Today, however, on Pentecost, we find that God is not interested in the payment economy, but in the gift economy. Pentecost refers to the day when, shortly after Jesus' ascension, the disciples were gathered in a room when the Holy Spirit came rushing in like a violent wind. It says, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” We’ve since come to understand the meaning of Pentecost in terms of the gift of the Spirit.
In today’s passage from 1 Corinthians, Paul says, every spiritual gift is “activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.” In other words, God’s approach to giftedness has nothing to do with work ethic or drive or discipline. Every unique ability, be it wisdom or discernment or knowledge is given, not earned. Even faith itself is a gift. Paul says, “No one can even say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.”
To be clear, life is a challenge and most of us have to work hard just to stay afloat. And yet, there are areas in our lives where things come a little more naturally. You may be a gifted listener who can listen to someone attentively without interjecting your own experience. Maybe you are one of the few who doesn’t take themselves too seriously and can help the rest of us lighten up. Chances are, you’re not even conscious of your ability which is the beauty of it. These are the places of spiritual giftedness, where God is actually providing you with the means to love people. J.R. Moehringer, the ghost-writer behind Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, wrote a piece in The New Yorker about what it’s like to write on someone else’s behalf. He said, “The mystic paradox of ghostwriting,” he says, is that “you’re inherent and nowhere; vital and invisible. To borrow an image from William Gass, you’re the air in someone else’s trumpet.” The same goes for God’s work in your life. The word inspire means “to breathe into,” which literally means His Spirit is the air in your trumpet.
What usually happens is that, as soon as we become aware of these gifts we will commodify them which often leads to their spoiling. You may love to write until you get your very first assignment to write for money and then a boon becomes a burden. If your gift becomes a means to an end (like success) it will become an investment rather than a gift. Just ask any high school athlete whose gift has been turned into their ticket to college.
In truth, we are not only hardwired to commodify any God-given gift but to reject the idea that it was ever a gift to begin with. A few years ago, an article in Vox announced that the 10,000 hour-rule had been debunked. Two different studies - one with violinists and one with baseball hitters - confirmed that, while practice accounts for some level of success, it’s not the key factor (I happen to know a handful of guys who have logged 10,000 hours on the guitar and are still no George Harrison). Practice, it turns out, is not guaranteed to make perfect. And yet, the book Outliers is guaranteed to always be popular because we live in a society that insists we can make it if we try, that, with enough foresight and determination, our lives can turn out exactly how we want them to. We need to believe that practice makes perfect in order to justify our existence. If practice doesn’t make perfect, why are we working so hard?
Our hope, therefore, is not in our ability to accept God’s gifts, because we will likely either commodify or commandeer or even reject them. Our only hope is in the gift itself. Rather, the gift Himself. A few chapters earlier, Paul calls the grace of God through Jesus “God’s indescribable gift.” He is a gift that we rejected by nailing it to a cross. And yet, through our rejection you and I became acceptable to God. Practice may not make perfect, but do you know who did make you perfect in the eyes of God? The Book of Hebrews says, “For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb 10:14). Jesus Christ, God’s gift to the world and to you, has made you perfect through his blood.
What does that mean for you? It means that life is not a talent show. Life is not something to be performed or earned, but a gift to be received. It means that you are not saved by your hard-work or merit. As the Book of Common Prayer reminds us, God accepts us “not by weighing our merits but by pardoning our offenses.”
It also means you can enjoy the gifts that God has bestowed upon others rather than hate those people for what you lack. In other words, you can stop condemning yourself for not being Paul McCartney and start enjoying his music. As the music journalist Rob Sheffield once said, “Being born on the same planet as the Beatles is one of the ten best things that has ever happened to me.” The same goes for your sister or your friend. To know that you are neither superior or inferior to anyone in the eyes of God, you will be able to enjoy them or even love them. This may be bad news if you’re feeling particularly pleased with yourself, but if you feel a little aimless or even a little worthless compared to what other people are doing with their lives, the news that you are already justified will feel like a breath of fresh air.
You can finally enjoy the freedom of your own mediocrity. Brian Resnick, the journalist who wrote the article in Vox, said the debunking of the 10,000 hour-rule was a profound relief because it freed him from having to justify himself in everything he did. He writes, “To this day, I am a slow, clumsy hiker. But I love being outdoors. I’m an okay painter. But it’s just nice sometimes to get out a canvas and engage the nonverbal parts of my brain. I find when I free myself from the expectation that I can be great, I can start having fun.” He says, “I wish I’d heard more of this growing up.” I wonder if you can relate.
Lastly, the fact that Jesus has already made you perfect means that if and when you feel like the wind in your sails has died, you can take comfort in the fact that the core of your identity is not in your gifts. Your resume is not the basis of your righteousness. In fact, because Jesus’ birth, life and death has taken the place of your birth, life and death, your biography has already been ghost-written for you. Just like we do with the Beatles, you can try to explain that, you can try to make sense of it. Or, you can just accept the gift and sing along. Amen.
