Charisma Comes with It

              Charisma Comes With it
Script: I Cor. 12.1-11
Intro: "We have lost touch with our roots in the earth. We have forgotten
that it is not gold that supports us, but the soil, the water, and the air. In the larger ancient economics of our ecosystem cost means more than dollar :every creature has its function and value, whether economics places a price tag on it or not."
These words come from Dr. Russell Peterson, one time governor of Delaware and president of New Directions. Barry Commoner, or Ralph Nader, or Buckminster Fuller could have said them. "We have lost touch with our roots" is almost a universal cry of confession. Especially is it found in the melting pot where now there is a revival of ethnicism as segments of our nation attempt to recover their roots.
Beyond these roots, hidden deeply within each of us, is the desire to un cover where home is. The spiritual supermarket is stocked with all kinds of programs designed to assist us in finding where home is. We find our­selves born into a historical context, the product of a genetic mix that has in it so many determinants beyond hair and eye color. We find our selves born here instead of in Africa; in relative wealth rather than poverty. Yet ultimately to die and return to dust.
Becoming aware of this mystery and our need for roots may account for the religious surge throughout the U.S. Too it may account for the desire by many within mainline denominations to go beyond their hymnody, their reredos, their candles and liturgies to ask about the roots of which my dust is ultimately a part. Am I destined to be a recycled soul; or a part of the chemistry agronomists in the future will study?
One response to this question has come through the charismatic movement A few years ago at Notre Dame, 20,000 Roman Catholics gathered to hear Bishop Suenens speak on the subject: The Holy Spirit. 10,000 gathered in Des Moines, Iowa as their Annual Conference sponsored a seminar on the Holy Spirit. On a smaller scale groups meet all over the country as para-church Christian fellowships. Their experience is the root of the Christian faith. The uninhibited freedom to praise the lord, to raise their hands in joy, to express their faith without fear.
I. What's the intrigue? One explanation might be that as a culture we are taken by the charismatic.
A. Is this not but a religious expression of a cultural phenomenon?
1. Some said President Kennedy had it as millions were struck by his challenge, Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. So did Martin Luther King Jr., "I have a dream he said. Those words said on Lincoln Memorial steps were enough to awaken the stone sculpture of honest Abe. Both had the capacity to influence masses of people, to mobilize them to action, to assist them in creating new visions of life. They appeared to be gifted—charimatic
2. Mohammed Ali says he has it, and Howard Cosell agrees. Thousands of young people go into ecstasy when Alice Cooper takes them through an evening whose liturgy is climaxed by the grotesque end macabre. They