HELLO!

Two things I want to share; one with a spirit of sadness and the other with joy. First, please keep Graham Holloway in your prayers, his mother Joan (living in Newfoundland) has died. Also, a note from Hugh Townsend, “This Sunday I am marking the youthful age of 88. I’ve passed Sidney Crosby’s famous 87. The other number connected to me is I have been writing sports columns for 73 years. That’s a record in Canada.” Hugh 88.

Also, this Sunday will mark the end of the Women’s Retreat (36 women from Woodlawn), with leadership from Juanita Sams and Bethe. Originally the event was to be held in Debert. Until this week, when locks appeared on their doors (finances). Juanita and Bethe pivoted quickly, the retreat will now be at our church, with the closing worship in the Heritage Centre (“The White/Old Church”). That means our Pentecost Service, with Communion, will be much more lightly attended than usual. I intend to open the windows at 10 am and call out to the 36 women “HELLO!”.

Our Pentecost reading is 1 Corinthains 12. Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth focuses on struggles we find familiar in community life: jealousy, striving, arrogance, and a propensity to measure one’s worth through comparisons with other people. Although the specific activities might seem foreign to us, the disease behind the symptoms remains common to all of us. Paul hoped his letter would lead to healed divisions and reestablished unity (see 1 Corinthians 1:10) so the Corinthians would more fully manifest Christ in their communal life and witness.

Paul notes the gifts of the Spirit are given to each for the good of the whole church. This allows us to identify gifts of the Spirit, those talents that are informed by, summoned by, and “energized” by the Spirit for the good of the church. Paul wants the Corinthians to adopt a new way of looking at spirituality by seeing these abilities as a means through which God is at work for the community. It is a dynamic transforming our talents into gifts of the Spirit. Talents are reoriented away from our interests, becoming vehicles for God’s love, the Spirit’s gifts to the church.

We must use those gifts for the common good to build up what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called, "the beloved community." Peace, Kevin