Our Sunday morning service at Clevedon is at 10 am. Join us in person or watch the live stream on our YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxBzxjBb3xU8ra2NHwvD_9A

You can watch it anytime afterwards as well.

The Reading and Reflection can be found below:

1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. 2 You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. 3 Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Let Jesus be cursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. 4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.

7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. 12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

On Tuesday, I sent out my regular weekly email reflection. In that email, I wrote about my experience walking, last Saturday, with 20,000 others, from the Aotea Centre down to Britomart on the ‘Walk for Nature.’

As you can appreciate with such a crowd, it represented people concerned about various issues. Apart from those relating to the preservation of our conservation estate, there were people waving signs and flags representing all sorts of causes. It was though, quite a festive affair and included people of all ages.

I enjoy tramping and fishing, and some of my concerns have to do with things like overfishing in the Gulf and the preservation of our unique parks and walks.

I am never quite sure how many people read the Tuesday letter. But on this occasion, I had two responses from people whose opinions I value.

One response said, words to the effect, “I am sorry I missed you on the march. It was a great event but with so many people." 

The second note I received raised questions about the perceived hypocrisy of all the “greenies.” How people happily rely on the benefits of oil and mining—with their cars, laptops, and bikes—but still go ahead and protest. What’s that about?

Perhaps we can all find groups of people, and even churches, where we can be pretty sure that almost everyone thinks similar things, votes for similar people, and has views that are more or less the same as ours.

But this wasn’t the kind of church Paul was writing to in his letters to the Christians in Corinth.

One of his basic points is that the things that draw us together, the things that overcome divisions, are so much more powerful than the things that divide and separate us.

This is what I value so much about our church. I know I can still eat, drink, and laugh with those who call me a greenie and those who are happy to go on a march alongside me. 

Paul is urging us back to the foundation rock on which we all stand.

Over these last weeks, we have been reflecting on the life of the church in Corinth. And our text this morning summarises a lot about the nature of the church.

Before we leave this important letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians, I want to sum up some of our key learnings.

Paul is said to have founded the church in Corinth around the year 50 or so, about 15 or 20 years after Mary found the tomb empty on that Easter morning, and those first believers proclaimed that God had raised Jesus from the dead.

In proclaiming the resurrection, there were two key things:

Those who trust and follow Jesus find atonement—meaning ‘at-one-ness’ with God—but also find this new community with one another. This community, this church, which we hear today, is formed by the power and work of the Holy Spirit.

This community also has some very special qualities to it.

Paul uses a very particular word to describe this community—a lovely word in Greek—koinonia.

Paul tells us that this community has three particular qualities:

It is extraordinarily diverse, made up of people from backgrounds that would mean quite often that they would normally have nothing to do with each other. So, in some ways, quite a chaotic community. Not so much greenies—and whatever the opposite of that is—but men, women, slaves, Greeks, Romans, Jews, and those who had previously worshipped at the shrines of any number of gods. Into this, Paul says:

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptised into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:12-13)

In this community, it was clear that each member had a purpose, just like the parts that make up a body. Paul described this community as the body of Christ. They are given these gifts: tongues, prophecy, teaching, and healing. And though through the ages, we have had churches that have focused a lot on these various gifts, and even to the point of excluding people who do not show that they have some particular gift, we find the one really important thing about them is their purpose. They are for the common good.

Paul says:

4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (1 Corinthians 12:4-7)

These various gifts are for the common good.

Finally, given all this diversity, Paul constantly reminded these people that the thing that held them together was love. Not an emotional love, but this special sacred love shown to us by God, this "agape" in Greek.

This type of love was based on these almost test questions that we can find in 1 Corinthians 13. I mentioned them a few weeks ago, but I’ll repeat them again: In the midst of this Pentecost excitement, in the midst of conflict, 

Paul asks in Chapter 13:

Reflection and Application

So today as we think about our church, we ask that question: How do we know the work of the Holy Spirit is among us? And the answer, Paul says, is that the Spirit proclaims Jesus as Lord. This real historical man, Jesus, lived, was executed, and raised. And this extraordinary claim - that he is Lord. The Spirit offers its gifts to the church for the common good, and the Spirit activates love for one another.

But there is a challenge here. Every one of us can look around and, based on some criteria or another, see people who are better than us. Better preachers, better musicians, better at sports, better gardeners, in business, or in some professional field. And we can probably identify people who aren’t so good at some of those things. Better or worse, stronger or weaker. Useful or useless. Greenies or whatever. We have many ways of judging people’s worth or merits. Who is one of us and who is not. 

I remember years ago walking into a small country pub in southern Hawke’s Bay. On opening the door, the volume of conversation dropped. There was that almost palpable sense of people calculating whether you fitted in or not. That pause almost, as you walked up to the bar as people noticed what drink you were going to order. Even if you had never drunk in all your life, the temptation to order a Lion Red was just overwhelming. It is a powerful thing. 

That’s a trivial example perhaps, but there seem today to be especially powerful forces at work in the degradation of those who are seen as different or “other.” Almost beyond analysis, isn’t there something incomprehensible in the destruction we are witnessing between the people of Israel and Palestine? In Russia and Ukraine. In Sudan.

Paul calls us to resist the forces that he described as the "powers and principalities." The unnameable things that work to undermine God’s good purposes.

While always holding up the Biblical principles of justice and reconciliation, perhaps the most important witness we can make today, is to resist the forces, the language, the behaviour that emphasises difference and division. Paul calls us back to the foundational unity we have in Christ.

Paul wanted the church way back in Corinth, and now, at this time, to witness to something great. A unity found in our commitment to proclaim a crucified and risen Saviour. A unity found not in all being the same, but in thankfulness for the ways that each of us are blessed by the Spirit in our lives.

A unity found in recognising that we each are blessed with different gifts. And, at its core,—a unity grounded in the love that brings us together.

AMEN