This Wednesday: Modern Worship Collective @ 7 pm (Dinner @ 6!)

Dear Kris,

On my last Sunday with you, I am so pleased to consider two things I love to talk about: spiritual gifts and wine. 

How fitting that on Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, the lectionary leads us to this reading on spiritual gifts. God activates varieties of gifts but they come from the same Spirit. The Rev. Dr. King and his many compatriots and collaborators were evidence of the variety of gifts put to good use. 

Mary and Jesus are a great example of the good of varying spiritual gifts, since both of them are integral to the unfolding of this, Jesus’ first miracle. Mary was paying attention and she knew just the person to help. And Jesus knew how to make the wine. 



Being so close to wine country, we could of course wax rhapsodic about wine itself, but I think of wine here as the miracle that shows who Jesus really is to the world, and the best part of all is that it happened in the midst of a significant hospitality event. This was not the miracle of Jesus on a street corner addressing the desperate need of someone to be healed (that does, of course, happen later). This was a gathering of families, and it was here that the shortage of hospitality was addressed through this partnership of mother and son. 

Join us in worship to consider spiritual gifts and miracles of hospitality.

Peace,

Laura

Join us for a reception in the Trinity Court to celebrate Pastor Laura—feel free to bring a pie to share if you'd like!

(Coffee Hour will be online via Zoom).

bit.ly/SVPCCoffeeHour

Theme for Sunday

Hospitality is not to change people but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines...The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. 

Henri J.M. Nouwen

• What are the spiritual gifts you bring to the world? When do you exercise them?

• How do you cultivate the conditions for your ministry as a vintner hopes for ideal grape-growing conditions, and how does SVPC create the conditions for its ministry in the world?

• What miracle of hospitality moves you? 

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were gentiles you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. 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.

Now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of services but the same Lord, and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of powerful deeds, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the person in charge of the banquet.” So they took it. When the person in charge tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), that person called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.