Still on Vacation...

Books conintued:

I finished Flying Colours yesterday after a quick day and a half read (I took the train to Philly and back again - there was nothing to do other than read). Great book!

It reminds me that sometimes things start off slowly and continue to build and build. This book begins slowly and doesn't really seem to go anywhere, slowly getting more and more interesting. By the midpoint, its hard to put it down.

Today I began Commadore Hornblower. The saga is almost done - three more books including the one I just started. What to read next? We'll see!

Vacation....

I'm off for the next 2 weeks, so the sermons will be on hiatus.

However....

Following the lead of my favorite priest I will give updates on the books I am reading and maybe even some of the music I am listening to. After all. Vacation is a time away and there is nothing like music and books.

Books:
I am rereading the entire Hornblower saga right now. The next book (Flying Colours) is my favorite of the series and I am plowing through another favorite (Ship of the Line) to get to it. Maybe I'll start tomorrow? If you have never read teh Horratio Hornblower novels by Forester, I highly recommend them. The Prince may be a great book for (ruthless yet competent) leadership theory, but Hornblower is a wonderful series about a man struggling in the midst of things he cannot control and doing the best he can... and doing it remarkably well.

Music:
A friend of mine who has been sick lately requested Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon to get him through his bedrest. Not a bad choice. I'm a big Floyd fan. However, I have always been a much bigger Rolling Stones fan. One of my favortie albums (ever) is Exile On Main Street. If you think you like Rock, this will be your favorite rock album.

Enough of this... I'm back to vacation!

Our Father

Sermon preached Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Year 2, Proper 6, Wednesday, Mass: Psalm 31:19-24, 2 Kings 2:1, 6-14; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

Today is the first day of summer! Do you feel different? Its kind of like asking someone on their birthday: Do you feel older? Sometimes new things don't feel new, we have to grow into them. As the summer wears on we will leave behind our cold weather clothes knowing that its unlikely to dip back to the 50s in July or August. Likewise as the year rolls on after a birthday I always get used to the fact that I am however old I am and leave behind more and more things of my youth.

As we continue reading from the Sermon on the Mount today, Jesus reminds us that life as children of our Father in heaven may not always seem so different than life in the world. We encounter the same temptations as everyone else: to be popular, to be praised, to be important in other people's eyes.

Jesus reminds us that the relationship we have with each other is founded not on a superior relationship with God - prayer and fasting are means of growing closer to God, not of growing farther away from each other - but rather our relationship with each other is built on the fact that through Christ we have become children of God, children who can truly cry out to our Father. This means that although we may not always feel that it is the case, those we might try to impress are actually our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are called not to feel superior, but to grow closer to them in the same we we grow closer to God every time we pray.

When you pray the words of the Lord's Prayer, meditate for a moment on the first words: Our Father. Through Christ God is Father of all of us and we are all not just children of God, we are not only heirs of the kingdom, we are brothers and sisters to each other in Christ.

Love your enemy...

Sermon preached on Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Year 2, Proper 6, Tuesday, Mass: Psalm 51:8-13, 1 Kings 21:17-29, Matthew 5:43-48

A good portion of what our Lord teaches can be viewed as a commentary on the Lord's Prayer. Or, from a different pespective, the Lord's prayer acts as a concise summary to everything that Jesus taught.

In Today's Gospel Jesus reminds us that we are not only called to love our neighbors, but also our enemies. The people who with hate me, insult me, offend me, rip down or destroy the things that I love; anyone that might in any way be thought of as an enemy....In addition to my family, my friends and those who agree with me Jesus reminds me I am to love all of my enemies as well.

Often I am sure that my first instict is to try to get back at my enemies, but the words of our Lord remind me that this instruction is no different than the Lord's Prayer which Christians pray whenever they gather together. We prayed it noonday prayer. We will pray it during the Mass today, and many of us will pray it several more times privately or in services throughout the day. Every time we pray the Lord's Prayer we ask our Father to forgive our trespasses and our sins, just as we forgive those who tresspass and sin against us.

At the heart of Christian faith is the revelation of God as our Father. God isn't just my friend and my companion, in fact he isn't even my Father... he is our Father. He is Father to the whole world and through Jesus we have all been made his sons and his daughters. Just as God offers the marvelous gift of creation to everyone - the good and the bad, the just and the unjust - as the sun shines down on all of us, so too we are all called to offer the love that the Spirit has filled us with to everyone regardless of whether they are our neighbors, friends, or enemies.

Today and every time you pray the words of the Lord's Prayer pray for strength not to forget those who sin against you, nor only to forgive those who sin against you, but to love those who sin against you as your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Hot & Cold

Sermon preached Monday, June 19, 2006
Year 2, Proper 6, Monday, Mass: Psalm 5:1-6, 1 Kings 21:1-16, Matthew 5:38-42

Its got to be 100 degrees in here tonight; I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do about that. Saint Mary's is too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. There are a few days where its just right, but even then, those days where I think its a perfect temperature in the church are days where others thinks its still too cool or still too hot.

It seems to me that worshipping at Saint Mary's throughout the year is like being a Christian in a world full of churches and denominations that can't agree about anything. Somebody is always too hot and complaining about it. Somebody is always too cold and grumbling about it. There are people who are always trying to adjust the temperature to suit their own desires. And of course the are people who find it hard to figure out why the weather is the only thing anyone ever talks about in church when its the worship, not the temperature that we are here for.

In the readings today we saw two responses to a disagreements. The first was to use any means necessary to win the dispute. In this case we heard how King Ahab lied about Nabboth and had him stoned, just to get his vineyard. That reminds me of a man who once demanded that the temperature be exactly as he wanted it in the church, assuming we kept it hot on purpose and not because we don't have AC. In the second we read the difficult words that Jesus offers on the subject. Turn the other cheek when someone strikes you. Give someone your coat if they want it. Go an extra mile with someone who forces you to go somehwere you don't want to go.

Its also possible to interpret these words as weakness and indifference to the reality of life. Afterall, nobody wants to get walked all over, just like nobody wants to be in a building thats 100 degrees just because a handful of people prefer it that hot. But I am not sure that's what Jesus is talking about. I beleive that he is offering us a great gift to remember that what is important to the world need not be our concern.

To return to the heat example, instead of rushing over to the thermostat every time I get uncomfortable or yelling out in the middle of the service that I'm too hot, I can do what most Christians have been doing in the church since the day it opened: set my heart firmly on Jesus. It may sound overly simplistic, but when when someone does something I don't like I find that the more I set my heart on Christ, the less important my original concerns seem to be. Ive noticed that there is always something to complain about. Always something to correct. Always something to get mad about. But I've also noticed that when I concentrate on those things I concentrate less on Jesus. I spend more time trying to figure out how to pay back the person who slapped me and less time trying to do what I can to spread the love of God to others.

Corpus Christi

Sermon preached at the Church of the Advent on Coprus Christi, 2005

“He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.”

Today is the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ: Corpus Christi. This is the day that we celebrate the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus himself. To be more specific, we celebrate Christ’s real presence among us in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. I think Christians, and especially Anglo-Catholic Christians recognize that Jesus is really present in the elements of the bread and the wine. Not just in a spiritual warm and fuzzy way, but in a way where we really do know, and feel and recognize the presence of God among us.

But far too often we as Christians and especially as Anglo-Catholics stop there. We are perfectly happy to come to Mass, partake of Christ and go home. We are sometimes even happier when we can come to Benediction, adore our Lord and then go home satisfied to have been in the presence of God. Satisfied to have entered into his courts with praise and thanksgiving. And satisfied once again to go home and leave Jesus where he belongs in church.

But the real presence of Christ in the sacrament is only the first part of what it means to talk about the Body of Christ. We too are the Body of Christ. When we are baptized we die to this world and we rise again with Christ into eternal life. We are marked not only as Christ’s own forever, but also as part of his Corporate Body forever. Christ is the Head and we, the Church, are his Body. When we eat and drink his Body and Blood at the Mass we are recognizing and partaking of the unity that we already have with Christ from our Baptism. The Eucharist isn’t a magical elixir that brings us temporary closeness to God – that would make it no different than the manna in the wilderness that maintained life. It is the most precious Body and Blood of Christ which was shed for us so that we can be children of God who have eternal life in unity with Christ, now and forever.

The fundamental identity that we have as Christians is not as sinners who occasionally get to be in God’s presence at Mass but who never manage to live up to the bar of perfection that we set for ourselves and for others. We all spend so much time trying to distinguish between sinners and saints that far too often we all fail to see that we all are children of God and we all are one in Christ as members of his Body.

All of those walls that we ourselves build to divide us can’t separate us from the love of God in Christ and no matter how hard we try it just isn’t possible for one part of the Body to tell another part that they aren’t needed or that they are any less important than any other part. The Father’s house doesn’t have penthouses for saints and doghouses for sinners: its one house and we will all be together under one roof. The heavenly banquet that Jesus is preparing isn’t going to take place at different times for different people with different menus to suit all of our personal preferences. When Jesus feeds us, he provides more than enough food for all of us, and the food he gives is his own flesh and his own blood which doesn’t just bring us long and prosperous lives in the land of milk and honey, it brings us eternal life in unity with God.

We have a very personal, close and intimate God. He became fully human – fully God and fully man – died, rose again, and ascended to the bosom of the Father so that nothing could ever separate us and God. He abides in us when we eat his body and drink his blood just as we abide in him when we accept him as our Lord and savior. We are his Body and he is our Head.

Our job, as his Body in the world, is to spread the message of salvation that we already have in Christ by inviting everyone to be baptized into his Body just as Jesus commanded us to do before he ascended; by making sure every single person knows that he or she is welcome at our Lord’s table just as Jesus himself ate with everyone from Pharisees to tax collectors; by letting everyone know what there is more than enough to feed and satisfy us all so that will never hunger or thirst again; and by telling every single person that they don’t need to worry about reserving a room at the Father’s inn in advance. We all already have a room in is how house waiting for us. And Jesus himself isn’t only right here with us, calling us each by name, and showing us the way, he is abiding in us all today and every day. With all of us every step of the way, now and for ever.

Fool!

Sermon preached on Thursday, June 15, 2006
Year 2, Proper 5, Thursday, Mass: Psalm 65:1-5, 1 Kings 18:41-46, Matthew 5:20-26

A quick browse across the world wide web will reveal a few things about people in general. Here's one thing I noticed. We are not opposed to branding each other fools. Whatever the forum may be - political, religious, entertainment, you name it - there is a tendancy to claim that the source of our disagreements must come from the sheer stupidity of the other side.

What saddens me the most is how this way of dealing with problems or disagreements has so consumed most Christian forums, online or otherwise. If I say anything that some other Christian disagrees with, often, the response is simply that I am a fool. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm ignorant.

That may be true, I may be a fool. But in today's Gospel we are reminded by Jesus that how we interact with people who disagree with us is as important as whether or not we are sure we are right. It was the Pharisees who dealt with people who disagreed with them by calling them fools or by casting them out of the community. It was Jesus called his disciples friends and said make friends quickly with people who accuse you.

As I see it, there are two ways to try to do what Jesus is talking about. The first is to shrink the circle of friends I have to a small group that agrees with me about everything. The second is to radically alter that way I deal with people by treating everyone as if they were a lifelong friend. I work hard to make sure that disgareements do not keep me from my best friends, I can work hard to approach disagreements I have with everyone in the same way. If I go the first route - and I think the more seductive and easier route - I will find that at some point my small circle of friends has become just me. If I go the second route I will find that I constantly fall short of living up to my own expectations.

However with the help of God, a with the power of the Spirit, I will find that that gap becomes closer and closer. Pray for the power of God to fill you with the strength to love everyone as much as you love yourself, as much as you love your God. With that power the word "fool" will thankfully escape our lips far less often then the word "friend".

Salt and Light

Sermon Preached Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Year 2, Proper 5, Tuesday, Mass: Psalm 4, 1 Kings 17:7-16, Matthew 5:13-16

There is a tension in many homilies that I have heard or read about the life we are supposed to live as Christians. Often I think in an effort not to sound too preachy, sermons approach Christian living as something we are called to do, but of less importance than believing in Christ. I think the problem is in creating the tenision in the first place.

In today's Gospel our Lord speaks of his followers as salt. I've always had trouble getting my head around this image, but I think I finally see what Jesus is talking about and its much more simple than I would have imagined.

Through Christ we are not simply flavored like Christ in the way that something flavored with salt beocmes salty. Actually, we become Christ in the same was we might become salt, the flavoring agent. We are then able to flavor the world. Its really the same image as the light image. Jesus is the Light, through him we too become the light of the world. Its similar to passing a light by a candle to someone else holding a candle. Once the candle is lit, its lit and it has become a light, not simply brightened up by the other light,.

As Christians, the challenge isn't to become more salty or brighter or more Christlike. We have already become salt, become light, and put on Christ. The challenge for us is to find ways to flavor others with the salt we have become and put ourselves in a place where our light is acting as a beacon to the whole world.

Saint Barnabas

Sermon Preached on June 12, 2006 - the Feast of Saint Barnabas the Apostle (tranfered)
June 11, Barnabas the Apostle: Isaiah 42: 5-12, Psalm 112, Acts 11: 19-30; 13: 1-3, Matthew 10: 7-16

Today we celebrate the Feast of Saint Barnabas. Barnabas first appeared on the scene in the Acts of the Apostles, where he is singled out for his generocity: at his conversion to Christianity he sold a large peice of property he owned and gave the money to the church. Later, he went to Antioch and working with many different Apostles, including Paul, Mark, Simeon, and many others he converted many to Christianity. Barnabas was particularly generous with his money and his time and these gifts, combined with the gifts of the Spirit seen in the other Apostles helped to spread the Gospel to new parts of the world.

In some ways, the spread of the Gospel in the early church is like my new razor, the Gillete Fusion - it has five blades on the main razor and one blade on the back. Its awesome! The five razors each work together for a smooth and painless shave. The one razor on the back is small enough to reach places that the five can't go. Although one razor does an alright job and sometimes is necessary to go places a whole group cannot, in general, many razors working together do a fantastic job and do things that one razor could never do alone. Spreading the Gospel likewise takes the gifts of many different people. Sometimes the Spirit fills a specific individual with gifts that allow her to go places and preach in ways that others cannot. But even so, the church still needs all of her members to work in concert with each other, each bringing his or her distinct gifts to the mission of the Church.

On Saint Barnabas' day may the Spirit fill us all to go out into the world generously giving the gifts we have been blessed with to others. Let the Spirit also strengthen the bonds of our common Christianity so that we can work together and spread the Gospel in more ways to more people.

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit

Sermon Preached Trinity Sunday Evensong- Year 2 June 11, 2006
Year 2, Trinity Sunday, Evening Prayer: Ecclesiasticus 43:1-12, 27-33, Revelation 19:4-16,
Ephesians 3:14-21

It’s a trend in parts of the church to avoid the actual names of the Trinity. If you visit 10 churches across the city, there’s a good chance you’ll hear about somebody called the “source” and you will get blessed in the name of a bunch of descriptive nouns. Are descriptions an accurate way to talk about God?

A popular and Biblically accurate way of talking about God is as creator. The author of our first reading from Ecclesiasticus marvels how the wonders of the universe, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the rainbow all show the glory of God, yet his greatest praises of God are in noting that these things fall hopelessly short of actually describing God.

God is the creator. I like large cuts of prime steak. These things are both true. But, if you referred to me as that priest who likes steak you wouldn’t be saying much about me, so too if I refer to God only by a handful of attributes I wouldn’t be saying much about God.

There is this great show hosted by Carl Sagan called Nova that explores the marvels of the universe. Almost every episode Carl Sagan notes that there billions and billions of something in the universe: stars, planets, solar systems. These things are attributes of the universe, but they hardly describe it.

There are billions and billions of ways to speak about God, and to be perfectly honest, God only knows which of those is accurate and none of these descriptions actually attain God. Through the name of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit we know God as both infinitely personal and infinitely incomprehendable.

Saint Augustine concluded his book aptly titled “On the Trinity”, with a prayer to God: A wise man, in that book we name Ecclesiasticus spoke thus concerning thee: “We speak many things, and yet attain not: and the sum of our words is: ‘He is the all.’” When therefore we shall have attained to thee, all those many things which we speak, and attain not, shall cease: one shalt thou abide, all things in all; one shall we name thee without end, praising thee with one single voice, we ourselves made also one in thee. O Lord, one God, God the Trinity, whatsoever I have said in these books that comes of thy prompting, may thy people acknowledge it: for what I have said that comes only of myself, I ask of thee and of thy people pardon. Amen.

There is nothing wrong with descriptions of God, but my starting point when I name God is as he was revealed by Jesus to his followers: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – I don’t start with obvious and often unhelpful descriptions but begin with a God with whom I have a personal relationship.

When I name God as my Father I name myself as one of his children. When we name God as our Father we name ourselves as children of God.

Just as Jesus was baptized and named Son of God, so too we are baptized, named a son or daughter of God, and name ourselves and each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Just as Jesus died and rose from the dead, so we as children of God can have faith that we will rise to eternal life as well. Just as Jesus ascended to his Father’s house, so too we can have faith that we will all have room prepared for us in our Father’s house.

By naming God as Spirit, we name the Spirit who descended on Jesus at his Baptism and filled the apostles and gave them power to preach the Gospel to all nations, as the same Spirit who descended upon us at our Baptism and works in us to spread the love of God to the world.

This personal relationship comes from the fact that God is Father, Son and Spirit and it is dramatically different from the world where people often don’t treat each other like fellow human beings, let alone like loved ones. This relationship with God and each other can’t be gleaned from marveling at the sun, moon, and stars or even the rainbow. It can only be revealed by God himself: Jesus Christ.

We praise God as Father, Son, and Spirit every day. But it is today that we stop for a moment to truly appreciate the gift that Jesus has given us by revealing God as more than our creator, more than our redeemer, more than any descriptive word can possibly say about God. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Saint Boniface

Sermon Preacher on Saint Boniface Day, Monday, June 5, 2006
Year 2, Proper 4, Monday, Mass: Psalm 91:1-7; 2 Peter 1:2-7; Mark 12:1-12

Today we celebrate the feast day of Saint Boniface. Boniface lived about 1300 years ago. He was a monk in England who wanted to do missionary work. He went to the area now known as the Netherlands and was not very successful. After a trip to Rome, he was sent to Germany. There he was a fantastic missionary. He built up communities and churches. He was so successful, that he was made bishop and eventually archbishop and finally was given a permanaent see in Mainze. As great a missionary as he was, he was an even better Bishop and the work he did for the church as a Bishop helped set the course of Christian history for hundreds of years. After he retired he returned to the area now known as the Netherlands to continue mission work. There he was martyred by pagans.

Sometimes, the Spirit calls us to do things that we might not expect to do or even things that we don't really want to do. Boniface always wanted to be a missionary in the Netherlands, but the Spirit called him to Germany. The Spirit even called him to be a bishop instead of a travelling missioner.

The Spirit calls each of us in different ways. Sometimes it calls us to do things that are unexpected. Listen to the Spirit and open your heart to his guidance. Often when we are doing God's work in the world it is not what we expected to be doing. What is the Spirit calling you to do?

Deep Concerns!

Sermon preached on June 3, 2006, Easter 7, Saturday:
(Acts 28:16-20, 30-31, Psalm 11:4-8, John 21:20-25)

Being a priest means getting fun mail and email fairly often. A good amount of the email or snail mail that I receieve seeks to address some deep concern the writer has for the church I am working at (Saint Mary the Virgin in Times Square). Let me give you two examples.

Recently I recieved a letter going on about how aweful we were because we are a Roman Catholic church (actually, we are not; we are an Episcopal Church) and how the Roman Church has been unbiblical since the Emperor Constantine introduced all sorts of Pagan practices into the church, such as Sunday worship (actually he didn't do that, the disciples did that, its in John, Paul, and Acts among other NT places), how we worship saints and statues (actually we don't, all of our prayers are addressed to God), and how none of the things we apparently did were attested to in the Bible. I've gotten numerous letters like this over the last two years and had many conversations that were very similar. Defending my parish and Western Christianity against these wild accusations and pointing out the many inacuracies in the letter would have been an exercise in futility, but I was tempted to write a brief comment about the fact that the Bible he was so sure had all the answers was inextricably tied to the Church that he hated so much. After all, the Church gave us the Bible as well as all of the traditions and customs that he finds so unbiblical.

I get many emails from people who are deeply concerned about various things as well. Usually the emails are liturgical complaints written in such a way as to just be borderline nasty (but not quite). A recent email wondered about the dating of a certain feast during the year and how we could break with tradition by celebrating it on a Sunday rather than on a Thursday. In an effort to be helpful, I replied the reasons why we do what we do. This of course initiated a barrage of emails nitpicking various things in my repsonse. Again, it would have been pointless to argue with someone who needed so badly to be right about things that he wasn't even involved in, still I was tempted.

Both of these examples, and many like them, are no different than the every day encounters all Christians have with the world. The world, be it in the church or outside, is deeply concerned with details and often we are all tempted to wade into the deep waters of deatils. Details are often important, but when you or I resort to nastiness, anger and outright hatred to ensure that the details we find important are correctly observed by everyone else, then we've got a problem. If I spend all of my time making sure I'm right and correcting the many mistakes I see in others, then I am not going to have any time to spend following Jesus, let alone any time showing others that despite all of the errors we all make, Jesus still loves us.

How are we to navigate a world (and a church) where details are important and still be disciples of Christ? One way is to set our hearts firmly on the pilrgim way. Jesus reminded Peter not to be overly concerned with the fate of the Beloved Disciple. He simply asked him to feed his sheep and follow him. By accepting the direction of the Holy Spirit and using the gifts he has given us to point others towards Jesus, we will find, I think, that we will be less concerned with what others are doing wrong and more concerned with showing the love of God to others, regardless of whether they are on our side or not. As we follow Christ, may we alwasys pray the Spirit to help us seek first the kingdom of God.

Pentecost: Gifts of the Spirit

Sermon Preached Sunday, June 4, 2006
The Day of Pentecost: Psalm 104:25-37, Acts 2:1-11, 1 Corinthians 12:4-13, John 20:19-23

Today we celebrate the work that the Church has done through the power of the Holy Spirit. We celebrate that the commission given by Christ to spread the gospel to whole world has been followed. Our work is not done, but today we celebrate this feast on the other side of the world from Jerusalem, knowing that the power of the Spirit has shown the love of God to the ends of the earth.

Pentecost isn't specifically about the giving of the Spirit, its more about being filled with the Spirit and using the gifts that the Spirit gives to go out into the world. In our first lesson from Acts we see how the disciples were filled with the Spirit and they began to preach the good news to those around them. The Acts of the Apostles narrates how the various Apostles continued to spread the Gospel accross the known world.

How did they do it? They used with the gifts that the Spirit gave them to spread Christ's Gospel. They didn't all have the same gifts and they didn't spread the Gospel in the same way. On the first Pentecost we see how the Apostles spoke to the people in many different languages. It wasn't just Saint Peter speaking in all those different languages, it was the different apostles speaking different languages to different people.

I look around at the Apostles who grace the walls of this church and think: 'how can anyone live up to that?" I don;'t know all of those languages, I don't have all of those gifts? I look on my life and wonder how often someone has said that I was letting them down in Jesus' name because I couldn't do what they asked of me. I didn't have the money they needed or the time they wanted me to spend with them. On Pentecost I am reminded that the different Apostles each had different gifts. I am also reminded that I know languages they didn't speak that day.

You and I have many gifts, but our gifts are not the same. One person might be given the gift of being the legs of Christ in the world, spreading the gospel to others. Perhaps another is given the gift of being the hands of Christ in the world, showing God's love to those around him. Perhaps anothers is being the arms of Christ, comforting those in need. Perhaps yours is being the body of Christ, showing God's presence to those who are alone in this world.

If I try to be everything for everyone, I will find that I am letting some people down. When I worry that I can't be all things for all people I remember that neither could the apostles. I think the apostles would be amazed at the various gifts that we all have. I think they would tell us to cultivate the gifts we have, learn how to use them to spread the Gospel, and find those gifts that we have but aren't using.

Today is a celebration of the work that we have all done, beginning with the Apostles and continuing today to us here in the church. All of this work has been accomplished because God has filled us all with his Spirit. Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit. Let us cultivate the gifts he has given us, and find and use gifts that we never knew we had.