‘In praise of the Holy Spirit’

Andrew Collis
Ordinary Sunday 10, Year B
Psalm 130; Mark 3:20-35

What Jesus says today about the Holy Spirit and about inclusivity/family can help us with our table talk about church repairs and future directions.

The Holy Spirit is active, Jesus says (responding to accusation and vilification), in ministries among the most vulnerable. And these ministries reconfigure family.

In other words, we meet at tables (in whatever state of vulnerability) to welcome the Holy Spirit. And we meet as siblings … companions on a journey that will entail reconfiguration.

We give thanks (eucharisteo) for invitations to self-examination, repentance, renewal.

We give thanks (eucharisteo) for gospel freedoms – the freedom to live with and for one another. This is a freedom for family and new expressions of family.

And in the context of discussion about church repairs and future directions, we refocus commitments to un/mission, to decolonisation … to values in line with our being/becoming a congregation-community-garden on Gadigal land: humility, creativity, curiosity … flexibility, the courage to take risks, awareness, patience, openness …

With thanks for work already done … we attend to options before us … listening to one another, open to change/opportunity, collaboration/amalgamation … in praise of the Holy Spirit. Amen.