Words of Welcome

1 Corinthians 12:1-11 Last week, in our reading from the Gospel of Luke, John the Baptist told the crowd that he baptized with water, but another would come baptizing with the Holy Spirit and Fire.  When Luke moves to Jesus’ baptism, he leaves us with the impression that Jesus, upon the Spirit falls in the form of a dove, is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and Fire. In Luke’s second volume, the Book of Acts, Jesus gathers the disciples together and tells them to wait until the Spirit falls on them, because the Spirit will empower them to proclaim the good news of God’s realm to the ends of the earth.  Then, as story the moves to the day of Pentecost, the Spirit falls on the entire community and they begin to proclaim the good news of Jesus in languages they’d never learned, and as a result God was glorified and the Age of the Spirit had begun. But what does this Age of the Spirit look like and what does it mean for us?   In today’s readi...