Let us remember that John Chrysostom set about reforming the church and exposing corruption among the clergy and in the Imperial Administration. "Mules bear fortunes and Christ dies of hunger at your gate," he is reputed to have cried out.

Christian communities make things happen. We forge ahead even with meager resources. We become the justice and the change we want for the greater world. And Paul reminds us today in this great introduction to his song of love in First Corinthians, that we do this together - never alone. It might matter that we need each other. Indeed we do. But more importantly, God needs us, and needs us together, shoulder to shoulder, cheek by jowl, laboring for the communion of divine grace and favor in the world.

We don't get a God who, like Superman, shields the faithful from our vulnerability or swoops in to fly us out of harm's way. Nor do we get a God who deliberately shakes the earth and wields indiscriminate death like the angry spirits of old. Instead, we get our God in Christ, who embraces our suffering, who brings water to the thirsty and food to the hungry and calls us to do likewise; who blazes trails through our devastations to bring us the balm of compassion, who weeps with us on the streets of death and shows up even at our feasts when the wine has run out.

The power of Christ's and our shared baptism is not something we are ultimately in control of. We can only tell story about it, sit in awe of it, reflect on it, act on it. But to talk about the rush of the Spirit in our hearts and its unpredictable ways is like trying to catch the wind.