Scripture: Romans 13:8-12
The curriculum we’ve been talking about this morning has all sorts of things in it. Among the items that happen to be included in the material for the first few weeks is a definition of the word “sermon”, which it says comes from Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th edition. It says “sermon: any serious talk on behavior, responsibility, etc., especially a long, tedious one.” I want to thank the folks at Seasons of the Spirit for passing that valuable piece of information along. And I will now try to prove that at least some parts of that definition are wrong. I’ll let you be the judge of whether I’m successful, and which parts I prove to be wrong, if any.
Seasons of the Spirit takes its name, I’m assuming, from the fact that it is based on the various seasons of the Christian year. There is such a thing as a Christian calendar, which some of us will be more familiar with than others, depending on what churches you were raised in or have hung out in. The Christian calendar year begins with Advent, the season leading up to Christmas, then there’s the season of Epiphany which follows Christmas and leads in to the season of Lent, which leads into holy week and Easter, which leads into Pentecost. Advent begins around the first of December and Pentecost is somewhere around the first of June. After Pentecost there is this six month stretch where there are no major holidays, and this is referred to sometimes simply as the season of Pentecost, or sometimes in church jargon it is called “ordinary time”. That’s the phrase I wanted to reflect on for just a few moments this morning.
There is a sentence in the scripture from Romans that says, “Besides, you know what time it is,” but do we, I wonder. There is this structure that comes from somewhere that tells us we are smack dab in the middle of something called ordinary time. I have to say that from where I sit here in the midst of Sojourners the times do not seem very ordinary.
Two weeks from today we’ll be celebrating an anniversary—or several anniversaries—ten years since the very first meeting, seven years to the day since we were officially received in the United Church of Christ and since we installed our first pastor, Marie Ford (who will be here, by the way). I like the title we have chosen for the event, This Far By Faith. It implies that we are not celebrating some gigantic accomplishment but that this is more like a pause in the journey of a congregation that is still very much in the process of growth and change and development. It leaves open the question of exactly how far “this far” is and says in any case that we have a long ways yet to go. It reminds me that we have not settled in to doing things the way they have always been done and in many cases have not figured out how we think they ought to be done. And it reminds me that if we are true to who we are this will continue to be the case, even as we grow older as a congregation. We do not aspire to the ordinary ways of being church. At least I hold out that hope for us. It is not just that there is a flurry of activity around the 22nd that makes it feel out of the ordinary. It is the thoughts and the questions the occasion inspires in me—how far have we come and what roads do we need to travel ahead—that make me feel these are not ordinary times.
And the very next week we will be engaged in a congregational meeting at which we will be considering some proposals about the future location and direction of the congregation. We turn directly from a celebration of the past to a consideration of the future. These will not be decisions that are definitive and irrevocable, but they do propose to commit us to a process in which we will continue to ask ourselves what it is that we aspire to as a congregation. These do not feel like ordinary times to me here at Sojourners. We are still very much in a formative period as a congregation, and these are exciting times, uncertain times, but not ordinary times.
Then there is the larger context of our congregational life. This week, of course, that larger context is dominated by the September 11 commemorations coming up in the middle of the week, which may serve to remind us that we can pretend to a certain ordinariness, can go through the motions of returning to normalcy, but there are other realities still at work. We are aware as never before perhaps that the world is filled with violence and threats of violence and we are vulnerable in ways we once didn’t consider. On top of it there is much talk of our nation initiating a war effort. It may be the case that violence and threats of violence and talk of war are familiar enough to us, all too familiar, but we dare not accept it as an “ordinary” part of our world. In the midst of all the violence and talk of war, what is the role of a peacemaker? How do we live beyond fear? Again it is not so much the memory of what happened a year ago, or all the commemorations that will take place this year that make the times feel so un-ordinary. It is the unsettling questions inside me that need to be faced. These are anything but ordinary times, I say to myself.
Then again, I say back to myself, maybe it is in just such times as these that we need to reaffirm the importance of ordinary things, at least some ordinary things.
Do I know what time it is? Maybe it really is, or needs to be, ordinary time. Just because there are special events and important decisions looming large in the life of the church, does not mean we can afford to neglect the start-up of Sunday School or that we can neglect to consider what our next steps will be in confronting racial injustice, a commitment we have made to ourselves, or that we need not work constantly on building up networks of communication and support in the church. The ordinary parts of church life go on, as do the ordinary parts of our public life, even while we acknowledge the losses and the continuing grief of the events of September 11 and continue to struggle with their significance. It’s important not to let unusual events distract us from going about the business of being who we need to be day in and day out, whether we’re talking about our personal lives or our church life. It’s important not to be determined by what is temporarily the headline news, the event of the day. And so it’s important to have a day when we lift up the work of Sunday School, to remind ourselves that there are not-so-glamorous, ongoing parts of church life that merit our attention and our investment.
But maybe ordinary is not what we’re after either. Maybe ordinary is not the best way to think about things. Maybe it’s not so much that we need to affirm the ordinary as to transform it into something extra-ordinary. Maybe the only thing that makes something ordinary is our attitude toward it.
If, on the other hand, we see God’s presence in the people around us, in the events around us, in the various things that claim our care and attention, then nothing would be ordinary. There is no such thing as ordinary if God is in it.
And I do believe God is in it—Christian education, for instance. Not in some vague general way. Not because that sounds like something we’re supposed to say in church. But precisely when Christian education is not just something we do because it’s something churches are supposed to do, God will be in it. God will be in it when we ask ourselves what resources our children will need to be seekers of justice, what resources our children will need to be peacemakers, what resources our children will need to be soulful when there are so many encouragements to be soulless. When we begin to approach Christian education with questions like these, then it ceases to be something that is ordinary. God will be in it.
And of course those are questions not just for our children but for ourselves. What resources do we need, what callings do we hear, to be seekers of justice, to be peacemakers, to be soulful, to be lovers of our neighbors. If we are faithful in bringing these questions to our worship time, our celebration time, our decision-making time, then God will be in it, and there will be no such thing as ordinary time in the life of Sojourners.
What time is it? Maybe it is urgent time. It is an urgent time, because the need for justice is an urgent need. It’s an urgent time because the need for peacemakers is an urgent one. It’s an urgent time because the questions and hungers of the spirit are urgent ones. It’s an urgent time because love is always an urgent need, not only on the receiving end, but on the giving end. May we never settle for ordinary time, which is to say, may God always be in us and among us. Amen.
Jim Bundy
September 8, 2002