Calvary July 19, 2015

ORDINARY Rev. Dr. S. Ronald Parks

Children’s Sermon: 1 Thessalonians 5

We give thanks to God for this place where the Children of the Lord gather. We welcome of the children among us to the front of this wor- ship space to celebrate God’s Good News.

Good morning, guys! (Good morning) Wow! That was lame. Good morning, guys! (GOOD MORNING!) Good to see you this morning.

A couple of weeks ago we all celebrated the 4th of July. I happened to be at a place called Rehoboth to celebrate the 4th of July along with 100,000 of my closest friends and one of the things that we all did in the evening was we watched the fireworks display which are set off from the beach.

I happened to be in that boat right there in that photograph. That pho- tograph was taken by the newspaper reporter who was on an even big- ger boat who was further away. If you look you can see me right there, I’m the really handsome guy in the cool shirt.

One of the things we did, however, earlier that day was we all went shopping downtown in Rehoboth.

And I stopped at a store that I’ve never been in before called “Christmas Spirit.” Now, that store has been there an awful long time, but I’m never really there at a time when I think “I should go into that store.”

Now, what do you think would be in a store called “Christmas Spirit”? Go ahead (Christmas things) Christmas stuff, exactly right!

Lighted bottles and ornaments and linens and towels and everything you could possible imagine were in there that has anything to do with Christmas. But the thing that really impressed me was they had about 26 different Christmas trees, all of them theme-based.

This particular one was about music, so every musical instrument you can find an ornament for on the tree.

This one was called the locker room and because Rehoboth is relative- ly close to Baltimore and Washington it was just filled with Ravens and Redskins and the Nationals and the Orioles and all kinds of stuff.

This one was called Irish Pride, so there were shamrocks and all kinds of green ornaments.

This one is called Snow folk. Snowmen. That’s the only ornament on the tree.

The great outdoors had everything you can do outside like camping and other things.

This was Baby’s First Christmas tree. Boy was it ugly! It was like pink and white and, I don’t know. It just didn’t light me up. It wasn’t something I was really impressed by.

This one, however, all red, white and blue ornaments. It was for veter- ans, for those who have served in the military.

This one was called Paws and Claws. It had only pets and dog and cat and other kind of pet related stuff on it.

This one was called Happy Trails. Only ornaments that dealt with the old west.

This one was called Sugar & Spice…you get the theme here? There’s like a ton of trees.

Life’s a beach. Only stuff found by the ocean was on this tree.

This one’s called Ocean Edge, all different sorts of boats.

And this one was Surf’s up, only surfboards.

I was exhausted by the time I came out of that store. So much to look at, so much to see, so many pictures to take to share with you. And as I came out, you know I thought? Something is not right.

It was, after all, the 4th of July. It was 90 degrees outside. Christmas was the last thing on my mind, because you know when Christmas is?

Tell me, what date is Christmas? Go ahead, everybody say it at one. (December 25) December 25, and from the 4th of July, you know what I did? I counted the days between the 4th and Christmas.

Christmas was 173 days away. That’s 172 shopping days for the rest of you.

Now, it’s not the right time for this, I thought. And then it occurred to me, as I was standing there kind of feeling almost disgusted by the idea of thinking about Christmas and snow and presents and Christmas Eve worship in the middle of July,

it occurred to me that God has a different and special view of time, much different than you and…yes, ma’am. (Christmas trees and green, not white and pink) Christmas trees are green, not white and pink. That was exactly my thought.

God has a very special view of time and a very different view of time than the rest of us have, and Paul knows that and he wrote these words to some friends of his at Thessalonica. Here’s what he had to say:

Everyone keeps track of time. How many of you have a clock in your bedroom? Probably you have all kinds of clocks in your houses. Some people even wear clocks on their bodies. They are called watch- es. Everybody keeps track of time.

Because we all have places to go and we all have things to do and when Pastor Ron goes late with the sermon everybody’s watch comes out, because we all have places to go and we all have things to do.

But I run on God’s timetable. God has God’s own timetable.

God does what God wants when God wants.

And God knows when the right time for Pastor Ron to finish his ser- mon is.

Since God doesn’t tell us what is coming next, we have to be ready all the time because we don’t want to miss being part of whatever God is doing.

So, as we said, God has a special view of time, but here’s why.

God is eternal, which means that God doesn’t really have a concern with time. God was, God will be,

and God is here all the time, every second of your life, every moment of your parents’ life, your grandparents’, every generation that goes all the way back through history, God has been there all the time and God always will be there. That’s what eternal means.

And God has a special and different view of time, not only because God is eternal,

but because God is powerful and that’s why we don’t have any prob- lem asking God for help anytime.

Not only is God here, but God shares His power with us to deal with whatever it is that we’re facing. He empowers us all the time.

And the other reason that God is special in His way of thinking of time and looking at time is simple.

God is love. That’s the one piece of God that we understand the best, that God is love. And Jesus is the one who helped us understand ex- actly what that looks like and we know that not only is God here all the time and not only can God empower us all the time,

but God loves us all the time.

So, no matter what’s happening at any given time, whether it is De- cember 25th or July 4th, or your birthday or any other day that you can think of, no matter what’s happening at any given time,

it’s always the right time to ask God for help

and to be a part of what God is doing through that love which is eter- nal and all powerful.

Yeah, somethings not right, I thought, and then I realized

it’s me. I have the wrong way of thinking about time.

And, I thought it might be cool to get something at the Christmas Spir- it store to kind of help you think about the wrong time and the right time, so these are beach balls that say “Happy Birthday, Jesus”. Only at a place at the beach called the “Christmas Spirit” could you buy beach balls that say “Happy Birthday, Jesus” so go ahead and grab one. If I have to get another bag out, I can do that. Got enough?

Here’s some more.

Now, why did I give you these beach balls? It’s an early Christmas gift. Seriously, because we need to remember all the time how much God loves us and how God’s Son is the symbol of that love. God has a very different view of time and

it’s always the right time for us to ask for God’s help because

we always want to be a part of what God is doing in love.

Thanks for sharing in our time this morning.

Message: Ecclesiastes 3 (selected)

(VIDEO)

So, Happy Thanksgiving! There’s a reason why Thanksgiving is the most heavily travelled day of the year. It’s the one day when everyone in our country, by common consent, decides that it’s important to give thanks. But if you ask them to whom and for what, here’s where you get a lot of diversity. For people who are part of a faith community, usually the thanksgiving is directed toward God. We give thanks to God. And that’s why we refer to it as a holy-day. It is a holiday in our country when we all stop and celebrate Thanksgiv- ing, but it is a holy-day in the Christian church where we realize God’s generosity toward us and the greatest gift of all that He has shared, the gift of His Son.

It’s a holy-day, meaning that it’s a time to set aside everything else to celebrate an event of great significance. That’s what the word “holy” literally means: set aside or set apart from that which is mundane in order to remember and to give thanks for an event of great signifi- cance.

There are a lot of holidays that are part of our national culture: Thanksgiving is one of them; the 4th of July, Labor Day, Memorial Day. We have a variety of holidays that culturally we have decided to celebrate together regardless of our religious affiliation or even if we have no religious affiliation. But for Christians, holidays always come down to one thing:

All Christian holy-days recall an event of great significance in the life of (Jesus). Boy that was tentative at best!

Jesus, the Christ! And we notice that because Jesus is a Jew that there are aspects of some of the Jewish holy days that have come to be part of our understanding of Jesus’ remembrance of those days as a Jew and of our remembrance of Jesus as our Lord and Savior. And, of course, because there are different holy days in the Christian church, we all know that the traffic on Thanksgiving is heaviest because that’s the one everybody wants to be a part of and the two Christian holidays where the traffic is the heaviest in the church,

the two Christian holidays where everybody comes out are…(Easter and Christmas) The holidays of birth: the birth story of Jesus in the manger in Bethlehem and the birth of the Risen Christ who emerged from the tomb on Easter Sunday.

The story of our salvation, however, is something that we celebrate all year round. You’ll notice the first eight hymns that we sang one verse each while you were strolling around and greeting, they are all part of holy days and sacred times and they are part of what’s called “Liturgical Cycle”. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking li- turgical cycle; this is going to be a nod. But that’s because we so sel- dom think about the timing of the year as we work through the story of our salvation.

So, I thought it might be kind of fun to give you a liturgical cycle quiz, just to keep you awake, and to make you feel good about how much you know about your church and the way that worship is conducted. Now, my suggestion is that for every, there are ten questions, for every one you get wrong, just put a finger down and you might want to put your hands behind your back so that the person next to you doesn’t re- alize how many you’ve gotten right or wrong. Let’s get right to it.

The Triduum is: Father, Son and Holy Spirit Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Matthew, Mark, and Luke Water, bread and wine

The answer is: (B) Yeah, you thought it was A but it’s B. The Trinity is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I expected you 10:30 people to be far more awake than those 8:30 people. The three day period, tri-dumm, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter. You have a finger down al- ready?

Christ the King Sunday is observed on: The Sunday after Easter The Sunday after Christmas The first Sunday of The last Sunday of Liturgical Cycle

D is answer, the very last Sunday of the Christmas year is called “Christ the King Sunday.” Two fingers down?

Here’s one, I missed a word, but you probably, it won’t make much difference. Purple is the traditional liturgical color for which two seasons of the ? Thanksgiving and Advent and Lent

Easter and Christmas Trinity and Temptation.

And the correct answer is: (B) B, Advent and Lent. I’m hearing a lot of right answers, whispered, but you know, they are pretty right.

The 40 days of Lent are the remembrance of: Jesus in the wilderness Israel in the dessert The length of the flood The wise men’s journey

Answer? (A) A…excellent. That was almost a give-me, right?

Season named after the Greek word meaning “appearance” Advent Lent Epiphany Theophany

C. Theophany is not a season; it’s a word that means God shows up. Theophany. Appearance. This is the 12th day of when the wise men arrive at the manger and God appears or is manifested for the whole world to see. That’s probably more than you really cared to know. The four candles on the Advent wreath represent: Faith, hope, love and charity Hope, peace, love and joy The four Gospels Peace, grace, faith and joy

(B) B, hey! Way to get it out there! Now we’re talking.

______marks the beginning of Lent Palm Sunday Ash Wednesday Shrove Tuesday Trinity Sunday

Everybody said in unison: (B) B, excellent. You guys are rocking it now.

Which of the following is not a liturgical color? Blue Let me read them!

C! Yeah, ok, it’s C

The Last Supper is remembered on: Yeah, it’s D Last one: The longest season of the cycle is called: Lent Chiros

It’s D. You’ve never heard of ordinary time if you’ve grown up in the United Methodist Church.

Ordinary time is the designation for the period of time, now think about this, between the Monday after , which is usually May or June and the beginning of Advent, which is usually the last Sunday of November. So if you put that on this year’s calendar, everything in green is considered to be Ordinary time and everything in purple is special stuff.

You see that’s the way we often think about the cycle of the Christian year.

All those purple times, those are the things we get really excited about. This is when people come to church who may not normally come to church. You got that Thanksgiving in the week of November and, by the way, the first Sunday of Advent is the first Sunday of the Christian year, so you’ve got the four Sundays of Advent and they build to Christmas, then you have Epiphany, when the wise men come, then it takes us all the way to Ash Wednesday and Ash Wednesday gives us the season of Lent and then we get to Holy Week with Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter, then there’s East- ertide and that takes us right to Pentecost, which this year feel on the last Sunday of May. Those are all sacred and holy seasons because they recall what God has done for us in Christ. These are the seasons. Those were the hymns at the beginning of the service, which we sang, which remind us of how God has acted in human history to bring us all to new life in Christ. His birth, his foretold coming, the manifestation of Christ to the wise men, his suffering in the desert, his temptation and torment, his time on the cross following his glorious entry into the city and then after his resurrection, the coming of the Spirit, the birth- day of the church. That’s special stuff.

But then you have all these other weeks. Boring!

That’s why they call it “Ordinary Time”. Ordinary time, that period from Pentecost to Advent, however, has not been recognized by the United Methodist Church since 1937, since 40 years before it was the United Methodist Church. You know what we’ve called it for almost 80 years?

We call it Kingdomtide and there’s a very good reason for that. King- domtide is a special time of remembrance.

It recognizes that you and I have been entrusted with the task of realiz- ing God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

It recognizes that there is no such thing as “Ordinary Time” in the life of a disciple and in the ministry and in the mission of the church. Kingdomtide reminds us that Christ is working through us.

So, all of those sacred times that everybody gets really excited about, all those big stories and events in the life of Jesus, that was what God did for us, but the whole rest of the year, that’s what we’re doing for God with Christ working in us.

Since God is working both in the sacred story of our salvation in Christ and in this moment through you and me, there is no such thing as ordinary time

and there is not better passage of scripture which points out who ex- traordinary any moment can be than Ecclesiastes 3. I am going to read this passage which you’ve hear a hundred times and I want you to think for a moment about the different instances and events of life and how significant they are to you because

There is a season for everything;

the “right time” for all that happens on earth and in heaven.

Birth, your birth, the birth of a child, the birth of a grandchild. Birth

and Death. My death, your death, the death of those who are close to us, the death of those who touch us.

Planting. Putting the seeds of faith in the soil of grace and hoping something will grow.

And then harvesting. Reaping the rewards, reaping the fruits or the consequences of the things that we’ve done.

Crying. Sadness and

laughter. Joy.

And then holding on. Look at those two hands, holding on. How hard we work in the most ordinary of circumstances just to hold on.

And then how sometimes tragically unexpected it is to let go and how important it is to move on.

Keeping. Holding on and letting go talks about relationship, but keep- ing, that’s stuff. Do you have a lot of stuff? Yeah.

How about some throwing away. And by the way, the keeping and the throwing away, it’s not just physical stuff; it’s the baggage of life.

Silence.

Speaking, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a song, sometimes in a shout, sometimes we need to be quiet and sometimes we dare not be quiet or offend God with our silence.

Love; there is a time for love.

And hate. I’ve always had trouble with this one. A time for hate? God sanctions hate? I’ve come to my own conclusion about that and I’m sure you have too.

And this one too: War. There’s a time for war and everything that happens according to God’s good time. War?

And peace.

We spend our days plotting and planning

and we’re all very busy, but what are we doing?

Timing is, as they say, everything and

only God knows everything that has been and everything that shall be,

so let’s just be satisfied in the moment with what is

no matter how ordinary, mundane, this sermon sounds to you. You know, there’s a reason why there are fewer people here this week than there will be let’s say on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Because it’s the summer, it’s ordinary. I mean, let’s face it, it’s Parks. What are you going to do?

It’s just ordinary stuff, but let’s live in the moment, let’s be thankful, because that’s the only way to worship the one who’s behind and be- yond it all. And that’s what Kingdomtide is about. It recognizes that there is no off time, no down time, no ordinary time in which the life of a disciple should be thought of as being mundane and the ministry and mission of the church and the worship that it conducts and the service that it offers to the world, well, you know, it’s summer. Let’s take a few months off.

Kingdomtide recognizes that there is no ordinary servant. You’re not one and I’m not one. There is nothing ordinary about any single one of us because we are unique, because we are priceless, we are extraor- dinary. The only thing ordinary is that we are all humans, but we’re all different humans.

We are all different servants and because of that, there is no ordinary service. There is nothing you can do to share the love of Christ which is ordinary. It may be common. It may not require a whole lot of ef- fort and it may be something that other people can do, but that doesn’t make it ordinary. It doesn’t make it somehow dismissive. It doesn’t make it mundane or profane in any way. Everything that you do that glorifies God and that shares the redemptive love of Christ is extraor- dinary.

How are you able to do that? Because there are no ordinary gifts. Every single one of you, when we do the Interest Inventories or some- thing like it in the next couple of months, should have a bunch of op- portunities to indicate all the things that you can do, all the things that you are anxious and willing and able to do. That’s because there’s no down time in the church and there’s no special servant in the church. There are staff people in the church. There are people who are or- dained by the United Methodist Church in the church, but that doesn’t make them holier than you. They are no more set aside than you are.

There are no ordinary gifts and there is no ordinary act of giving. When you spend yourself, when you give yourself away, it is extraor- dinary and it should be thought of as just another way in which the kingdom is made real.

And that’s what Kingdomtide is all about. It recognizes that you and I have been entrusted with the task and the gifts for realizing God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

We believe that so strongly at Calvary that we have an actual staff po- sition that is entitled “The Director of Congregational Engagement,” the person who is tasked with the responsibility of making sure that you have a chance to serve. Since December of this year, it’s been Kristi Ondo. Prior to that, for 26 years, it was this lady. Her name is Linda Hoffman. She is sitting in the front row as I asked her to and she is now going to stand up.

So, for 26 years, up until this past October, she, for the most part, was tasked with making sure that you were aware of the ways to serve, that you were aware of the fact that you are gifted to serve with not ordi- nary gifts and that you have been given the invitation by this congrega- tion to live your life out edifying the Kingdom of God through Christ.

And when she retired last October, I invited you to share a token of your appreciation of her years of service to this congregation. Over the past few months we have, Linda and Susie Shepler and I, have looked at a whole bunch of things that we might do with the funds that have been collected.

But what we decided to do was to celebrate our role in the Kingdom. And so, these are the new paraments for Kingdomtide. The color of Kingdomtide is green

and they are given in celebration and in honor of Linda’s years of ser- vice. And it’s a good time to thank her again. (applause)

I realize you can probably see the design on it from where you are sit- ting, but if you, (laughter) she asked me after the first service “How long was I supposed to stand up?” You can sit down. If you have a chance to after the close of worship, come up and look at it. The work, the craftsmanship, in this particular design is extraordinary, but I want you to think about the symbols that are here, because they are exclu- sively intended to remind you that there is no ordinary time, no ordi- nary servant, not ordinary gifts in the Church of Jesus Christ.

The reminds us of the faith that unites us. It gives us our sin- gular identity as people in Christ as we share the cup and the loaf, the communion of our Savior.

The Crown up on the top, symbolizes the Kingdom toward which we move, the Kingdom that He began, the Kingdom that God is bringing through us.

And, of course, the Cross behind it all as the cross in the glass behind me symbolizes the sacrifice and the love that defines us.

These three things, the faith that unites us, the hope that inspires us and the love that defines us, these are the paraments for Kingdomtide, for an entire half of the year. When we are done celebrating what God has done for us, then we pick up the celebration of what we are doing for God in the name and in the love of Christ.

And that’s why in this church in in United we celebrate Kingdomtide because we recognize there is nothing ordinary about this moment, about you as a disciple and about the work that we share as the Church of Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God for the gift. Thanks be to God for the chance to serve and thanks be to God for the extraordinary people around you.

Let us present our tithes and offerings.

BENEDICTION: We are in the season of Kingdomtide which reminds us and recognizes that you and I have been entrusted with the task of realizing God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

This is no ordinary time. You are not an ordinary servant. And you do no possess ordinary gifts. Since God is working all the time, make this the time to celebrate and to serve the Lord. In His name. Amen