Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from May 22, 2005

“Ordinary Time”

Rev. Patricia L. Liberty

Scriptures:

Matthew 28:16-20

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

Some clever person once commented that “life is what happens while we’re making other plans”.  Think about it.  You have the entire day planned going from one thing to another, perhaps in no particular order—just having to get certain things accomplished.  Then, the phone rings.  Suddenly, you’re into Plan B.  Or you get on the highway.  Just beyond where you’re able to see, traffic is stopped dead for miles.  The nicely-timed rhythm of the day has just yielded to the ubiquitous traffic jam.  From the mundane aggravation of having an arbitrary schedule disturbed to those moments when we look back over our lives and marvel how it is that we ever ended up where we are, it’s clear that our best plans for how things are going to go just don’t always pan out. 

When I graduated from high school in 1975, I could no more imagine the turn of the century and being forty-two years old than I could imagine chartering a plane to the moon.  I wanted to be a veterinarian and have a large animal practice somewhere in Vermont taking care of sheep, cows, goats, pigs, and horses.  Approaching the twenty-fifth anniversary of my ordination gives me pause to think how different life is from what I expected as a senior in high school.  Time unfolds differently from the way we plan.  “Life is what happens while we’re making other plans.”

If we think that’s true for us, think about the first disciples:  from fisher folk and tax collectors in some obscure village in the middle of nowhere to the founders of a religious movement that has shaped the course of human history.  I doubt when they left their nets and their ledgers they had any idea of how their own lives would change and how the lives of countless millions of people they would never know would change.

The reading from Matthew’s gospel:  all those who had another plan, including us, thousands of years later, had that plan altered by an encounter with Jesus.  They and we are given new marching orders, a new purpose, a new reason to be in the world:  “Go, teach, preach, make disciples, obey.”  It’s a vocation that supersedes all others.  Whatever their plans may have been, they were now shelved for this new agenda.  Those of us, who count ourselves among those whose lives are different because of those fisher folk, are rounded up for the same reason.  It’s a whole new day and we’re about a whole new thing.

It’s interesting that these marching orders, also known as the “Great Commission”, come on the first Sunday of what is known as Ordinary Time.  From now until the first Sunday in Advent, the liturgical season is known as Ordinary Time.  Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost are past and now is the time to get down to the work of being a disciple of Jesus Christ in the world.  The celebrations are over and now it’s about getting the work done.  Whatever other plans might have been, we have something else now on the front burner.

Then it gets interesting that this text is paired with that wonderful priestly writing that talks about creation.  As God brings forth new things each and every day, there is a rhythm to the life of the world and the life of creation.  This Great Commission joins with it to make our Ordinary Time anything but ordinary. 

Sarah Dylan notes the Great Commission doesn’t stop there.  Too often, what follows is the Great Omission in the life of the church.  We’re called not just to baptize.  We’re called not to make church-goers—although, we’re glad you’re here—people who include religion as one among many respectable civic activities.  We’re called to make disciples—people who really follow Jesus as Lord.  This is the life we’re supposed to be about, even though we may have made other plans.

Ordinary Time is that season where we live our lives differently because of what has happened between last Advent and Pentecost.  The color of the season is green, implying that it’s a time of growth.  It’s called Ordinary but I think that maybe one the greatest oxymorons of our faith because time that is filled with the Risen Christ is anything but ordinary.  Perhaps, we should rename the season Extraordinary Time because what happens in these days and months as we seek to be followers of Jesus can be anything but ordinary and predictable.

Today, the new reality is that what we do matters.  Ordinary Time means now that all time is an opportunity to be Christ’s people in the world, and to take that as seriously as if our lives and the life of the world depend on it, which of course it does.  Ordinary Time is really Extraordinary Time because God comes and asks us to do simple and, yet, wonderful things that can change not only our own lives but the life of the world.

This is my stole for Ordinary Time.  It has a bit of a story that goes with it.  I’ll tell you just a part of it today.  When the fifteenth anniversary of my ordination rolled around, I sent some letters out to folks who had encouraged me in my journey.  I said, “Would you please send me a piece of fabric?”  Then I had a friend of mine make it into a stole.  Each person who sent fabric sent a little note saying why they were sending what they were sending, and offering a thought for the next leg of ministry which, at that time, I wasn’t really so sure I wanted to do anyway.  These folks were, in their own way, a wonderful witness to me about what ordinary folk can do when their lives are grounded in God. 

This little Mickey Mouse here, which hangs at about knee-level because that’s where kids usually look, belonged to a sweatshirt that was worn by my good friend Marsha.  She actually was wearing it when she died.  A year or so later, as her husband was cleaning out some of her clothes, about coincided with the time that my letter arrived.  So, he cut this little Mickey Mouse out and sent it to me with a letter.  I was able to remember something about Marsha that had slipped to the back of my mind.  She was a registered nurse and worked in the local hospital oftentimes taking care of people who were almost as sick as she was.  Yet, she did so with grace, ease and care.  She reminded people that there was no place that their journey could lead them where God would not keep them.  She witnessed to that truth as she lived out each and every one of her very ordinary-turned-extraordinary days because of her faith.

This other little piece here that keeps falling apart belonged to my friend Sheila.  It actually belonged to her father.  It’s about a hundred and ten years old which, I guess, is why it’s falling apart.  Sheila was always careful to tell me that her father wasn’t much of a churchgoer and that most of what he though about religion was far too disorganized to fit into any one belief system.  Yet everyday, as their family gathered around the dinner table, he would tell them some sort of story or anecdote or something that would help them to reflect on who they were and who they were becoming.  All of those children turned out to be incredible people whose ordinary days made extraordinary differences in the lives of the people that they met.

This piece here comes from the Reverend Doctor Marie Marshall Fortune.  Marie Fortune is a name some of you may know.  She is the one person who nationally helped to bring the crisis of clergy sexual abuse to the fore and wrote the curriculum that most churches now use as a gold standard for education and intervention.  She was my mentor in the work.  When she wrote me her note and sent this bandanna, she said it actually had belonged to her labrador retriever.  She assured me she washed it first.  After she had put her dog down, this bandanna was just sitting around but her dog was one of the companions that furthered the journey.  She said it with a prayer that she hoped I would always find people who would further my journey.  She is one of those people who, living out the ordinary days of her call, has come to do very extraordinary things.

That’s really what the life of discipleship is all about—that, each and every day, we have the opportunity and, indeed, the call and responsibility to live out our days being prepared to make other plans because we never know when God may put some wonderful opportunity in our path and call us to make a faithful response.

A colleague of mine tells a story about how his grandfather took him to the fish pond on the farm when he was a little kid.  He writes, “He told me to throw a stone into the water and to watch the circles created by the stone.  Then, he asked me to think of myself as that stone person.  He said, ‘You may create lots of splashes in your life but the waves that come from those splashes will disturb the peace of all your fellow creatures.  Remember that you are responsible for what you put in your circle and that circle will touch many other circles.  You need to live in a way that allows the good that comes from your circle to send a piece of that goodness to others.  The splash that comes from anger or jealousy will send those feelings to other circles.  You are responsible for both.’”

It was the first time I realized that each person creates the inner peace of discord that flows out into the world.  We cannot create peace if we are riddled with inner conflict, hatred, doubt, or anger.  We radiate the feelings and thoughts that we hold inside whether we speak them or not.  Whatever is splashing around inside of us is spilling out to the world creating beauty or discord with all the other circles of life.  Every day, we’re like a stone in the water and the ripples go out from our very ordinary days.  But with God at work with us and our own discipleship encouraged, who knows what extraordinary things we may accomplish for the Kingdom. 

Amen.