Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 11, 2006

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Last Sunday we celebrated Pentecost, the day in the Christian church calendar that marks the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciple community. We have now entered into the longest season of the church year. I hate to tell you this, but this new season of the year is really boring, as church seasons go. The church year began late last November with the first Sunday of Advent. Since then we’ve had all the fireworks the church year has to offer: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter, and Pentecost. We’ve celebrated the entire life of Christ, from birth though baptism, triumph, betrayal, execution, resurrection, and ascension. Since the first Sunday of Advent the church calendar has given us special occasion after special occasion. It has kept the Boyes really hopping to keep up with the different colored flags needed to mark each of those days and seasons.

Well, the church calendar just ran out of steam. We have entered a season that lasts from now until December, 3, the next first Sunday of Advent, nearly six months away. In those six months there isn’t a single special celebration or commemoration--at least not one that pay much attention to--to break the monotony. This season doesn’t even have an interesting name. It’s called either "ordinary time" or "the Sundays after Pentecost." Boring! Ordinary time is so, well, ordinary. To give itself any identity at all, this season refers back to someone else’s big day, thus, the Sundays "after Pentecost." This season of the church year seems indeed to have little to recommend it. Even its color is dull. Ordinary time doesn’t get flaming red like Pentecost, or passionate purple like Lent, or shimmering white like Easter. It gets green. Just plain old green. Even Kermit the Frog had trouble with being green, as any Sesame Street fan can tell you. He had to talk himself into believing that it was ok to be green.

So I’ve been pondering just what this season of ordinary time is all about, and something struck me that I suppose ought to be pretty obvious. The Sundays after Pentecost are precisely about living after Pentecost. They are about living the Pentecostal life. They are about learning what it means to live in the Holy Spirit, then living into that knowledge. So as I read the Scripture passages assigned for today, I asked them a new question: Do you have anything to say about what it means to live the Pentecostal life, to live life after the coming of the Holy Spirit upon Christ’s disciples? And the Scripture readings, or at least a couple of them, answered me: Yes we do, although it will help if you expand the lectionary reading from Isaiah a bit. Let me explain.

We begin with that reading from Isaiah. It is Isaiah’s call story, perhaps the classic story in all of Scripture of God calling someone to be a prophet, that is, to be God’s voice in the world. In it, Isaiah has a vision of the throne room of God, imaged here as a great and powerful heavenly king. In the vision Isaiah undergoes a purification ritual. Then the voice of God asks: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Isaiah responds: "Here am I, send me." All in all a great call story that establishes Isaiah’s bona fides as a prophet. It tells us that part of your life after you’ve been touched by God, or after you’re received the Holy Spirit which amounts to the same thing, is being sent into the world to do God’s work.

This story is famous. A lot of us know it. It is, however, incomplete. God sends Isaiah, but when we only have this much of the story, we don’t know what it is that God is sending Isaiah to say or to do. That part of the story comes in the next five verses that the lectionary leaves out. Those verses read:

Isaiah 6:9-13 (NRSV)

And he said, "Go and say to this people:
'Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
keep looking, but do not understand.'
[10] Make the mind of this people dull,
    and stop their ears,
    and shut their eyes,
so that they may not look with their eyes,
    and listen with their ears,
and comprehend with their minds,
    and turn and be healed."
[11] Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said:
"Until cities lie waste
    without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
    and the land is utterly desolate;
[12] until the Lord sends everyone far away,
    and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.
[13] Even if a tenth part remain in it,
    it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak
    whose stump remains standing
    when it is felled."
The holy seed is its stump.

The message resulting from this vision of God’s majesty is an Israelite future of nullification, a ceasing to be in the world. The burden of the oracle is that God has given up on this beloved people and will no more protect them, but will intervene to undo them

So does the Pentecostal life mean going into the world to preach God’s judgment, God’s condemnation? I don’t think we can completely rule out the possibility that God may at times call people to do that, as at least part of the message God wants to world to hear. I think, however, that as Christians we have a different vision and a different calling. That’s what our Scripture readings told me when I asked them if they had anything to say about living the Pentecostal life. They led me straight to John 3:17. God may have sent Isaiah into the world to condemn the world, or at least the Israelite part of it. John 3:17, however, gives exactly the opposite message. It famously reads, in the more familiar King James Version: "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved." Christianity is not about God condemning the world. It is about God saving the world through Jesus Christ.

God saves the world through Jesus Christ, but like every other big Biblical claim, just what that one means isn’t as obvious as it might sound. We all probably think, or at one time in our lives thought, that it means that people are saved if they believe in Jesus Christ. Indeed, the author of the Gospel of John himself apparently understood salvation that way. See for example John 3:18, a verse that I consider so wrong that I won’t read it in church. This morning I invite you to think about God’s salvation of the world in Christ Jesus in a different way. We’re told: God sent Jesus Christ into the world to save the world. Salvation of the world is God’s purpose in sending the Son into the world in the person of Jesus Christ, and God’s purpose will not be thwarted. If God intended to save the world, then the world is saved. Period. The Apostle Paul at least on occasion said the same thing. He said: "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself...." 2 Corinthians 5:19 In Christ the whole world is indeed reconciled to God. Every week here I tell you to believe the Good News: In Christ Jesus we are forgiven. That’s just another way of saying the same thing. In Christ Jesus the world is saved. Our problem isn’t that we aren’t saved, it’s that we are but don’t know it and don’t know what it means.

The season of ordinary time is a season for us to focus on what it means that we and the world are in fact saved, that we are forgiven and reconciled to God. It is a time for us to deepen our understanding of our salvation and to live into that deeper understanding. And it is a time for us to answer God’s call as Isaiah did. God asks: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" In this ordinary green season we answer: "Here we are. Send us." Only where Isaiah brought God’s word of condemnation, we bring God’s word of salvation for the whole world.

What does it mean for us to deepen our understanding of our salvation and to live more fully into it? The answer to that question probably differs for each one of us. It depends on what it is we believe separates us from God. If we believe that our sin separates us, then the season of ordinary time is for grasping God’s forgiveness of sin in Christ Jesus and practicing seeing ourselves not as wretched sinners but as beloved, forgiven children of God. If we believe that our lives are without meaning, ordinary time is for remembering that God’s love gives meaning to every human life and that we can find that meaning and live into it by serving others. If we believe that we are alone in a cold and uncaring universe, then ordinary time is for remembering God’s eternal presence with us and with all people. It is a time for prayer and for finding God’s loving embrace in the community of faith and in retreat time devoted simply to being in the presence of God. If we are afraid, ordinary time is for overcoming our fear by praying our way into trust in God’s unfailing care.

What does it mean for us to bring the world the word of God’s salvation? It means reaching out to all who are lost, all who are hurting, all who are alone. It means feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoner and the shut-in. But it means more than those acts of charity. It means speaking truth to power and calling our nation and the world to turn from its sinful ways of violence and oppression. It means fighting oppression and discrimination wherever we find them; and, of course, it means doing so creatively, courageously, and always nonviolently.

Earlier I put down the color green, but now it’s time to tell you that green is the color of ordinary time for a reason. The green of ordinary time symbolizes growth. What all of these things that I’ve mentioned come down to is growing in the Christian faith. Ordinary time is a time of study. It is a time of prayer. It is a time of service. It is a time of worship, and it is a time of Christian fellowship. It is a time when can dedicate ourselves to growing in our Christian faith without the distractions of the church’s big holidays and special commemorations. It is in other words a time for living the Pentecostal life, the life of the Holy Spirit. May these next six months be for each of us a time of growth in our faith, a time of growth in the Holy Spirit. May this truly be a season for living the Pentecostal life. Amen.