A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on May 29, 2016.
The first in a sermon series on The Fruit of the Spirit.

Adapted from a previous sermon series at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kansas 
and inspired and using ideas and content from the Rev. Chris B. Herring
preached at Westminster Presbyterian Church of Saint Louis. Original citation lost.

1 John 4:7-19
and Galatians 5:16-23

Our family doesn’t always do a good job keeping a family calendar.

We have one. Its up on the wall in the family office.
But it is a 2015 calendar, and I think it still is on December.
That might tell you something about the life of parents these days.

Maybe its because we’re more technologically saturated.
Brook and I keep our calendars on our phones and computers.
The kids keep their calendars, such as they are,
in their heads:
When is the next play date?
When do the pools open for the summer?
And they trust the big stuff, such as it is, to us.

Kids keep a different rhythm.
Particularly during the summer.

And in a way, so do we in the Church.

Today we’ve moved everything back to Ordinary time.
After the season of Lent, Easter Day and the SEASON of Easter,
after the celebration of Pentecost and then Trinity Sunday last week,
we’re now in a new season, stretching all the way to November.
Ordinary time.

The church keeps time, as you know.
It does so a bit differently than the secular world,
and it thinks that the rhythms of the year are theologically significant.
And so the white and the red paraments, for Easter and for Pentecost,
here on the pulpit and on the communion table,
are now the familiar Green of the Ordinary season.

We sometimes get confused by that name, Ordinary.
Its not that the other days are extra-ordinary,
and that these days are, by comparison, plain.

Its that these days in between our grand celebrations of Easter and Christmas,
our preparation during Lent and Advent,
these days are Ordered days, following God’s time.
They are Ordered, and therefore Ordinary.

That’s the intent, at least.

These are the days where some of the richest parts of God’s story can be told
where we can explore in depth some of those other elements of our faith
that make up who we are. [Read more…]