Sermons

In the church calendar, the season between Easter and Lent is called Ordinary Time. There are no major holidays, and it can seem like the season stretches on and on. For children, being out of school is fun, until they start to miss their friends. Summer jobs can lose their luster. And for those working in the fields, the days can seem unending. It's easy to find God in the exciting moments, but more challenging in ordinary times. At St John Church, the children join the adults for worship services in the summer, and this year, the teenagers and elementary children have been tasked with helping fill the ordinary with moments that are a little more filled with wonder, and--dare we hope--even extraordinary. We invite you to join us on a journey, in which we see God through new eyes, and find our ordinary lives filled with a little more wonder when we look for Jesus and find him at work around us.

A lot of people see Easter as a one-day event, but like many other holidays on the church calendar, it is actually a season. This season, Eastertide, begins on Easter Sunday, marking the culmination of Lent and continues for 50 days, ending on Pentecost. There are several other church holidays that will make an appearance during Eastertide, but what most caught my attention was that unlike 40 days of Lent, this celebration is 50 days, the number of Jubilee.

In Jewish traditions, people were given six days to work, and then, on the seventh day, they were to rest. Similarly, they were to work the land for six years, and on the seventh year, they were to let it rest. But the most wonderful tradition occurred after seven sevens. Seven seven-year periods. Year fifty was the year of Jubilee. The year of new beginnings and glorious resets and second chances. Eastertide is similar. In a series of seven weeks, we rejoice in not just what God did on the cross and through the empty tomb, but the sending of the Holy Spirit to all of us on Pentecost. This is the church's Jubilee.

As we count down the days and the weeks, let us continue the celebration that begun on Easter. May we be different as a result of all that God has done and is doing, and may we remember that we have been invited to usher in new world of God's kingdom here on earth through the life of the church.