2023 Sun June 18

Beginning on Pentecost 2, we enter the Church year known as Ordinary Time. After Easter, Jesus’s ascension into heaven, and the coming of the Holy Spirit to us at Pentecost, we accept responsibility for being and becoming Christ’s body in the world. We are called by Jesus to live in community, our lives together guided not only by the example of Jesus, but by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
 

Basically, Ordinary Time encompasses that part of the Christian year that does not fall within the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, or Easter. Ordinary Time is anything but ordinary. According to The General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, the days of Ordinary Time, especially the Sundays, “are devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects.” We continue our trek through the both the Gospels of Luke and John- through parables challenges, healings – some great stories and teachings.  

Vestments are usually green, the color of hope and growth. Green has long been associated with new life and growth. Even in Hebrew in the Old Testament, the same word for the color “green” also means “young.” The green of this season speaks to us as a reminder that it is in the midst of ordinary time that we are given the opportunity to grow. 

Ordinary Time, from the word “ordinal,” simply means counted time (First Sunday after Pentecost, etc.). we number the Sundays from here on out in order from the First Sunday after Pentecost, all the way up to the Last Sunday after Pentecost The term “ordinary time” is not used in the Prayer Book, but the season after Pentecost can be considered ordinary. 

The Church counts the thirty-three or thirty-four Sundays of Ordinary Time, inviting her children to meditate upon the whole mystery of Christ – his life, miracles and teachings – in the light of his Resurrection.

You may see Sundays referred to as “Propers”. The Propers are readings for Ordinary Time following Epiphany and Pentecost, numbered to help establish a seven day range of dates on which they can occur. Propers numbering in the Revised Common Lectionary begins with the Sixth Sunday in Epiphany, excludes Sundays in Lent through Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, and resumes the Second Sunday after Pentecost (the first Sunday after Pentecost is Trinity Sunday), usually with Proper 4. 

In some ways, it might be right to think of this time as “ordinary”, common or mundane. Because this is the usual time in the church, the time that is not marked by a constant stream of high points and low points, ups and downs, but is instead the normal, day-in, day-out life of the church. This time is a time to grapple with the nuts and bolts of our faith, not coasting on the joy and elation of Christmas, or wallowing in the penitential feel of Lent, but instead just being exactly where we are, and trying to live our faith in that moment.  

It is a reminder of the presence of God in and through the most mundane and ordinary seasons of our lives. . It is a reminder that when God came and lived among us in the person of Jesus Christ, he experienced the same ordinary reality that we all experience. And that God, in Christ, offered us the opportunity to transform the most ordinary, mundane experiences into extraordinary events infused with the presence of God. God is there, present in the midst of the ordinary, just waiting for us to recognize it.  

Only when the hustle and bustle of Advent, Easter, and Lent has calmed down can we really focus on what it means to live and grow as Christians in this ordinary time in this ordinary world. It is a time to nurture our faith with opportunities for fellowship and reflection. It is a time to feed and water our faith with chances for education and personal study. It is a time to weed and prune our faith, cutting off the parts that may be dead and leaving them behind. And we have a lot of growing to do, so God has given us most of the church year in which to do it.  

Midsummer’s Night, Celebrate Light and community-  

We pass Midsummer’s Night in June . European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice, or that take place on a day between June 21 and June 24, and the preceding evening

 The Midsummer’s night celebration began in pre -Christian times when it was believed that forces could slip between this world and the next at a time when there was more light than at any time of the year. Fires were lit to ward off the evil spirits.  

We may think of Midsummer’s Night in terms of Shakespeare’s play of the same name. Ironically, most of the play takes place in a dark forest in a wild, mysterious atmosphere, rather than in the light, in which the magical elements of Shakespeare’s plot can be played out. One of the subplots involves the brawl of the ferries, Oberon and Titania which creates a disturbance in nature.  

Midsummer’s Night is the pagan celebration of the solstice. The Compline service is the Christian celebration. It is more general and can and is said daily by many in the world.

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The June solstice occurs on Wednesday, June 21, 2023, at 10:58 A.M. EDT.

This solstice marks the official beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, occurring when Earth arrives at the point in its orbit where the North Pole is at its maximum tilt (about 23.5 degrees) toward the Sun, resulting in the longest day and shortest night of the calendar year. (By longest “day,” we mean the longest period of sunlight hours.) On the day of the June solstice, the Northern Hemisphere receives sunlight at the most direct angle of the year.

In Fredericksburg we will have 14h 50 minutes of daylight from 5:47am to 8:37pm

An advertisement in 2020 for a compline around the solstice.

Last week’s sermon’s (Jun 11) key phrase was “Press on to know the Lord.” The knowledge and love of God bring peace and a deeper knowledge and love of God and is a circular turning that promotes more of the same and our own spiritual growth.

Today’s sermon (June 18) “As we receive God’s peace, as we come to know God’s love more and more personally, we also find that our hearts fill with joy. And that is the theme of today’s sermon! Rejoice! To rejoice in God is our reason for being! “

That is our point of rejoicing for religious reasons. But there is also political freedom that intersects the religious. Today, June 19 is Juneteenth the second of three documents during the Civil War promoting freedom for black slaves – Emancipation Proclamation, Juneteenth, and the 13th Amendment. This one extended the Emancipation Proclamation to Texas. This one also must have caused rejoicing since an army came with it to enforce it. And this rejoicing is for all. The first institution that the emancipated people of Galveston established legally was a church . As Time magazine recently wrote “We should care because the very fabric of our society depends on our shared religion of inalienable rights. A celebration of freedom for any American is a celebration of the ideals that make our country what it is today.”

In honor of Juneteenth, two of our hymns on Sunday, June 18 were “We Shall Overcome” and “Go Down Moses” The bulletin contained a background of both hymns. We Shall Overcome” began as a folk song, a work song. Slaves in the fields would sing, ‘I’ll be all right someday.’ It became known in the churches. A Methodist minister, Charles Albert Tindley, published a version in 1901: “I’ll Overcome Someday.” As it spread it became a political message and one looking for eventual progress. With “Go Down Moses” slaves related their experiences under slavery to Moses and Israelites who were enslaved by the Pharaoh. It was used by Harried Tubman to communicate with fugitive enslaved people.

Juneteenth was kept alive by black populations despite the pushback. They were the fruits of their rejoicing. As historian Henry Louis Gates recounts about Juneteenth “For them, Juneteenth was, from its earliest incarnations… a past that was “usable” as an occasion for gathering lost family members, measuring progress against freedom and inculcating rising generations with the values of self-improvement and racial uplift.”

Links for Juneteenth
1. Here is Henry Louis Gates on Juneteenth

2. A recent program from PBS

Business Insider has written.."Immigrants can strengthen nations. A UK study found migrants boosted the British economy, deepened its labor force, raised wages of native workers, and boosted tax revenues.

"An influx of refugees into Denmark in the 1980s created increased competition for jobs, which encouraged native Danish workers to boost their skill sets. A German economist said immigration would quickly boost economic output in the EU (Euractiv).

"Many thriving entrepreneurs are also immigrants, such as Elon Musk of Tesla, Google’s Sergey Brin, and WhatsApp’s Jan Koum. Oh, and Steve Jobs’ dad was a Syrian immigrant."  Enterpreneur Magazine has said the same thing. Plus refugees bring their own skillset – "By bringing their unique perspectives and skill sets to a new country, refugees are more than capable of finding new ways of doing business." Many are not trying to take jobs but create jobs.

Moreover throughout the Bible there are numerous statements from the Old to the New Testament on welcoming the stranger."Deuteronomy 10: "You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." The in Hebrews 13: "Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it."

We give thanks for fathers.

We give thanks for those fathers who have striven to balance the demands of work, marriage, and children with an honest awareness of both joy and sacrifice. We give thanks for those fathers who, lacking a good model for a father, have worked to become good fathers.

We give thanks for those fathers who by their own account were not always there for their children, but who continue to offer those children, now grown, their love and support. We pray for those fathers who have been wounded by the neglect and hostility of their children.

We give thanks for those fathers who, despite divorce, have remained in their children’s lives. We give thanks for those fathers who have adopted children, and whose love and support has offered healing.

We give thanks for those fathers who, as stepfathers, freely choose the obligation of fatherhood and have earned their stepchildren’s love and respect. We give thanks for those fathers who have lost children to death, and who, in spite of their grief, continue to hold those children in their hearts.

We give thanks for those men who have no children, but cherish the next generation as if they were their own. We give thanks for those men who have ‘fathered’ us in their roles as mentors and guides.

We give thanks for those men who are about to become fathers; may they openly delight in their children. And we give thanks for those fathers who have died, but who live on in our memory and whose love continues to nurture us.

We give thanks for fathers.

Amen
 

Adapted from a prayer by Kirk Loadman-Copeland