“For such a time as this.” One of the better-known verses, it is a Hebraism, whose counterpart in Greek is known as “kairos.” Compared with other verses—”to everything there is a season” (turn, turn, turn), or even “now is the time” or “now is the day”—the implication is that time is tied to events and intentions. Not so much that “all things happen for a reason,” but that the movements of God are ordered, or even patterned; they are intended not for us to make meaning of the things we call good or bad in our lives, but to convey who God is and what God is doing in our lives, and life together. Still, life according to the Holy Spirit moves us out of the patterns and away from the expected—the Son of God born in the most unlikely and undesirable places, the people of God are not the powerful and majestic, the humble and mundane become the places where our expectations of God, and the patterns we’ve known, are upturned and the chaos of life is given order through the charisma of the Holy Spirit. When it was the right time, God acted out of the ordinary. 

As Jesus says in the Gospel of John about the blind man given sight, the man was not blind to cause shame or hinder him, or punish the man or his family; instead, he was made by God blind so that “God’s works might be revealed in him.” We often take that to mean that the healing itself was the work for which the man was born—in other words, that his destiny in this world was to be healed. However, this may be an oversimplification. And it leaves us with questions whether or not blindness or ways of being, or even ailments and illnesses need healing in order for God to be at work. To heal the man would be to name him as an extraordinary person—either because he was especially blessed, or specially punished. Instead, the real revelation comes when the man goes on his way to tell the great things Jesus had done for him. God’s works make our ordinary lives extraordinary, and the things that we have together—whether they be common experiences, or perspectives born out of the features that differentiate one person’s experiences from another—are revealed to be extraordinary.

The hardest thing sometimes for us to imagine is how ordinary life is in fact, where God is working. We more often than not imagine only the miraculous—only in the things we can see or touch or sense are extraordinary—are the circumstances when God is at work. Only vacations and special projects are more worthy than mundane, daily life. But this suggests that God is at work some of the time and only with worthy subjects or worthy circumstances. But the truth of the gospel is the revelation that God not only appeared in the ordinary, but reclaimed ordinary time from our sense that some times are better than others, or some less banal, or even that some are worse. God called ordinary people, in ordinary circumstances, to extraordinary lives in the life of the Spirit. That makes every time and every life extraordinary. In John’s gospel, Nathaniel remarks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” which tells us that Jesus was born into this ordinary life in the most ordinary of places. And even the ordinary woman Mary, when Gabriel tells her “nothing is impossible for God,” all childbirth is highlighted as anything but ordinary. Life in the Spirit takes life and takes us out the ordinary.

The days extending between Pentecost and Christ the King Sundays have for a long time been referred to sometimes as “ordinary time.” It is when the church calendar has come almost full-circle and the life of the church focuses on God’s actions through the apostles. Time after Pentecost, having once been called the season of Trinity, starting on Trinity Sunday, is a time when Sunday readings from Scripture point to the culmination of the stories that name God as Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus has been raised by the Father, and ascends into heaven, but not before the Father and Son send the Holy Spirit as Jesus promised. So the question is what, now? Well, now is the acceptable time. Now is the worthy time. Now is the day. For such a time as this, we are told that all things culminate to serve the purpose or the mission of God. A particular time or season is not established only so we may have reference points to measure time, but it shows that God is working at all times, and, all times are worthy—any time is good enough for God to be working. And in this time after Pentecost—after our commemoration and celebration of the God pouring out the Holy Spirit—we a reminded that even in the most banal God shows up. The promise of God’s presence in the Holy Spirit is that the extraordinary shows up in our ordinary lives.

As Our Redeemer’s takes this summer, and many are working, taking vacations, classes, and our choir is out, nevertheless the Spirit is flowing. The order of our lives in summer can take on out-of-the-ordinary characteristics. We travel to places that are out of the way. We treat ourselves to the unexpected sunlight that has decided finally, to stay for a bit. And as we discern how the Spirit is calling us to re-form, and re-organize for the Fall, all we can say is that this is no ordinary life. Thanks to God, now is the time for the extraordinary.

-Pastor Thomas Voelp