The Liturgical calendar is divided into two parts. The first half of the year we remember and celebrate the events of Jesus life on earth, from Advent to Pentecost. The second half of the year starts on Trinity Sunday and is called the long green season or Ordinary Time. The meaning of the term “ordinary” in this case is based on ordinal numbers, since we delineate the Sundays as being the first, second, third, etc. Sunday after Pentecost. However, I want us to think about the more standard definition of “ordinary.”

I was looking up this Sunday’s lectionary selections for inspiration for the Spirit Shot for this week. When I saw what the Epistle is going to be for Sunday, I just decided to put it up here. We all have unique gifts, and we need all of our gifts to be shared with each other as we work through these next few months. As often happens, the perfect scripture appears at the perfect time.

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

As our Holy Spirit community faces an important transition, I would like to first express my gratitude and thanks to Josh Condon and his family for all the contributions, sacrifices, and improvements they have made to our church and school. I have a unique perspective of serving on the Vestry both when Josh arrived and later when he departed. Under Josh’s leadership, we have greatly enhanced our church facilities, financial position, church and school relations, membership, and overall spiritual growth as a community. Even though we have lost a very capable and energetic rector, he has left us in a great place and we have solid foundation to build upon.

For what are likely obvious reasons if you read last week’s announcement, I have been thinking a lot about how to say goodbye well. How do I say how much I love you and appreciate you while also in the same breath say my family and I are leaving this wonderful church? Honestly, the only way, with all sincerity, is that I really do believe this is what God is calling us into. That is not to say that God is negating anything about our time together, but I believe it is more an honoring of all we have shared.

The shape of an egg is unmistakable even as simple as it is. This means that all sorts of things can be called “eggs” even if they have no yolk and no capacity to form and deliver new life. The Easter Eggs our little ones will hunt on Sunday have a hard plastic shell filled with sugary goodness. The mini chocolate eggs I keep hidden in my desk drawer have a hard candy shell with the best possible filling (in my humble opinion). There are famous eggs like those of the Fabergé variety and simple eggs we pull out of our garage for decoration every year. The only thing these all have in common is their shape.

This Sunday we will enter into the accounts and drama of the most important week of our liturgical calendar, Holy Week. As I preached on Sunday, we find great depths in the tension of two seemingly contrary things coming together to convey intrinsic truths. I quoted this from Francis Spufford’s article, “Where’s the next brick?” found on the Mockingbird site, “God the creator of all things… came closest to us in paradoxes. Wisdom, in foolishness; strength, in weakness; sovereignty over the immense empire of matter, in helpless self-sacrifice, in a choking man brought to death by a shrugging government.” This Sunday will offer us the most powerful example of such paradoxes as we gather for Palm Sunday.

“What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?” - Romans 8:31-32

Dear friends, I write this to you in advance of Spring Break while we continue in the season of Lent. The verse above was cited in the Lenten devotion we are reading at Holy Spirit by Henri Nouwan (if you have not picked one up, we still have a few).

The “how much more so” type of phrase shows up in various ways and places in scripture to make the point of how valuable we are to God and how much we can be assured that God will take care of us. Another wonderful example is from Matthew 6: “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” The season of Lent is fertile with possible themes and nuances all meant to bring us closer to the hope we have in Jesus. A foundation for them all is the promise that we matter to God above all else.