Our Story, Capital "S" and the Sermon Behind it.

   Jesus was born for us.

          Jesus was baptized for us.

                   Jesus lived for us.

                        Jesus died for us.

                              Jesus arose for us.

                                    Jesus ascended for us.

                                        Jesus prayed for us.

                        CHRISTMAS TO PENTECOST

                                    Okay, Reign of Christ Sunday to Trinity Sunday...

Sermon  September 8, 2025    “Our Story, Capital S”   Rev. Peter Hofstra            Philippians 2; Acts 2

       So I have "my" theory about poetry. When you write something beginning to end, a prose piece, and essay or a story or a novel or a sermon, let it ferment for awhile, then return to it and remove all the words that can be done without, taking it to the minimum, what is left is a poem.
       Thus, Our Story, Capital S, as a poem,
Jesus was born
       Jesus was baptized
Jesus lived
Jesus died
       Jesus arose
              Jesus ascended
                      Jesus prayed,
                                    For us.
       What finally got it down to a poetic form was removing “For Us” from every line about Jesus and moving it to the end. Because this is like a poetry thing to do.  Our Story, Capital S, is reduced from nothing less than the Christian Calendar.  Christmas to Pentecost.  It is about half the year.  We are presently in the other half of the year.  You can tell that by going to the top of the order of worship.  Notice where is says the ‘16^th Sunday after Pentecost’?  It used to be called “Ordinary Time”, not in opposition to Extraordinary Time so much as the Christmas to Pentecost portion is pretty much all taken up with Seasonal weeks.  But not all.  There is some time between Epiphany and Lent that was ordinary, but now those months are the “Sundays after Epiphany”.
       But you know what?  It gets even better.  The Christian Calendar is one of three primary rolling calendars that our church has to contend with in the American culture.  Do you like that?  We “officially” start the Christian year 5 Sundays before Christmas.  The latter four are the Sundays of Advent, the one before Advent, usually the Sunday before Thanksgiving, is Christ the King/Reign of Christ.
       Then we get the Calendar Calendar.  What?  January to December.  It is the one for all the pretty photo calendars, including the one that we have in sponsorship with Gaskill Brown Funeral Homes. It is a rather arbitrary system where we tick up the year by one, using the birth of Christ as our benchmark. But it’s an approximate thing.  Because the New Year is not timed to Christmas, not even to the Winter Solstice. 
       But then there is the third calendar, the one we are living into this Sunday. Historically called ‘the School Calendar’, it is also called ‘the Program Calendar’ and so on.  It is when things “really” get going, back from summer vacation, back to school, all our programs are gearing up to begin again.  Our kids are a grade older and hopefully a little wiser.
       There is inevitable conflict between the calendars. There is an interesting invasion of the Christian Calendar into the Program Calendar, and its not even the church that’s doing it.  Every year, the consumer and retail industries try to invade a little bit closer to Labor Day with their Christmas paraphernalia. 
       There is a fourth calendar however, the seasonal calendar.  It has ‘official’ dates but also ‘practical dates’.  Summer starts ‘officially’ at the Solstice, the longest day of the year, June 20ish, winter on the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, December 20ish.  Then we have equinoxes in March and September.  But in practical terms, Summer is Memorial Day to Labor Day.  Fall is Labor Day to Christmas (for many people, for me, its more like Thanksgiving).  Winter is Christmas to Easter.  Spring is Easter to Memorial Day.
       So what do we Presbyterians do when we are trying to struggle through three calendars, our spirits telling us the Christian Calendar is most important, Uncle Sam telling us the Calendar Calendar is most important, but the realities of family life telling us THIS is the most important?  Well, WE EAT!  There is a brunch laid on downstairs that is going to be fabulous.  Well, first we pray.  First one downstairs, gather a quorum and say grace.  You don’t have to wait for pastor if you don’t want.
       It’s a new program year. And to make matters worse, the church is stuck with a couple of noobs, the talker behind the pulpit, well, at least the guy playing the piano has some skills! But on top of all of that, here at church, we have meetings and programs and worships and events and missions and outreaches and games and a sister church and a town to plan around.  Let me give you an example.
       Next Saturday, September 14, as you will see in your bulletins, we are having a memorial service for Earl Driscoll here in the church at 10am.  This is for his church family.  By divine circumstances, his ashes are being interred at his family plot up in Maine that same day.  But wait, there is more.  Our New Covenant partners in ministry here are having a drive by prayer time out in the parking lot.  When I picture a drive-by prayer, I picture Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church up in Mountainside, NJ. They have a duplicate of the statue of Mary found at the miracle center of Lourdes, France, and its set up on their arced driveway across the front of the church.  Cars can pull through for folks to ask the Mother of our Lord for her aid and intervention in prayerful veneration.  There is also a secure place to receive donations because, why not? 
       But to make it even more interesting, this is the date for the town wide Yard Sale.  According to the flyer, there is a secure process to make a donation because, why not?  And it will get you on the town wide map.  Speaking of which, if anyone gets a copy of that map, can you forward a picture to the church email?  On top of all of that, there is a Toys and Collectables show on West Park next to the Municipal Building starting at 10am as well.  Nothing about a donation however.
       I am glad that Earl’s funeral processional is not here but up in Maine.
       It’s a new program year.  Jesus has this parable about how the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  But we covered that topic more in last Sunday’s sermon.
       And that is just our present age that we have to consider. Look at Peter’s Pentecost sermon. It is a call to get out into the world and bring forth Jesus’ love. From verse 17 on, people will prophesy, have visions, dream dreams (sound like drugs to anyone?).  Verse 19 on, signs of the last days, like something lifted from the Book of Revelation.  Verse 21, anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved (and the implied responsibility applied to everyone reading this-we are witnesses of Christ to make it so!) 
       It is quite enough to juggle the calendar, to meet the needs, to be a church, without this mystical, spiritual Biblical mandate on top of all of it.  What are we to do?
       So here is our reality. We live in a broken, sinful world. We want to do what is best, but we are living witnesses of a time where the fabric of our civilization continues to unravel, that this fragile world that supports us is being beaten and battered recklessly by its inhabitants, and we human beings have no will to do what it takes to fix things on our own.  Now, maybe I am an optimist, but I believe we humans have the capacity to fix our problems, but our own self interests, read, greed, get in the way. 
       But we have hope. Enter our loving Messiah, our Lord and Savior, our Rabbi, Healer, and Friend, our Beloved Jesus.  Read from verse 22 on in Acts, and chapters from Our Story, Capital S, are being shared.  Jesus lived, Jesus died, Jesus arose, for us.  From Philippians, we affirm our faith.  Jesus was born for us.  God’s power is the driving power that has both the capacity and the will to save us from our sins and heal our brokenness.  That is what we do all this church stuff for. 
       But at the bedrock of all of this, of all our plans, all our hopes, all our dreams, all our work, planning, frustrations, warring calendars, all of it, it all begins with Our Story, yes, Capital S.
       This is where Christ the King Sunday comes in five weeks before Christmas.  Yes, Jesus was born for us, but like it says in Philippians, Jesus did not count equality with God as a thing to be grasped. The power of God was there, in Jesus, but Jesus was born for us, taking on the form of a human. (We will celebrate that on Christmas Eve).   For thirty odd years, he lived as a human until he was baptized for us (January 12).  The Holy Spirit came down upon him and he became unstoppable.  It may sound a little thin to say He lived for us, but in living, he taught, forgave, healed, he lived everything that is the life of one who is a child of God.  Our call is for each of us to be an Imitator of Christ.  Our date for that I suggest is Ash Wednesday, March 5, the day that begins a season of reflection and preparation on who we are in Jesus.  The build up to Jesus dying for us is Palm Sunday, April 13 (on my birthday this year), but the actual date is Good Friday, April 18, Jesus took the punishment for our sins, Jesus was the perfect sacrifice, Jesus made atonement for us, Jesus satisfied the perfect law of God, Jesus descended into hell and kicked down the devil’s door and WON, because Jesus arose for us, Easter, April 20 in 2025 (yes, I agree, late this year).  New life in Christ means new life for us.  Its like baptism, descending into the water, into death, only to be raised up again into the air, into new life.  Jesus ascended for us, yes, he rose up into heaven on the promise that he would return the same way, this Christian Calendar Year, it falls on Thursday, May 29.
       The conclusion of Our Story, Capital S, is on Pentecost, Sunday, June 8 this year.  Jesus prays for us.  But its also the coming of the Holy Spirit upon us.  Yes, that is the prayer.  Read John 14 about the promises we have concerning the Holy Spirit.  It is for us, what we celebrate Jesus receiving on January 12, at his own baptism.  He ascended because it is now our turn to do what Jesus did.  And for all the anarchy of warring calendars and meetings and all the rest of it.
       As I was going through the Christian Calendar as laid out in the Presbyterian Planning Calendar, a pretty good attempt to integrate these two systems, I could not help but notice that it is Trinity Sunday one week after Pentecost.  Maybe this is the growing edge of my awareness in my faith, but Trinity Sunday is not as exciting to me as Pentecost, or the rest of our Story, Capital S.  You know what it feels like?  How many people here watch the Superbowl?  How many for the game?  How many for the commercials?  If my cultural sensibilities hold, they play the Pro Bowl the week after, out in Hawaii.  Okay, nice.  Forgive my impertinence if I compare Trinity Sunday to the Pro Bowl.
       What we need hard and fast, before we do anything else, is Our Story. We got to know who we are and where we come from and what Jesus has done for us.  When we know that, we are ready to do for others. If we don’t have that, then getting it done can become more important than what we are called to do. And that would fall into the category of what the Bible calls an ‘idol’, an image, a thing that is more important to us that our God.
       It is my intention to visit these high points of Our Story, Capital S, as we enter this year (even poor Trinity Sunday). But let us remember that our Welcome Back Brunch is NOT welcoming us back to the Chaos, it is welcoming us back to the Promise we have in Our Story.
  Jesus was born for us.
       Jesus was baptized for us.
Jesus lived for us.
Jesus died for us.
       Jesus arose for us.
              Jesus ascended for us.
                      Jesus prayed for us.
       There is a world out there that does not know, does not understand, does not realize what Jesus has done for us.  May we be blessed in knowing what Jesus has done for us as let the world know that this is done for them.
Amen.