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Of All People               Galatians 1: 11-24               June 10, 2007

Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of my favorite authors, and one of her books, No Ordinary Time, may just be the best non-fiction work I’ve ever read.  It’s about the early 1940s – the war years – and while it touches on the milestones of World War Two, the book’s real strength, as one reviewer put it, is that “one feels as if one is actually living in the White House along with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Missy, Fala (Roosevelt’s dog), and all the other interesting characters who come along, including Winston Churchill and various other dignitaries.”

If anyone had a doubt that these war years were anything but ordinary, reading this book will certainly convince that person to the contrary.

This morning is not just another Sunday.  Today, in sharp contrast to the title for Goodwin’s book, is the first Sunday in what the Church, in fact, calls “Ordinary Time.”

This season – or, I suppose you could argue, this “non-season,” begins today, the second Sunday after Pentecost, and runs clear through until “Christ the King” Sunday at the end of November.  Twenty-four Sundays in all.  Six months of relative calm before Advent, when we begin, once again, to prepare for Christmas.

Despite its name, this long stretch of time in the Church year is not intended to be boring.  Rather than meaning “common” or “mundane,” the term “ordinary” comes from the word “ordinal,” which simply means “counted time.” 

And indeed we do count the Sundays.   If you look at a Church calendar, or at your Daily Text book for that matter, you will see that the Sundays don’t have names, like they do the rest of the year.  The Sundays are simply numbered – fourth Sunday after Pentecost, fifth Sunday after Pentecost, sixth Sunday after Pentecost, etc. etc.

And, while it may not be Christmas or Easter or Pentecost, I would argue that this time of the year – the season we begin today – should be anything but ordinary.

Even a quick look at our text for this morning will, I think, drive us to that same conclusion.

The passage, taken from the opening section of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, is essentially a little autobiographical sketch.  A brief synopsis of Paul’s faith journey.

^“You have heard, no doubt,” Paul writes, “of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it.”  But now, he continues, “The one who formerly was persecuting the church is proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.”

Paul’s turnaround – his conversion from persecutor of the church to ambassador for the church – is the most famous about-face recorded in Scripture. 

It is remarkable, when you think about it, that a former Zealot, intent on destroying the early Christian movement, would not only be neutralized by God, but used by God to transform the Church from a small sect within Judaism to a faith that would spread throughout the world.

Of all the people that God could have chosen to carry out that task, he chose Paul, a dedicated antagonist. A tentmaker, who one early source suggests was “small in stature, bald headed, bowlegged, with meeting eyebrows and a slightly hooked nose.”

Hardly the kind of actor that Central Casting would choose to play the part of a hero.

It was not an easy task for Paul.  As he reveals over and over again in his writings, he remained tormented by his past.

But Paul overcame his failures and turned away from his past, always making sure that his audience knew that it was only the grace of God working in him, and not his own giftedness, that caused him to become, arguably, the most influential man in the history of the Church.

In fact, Paul was so convinced that his relationship with God through Christ had changed him that he was able to pen what were possibly his most memorable words: "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!"

So, what I would like to propose, today, on this first Sunday of “Ordinary Time,” is that we embrace the good news that God can take the most unlikely of characters and use them – use us – to accomplish remarkable things.

It doesn’t matter what we have done in the past.  For us, as was the case for Paul, “everything old has passed away; everything has become new!”

For us, through the Grace of God, Ordinary Time can be changed into Extraordinary Time.                                                                                                                                                         AMEN