Call to Worship: Psalm 19:1-2, NIV
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.

Unison Prayer
Lord, help us to praise you in these ordinary days.  Remind us that you are there in the routine and the mundane, in our daily toil and the restless hours of the night.  While we long for peak experiences, teach us the beauty of the in-between.  Amen.

Words of Assurance: Lamentations 3:22b-23a, NIV
God’s compassions never fail; they are new every morning.

The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father,
who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil;
for thine is the kingdom,
and the power,
and the glory forever.
Amen.

Opening Song: Phil Wickham, “Everyday Hallelujah”

Scripture: Psalm 23:1-3a, KJV 
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters. 
He restoreth my soul. 

Sunday Sermon

According to the Christian calendar, we are currently in the longest season of the church, which stretches from Pentecost to Advent. This season is called Ordinary Time. Due to an odd quirk of the English language, the word “ordinary” does not mean “ordinary,” but “ordered” or “numbered; the somewhat boring church name for today is the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, and this numbering system will stay in place until the 26th Sunday after Pentecost, which we will call The Day After Santaport.

Ordinary time will restart after Christmas and continue until Lent. And as much as scholars would like people to forget the modern meaning of the word “ordinary,” this tracks well with church attendance, as most people view Christianity as a religion with two special seasons, culminating in Christmas and Easter, with long stretches in-between when attendance dips. During these weeks, some people even forget it’s Sunday.

For example, one Sunday I went to Stop & Shop before church and met a parishioner who asked, “So, what are you up to today?” You should have seen their expression when I said, “You mean after church?” I got a real deer-in-the-headlights look as the person suddenly realized that a) it was Sunday, b) they should probably be in church; c) they had no intention of going to church and d) maybe they’d have to go to church now because I caught them!

In Ordinary Time, we have a lot of ordinary days. And on ordinary days, it’s easy to lose track of God. The message for today is that the ordinary does not have to be ordinary.

Ordinary things do not get much press. The shortest Gospel is Mark, which has 16 chapters. Most people could read it in an hour. It covers all three years of Jesus’ ministry. The Chosen covers everything up to the crucifixion in 40 hours, with events seemingly unfolding in real time. If you take out sleeping, that means all three years of Jesus’ teaching and healing could have taken place in three days, which means either a) Jesus did nothing for about 1000 days or b) in the middle of all the cool things, he did a lot of ordinary things.

It’s always good to have something to look forward to, but we do our lives a disservice when we live only for the Next Big Thing. It would be weird, for example, to start looking forward to Christmas right after Easter, unless you were a C & E person, and as I like to remind people, we’re here every week. In terms of our church, the Last Big Thing was UM Army, and the Next Big Thing is the Blessing of the Animals with Band and BBQ, but that doesn’t mean everything in-between is unimportant. Or to use another example, some friends of mine just celebrated their Silver Anniversary, but that doesn’t mean all the fun is over until their Golden Anniversary. Or at least we hope not!

Commercials try to make us think that everything is exciting. Wow, look at my new walk-in-shower! Wow, look at that new orange latte! Wow, this new movie looks great! Wow, here’s a pill to solve all my problems! Even one of the phone companies – it may have been Verizon – just introduced a hip-hop video with dancers to show how happy people are when they switch carriers. But normal people don’t spontaneously dance when they save money by switching to Verizon.

The commercials get one thing really wrong: most things are not this exciting. But they accidentally get one thing really right: ordinary things do have value. When we pair this realization with faith, we get gratitude.

The #1 Christian song in the country this week is “Everyday Hallelujah” by Phil Wickham. Here are the opening lyrics:

I can see You in the morning
Painting colors in the sky
I can see You in the glory
Of those starry diamond nights, in all those moments in between
I feel Your goodness over me and I just thank You
I thank You

I can feel You in my children
Wrap their arms around my neck
If I counted to a million
I’d still have a million left of what You give and I receive
I lay it all back at Your feet and I just thank You
I thank You

In the joy and in the pain
In the sun and in the rain
Every breath gonna bless Your name
Here’s my everyday hallelujah
For the love and for the grace
For the hope that’s never gonna fade away
Let my life be a life of praise
Here’s my everyday hallelujah

The song captures an important aspect of the Christian life: hallelujahs are not just for Christmas and Easter. In my last church, many of the trustees stopped coming to church because they said they couldn’t get from their cars to the sanctuary without someone bringing up a building problem, and then after church the same thing happened in reverse. So I made an announcement that on Sundays, every time someone brought up a non-emergency instead of sending an email or text to the trustees, their response was going to be “hallelujah.” This might sound crazy, but it worked; the trustees started coming back, the rest of the church started treating them like normal human beings again and there were a lot more hallelujahs.

What is an everyday hallelujah? For Phil Wickham, it’s not only sunrises and starry nights, but the moments in-between, the most important of which is spending time with his kids. A lot of my friends have kids, and as soon as they started having them, we stopped doing really exciting things. We stopped going to Six Flags or hiking or the movies, and instead I would come over, hang out with the kids, we’d make hamburgers and hot dogs and the kids would get tired at 9 and go to bed, which meant there was about 15 minutes left before the parents got tired and needed to go to bed. And every family I know has apologized for this, but to me a couple hours of games and a barbecue is absolutely an everyday hallelujah.

An everyday hallelujah is the realization that God is blessing us all the time. You may remember that during UM Army Week, it was super-hot and smoky, and I was going non-stop and didn’t have time to water my chrysanthemums, and they all died. I thought it was probably hopeless to start watering them again, but I did, and now little chrysanthemums are blooming. That’s an everyday hallelujah. I took my work team to Michael’s because one of them wanted to buy a yellow wig for Yellow Day, and we went to the section where they were supposed to be and they were all out, but then someone said there was a second place in the store where they might be, and there was one wig left, and it was a yellow one, and to Avery, the girl who was looking, this was not only an everyday hallelujah, but a yelp ~ and she couldn’t stop talking about it.

How many of you woke up today? That is an everyday hallelujah. How many of you are alive right now? That is an everyday hallelujah. How many of you look forward to Coffee Hour even though you don’t know what the snacks are going to be? That’s an everyday hallelujah. I think that in the times between the miracles and the teachings, when the disciples were just hanging out and talking, or walking between towns, or sharing meals, Jesus modeled the everyday hallelujah. You can tell in the way he spoke about salt and light and seeds and grain and sparrows and fish that he appreciated the everyday gifts. He didn’t have to perform a miracle every day when life itself was the miracle. He didn’t have to preach every day because the whole earth was the sermon.

It’s rare to read only the first part of the 23rd Psalm, but that’s what we did this morning. Nothing much happens in the beginning of the psalm, but in another sense, everything happens. For most of us, visiting a meadow and a river is not very exciting. But imagine you are a sheep. Today your shepherd has led you to a green pasture, which is an all-you-can-eat buffet. He has led you beside still waters rather than rapids or waves, so you won’t fall in and you are able to drink. This is an everyday hallelujah, or as the sheep like to call it, a baa-lelujah. This day might blend into the other days, but is no less a miracle for it. After the meal, you, the sheep, feel restored. You have received everything you need, and as a result, you are content.

Now imagine that you are a human (this should be easy!). Today God has already given you a sunrise and promised you a sunset. In-between, there will be some kind of weather, some wind, some clouds, some peeks of sun, perhaps a little rain, during the day warm but not hot, during the night cool but not cold. You have probably already eaten. If you haven’t, there’s free food down the hall. If you haven’t yet had a smile and a pleasant conversation, the chances will increase the longer you stay. The people around you are like you in all the ways that count. They either know God or are seeking God. They are trying to be decent human beings. They are fighting the good fight. They believe in goodness and grace. You belong to a community of love, and it’s bigger than this church; it stretches around the globe. How many hallelujahs is that?

In the ordinary days, in Ordinary Time, between events, when nothing special seems to be going on, in the dog days of summer, in the heat and humidity, in the thunderclouds and the rain, may we find our everyday hallelujahs. Amen.

Closing Song: Glen Hansard, “Winning Streak”

Benediction