The Strong Season of Ordinary Time (Luke 4:1-2, 13)

As the church settles into ordinary time after a long stretch of Advent, Lent, and Eastertide, Pastor Margot Ann Perez-Greene turns to a shortened version of Jesus's wilderness temptation, skipping past the specific tests to sit with what comes before and after them. Weaving in the story behind the 1949 gospel hit "It Is No Secret" and the witness of gospel singers Joey and Rory facing terminal illness, she makes the case that testing isn't a detour from faith but a given, and that the only way through it is the same way Jesus met it: saturated in scripture, not self-reliance. It's a sermon about what surfaces in us under pressure, and why knowing what's true in advance matters so much when it does. Sermon date: June 7, 2026