What's So Extraordinary About Ordinary Time?

picture taken August 27, 2017 

on the occasion of my preaching at 

St. Peter's Scottish Episcopal Church, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis

It's Ordinary Time, a period in the Church year when there aren't any big festivals like Advent and Christmas, or Lent and Easter.  Instead, this is a time for the regular rhythms of worship and for developing or maintaining spiritual disciplines that keep us grounded in the knowledge that we are in the presence of God all the time.  As a pastor, I used to dread the approach of Ordinary Time, partly because the green stoles and paraments often wind up being a sickly color that conjures up visions of healing bruises more than growth and partly because of the well, ordinariness of it. However, I have come to value this liturgical season more as time has passed, and not just because I have a couple of vibrant stoles that triumphantly point to LIFE with a capital L!  I have come to appreciate the change of pace and the opportunity to sink more deeply into habits of prayer and meditation in the quietness of everyday life..

I now treasure the time we call ordinary, not as boring, plain vanilla ordinary, but as the time of usual spiritual growth, of quiet budding, of slow and steady turning towards fruition. To think of it that way is to regain a sense of the beauty of the most humble and yet most extraordinary of miracles: the greening of the earth, the birth of a child, the maturing of a seed into a flowering plant, the almost imperceptible transformation into the likeness and image of God as the Spirit works within.

Some churches choose to retain the red paraments of Pentecost for a few weeks into Ordinary Time as a way of focusing attention on the ongoing work of the Spirit.  I like this practice as a corrective to our tendency to neglect this mysterious Third Person of the Trinity, and using bright red is a sure-fire way to catch and hold one’s attention.  Still, I am glad that most of us do unfold our humble stoles and vestments of green, donning them week in and week out, as we remember that all of life is sacred, even the most ordinary moments in it.

In his notes on 1 Thessalonians 5:16-17, John Wesley wrote:

In everything give thanks ... This is Christian perfection. Farther than this we cannot go; and we need not stop short of it. Our Lord has purchased joy, as well as righteousness, for us. It is the very design of the gospel that, being saved from guilt, we should be happy in the love of Christ. Prayer may be said to be the breath of our spiritual life. He that lives cannot possibly cease breathing....

Thanksgiving is inseparable from true prayer: it is almost essentially connected with it. He that always prays is ever giving praise, whether in ease or pain, both for prosperity and for the greatest adversity. He blesses God for all things, looks on them as coming from him, and receives them only for his sake; not choosing nor refusing, liking nor disliking, anything, but only as it is agreeable or disagreeable to his perfect will.

I invite you to think of ways this can be an extraordinary time of spiritual growth and maturity for you through the most ordinary of things.  Take a walk, paying attention to the sunlight through the leaves.  Listen to the ocean as it roars against the sand during a thunderstorm.  Hold the hand of someone you love, marveling at the warmth of flesh against flesh.  Savor a verse or two of scripture, allowing it to comfort or challenge you, as the case may be.  Give a cup of cold water to the homeless man crouched in the doorway of the church, seeing in him the very face of Christ.  And give thanks.

Ordinary time.  It's the right time to be grateful for God's extraordinary grace and to grow in love of God and neighbor.

The Dreaded Mother's Day Holiday Approaches

This photograph, taken on my wedding day in 1989, is my favorite picture of Mama and me together, partly because I was looking my best and was about to marry the man I love, and partly because Mama was doing what she did naturally, showing how much she loved me.  The summer before she died, she told me that she wanted to be buried with a picture of me "if that wasn't being selfish."  Typically, she worried that she might be putting someone out by making a simple request for something that was meaningful to her.  When she died a few months later, the articles we placed in her casket included Dentyne chewing gum, Kleenex, an extra pair of socks for her always-cold feet, a dollar bill from her brother who jokingly wanted to prove that you CAN take it with you, pictures of Daddy, photos of my sister and her family, pictures of my husband and children, and this one of the two of us.  Seeing it squeezes my heart with a bittersweet joy that is closely akin to pain because I miss her so much. 

Mother's Day used to be a big deal to me because it was the one day we actually took time to express how much we appreciated and loved her.  Sappy, sentimental cards, fragrant roses and carnations, a long telephone call if not a visit, and a pastel sweater or bottle of perfume -- those were the coin of the realm in which we paid our tribute, and the explosion of pink roses that covered her casket was the perfect blanket for her grave on that cold November day.

I became a mother on April 12, 2001 when we adopted Sergei and Natasha in Arkhangelsk, Russia.  He was a month shy of 14; she was 8 1/2, while I never carried them in my body, as my mother did me, I carried them in my heart.  She had the fruitful experience of feeling as well as seeing her body swell with the new life that created space for itself literally in the center of her being.  She made room in her heart, her body, and her life for me to grow and learn and laugh and love.  I am forever grateful for her faith and her example but most of all for her love.

Those of us who adopt have a different, though in some ways, similar experience to those who give birth. Adopting means making room where once there was only yourself, and it means setting out on a journey to parts unknown. From the time Scott and I received the video and pictures of our daughter and knew that she was ours, and then when we discovered we could also adopt her brother, we were seized with a fearful joy. Being a mother has brought me tremendous happiness, amusement, anxiety, fear, frustration, and the most profound sense of the ways that God mothers and loves all of us.  And there is a part of me that is pleased that I can look forward to texts and calls from my two "little monsters" this Sunday, but with Mother's Day approaching, I have to say that I miss my mother, dead these 7 1/2 years, more than tongue can tell.

John Wesley was especially close to his mother Susanna, and her death left a profound void in his heart and life.  She had been his spiritual adviser, his critic and defender, and his rock and support in the tumult of the early days of the Methodist revival just as she had been from his birth.  Unlike me, he was somehow able to preach and officiate at his mother's funeral, rejoicing in her release from sorrow and pain while also grieving his own loss of her physical presence in his life.

The picture below is of a miniature sculpture that perfectly captures Wesley's grief as he leans on her tombstone.  In lifelike detail, his body expresses the sadness and resignation as he contemplates the finality of death, even as he commends her body to the earth in "sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ."  He seems to be physically as well as emotionally spent as he rests his head in his right hand and as his left hand holds his hat loosely at his side.  I think I have a glimmer of an idea of how he felt -- bereft and hurt, yet hopeful. Holding those feelings in tension, Wesley carried on with his proclamation of the good news, and so must I.  Like him, I must pause to feel the depth of mourning for the mother I relied upon, the mother who always loved me, no matter what, and I must cling to that same resurrection promise and joyful hope. And so, just as Wesley did, even  through my tears, when I remember her on Mother's Day and every day, I will say, 'Thanks be to God!

In Memory of Her/Known Only To God

When I was a sophomore in college, my psychology professor gave us an assignment in which we were required to write our own obituary.  At 19 or 20, the idea of death seemed pretty far off, even for me, the mortician's daughter, but I gave it a shot.  I don't remember everything I wrote, but I do know that it bore little resemblance to the way my life has actually turned out.  Stopping to think about how one might be remembered and what one's legacy might be is a pretty good exercise, but it isn't one that would have made much sense to most of the people of Jesus' day.

I recently read a post on growchristians.org called "Saints Don't Need To Be Heroes."  It was written to mark the feast of two lesser-known disciples, Philip and James, and the writer commented that she wished she knew something heroic about them until she realized that she already knew all she really needed to know about them -- they gave up everything in their familiar lives to follow Jesus.  Given that, it really didn't matter that the Bible doesn't tell us anything about them beyond that.  If Shakespeare was right that the world is a stage and we are merely players, it follows that not everyone is going to be the leading lady or the hero of the story.

All of which made me ponder the many biblical women of whom we know little, women who were disciples and apostles and faithful followers of the itinerant carpenter named Jesus.  Some of them have names we recognize:  Mary Magdalene, Salome, Joanna, Susanna, and Mary and Martha of Bethany. But others are simply  mentioned and never named:  the Samaritan woman at the well, the Syro-Phoenician woman who pleaded for her daughter, and the woman who anointed Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair. 

This last woman is depicted in the picture above by an artist named Ivanka Demchuk.  This woman, whose name is known only to God, knelt before Jesus and broke open a very expensive container of ointment to pour over his feet.  Her lavish, extravagant, bold gesture of love earned her the criticism and scorn of some in attendance, but the response from Jesus?  He told them that she had done a beautiful thing to prepare him for burial, and he furthermore said that whenever the gospel was told, throughout the whole world, what she had done would be told "in memory of her."  If those last words sound familiar, perhaps it is because they foreshadow the Last Supper when Jesus took bread and wine and gave them to his disciples with the commandment to re-enact this act and to do so "in remembrance of me."  And even today, this woman's prodigal offering of valuable perfume is told and remembered and celebrated, and even today, Christians gather at the table to enter into the holy mystery in memory of the One who first hosted the sacred meal.

I would like to know more.  I'd love for the bravery and faithfulness and steadfast love of these mothers in the faith to be remembered along with their names.  Heaven knows, the Church needs to know and teach and rejoice that they are just as much a part of the story as the more well-known men!  But perhaps in the end, it doesn't matter so much that we don't know the back story, that we don't have a clearer picture of them.  Perhaps in the end, it is enough to know that women provided for Jesus and the others out of their own resources, that women gave their all, breaking taboos in the process, to follow him and to proclaim the gospel throughout the earth. 

And so, today, let us give thanks for the countless women of faith whose names are known only to God, for as long as the gospel is proclaimed throughout the earth, these things will be told in memory of her, and her, and her, and her.  Alleluia and Amen!