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.