There is a sacred rhythm to human life: lengthy stretches of ordinary, run-of-the-mill living are occasionally interrupted by extraordinary events that define us as individuals. The liturgical calendar, set up to follow the flow of kairos (God’s time) as opposed to chronos (clock time), reflects this same ebb and flow in the life of Jesus. His pattern is our pattern for living—and vice versa.
Epiphany Sunday (which happened to fall on January 6, the day of Epiphany this year) marks the end of the Christmas season for the church. We’ve now entered a liturgical season referred to as Ordinary Time,[1]which encompasses the majority of the weeks of the year (33 or 34, depending on when Easter falls in a given year). And Ordinary Time has a characteristic that, well, isn’t ordinary. Unlike other liturgical seasons such as Advent or Lent, Ordinary Time covers two different blocks of time on the calendar. We are in Ordinary Time now, and will be until Ash Wednesday (March 6). Then, we will have an approximately 14-week "interruption to the ordinary" for the seasons of Lent and Easter. These are seasons when we prepare for and experience a series of extraordinary events from the life of Jesus. We focus on the events leading to his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, followed by the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost—50 days after the resurrection. Then, after Pentecost, Ordinary Time resumes, starting on Trinity Sunday and carrying us through the summer and fall, and ending on Christ the King Sunday, the week before the first Sunday of Advent, which again is another season to prepare for the extraordinary happenings surrounding the birth of Jesus.
Can you see the pattern? Ordinary days are occasionally interrupted by extraordinary events.
It could even be argued that even special days like Easter and Pentecost are themselves ordinary days that were interrupted by extraordinary events—e.g., a time when God acts in a way heretofore unprecedented. Consider, for example, the disciples waking up on the first Easter morning. Clearly none of them expecting a miracle that Sunday morning. (This despite the fact that Jesus had told them what was going to happen before he died.) The fact is, Jesus had been crucified two days earlier, and they expected the women to finish burying him that morning, the way they did with every other dead person before him. After all, no one had ever come back from the dead before—especially not from a crucifixion. Crucifixion was Rome's final word... It was only when Mary and the others returned breathless from the tomb with news that Jesus’ body was missing that they began to realize something extraordinary had indeed taken place and that God was on the move in a new way.
Likewise the disciples gathered in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost didn’t know this would be the day the Holy Spirit came. (Even though, at his ascension, Jesus clearly told them to expect something extraordinary to happen in Jerusalem.) They were just assembling for the annual Firstfruits Festival in Jerusalem on Pentecost as they did every year. The arrival of the Spirit caught everyone present that day by surprise.
The point is, any ordinary day can become extraordinary when God is present—provided we’re paying attention.
Ordinary has a negative connation today’s world. If something or someone is ordinary, they are viewed as not good enough or not special. I don’t want my children to be just ordinary. If you aren’t extraordinary, you run the risk of being passed over for the scholarship, promotion, etc. Clearly the church fathers didn’t intend Ordinary Time to be interpreted that way. The word actually comes from the Latin words, tempus ordinarium, or “measured time.” These are, simply, the numbered weeks of the year, ordered from 1 to 33 or 34—e.g., the 4thSunday in Ordinary Time. (We could also call it Ordinal Time.)
The liturgical color for Ordinary Time is green, a color associated with life and growth. Liturgical readings explore the Gospels and Acts; they tend to focus on the teachings of Jesus and the rapid growth of the early church. Just as we cannot pinpoint when the physical growth of our children happens, so we can't predict the movement of the Holy Spirit. Much of our spiritual growth happens on ordinary days as we wake up and do “the same thing we do every day”—but always within the matrix of God with us. We often can’t see the fruit of our efforts day-by-bay, but nevertheless we persist in doing our best to live as Jesus would live if he were us—which is how author and philosopher Dallas Willard defined discipleship.
Sometimes, in the days following Christmas I feel a bit sad. As friends and family disperse, and I put decorations back into storage for another 12 months, I experience a letdown as life goes back to ordinary. But the Church calendar reminds me how important ordinary days are. Ordinary Time is a built-in opportunity for us to apply what we’ve just learned, to catch our breath before the next special thing.
Maybe our growth is a bit like that of the dormant trees outside my window today. We grow in those moments when it seems nothing special is happening on the outside—and when no one seems to be paying attention to us. We may not notice the incremental change, but it’s happening. Someone who hasn’t seen my son for a while will inevitably comment on “how much he has grown since the last time I saw him.” But I see Brady every day, so I don’t tend to notice the growth as readily—until someone else points it out to me.
During Ordinary Time we are expected to put forth the effort to grow, and to put into practice was the previous liturgical season has taught us/reminded us. As author and theologian Howard Thurman said it:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among all,
To make music in the heart.
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among all,
To make music in the heart.
Some will attend church on Christmas and choose not to return until Easter Sunday. I believe that doing so deprives us of so much. Our spiritual growth shouldn’t take a vacation now that Christmas is behind us. While there’s not an extraordinary event on the church calendar these next weeks, the ordinary day-to-day life of your local church continues. More importantly for followers of Jesus, the work of Christmas is always ongoing and each one of us is needed to that which God has uniquely called us to do.
I’ve heard it said that we’re always being shaped by someone or something. Left to our own devices we’ll tend to drift away from God toward other influences. Without regular opportunities to return our focus to God we inevitably drift from where we desire to be. When plotting a course for a trip, only a slight offset continued over a long enough time interval will result in us enduing up far from our intended destination. A similar analogy can be applied to spiritual growth. It doesn’t take long to get off course.
The good news is that every Sunday we can get that needed course-correction for our lives if we are willing to do what it takes to regularly participate in a church community. In a sense, we celebrate a mini-Easter every time we gather for worship. We have a chance to meet the Risen Lord on whatever road we are walking and be renewed to continue the journey. We support and encourage one another as we walk forward together; we remind each other that God is still with us today, laughing when we laugh and crying when we cry, and welcoming prodigals home no matter how far they have wandered. We become Christ to others, and others become Christ to us.
I think even in Ordinary Time, that’s extraordinarily good news.
[1]The term Ordinary Time came about after the Second Vatican Council in 1970. Prior to that, the Sundays after Epiphany were referred to as the “xxth Sunday after Epiphany” and likewise the Sundays after Pentecost were referred to as the “xxth Sunday after Pentecost”. The older terminology is still used in some places.
