With the Second Sunday after Pentecost now behind us, we can start settling into the so-called Long Green Season. The Post-Pentecost season stretches from late Spring to the end of the Church Year, lasting between twenty-three and twenty-eight weeks. Punctuated by only a few major and minor festivals and commemorations, it begins to strike us as a long stretch of ho-hum sameness: lots of Bible passages to run through, lots of time when the church is no longer busting its collective keister getting seasonal decorations up or down, and time enough so choirs can catch their breath with no “special music” to learn.
As mentioned in an earlier blurb, Pentecost and the weeks following are difficult to pin down. First, the “meanings” of Pentecost itself are many and varied. When the Holy Spirit is on center stage, we learn very quickly not to try cramming it into a mental cage as if we could keep the Spirit under control. Like Roger and Hammerstein’s “June,” the Holy Spirit delights in “…busting out all over!” for the remainder of the church year, for the remainder of life as we know it on this terrestrial ball. That is part of what the church explores and ponders during this lengthy green time. Second, given the Holy Spirit’s tendency to blow where it will when it wishes, it is nigh on impossible to find a fitting focus or festival name for this great abundance of Spirit-drenched time on our hands.
This is the great irony of the rather “ordinary” time after Pentecost. Without the glitz of major festivals like Christmas and Easter to provide focal points for the church’s days, weeks, Sundays, and seasons, the time after Pentecost strikes us as commonplace which is to say rather ordinary. What name or title can we use which reminds us what such a diversity of topics is all about? We find ourselves in the same boat as Moses chatting with the burning bush. Moses, caught up in his ordinary work of tending a flock of sheep, is surprised by God’s startling appearance. Moses receives God’s encouragement to confront Pharoah, saying, “Let my people go!” [WOV 670]. Moses himself can hardly fathom what God is saying to him. Moses also wonders if he has the wherewithal to convince God’s people that he is to lead them into freedom. Thus he asks, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them” [Exodus 3:13]? The cryptic answer given by God is packed with meaning difficult at first to understand in English, “I am who I am” [Ex 3:14]. Bible scholars suggest that its meaning includes, “I will be what I will be.” Others conclude, “I’m happening!” – meaning that God is known by what God has done, is doing, and promises by covenant yet to complete.
God’s ordinary “…is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done,” to borrow from Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. God’s modus operandi, God’s way of being present in the ordinariness of our daily lives, is to befriend, heal, renew, enliven, forgive, bless, and grant untold blessings for us so that we can do extraordinary deeds and work in the midst of the world’s distractions, apathy, and despair. To get to know “the God of our ancestors” we discover that this is the way God ordinarily spends time with us. For this very reason the ecumenical community has come to call the various portions of the church year not marked by festivals “Ordinary Time.” The longest sweep of God’s kind of ordinariness takes up where the festival portion of the church year concludes on Trinity Sunday. A smaller, also flexible period occurs just before Ash Wednesday. Both of these periods explore what God and God’s people “ordinarily” do day in and day out, year in and year out.
We have been given all manner of clues regarding the Almighty’s tendency to upset the applecart of drudgery we assume is “ordinary.” God’s first shouts of “Tov!!!” [It is GOOD!!!] in the Creation account of Genesis will continue to echo in the banquet hall of the marriage feast of the Lamb. The prophet Isaiah reminds us of God’s ordinary desire to do the surprising, to do good, to encourage and empower us for similar action: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior… For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress [Isaiah 43:1-3; 65:17-19]. However, if the words of the venerable prophet are not sufficient for you, the author of I Peter 3:13-14 summarizes: …in accordance with [God’s] promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. 14 Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; 15 and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. How extraordinary!