Living life in ordinary time

by Mathew Block

My wife and I recently began renting a new home, so much of my “time off” lately has been spent unpacking boxes and trying to put the house to rights. Getting the garden in has also been a major concern. Add in preparing this issue of the magazine for press, and it means a pretty busy period as of late. It’s little wonder then that I’m looking forward to some upcoming time off to recuperate a bit and get to bed at a decent hour. It’s safe to say I’ve been counting down the days.

We tend to live life like that—looking forward to the next big event on the calendar. Maybe it’s a birthday, or the long-weekend, or some other type of holiday. These are important days for us, and so we celebrate them accordingly.

Something similar happens in the Calendar of the Church Year too. There are major events like Christmas, and Good Friday, and Easter. And we have special “seasons” (Advent and Lent) which remind us when those big events are on the way. We deck the altars with appropriate colours and put up special banners. Sometimes the celebrations are sombre—Good Friday, for example—and sometimes they’re joyful, like Easter.

But then there are seasons at church when things stay pretty much the same week after week. The altar paraments stay the same colour. The pastor wears the same stoles. One Sunday blends into another, and everything begins to look the same after a while. It can begin to feel like you’re walking on the flattest part of the prairies; there aren’t any high points or low points to speak of, and you just walk on and on in one direction. At best you get the odd tree or house to break the unending horizon—little peaks in an otherwise monotonous landscape.

One Sunday blends into another, and everything begins to look the same after a while.

Some Christians call these down-seasons in the Church Calendar “Ordinary Time”—that “season,” if you will, that comes when there are no real seasons to speak of. It’s the period on the Church Calendar we currently find ourselves in. What’s more, we’ll be in it until Advent later this year. Yes, there are some festivals that will come before then (Reformation Day, for example), but the season of Ordinary Time will go on and on until December 1.

The “ordinary” in “Ordinary Time” comes from the same root as in “ordinal numbers.” In other words, “Ordinary Time” means “counted time” (so called because we “count” the weeks from Pentecost to Advent). But you can take it another way too. It’s the time in the Church Calendar when we’re experiencing “normal” life—ordinary life, as it were. We aren’t celebrating any major festivals, we’re just living daily life in the Church.

The temptation is to think Ordinary Time in the Church is somehow less important than the big events. You see that reflected in our attendance numbers. We all know members who only seem to show up for Christmas and Easter. But in the middle of July? Not so much.

The temptation is to think Ordinary Time in the Church is somehow less important than the big events. But Ordinary Time is where real life happens!

But Ordinary Time is where real life happens! After all, each of us have more unbirthdays (to borrow a phrase from Alice in Wonderland) than birthdays. So what do you do in “ordinary” life when you’re not celebrating a holiday? You go to work. You study for classes. You eat supper. Maybe you read a book or watch a television program. You play with your kids. These aren’t earth-shattering events, but they’re part and parcel of daily life. Doing these things are important to keep you in good health, both physically and mentally.

The same is true for Christian faith. We have Ordinary Time things to do. We need to go to church regularly, to feed on God’s Word and receive His Holy Supper. We need to spend time studying the Scriptures, growing deeper in the faith. We need to go about our daily work, telling others about the good news of Jesus Christ. And we need fellowship with other Christians, to encourage and pray for one another.

And as we live out that Ordinary Time life, we look to the big events to give it all meaning. We look back to our baptismal birthdays, remembering that the Father has adopted us as His children. We look to Good Friday and see God’s judgment of sin as well as His love in sending His Son to die in our place. We look to Easter and see Christ’s triumphant resurrection and the hope it gives us even on our dark days. We look to Pentecost and remember the coming of the Holy Spirit—how He gives us power to work for God’s Kingdom here and now. These special events inspire us to make the best use of the Ordinary Time we have this side of heaven.

This issue of The Canadian Lutheran presents us with some Ordinary Time faith stories. We learn how praying the Psalms is a way of caring for our brothers and sisters in Christ. We see how one congregation is reaching out with the Gospel in their community. And we consider the future of the church, asking what exactly revival is. It’s everyday life stuff. And it’s all here for you to read—so dig in.

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Mathew Block is editor of The Canadian Lutheran.

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