First Presbyterian Church of East Hanover

In the liturgical calendar, the annual cycle of seasons and days observed in Christian churches, we now find ourselves in what is known as “Ordinary Time.” This liturgical season includes those weeks that are not included in the major seasons of the church calendar. Ordinary Time runs from after Pentecost until the season of Advent.

 

I cannot help but think that though in the church calendar we are in Ordinary Time, there is nothing normal about this time this year. “Ordinary” and “normal” have taken on new meaning, and this is a difficult reality to accept. We are in unchartered territory, on unfirm ground, on a journey with no clear end in sight.  New phrases and behaviors that months ago we didn’t even have words for, let alone a need for, are now normal. “Sheltering in place,” “social distancing,” and the need to quarantine and wear a mask are now ordinary and normal.

 

Those first disciples, when they initially heard the teachings of Jesus, must have been struck by the new normal Jesus was taking about. It must have been confusing to them when Jesus talked about how the first would be last and the last would be first and that the meek would inherit the earth. Jesus took ordinary things – bread, a fig tree, a mustard seed, salt, a vineyard, a sparrow – to help us to see ordinary things in a new way, a more inclusive, loving, just and and merciful way. It is God’s way to turn our thinking upside down, so that our lives might reflect a new normal that reveals the new normal Jesus introduced.

 

Let us use this anything but Ordinary Time to think about what important things God may be revealing to us. God’s presence and purpose are disclosed in all events and in all times. We just need to slow down and consider what God might be teaching us. Ordinary Time is a season to discover God in the daily rhythms of our lives. May we find God speaking to us a new message in this new time.