Proclaiming Good News: Week 2 of Ordinary Time Daybook
Look: High and Lifted Up, 2020, Phyllis Stephens - Source | HT
Listen: Born to Preach the Gospel, Ashley Cleveland - Lyrics | Spotify | YouTube
I made us a new playlist! Ordinary Time, pt. 1: World and Church
Read: Genesis 3:1-21; Psalm 130; 2 Corinthians 4:13-18; Mark 3:20-35
Readings for the rest of the week from Living the Christian Year*: Psalm 96; Isaiah 52:7-10; Luke 9:1-6; Acts 3:1-4:22; Acts 17:16-33
(If you’d prefer to keep tracking with the Daily Office Lectionary from the 1979 BCP, you can find those references here.)
Pray: Book of Common Prayer, Collect for the Second Week After Pentecost
Grant, O Lord, that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by your providence, that your Church may joyfully serve you in quiet confidence and godly peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Do: For the next seven weeks, we’ll consider how we embody God’s love in the world and the church.
Pray for awareness, courage, and joy in proclaiming the gospel! Who can you pray for this week, that God would bring them healing or open their heart to the gospel? With whom can you begin a spiritual conversation this week, where you might have a chance to listen to their experiences with faith and to share your own experience following Jesus?
Register for one, two, or all three virtual mini-retreats I’m hosting during Ordinary Time. Watch your email this week for more details!
How to stay in the Church and the World: Thursday, July 1, 11:30 am - 1:30 pm
How to view Neighbors and Myself with sacramental eyes (TBA)
Called to Work and Rest (TBA
Ordinary Time is the longest season in the Church calendar. Some churches refer to these weeks as “weeks after Pentecost” beginning with the first Sunday after Pentecost also known as Trinity Sunday. Other churches refer to this time on the calendar as “weeks of Ordinary Time” (as in, “Today is Tuesday, the eleventh of September in the twenty-eighth week of Ordinary Time”). There are a few more variations, but I’ve found it more fruitful to worry less about what to call these weeks between Pentecost and Advent, and instead to focus and become more deeply formed in the theology of the church’s intentions. What does it mean that half of our calendar is left open to the ordinary? What does it tell us about the God who created and gives purpose to our lives?
One way I do this is to consider the parts of Christ’s life that the Scriptures tell us almost nothing about. Between his newborn and toddler days which were spent in various locations of the earth, as his parents sought refuge from Herod to the beginning of his more formal ministry marked by his baptism in the Jordan River we know only a few sparse details. You could say this was the Ordinary Time of Christ’s life. The years we can patch together a few details of work and worship made up the vast majority of his days on earth. Each liturgical cycle, we reenact that reality in the church’s calendar with days, weeks, and months of ordinary time.
If the historic liturgical calendar teaches us to number our days to gain a heart of wisdom, there must be a lot of wisdom to be gained in our regular, working, resting, and worshipping lives. This is the model Christ seemed to have lived, and the church invites us to embrace the same pathway.
*During Ordinary Time this year, I’ll be sharing readings from the excellent devotional guide, Living the Christain Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God by Bobby Gross. While it’s not necessary to purchase the book to follow along with us, it’s an excellent resource we’ve dog-eared so often the pages are falling out of our copy!