The Giving and Sending Community: Week 9 of Ordinary Time
LOOK: Kingdom of Heaven, Natalya Rusetska - Source
LISTEN: Father, Let Your Kingdom Come, The Porter’s Gate, feat. Urban Doxology, Liz Vice, and Latifah Alattas - Lyrics & Lead Sheets | Spotify | YouTube
Here’s a playlist I made for us a few years ago! Ordinary Time, pt. 1: Worship God in the World and Church
READ: 1 Kings 3:3–14; Psalm 119:121–136; Romans 8:26–34; Matthew 13:31–33, 44–50
Readings for the rest of the week*: Psalm 67; Genesis 12:1-9; Luke 10:1-20; Acts 11:19-30; 13:1-3; 2 Corinthians 8-9; Galatians 1:11-2:10
(The weekly readings during Ordinary Time are a thematic survey from the Daily Office Lectionary curated by Bobby Gross in Living the Christian Year. If you’d prefer to keep track with the Daily Office Lectionary from the 1979 BCP, you can find those passages here.)
PRAY: Book of Common Prayer, Collect for the Ninth Week After Pentecost
Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
READ: An excerpt from The Spacious Path, Part 4 (pp. 206-207)
LOVING STRANGERS
In August 2021, we celebrated my mother’s retirement. For fifty years, she served as a teacher in all kinds of settings. For the last dozen years of her career, she poured her heart and soul into her students who had arrived in her small town from all over the globe and were learning English as an additional language. She taught them to read and love language the way she taught in every context—with creativity, passion, and love.
The year before she began her job at the civic association in our hometown, an angry former student barricaded the building and killed fourteen people, including teachers.2 Still, my mom took the job because she loves language and teaching and has grown to love the image of God represented in all peoples. She learned how to teach English in every creative way possible to a classroom that spoke dozens of different languages, except English. She taught through masks, face shields, and severe back pain for the last couple of years. And her students loved her.
At her retirement dinner, she began sharing stories from her final months of work. She told us about the two women from Colombia in one of her classes who took her out for farewell margaritas (my mother’s first), which became her favorite beverage. She told us about an older couple from Korea and a woman from Turkey who gathered for dinner at my parents’ house. Mom ordered pizza, and the Muslim woman graciously removed the pepperoni and then, out of her deep gratitude, insisted on hand-washing the dinner dishes. After dinner, my parents modeled the hanbok they wore when my brother married my sister-in-law a couple of decades ago. The Korean couple said they would like to be my parents’ neighbors.
Just two stories of strangers becoming friends, and she has so many more.
Her students called her Teacher Nancy, and at her retirement dinner, we celebrated her steady, faithful work on behalf of people most of us could consider “the other.” My mom used the blessing God gave her to bless countless others; in the process, we, her family, were blessed.
DO: This week, we’re thinking about what it means to belong to Christ’s giving and sending community. In the safety of God’s presence, ask the Spirit to help you prayerfully sit with the following questions from Living the Christian Year (p. 267):
Does your church support missions partners? Do you pray for any of them or give money in support of them?
Do you give money toward relief efforts at times of disaster or in response to human suffering in parts of the world?
How are you making yourself available to relationships with people from around the world? Is there a particular people group you feel most drawn to know better and to build friendships?
Ask God’s help to give something of yourself this week to one of the partners or people groups highlighted from the questions above.
*During Ordinary Time this year, I’ll be curating the weekly themes, music, readings, and practices from four sources:
Sunday lectionary readings from Year A of the Book of Common Prayer 2019 (Anglican Church of North America).
Weekly themes and select lectionary readings from the excellent devotional guide, Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God by Bobby Gross
Weekly song to meditate from the sacred ecumenical arts collective, The Porter’s Gate because it feels like they’ve curated their discography to coordinate with the themes of Ordinary Time in Living the Christian Year!
Weekly readings and suggested practices from my book The Spacious Path: Practicing the Restful Way of Jesus in a Fragmented World because I was definitely influenced by Living the Christian Year! While it’s not necessary to purchase the book to follow along with us, I’d be grateful if you did!