In the course of daily ministry, I have had multiple experiences of arriving in time for a significant development or event or action in the lives of church members.
One day after a morning clergy meeting I decided to go straight to the hospital instead of getting lunch. I arrived shortly before our church member died and met a new friend already at his side. She and I remembered his baptism, prayed over him, and were with him as he took his last breath. On another occasion, I was with a church member who died on his 84th birthday by deciding to remove life support. I was with him and his family for the removal, prayed with them in the peaceful silence, and said good-bye. The family called me before I left the hospital parking lot to tell me he died. And then there was a phone call to see if a church member was still in the hospital. I learned from her daughter that something had just happened and her mother wanted me to know. My call came in the moment they were returning to her room from the procedure.
Hospital visits and phone calls are the regular ordinary things pastors do; they are what friends and neighbors do. They are part of our daily or weekly work and are rarely scheduled for certain times.
Obviously, we do not control what happens at those levels of human mystery. What we can do is make our daily rounds. Do the common ordinary work. Because those are the moments that become extraordinary or transformational and they are sacred, even if nothing else happens.
We do not know what moments God will make extraordinary or shed greater light upon or change us from that moment on. Instead, we bring our faith and willingness to show up to see what God will do or, more likely, what God is already up to.
The Church season after Pentecost is called Ordinary Time and the color for the season is green. It lasts until November 23, Thanksgiving Sunday. It is the longest season of the Church year. This is a fitting connection with making our daily rounds or doing common work. I have always had this understanding of the season.
And then I looked up what The United Methodist Church says about it and admit I am a little disappointed…
The word “ordinary” here does not mean “routine” or “not special.” Instead, it refers to the “ordinal numbers” (first, second, third, etc.) used to name and count the Sundays (such as the Third Sunday after Epiphany). This term comes from the Latin ordinalis, meaning “numbered” or “ordered,” and tempus ordinarium, “measured time.”
(I kept reading…there are actually two seasons of Ordinary Time)
The first period of Ordinary Time, called the Season after Epiphany, begins on Epiphany Day and ends on the day before Ash Wednesday (the beginning of Lent)…The second period of Ordinary Time, the Season after Pentecost, follows the Easter cycle… The purpose of this season is to support new disciples and the whole congregation in living out the gifts and callings discerned during the Easter Season and commissioned on the Day of Pentecost. Every year, Christians experience the contrast between the central seasons of Christmas and Easter, where we see God in the events around the coming of Christ, and the in-between times, where we see, speak about and join God’s ongoing work in the world. (Ask The UMC: What is Ordinary Time?)
And then I found some encouragement from the Florida Catholic Media article on Ordinary Time.
But although the “ordinary” in “Ordinary Time” does not come from the same source as our word for “unremarkable,” in my own opinion the double meaning of the word “ordinary” is a linguistic happy accident. In a certain sense, Ordinary Time is indeed “ordinary” in this way… Ordinary Time reminds us to “get to work” in the normal, daily task of evangelizing in the course of our everyday lives.
We can thank God for the double meaning of ordinary as a call to number or measure our days, and make our daily rounds with faith. And in all of it, we praise God who makes all our days count in the mystery of grace and love.