Ordinary Life in Ordinary Time
We have embarked on a season of the church year known variously as the Time or Season after Pentecost, Kingdomtide, or Ordinary Time. Time was when I chuckled at the term, Ordinary Time, as though it seemed to indicate the season when getting to church on Sunday became a little more optional, a little less of an expectation. After all, six whole months of those same altar hangings!
Based on the collect, today might also be called Orthodoxy & Orthopraxy Sunday – a day to celebrate right thinking and right action. However, those terms come packed with meaning that the writer of the Collect likely never intended. Right thinking, for most people in 21st Century Western culture, means to be sensible, to do what it takes to make one's way in the world, to say and do what is expected and, above all, to preserve the status quo. Echoes of my Mother's advice: Be sensible. Act right. Do the right thing. In other words, don't rock the boat. More about that in a moment.
But as I listen to today's readings, I realize they hint at something that, to me, seems very extra-ordinary. Bringing life where there is death challenges my conventional thinking, it really rocks my boat! Maybe I've had too much time to sit and be and listen lately, but I know I heard a voice suggest that, “John, perhaps your expectations are too small, your sense of the ordinary too limited.”
I must admit, to see the dead come to life, to see the hopeless given hope, to see grief turn to joy is for me, extra-ordinary. But what if I expected to see, to experience, those things, not as common, but as ordinary? What if I am living small, thinking small, and missing the special things around me because I have failed to live into God's ordinary?
These stories of resuscitation by the touch of another human are but two of seven found in the Bible. In the Hebrew Bible, of course, Elisha had to, as a minimum, do those things Elijah had done, and so in the 4th chapter of II Kings we hear the story of how he raises to life the son of a Shunamite woman. Jesus brings back three people from death: Jairus’ daughter, whom he says was just sleeping – that is, she had only shortly before his arrival died; the son of the widow of Nain whose death had been long enough before that the burial procession was underway; and Lazarus who had been in the tomb four days when Jesus arrived. In Acts 9 we hear of Peter calling Dorcas (Tabitha) back from the dead after the manner in which Jesus brought Jairus’ daughter back. Finally, in Acts 20, we have the report of the incident where, as Paul preached a sermon that went on and on into the night, one Eutychus, nodding off, falls from the third story window. Paul rushes out and restores life to his body after the manner of Elijah.
There are several very important facets common to all seven reports that I must point out.
First, these acts of resuscitation are not of the same order as resurrection. Each of these men, women, children, brought back to life, are restored to the same body, subject to the same ills and needs as before.
Secondly, people who bring someone back to life have, themselves, faced death. Elijah thought he was the last person in Israel that knew God – he literally sat down to die of starvation when God sent the ravens to feed him, restore him to physical and mental health, and then point out that there were 7,000 faithful Israelites. Elisha struggled to keep up with his mentor, Elijah, fighting rejection and discouragement, and only through miraculous intervention, received the power of the prophet.
Jesus, of course, also knew, rejection, the threat of death, the failure of his disciples. He experienced in depth, the hurtful ways we as humans can destroy one another. Yet he loved and healed and drew from the Father, the strength to continue in this life as the window, the door, the Way into the Kingdom life.
Peter had blown his role as disciple – denied the Christ – not one, not twice, but three times in one crucial night. What was left but to go back to what he did know how to do – fishing. Then he finds even at that he is no longer successful – until the Master appears along the shore – “Cast your net on the other side!” “Can it be? Is it … Jesus?” The story says that Peter put on his clothes and jumped into the water – now that's excited… Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.
Paul, in more than one place tells of how, although he was a Jew among Jews, he missed God – but as one born out of time, was made an apostle. He died to all he was to become what God had called him to.
Third, not only did each of these know what it was to be rescued from despair and death of their dreams but also they restore life out of compassion —not as a show of their personal power or charisma. Filled with the gift of God to be sure – but read the stories carefully – in every case, life immediately continues on as before. There is no great fanfare, no passing of the collection plate. The widow is rescued by the restoration of her son, justice and peace are preserved, dignity is respected.
So, stories of bringing the dead back for another go at life are not everyday occurrences, but in the Biblical world, neither are they unheard of or even shocking. They seem to fall into the category of God's ordinary.
Israel, a divided kingdom, is suffering under the rule of Ahab and Jezebel. Israel's God seems to have forsaken them; anguish and hopelessness abound in the land when into this scene walks a prophet like no other. Elijah, himself a victim of hopelessness, connects with God and becomes the vessel through which the spark of life is injected into a languishing – a dying people. Under Roman rule, Palestine has likewise languished for over half a century when Jesus comes as the Messiah, the deliverer. No wonder folks wanted to see Elijah in the flesh.
But unlike the political leader for whom so many were looking, Jesus comes as the Christ to usher in a new, a really new, Kingdom – the Kingdom of God. Everywhere he went, he announced, “The Kingdom of God is at hand – it is here, now, with you!” Perhaps you will recall that after his temptation, he returns to Nazareth and enters the synagogue. After reading Isaiah’s prophecy about the coming Messiah, he sits down to preach a very short sermon – words were to the effect that, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” When the people objected: “This is the son of Joseph – just an ordinary kid whom we know, claiming to be Messiah!”, Jesus responded with the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. Nearly got him thrown over a cliff too!
Then, lest anyone doubt his credentials, we have those escalating stories of his ability to bring life in the place of death. Ann Fontaine, a priest in Wyoming, speaking of Jesus’ meeting the funeral procession from Nain, said it well:
As we come to the 21st century, however, we ask, “Can we believe these stories?” “Can we bring the dead back to life?” Certainly, with our modern medical technology we are frequently made aware of stories of resuscitation but can we accept that within us, each of us, is a spark of life giving power, a bit of the Holy Spirit which infuses us with the power of the Kingdom of God?The Son of Life meets a son of death -- there is something about Jesus that sucks the death out of people.
I think we need not look far to see that life is what is growing in this place. Through ministries that take the church out into the world such as our pastoral care and eucharistic visitor ministries, Edie’s work with families outside the walls of the church, and through ministries such as the EDG and global warming groups that bring the world in so that we might connect the spiritual with the temporal, St. James’ – you – are finding the Spirit of God within as a community and as individuals. We find hope in ourselves when we face struggles such as a congregation with many members experiencing health needs. We find joy in celebrating our presence in a community where personal and public issues seem, at times, divisive.
I would like to tell you a short story – I promise not to pull a Paul and preach till evening. When I was in my teens, I heard a call to ministry. As I was recently reminded by one of my cousins, as far back as history in the U.S., there has been a Methodist preacher in the Burton family. Her Dad, my uncle, recently died and ended that line. I think it was seeing the circumstances in which they lived that prompted my parents to discourage – no forbid – me from pursuing a career in the church.
While I may have redirected my career goals, I continued to ask questions and seek understanding about my place in the world. Without much support, it was easy to drift away from the religion of my youth and find myself in an intellectually self-sufficient place. But the birth of my first child challenged that self-sufficiency and stirred up the old as well as some new questions. Here, the Spirit moved – separated the waters, so to speak – and I found myself connected to a minister who could challenge my mind, my heart, and my soul. As I grew in knowledge and spirit, I again felt that call to ministry, only to be thwarted by a preacher friend whose own struggles gave a realistic if not desired response to our discussion.
It would be another decade or so, when I rediscovered the call, this time, through the results of work in AlAnon and another friend whose presence was somehow timed by the Spirit. This started me on a journey that eventually brought me to this place and time where my story and that of St. James’ intersect.
And so it is that, God willing, on August 12 of this year, our bishop will ordain me a priest to serve you in a role that I had thought dead only a few years ago.
Each of us have our stories of experiences where, while on the way to our heart's burial ground with a hope, a dream, a vision that had died, a spark of life, a touch of the Messiah, the power of the Kingdom of God brought life to that which seemed absolutely dead. And from that gift we gain power to pass it on, to give hope and life to others – power, a spark of creativity, the ability to touch what has died with life-giving force? That force comes from the presence of God's Kingdom within, from the shared life of who we are as the Church, from the bread and wine of life planted to rise again, bearing fruit. Come, eat, drink, celebrate life, celebrate hope, celebrate the presence of the Kingdom…
John Dryden Burton
10 June 2007
Return to St. James' Home Page 06.07