Pentecost 9, Year C

The Rev. Dena Cleaver-Bartholomew

July 29, 2007

Ordinary time: that is the name for this season of the Church year. It is also known, ever so unimaginatively, as The Season after Pentecost. It is marked by nothing more exciting than a long stretch of time after celebrating the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and concludes as Advent arrives and we are close enough to turn our attention to waiting for Jesus to come among us. There is something calming about Ordinary time, the days and weeks that comprise our daily routine as summer slouches along and notions of back to school preparations come into focus. As the Church year goes, it is unremarkable for its lack of major feasts and festivals to draw our attention to God and keep it there. That is also why it is important. Ordinary time is when it would be easy to have our commitment wane, our attention wander, our attentiveness fade like a weekend suntan.

Hosea was a prophet whom God chose to rouse the Israelites from their ordinary way of living in the world. Long past the Exodus, the wandering in the wilderness, and entering the Promised Land, the Israelites had become very comfortable in the land they inhabited. The people were so comfortable they had begun to worship the local gods along with Yahweh. Their kings were blending in well with other kings in the region, creating alliances and making political decisions. Despite the words of other prophets, the Israelites failed to live out their covenant relationship with God, to remember that they were called to live as a chosen people who were special to God. So God commanded Hosea to live out the drama of the strained relationship between God and the Israelites: “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD.” Like a couple many years after the wedding, the test of love and commitment was how it was lived day to day. God spoke through Hosea, whose life embodied God’s perspective. Anger and rejection are clear in the divinely commanded names of Hosea’s children, which include “Not pitied,” and “Not my people.” The final name was a clear reversal of God’s act of claiming the Israelites in Leviticus, saying “I …will be your God, and you shall be my people.” The tension in the drama lies with both God and the people. Even while God is declaring punishment, God also makes room for compassion, declaring that, eventually, they shall be called “Children of the living God.” How will they respond?

In Paul’s letter to the Colossians he encourages them to return to the basics of living out their faith in Christ Jesus. “Continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” There is a fine art to balancing living in the world and living in faith. The Israelites had become so relaxed about living in their world they had failed to live out their faith. The Colossians were so zealous to live out their faith they made life far more complicated than necessary.

Ordinary time provides us with an opportunity to seek ways to be faithful people in the world, people who live out regular lives rooted in Jesus Christ, people who can find a perfectly average summer day an occasion for abounding in thanksgiving. My friend Cathy is approaching her one year anniversary of a mastectomy. Her journey through cancer has taught her that there is great joy to be had in ordinary time. Her recent online journal ended with the following words:

I am so glad to be alive. I am so glad to be alive. I am so glad to be alive.

I love my life. I love my family. I love my friends. I love this sunny day.

Thank you God, thank you, thank you, thank you.

I hope this finds you well and enjoying (nearly) every moment of your summer...

Love, Cathy

Not everyone bursts into spontaneous praise the way Cathy does. Not everyone is expected to do so. What we are expected to do is to seek to live out our faith authentically, each and every day, within the context of our lives.

In the movie Contact a scene shows eight year old Ellie Arroway operating her Ham radio, broadcasting the words “Seek you. Seek you. Is anybody out there? Come back.” She turns to her father, who is standing in the background and says “I’m not getting anything.” He reassures her: “Small moves, Ellie, small moves.” Suddenly she gets a response on the radio on and turns to her dad again: “What do I say?” His words of wisdom are: “Just be yourself.” Not bad guidance from a dad; even better as a spiritual director.

When the disciples turned to Jesus as Ellie did to her father, their question was essentially the same: “What do I say?” Jesus’ answer was to teach his disciples to pray by praying. Coming from Judaism, a tradition in which the name of God is so sacred it is not spoken, it is surprising that Jesus uses a direct, intimate form of address for God and invites his disciples to do the same. It is fitting that in the Episcopal tradition we pray these same words by beginning with the phrase: “We are bold to say….”

What we have come to call The Lord’s Prayer is both a specific prayer and a pattern for prayer. It places God first. It yields our vision of the how the world ought to be to God’s. It declares trust that God will provide for our daily needs. It recognizes our need to be forgiven and our need to forgive. Finally, acknowledges our vulnerability and asks for protection.

Jesus puts these petitions in perspective by telling a story and giving several illustrations. First, the man who seeks on behalf of his friend is commended “because of his persistence.” The verbs Jesus chooses to illustrate the qualities needed for prayer are verbs that describe ongoing action: keep on asking, seeking or knocking. We don’t just pray once—or occasionally. We need to keep on praying. That is because prayer is not just something we do. Prayer is an ongoing part of how we participate in a relationship with God. Like Ellie with her Ham radio, we are invited to “Seek you. Seek you.” We are invited, in our own everyday ways, to seek, to listen, to be attentive to cultivating our awareness and appreciation of God. As Paul would remind us, this doesn’t have to be complicated. As Hosea could remind us, how we choose to live our daily lives is a testimony to how we understand ourselves in relationship with God and each other. As I have seen in my friend Cathy and so many others, it is quite possible to be faithful and be yourself. Like a beautiful, sunny summer day, God invites us to experience how truly extraordinary the ordinary can be.

Amen