Ordinary Time

Ordinary Christianity
Mark 4.26-29

Sunday, June 15 begins Ordinary Time. Technically it begins the previous week, but that is Trinity Sunday, still a special day, so it doesn’t really count. The fifteenth kicks off Ordinary Time in earnest. Now, we should remember that ordinary in this context doesn’t mean what we use it to mean – plain, common, boring. It is the idea of “ordinal” as opposed to “cardinal” numbers. From here until the start of Advent next fall we mark the Sundays not by the great events of the gospel – the first Sunday of Epiphany, the sixth Sunday of Easter, but by plain old numbers – first, second, third.

So maybe, now that I think about it, we are using ordinary in the ordinary sense. Because Ordinary Time denotes the life of the church after Pentecost and until Advent, in the long, repetitive haul between Our Lord’s departure and his promised return. That’s the time in which we’ve always been the church, and it is a hard time to be the church. A. J. Mojtabai says it well in her novel entitled, appropriately enough, Ordinary Time as she narrates the morning routine of an aging Catholic priest who tends a dying flock in a Texas town called Durance – which means “prison”!

It is time – time to be up and about. Ordinary time, Father Gilvary reminds himself, the longest, and hardest season of the liturgical year. But why ahrd? When the message – the reign of God is already in your midst – is so simple . . . Not in the mighty wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the blazing fire, but in the murmuring breeze, the still, small voice. In the yeast working unseen through three measures of flour. In Jesus and Peter paying the temple tax, half a shekel each; Paul instructing the Thessalonians, no goldbricking while waiting around for the apocalypse: continue quietly working and earning the food you eat.

Be here now.

What could be easier than this?

Almost anything, actually . . . Great occasions, miracles, rescues, tribulations, scourges. Epic sacrifice. Anything sudden and vivid with trumpets blazing on high. Anything – anything but the long laboring for the kingdom, the following-through, the daily round. . . .After the valleys and peaks of Lent and Triduum, the flights of Easter and Pentecost, they are back to the flatlands of time, to the time between the Times.

Something to that, isn’t there? It is Ordinary Time, and for the next six months we just have to suck it up and love Jesus. Oh, I know - we have to love Jesus all the time but now we have to love him when the temperature and the humidity are in a neck-and-neck race to see which can go higher, and we have to mow the lawn, and there’s no hope of the Astros getting into the penant race and the kids are out of school and underfoot all day.

So it is good that the lectionary for this Sunday points us to Mark 4 and Jesus’ parable of the seed growing by itself. This, by the way, is the only parable found exclusively in Mark’s gospel. Scholars have long noted that Matthew and Luke ripped Mark off when they wrote their gospels, taking shameless liberties with his copyright, but neither of them seemed interested in this little snippet.

And I can’t blame them. We don’t like it very much either, don’t preach from it often. It isn’t a very ambitious parable, is it? Not very . . . American, somehow. After all, it seems to say that the kingdom comes in its own process and at its own pace and there’s nothing we can do about it. You don’t hear this story featured at a lot of church growth conferences. We prefer entrepreneurial parables, like the one about the venture capitalist in Matthew 25. You remember: the CEO of a dot-com start-up heads to Washington to lobby his senator for a slice of the federal bailout bonanza but before catching his flight he calls in three junior execs and gives each a budget for any project he wishes to pursue and the guy who brings in the biggest ROI gets the corner office.

That’s the kind of story we like: Horatio Alger stuff. Grab the church by the reins and ride her like Rachel Alexandra at the Preakness! Go to the whip on the backstretch if you have to but do whatever it takes to bring home the prize. Not this laissez faire business about leaving well enough alone. It seems too boring, too uninspiring, too . . . well, too ordinary. But it would be a mistake to ignore this parable, a mistake to skip it and move on to something more dramatic. This parable tells us that, for the church as she awaits the full coming of God’s kingdom, it is always ordinary time, and that this fact is good news for a few reasons.

Before I get to those reasons, it is probably a good idea to define a key term. Jesus says his parable is about “the kingdom of God.” Sometimes he calls it “the kingdom of Heaven.” Either way, he talks about it a whole lot. There are a couple of things it doesn’t mean: it doesn’t mean the church, and it doesn’t mean the place you go when you die. For Jesus, it means any place, right here and now, where people live out the truth that the risen Christ is Lord and therefore all the rules have changed.

I saw something recently that helps me understand this. President Obama made a crucial speech on Thursday, June 4. He wanted to reach out to the Muslim world and try to heal the rifts, hatreds, and misunderstandings that separate us. Toward that end, he did one thing that seems small but actually constituted a bold move: he referred to a nation, “Palestine.” Now, if you keep up with middle eastern politics, you know that no such nation exists. There is a Palestinian people, and they claim to have a homeland and they have a government - two rival governments, in fact - but no piece of territory officially recognized as their own. But President Obama didn’t talk about the Palestinian people; he talked about “Palestine.” One expert described the impact this way: “Now Obama is saying, ‘Palestine’ is a present reality.”

That’s a little like what Jesus means here. He says that the kingdom of God is more than an ideal, like Camelot. It is a present reality. And he invites you and me to live in it right now, right here, today. He says to people like us, enslaved by sin and, perhaps, disenfranchized by this world’s power structures, that we have a kingdom and a king!

So what kind of a kingdom is it? How do we get in on it? And if I’m living in the middle of a mighty revolution and Jesus is turning over the whole world, why doesn’t anyone notice? Why does life still seem so, well, ordinary? That’’s where we want to look carefully about what Jesus says about this kingdom of his and how it works, so we can decide if we want to live there. Look at some things he says here about it.

First of all, IT IS ALWAYS ORDINARY TIME, AND THE CHURCH DOES WELL IN ORDINARY TIMES. It is always Ordinary Time. We might as well get used to that idea. Ernest Hemingway once wrote that “nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters,” but he was wrong . . . about the bullfighters. Most of life, anybody’s life, is routine. Even if you were a matador or a rock star or an NBA forward or a seminary professor or some equally romantic and glamorous job, the bulk of your life would end up being spent bathing, shopping, sleeping, waiting in traffic.

And since we have to live most of the time in Ordinary Time, isn’t it a good thing to know that the Kingdom of Heaven does well in such soil? No need for constant hype, the exhausting business of psyching ourselves up with one big project or promotion or cause after another. Go to bed, get up. Hit your stride. Find your rhythm. Jesus does not invite us to laziness, but neither does he condemn us to a 24/7 Blackberry-driven, internet-ridden hyper-connectivity. In fact, note a couple of things about the text.

First, did you catch that Mark has his days and nights backwards? “He goes to bed at night and gets up by day.” We wouldn’t say it that way. Neither would Mark’s original Roman audience. In fact, he indicates elsewhere that he is fully aware that they don’t tell the time the same way that the Jewish people did, and still do. In Mark 14.30 where he predicts that Peter will betray him, the literal Greek is, “Today - yes, tonight.” But Mark preserves Jesus’ original wording here, perhaps as a hint to the over-worked Romans to whom he originally wrote his gospel that, since Jesus has things under control, the first order of business for a believer is a good night’s sleep!

Now, second, look at verse 28. “The soil produces crops by itself.” That last phrase is in Greek literally “automatically,” and it comes first in the original text: “Automatically the soil produces.” Again, not to encourage laziness, but to promote peace. The kingdom isn’t exactly on auto-pilot but it is at least on cruise-control. No need to keep stomping on the accelerator, laying rubber on the straight and narrow way trying to outrun the Almighty.

So the good news here is that you don’t need to worry if your life, whether we are talking about your work life or your family life or your church life or your personal spiritual life seems a little ordinary, a little routine. Jesus tells us that this is ideal campaigning weather for the kingdom. God is at work, even if you can’t see what he’s up to or make it happen sooner.

Secondly, IT IS ALWAYS ORDINARY TIME, AND ALL OUR WORK IS EXTRAORDINARY IN ORDINARY TIMES. Don’t miss the balance here. The farmer doesn’t sleep all the time. “he goes to bed at night and gets up by day.” God, it seems, is deeply interested in our ordinary lives. We all know the story of Noah and the rainbow - God’s promise that he won’t flood the place out again. But what does he really promise? Look at Genesis 8.22: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” The Lord promises us . . . what? A routine! And he seems to think he’s done us a favor. Apparently our everyday duties matter to him. Apparently, in fact, he rejoices in them and uses them to his glory.

We find this elsewhere in Scripture. Psalm 104.10-23 describes God’s ideal dance. God makes things grow. He takes care of everybody. At the same time, he invites us to participate, gives us meaningful tasks to perform. After the animals clock off at the end of the night-shift, “man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening” (v.23). It is the same in our story: The farmer doesn’t just sleep the whole time. He gets up at sunrise. He has work to do.

In fact, I’ll go a little farther. Look at the word that describes our work in v.27: “he gets up by day.” That is the world most commonly used in all of the New Testament to speak of Jesus’ resurrection! So every morning when you wake up, it is a reenactment of the very basis of our salvation. Every day when the alarm clock goes off, you rise from the dead! (I know, I know - for some of you death tends to linger until at least the second cup of coffee, but still.) This is more than poetry; it is sound theology. Every day of the Christian’s life comes as God’s gift, filled with meaning because Jesus has defeated death and therefore nothing we do is unimportant or temporary. On the brink of Ordinary Time we do well to remember that every ordinary day is also Easter Sunday!

Now, this has some sobering implications, because it means that we can’t write anything off, can’t ever say, “Oh, it just doesn’t matter.” It means that we must examine each day, each moment, each word, each action in light of the eternal consequences that they doubtless have. I think C. S. Lewis has said this best in his famous sermon, “The Weight of Glory”:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nighmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrrors or everlasting splendors.

It is ordinary time, so get to work! Do the ordinary things with the inspiration (literally, the “filling of the Spirit”) that comes from realizing that those ordinary things bear - for good or ill - eternal fruit, for which you will one day give accoundt at the judgment bar of God.

Finally, IT IS ALWAYS ORDINARY TIME, BUT ONLY UNTIL THE END OF TIME. We get around to the reaping at last, and this is something you shouldn’t miss. It’s a pleasant, pastoral picture, isn’t it? Reminds me of the great old hymn, “Come Ye Thankful People Come”: “First the blade and then the ear/Then the full corn shall appear.” You know it; we sing it at Thanksgiving as visions of gluttony dance in our heads. Well, I’m all for thanking God for his provision, but that isn’t what’s going on here. To get a feel for the real meaning, we have to look back and then forward.

First, let’s try looking back to the Old Testament, to the probable source of Jesus’ parable. Remember that Jesus knows the Old Testament well enough to quote Deuteronomy to the devil after a forty day fast. He is steeped in the Torah and regards it as the absolute and inspired Word of God. So his teaching consistently arises from Old Testament roots. The most likely candidate here is Joel 3.12-14:

Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: F13 for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.

Not quite as cozy as a Thanksgiving dinner, is it? The passage speaks of the time after God has judged his own people, Israel, and now turns around to let loose on the surrounding nations who have attacked her. Nor can we dismiss this as some sort of backward, bloodthirsty Old Testament thing. Because next we will look ahead to see what the early church made of Jesus’ imagery here. We get a very close parallel in Revelation 14.14-19:

And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped. And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe. And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.

I’m not much good at math, but I make that five references to sickles in five verses - one in each verse. This is no longer “Come Ye Thankful People Come.” This is “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory,” a song I never really liked because it basically amounts to a prayer that God would bless the Yankee army as it marched south to kill my ancestors. But at any rate, here we are with the Lord “trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,” where he as “loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword,” or sickle, at any rate.

So what are we to make of all this? Simply this: that Ordinary Time is decisive time. Jesus calls on us to make a clear-cut choice, one way or the other. We stand in the Valley of Decision where we make a choice that God himself will one day ratify for all eternity. This is very unpopular imagery in our day. Everybody tells me we Christians should not preach about damnation because Jesus was a sort of first century Mr. Rogers who spoke only of peace and love. But read what he said - just some of his parables if nothing else. You get chaff torched in a blast-furnace, inedible fish blasted to a crisp, underdressed wedding guests tossed into the Black Hole of Calcutta. He seems unafraid to set himself up as an unavoidable and unmistakable point of decision. It is worth asking yourself which choice you have made.

One more thing, just to wrap up. I like what Dr. David Garland of Truett Seminary says about this passage. He writes in his commentary on Mark’s Gospel that “we live in the in-between time, between the beginning when the seed is sown and the end time when the final stage becomes manifest and all God’s purposes are accomplished.” He’s right, of course, but that leaves an open question: just how “in-between” are we? At what point do we stand on the line that stretches from the fall of Spirit-fire at Pentecost to the sickle-stroke of the final harvest?

The answer, of course, is that we do not know. I said earlier that we are in a time of waiting, checking days off our calendars until next November when, once again, we remind ourselves of our yearning for Christ’s return. But that, of course, is a contingent statement: because the return could actually happen before we get another chance to enact it ritually! Jesus uses some interesting grammar here to talk about the harvest: “But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” Look at three words.

“When the crop permits.” It is a strange phrase because it does not employ the usual Greek verbs for ripening. Instead, this word is most often used to describe Jesus’ betrayal. In fact the last time Mark uses it, just shortly before this story, is when he writes of “Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Him” (Mk 3.29). So what? Well, it seems to me that Mark drops a hint here: in one important sense, the grain has already “permitted” itself to be harvested, has “handed itself over” (a more literal translation of this verb) to the sickle. The crop is already ripe, the kingdom of God has arrived.

That leads me to the second word I want to notice. “Immediately.” This is one of Mark’s favorite words. He’s always saying “immediately.” In fact, some scholars think it amounts to an ancient Greek version of “um” or “you know.” But I don’t agree because I don’t think the Hoy Spirit inspires filler. No, I think that throughout his Gospel, and especially here, Mark wants to tell us that every moment counts, that there is an immediacy to the claims of Christ that we ignore at our own peril.

Then look at a last word: “the harvest has come.” Jesus phrases that verb in what is called a perfect tense. Without getting too technical, let me just say that this means the action in question is not momentary in the present, nor potential in the future, nor confined to the past, but stands complete in the present moment. “The harvest stands ready right here and now,” might be a good way to say it. And that is important if we go back to Jesus’ initial sermon, the bumper-sticker version of his whole message found in Mark 1.15. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repenet and believe in the gospel.” Both of those first two verbs are also perfect tense. In other words, Jesus says, not that all of this has already happened, or will happen very soon, but that it is happening right now, in the present moment.

And this means two things. The first is that you can choose to live in the kingdom of Heaven right now, right this very instant. You can decide to turn to Jesus and let him produce his kind of life in you in the big fat middle of your ordinary life in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The second thing it means is that Ordinary Time could end forever at any time! There is nothing else that needs to happen before Jesus comes back and does all the sickle-swinging and vintage-trampling that we talked about a moment ago.

Time, then, is never really “ordinary,” even in Ordinary Time. Time is precious, time is limited - time is now. What are you going to do, in this ordinary moment, with the only time you have?

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