Introduction
Today is not just the first Sunday of Ordinary Time. It is Trinity Sunday, and it marks the beginning of this long, perhaps strange, stretch of the calendar that the church calls Ordinary Time. Most of the seasons of the church year have a specific theme or focus on a redemptive-historical event. Epiphany is themed toward the revelation of God to the Gentiles. Lent is about repentance. Advent is about preparation. Easter celebrates the resurrection. But then, after Pentecost, we leave all of that behind, and we enter Ordinary Time.
In some versions of the church calendar, there is a brief period of Ordinary Time after Epiphany. Still, most people, if they think about Ordinary Time at all, think of this long stretch of the church calendar that begins today. So what is Ordinary Time? How do we understand it? And what are some ways that we can think about it and wrap our heads around it?
What Is Ordinary Time?
I spent this week trying to figure out how to explain what Ordinary Time is, and luckily, an excellent analogy was right at hand. This past week, we celebrated Anna’s graduation from middle school, and for several days, our house was full of people. We had my mom. We had Michelle’s mom and dad. We had Michelle’s friend. Eight people were living in our house for several days, and most of those days were celebratory. The first night that everybody was there, we went out to dinner. Anna graduated the next night, and we all went to dinner again. These big events were high points, and those are great. One of the best things about being human is that we get to celebrate important moments in our lives with others, especially family and friends.
But (as I think we all know) when you have had a bunch of people in your house for a while, or maybe just a busy calendar where weekend after weekend you have weddings and parties and events, what you really want to do after all of that is to get back to normal. You want to get back to your normal routines. You want to get back to what is ordinary.
That’s not to say that celebrating isn’t great, because it is. But we all know that, along with joy and celebration, we also need those days that are just plain old ordinary.
Now, I know, before anybody writes me an email, that the word ordinary in Ordinary Time does not mean ordinary in the way that I was speaking. The word ordinary in this sense comes from the word ordinal, because we are counting these Sundays. They have no theme. They are being counted as we move along. But in actual practice, I’m not convinced the meaning is all that different. Advent through Easter are like weekends filled with parties and celebrations. They’re great. We love them. We need them. We thank God that we get to enjoy and remember them. But now the parties are past us. The special events are behind us. The friends and family have finally gone home, and now we can get back to the regular rhythms of our ecclesial life. That’s what Ordinary Time is. It is getting back to the regular rhythms of your Christian life.
With that in mind, there are three things I want to say that help us define more specifically, and more theologically, what this time is supposed to be and how we are supposed to dwell and live inside it. I promise each of these will be brief. Ish.
Majority Time
First, Ordinary Time is where we spend the majority of our liturgical lives.
Advent usually begins right around the start of December. It can reach back into November, but usually begins right around the start of December. And because Easter is movable, and Pentecost falls fifty days after Easter, the latest Pentecost can fall is June 13, right around the middle of June. All the major seasons of the church year (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter) therefore fall within a six- to seven-month window, and the rest of the year is Ordinary Time.
Today is the last day of May, and this is the first Sunday of Ordinary Time. We will stay here in Ordinary Time until November 29, the First Sunday of Advent. So we will spend the next six months in this season, which means that we spend basically just as much time in Ordinary Time as we do in the rest of the church calendar combined. Ordinary Time is where we spend the majority of our liturgical lives.
It’s very easy to get caught up, and rightly so, in the wonder of Christmas, the penitence of Lent, the joy of Easter. And those things, each for what they are, should be celebrated and enjoyed, like birthdays and graduations and weddings. We need each of the church seasons to be for us what they are meant to be. But we don’t want to live there.
We shouldn’t be like Peter at the Transfiguration, asking to set up booths so that we can stay in one particular moment. The seasons are good and right. They’re all amazing. They’re all fantastic. But they’re all for a season. They’re not meant for us to live in them, even though we all probably gravitate toward one season or the other.
The rector of the church that Michelle and I came from used to refer to All Souls as the Church of Perpetual Lent. I sometimes joke that we are the Church of Perpetual Advent, because Advent is my favorite season. But we’re really not supposed to live in just one of those seasons. We live after those seasons. We’re meant to experience them and then, for the rest of the year, get on with the business of being the people that God has created and redeemed us to be.
We don’t live our lives at the creation of the world. We don’t live our lives in the first century, waiting for the return of YHWH to Zion. We weren’t there for Christmas, for Easter, for Pentecost. We live after all these things. And so Ordinary Time is rightfully our space. It’s our time. It’s where we live the entirety of our Christian lives, and it is appropriately where we spend the majority of the church year.
Pentecostal Time
Second, and this gets back to what I preached about last week, I think you really could call this time not Ordinary Time but Pentecostal Time. The church calendar is not just a random series of seasons. The church calendar tells a story, and its climax is Pentecost. The Sundays that follow Pentecost, what we call Ordinary Time, are really the Sundays that follow the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. God’s Holy Spirit has been poured out on the church. Now, how are you going to live?
It’s not that the story ends with Pentecost and then a random numbered series of Sundays begins, but rather, having gone through the story of the church calendar and now having been filled with the Holy Spirit, we are all tasked with being the Spirit-filled people that God created and redeemed us to be. If we drive too great a wedge between the other seasons of the church calendar and Ordinary Time, we will miss this point entirely.
So let’s rehearse this story. In Advent, we join Israel in waiting for the return of YHWH to Zion. We are waiting for God to show up and return again to his people. And then, in the darkness of Christmas Eve, a child is born: Emmanuel, God with us. That child grows and reveals himself not only to his people but to the whole world with signs and miracles, and that’s what we celebrate throughout the season of Epiphany. But then, for forty days, summarizing Jesus’s entire earthly ministry and especially his fasting in the wilderness, Jesus proves himself to be faithful where Adam and Israel were faithless. And that’s why Lent leads directly into Holy Week, where Jesus’s faithfulness and obedience lead him to a Roman cross. Then, gloriously, three days later, Christ rises from the dead. Forty days after that, he ascends to heaven as the world’s true Lord and King. And ten days after that, he pours out his Holy Spirit on his people and sends his people out into the world on mission.
That’s where we are right now in the story of the church calendar. We have been filled with the Holy Spirit and sent out into the world to be the place from which God’s mercy, love, and forgiveness might flow back into creation.
And so the question we should be asking ourselves, as people who have made this journey this year (and many of us have made it many times before), is this: Who is God calling me to be in light of this journey? In light of this story, in light of what Christ has done, in light of the resurrection, in light of Christ’s ascension, in light of the Holy Spirit’s power and presence living inside me, what kind of person am I called to be now?
In case you don’t quite see it, the shift in the church calendar, the shift from the Gospels to Acts, is a shift from a story about the Father and Jesus to a story about the Holy Spirit working through God’s people. It was a story about Jesus. It has become a story about us, a story of God’s Spirit-empowered people continuing to work in the world.
This is why Acts begins as it does. Luke writes that in his first book he dealt with “all that Jesus began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1 ESV). Luke doesn’t see a difference between what Jesus was doing in Luke and what the Spirit-filled, Spirit-empowered church is doing in Acts. That is still Jesus doing and teaching. We are being drawn into the story of the church calendar. Jesus has gone to heaven, but he has poured out his Holy Spirit on his people so that the story can continue through us.
In light of this incredible story we have all walked through together, culminating in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, there are really two questions you need to be asking. Who is God calling you to be? And what is God calling you to do as he continues to work in this world through his Spirit-filled people?
This whole season is Pentecostal. This whole season is Pentecostal Time.
Trinitarian Time
Lastly, we might call it Trinitarian Time as well. Ordinary Time begins with Trinity Sunday because the whole story of redemption, including our Spirit-enabled role in it, comes from the one God we know as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You can all thank me later, but we aren’t going to recite the Athanasian Creed together today, because it’s really long, and we’ve done it before, and it didn’t go over very well. I’m also not going to stand here and give you a bunch of bad analogies to try to explain the interrelationships of the Trinity.
Instead, I’m going to tell you, as you head out into the world to live out being a Christian in Ordinary Time, that what should define your life, your being, your existence during these many weeks of Ordinary Time is not your political party, your grades, your degrees, how much money you have, how affluent your friends are, how smart you are, how successful you are, or anything else that you might place in that list. What should define your life, and the story that you understand yourself to be living out in this world, is the one God of the Bible: the Father who creates, the Son who redeems, and the Holy Spirit who connects us to the divine life of the one God and makes us fellow heirs with Christ. Our triune God has written the greatest story ever told, and he’s written it on the pages of human history. And he is inviting you, today and in the many weeks to come, to live your life in his triune life, to live your story inside his story.
Conclusion
In conclusion, then, this Ordinary Time turns out to be anything but. It is the space in which we live most of our liturgical life and all of our Christian life. It is the season in which God’s Spirit-filled people are sent into the world on mission, continuing the great work of bringing the kingdom of God that began in Jesus Christ. And it is our place in the great redemptive-historical story that God has been telling since the very beginning of the world.
This is where we live. Christ has died. Christ is risen. The Spirit has been poured out. And yes, Christ will come again. But in between then and now, thanks to the Holy Spirit dwelling inside us, we live our whole lives not only within that great story but within the divine life of the one God that we confess as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As it turns out, Ordinary Time is anything but ordinary.
Amen.
Life Group Discussion Guide
Intro Prayer
Heavenly Father, we come before you at the start of this time together, grateful for the story you have written across human history and for the invitation to live our lives within it. As we open your Word and reflect on what it means to be your Spirit-filled people, we ask that you would quiet our hearts and open our minds. May we not simply discuss ideas today, but truly hear what you are calling each of us to be and to do. May your Holy Spirit guide our conversation, deepen our understanding, and draw us closer to you and to one another. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Ice Breaker
What is one personal routine or rhythm in your daily life that you genuinely look forward to returning to after a busy or eventful stretch of time?
Questions
Ordinary Time is the season in which we spend the majority of our liturgical and Christian lives, roughly six months of the year. Does that idea surprise you, and how does it change the way you think about the weeks between Pentecost and Advent?
Returning to normal rhythms after a house full of guests and celebrations is one picture of what Ordinary Time is like. In what ways does that image resonate with your own experience of the church calendar or your spiritual life?
The church calendar tells a single story, from Advent’s waiting through the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost. Which season of the church year do you find yourself most drawn to, and why do you think that is?
At the Transfiguration, Peter wanted to set up booths so he could stay in that one moment (Matt 17:4). In what ways might we, as individuals or as a church community, be tempted to linger too long in one season rather than moving forward in the story?
Ordinary Time could rightly be called Pentecostal Time, a season defined by the reality that the Holy Spirit has been poured out (Acts 2:1–4) and we have been sent into the world on mission. What does it practically mean to you to live as a Spirit-filled person in your everyday, ordinary life?
Luke opens Acts by writing that his first book dealt with “all that Jesus began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1), implying that the risen Jesus continues his work through his Spirit-empowered church. How does that understanding shape the way you think about your own role in God’s ongoing work in the world?
Our identity during Ordinary Time should not be defined by political affiliation, academic achievement, wealth, or social status, but by our place in the life of the triune God. What are the things in your own life that most compete with that Trinitarian identity?
Ordinary Time turns out to be anything but ordinary, because it is the space in which we live out the whole of our Christian lives within the divine life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What is one specific area of your ordinary, everyday life where you sense God is calling you to live more fully within his story?
Life Application
This week, choose one ordinary daily routine, whether it is your morning commute, a meal, a walk, or a quiet moment before bed, and intentionally use it as a moment to ask yourself the two questions at the heart of this season: Who is God calling me to be, and what is God calling me to do? Consider keeping a brief journal of what comes to mind throughout the week, and bring those reflections back to share with your group.
Key Takeaways
Ordinary Time is the longest season of the church calendar, spanning roughly six months, and it is the season in which we spend the majority of our liturgical and daily Christian lives.
The season is best understood not as a pause in the story but as its continuation. Having walked through Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost, we are now called to live as Spirit-filled people sent into the world on mission.
The shift from the Gospels to Acts mirrors the shift into Ordinary Time. The story shifts from what Jesus did to what the Holy Spirit is doing through his people, and we are invited into that ongoing story.
Ordinary Time begins on Trinity Sunday as a reminder that our identity and purpose are rooted in the life of the one God, known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rather than in worldly markers of success or status.
The central questions of Ordinary Time are personal and missional: Who is God calling me to be, and what is God calling me to do, as someone who has been filled with the Holy Spirit and sent into the world?
Ending Prayer
Lord of all seasons, we thank you for this time together and for the reminder that the life you have called us to is not confined to the high moments of the church calendar but is lived out in the ordinary, faithful rhythms of every day. As we leave this place and enter into the weeks ahead, fill us afresh with your Holy Spirit. May we carry with us a deeper sense of who you are as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and a clearer vision of who you are calling us to be. Where we are tempted to define ourselves by the things of this world, redirect our hearts to your story. Where we feel the weight of the ordinary, remind us that your Spirit dwells within us and that nothing lived in your presence is ever truly ordinary. Send us out with courage, with love, and with purpose, to continue the work that began in Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.