Ordinary Time... Ho Hum?

All Saints Church, River Ridge 06 06 09
Dear Friends in Christ,

In the first volume of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles, known as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the world of Narnia is under the spell of the White Witch, who keeps Narnia in a perpetual state of winter. It is as if life and time are stopped in its track. One of the inhabitants of Narnia described this state as “always winter, but never Christmas.” With Trinity Sunday past us, we move into the long season which we enumerate as the “X Sunday after Pentecost.” The color for this season is Green. In the Roman tradition, this season (as well as the Sundays after the Epiphany), is called “Ordinary Time.” This season occupies about half the year. About half way through, I start longing for some variety as we get with Advent/Christmas and Lent/Holy Week/Easter, but to no avail. I start to feel like the poor resident of Narnia under the spell of the White Witch, saying “always Pentecost, but never Advent.” Fortunately, for us, eventually the endless sea of green does end.

Despite the apparent sameness of the season, there is an inner dynamic at work here which is at once subtle and at the same time powerful. Sameness is sometimes comfortable, it is a known quantity. Yet sameness can also be deadly and stifling. This was the case in Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles. The White Witch has all of Narnia in suspended animation. It is the sameness of a prison. It is the sameness of oppression. For decades, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, and China experienced the oppression of communist totalitarianism. There was a kind of bland sameness which was immediately apparent to visitors. In my student days in Germany, I visited Berlin several times. The contrast between the two sides of the Wall was stark. Not because East Berlin was poorer (it was), or that there were still ruins from WWII (there were still many), was it so stark, it was that all the new stuff was the same. Oppression killed creativity, diversity and individuality. In the West there was color, in the East all was gray, except the occasional remnant of pre-war life. Yet in a world created by the living God, oppression and its enforced sameness do not have the last word. In Narnia the spell of the White Witch is broken when “Aslan is on the move.” Aslan is the redemptive Christ figure. In Eastern and Central Europe, poetry, literature, the churches, and labor organizations could not ultimately be suppressed. When the forces of Soviet oppression lightened, the entire edifice collapsed and new life, creativity, and freedom came to the fore.

In the New Testament worldview, the world is currently under the spell of the “prince of this world.” Yet the New Testament tells us that the Kingdom (or Rule) of God is breaking into this world of sameness and oppression. Most of the parables of Jesus are precisely about this point. And it is these parables and stories that we hear about in the long and endless “green season.” It is the growth and ultimate victory of this Kingdom of God in our midst that we talk about in this season. The green is about the verdant dynamic of growth. This Sunday’s Gospel about the miraculous growth of seeds, and the parable of the mustard seed are parables of the Kingdom. It is the nature of the Kingdom – that this Reign of God is near us, in our midst and in us. May we enjoy the dynamic of the Kingdom in this long season of “ordinary time” which is in no way ordinary, for where God is planting and giving growth it is always extraordinary!