Disciple: Ordinary Time, Growing Time

By the Rev. Canon Rhonda M. Lee

“Purple is for preparation, white is for celebration
Green is for the growing time, red is for Pentecost…”

- “The Liturgical Colors Song” by Holly Tosco

If your church uses a Montessori children’s curriculum like Catechesis of the Good Shepherd or Godly Play, this song is probably familiar to you. If you’ve never heard it, I promise it’s catchier when a group of children sings it by heart than when you see the words sitting on a page.
I love this simple song’s characterization of the seasons after Epiphany and after Pentecost, the weeks we often call “Ordinary Time.” “The growing time” is especially the perfect name for the five or six months between the feast of Pentecost and the beginning of Advent.

The first six months of the church year, from Advent through Pentecost, are action-packed. That cycle of fasts and feasts takes us to the heart of our faith and reminds us of both the joy and the cost of discipleship. We wait with Mary and Joseph for the birth of our infant Savior and Judge in Advent and welcome him at Christmas; we see him revealed as the light of the world in Epiphany; we journey with him to the cross and tomb in Lent and Holy Week; we revel in his resurrection in Easter and ponder the mystery of his Ascension; and we pray for the courage to follow the Holy Spirit’s call at Pentecost.

During those months, the church is on the move preparing for Christmas pageants, rehearsing new music and reviewing the liturgies we celebrate only once a year, preparing and sharing meals. Clergy write endless sermons; senior wardens of small missions seek supply priests for key celebrations; altar guilds polish mounds of brass and silver and keep careful track of when to change the altar hangings to a new color; and acolyte masters train new thurifers in the art of offering a fragrant sacrifice without burning down the nave.

Then the day of Pentecost comes and goes. The altar is decked in green, and, with a few exceptions, it stays that color for months. Clergy go on vacation, the choir disbands and formation programs stop for the summer. Committees pause their work—even vestries may take July off—and Sunday morning attendance dips.

In what sense, then, is the season after Pentecost a “growing time”?

A NEW AWARENESS

It is a growing time if we accept the invitation of our Book of Common Prayer and the lectionary to listen again to the stories of God’s actions and our human responses, and to join in prayer with saints through time and around the world. A church calendar—and, if we’re lucky, a personal calendar, too—with more open space in it can be a call to grow by reflecting on Jesus’ life of joyful obedience to God and what that life means for ours.

While the seasons of Advent through Pentecost take us through cycles of preparation and feasting, hitting the high (and very low) notes of Jesus’s life, the long green season after Pentecost takes us into the heart of his earthly ministry. If you have been a Christian longer than a couple of years, the readings for the season after Pentecost will seem familiar. They may even seem repetitive. But the Holy Spirit is still speaking through them to the whole Church together and each of us personally.

We hear once more Jesus’ parables of the kingdom of heaven—how it’s like a mustard seed, a priceless pearl and a great sorting between those who loved their neighbors in tangible ways and those who didn’t—and we ponder what, exactly, we value most. We witness the feasts where Jesus feeds thousands with laughably inadequate provisions, we stand beside him as he heals the bodies and souls of his neighbors, and we’re reminded again of the endless abundance of God’s love. We huddle with his frightened disciples on their tiny boat in a great storm, and hear again Jesus’ reminder not to be afraid, because whether we live or perish, he will be at our side. Every time we hear these stories retold is an invitation to listen more deeply for what Jesus has to say to us in the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

And as we listen, we may hear echoes of the themes of Advent through Easter. On the sixth Sunday after Pentecost, in July, you might hear the opening collect, “O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them,” and you might identify with the apostle Peter. He denied Jesus on Good Friday, yet received grace after the resurrection to take the Good News all the way to Rome and accept martyrdom there. A couple of months later, you will have another opportunity to ponder Peter’s struggle, and maybe your own, to understand what it means to be a Christian, as you hear Jesus’ familiar rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.”

In September, you might hear your priest pray, “Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works” and identify with the Blessed Virgin Mary, who nourished God within her own body and was herself nourished by our Heavenly Father’s love.

LISTEN AND GROW

In these summer and autumn months, listen in a new way to the Scripture and prayers you hear on Sunday. Take note of anything that catches your attention, makes you smile, makes you angry or sad, puzzles you or seems like it was pulled out of your own life. Spend some quiet time with that Scripture passage or prayer. Pay attention to the feelings that arise within you or the images that come to your mind. Imagine yourself in the Bible passage; where are you, and what role are you playing? If a story or a prayer brings back the challenges of Lent, the desolation of Holy Week or the joy of Easter, sit with that movement of your spirit and ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand what it means. The struggles or joys of a friend, family member or neighbor may loom large in your thoughts or heart and lead you to pray for or reach out to them. Or you may realize you need to talk with your priest, a friend, or another trusted person about concerns of your own.

No one can predict exactly what insights you might gain from taking on this discipline in the season after Pentecost. But if you undertake it, the green season will indeed be a growing time.

The Rev. Canon Rhonda M. Lee is a diocesan canon for regional ministry and a spiritual director in the Ignatian tradition.