The children’s story was
Dr Seuss’s Great Day for UP! And Bruce Chilton read it fabulously.
The sermon went like this:
Part
One.
So, who knows what today is, in terms of religious festivals?
Today is, unusually, absolutely nothing in terms of religious
festivals.
In Roman Catholic and Church of England calendars, today is the 19th Sunday of
the second period of Ordinary Time.
Ordinary Time.
Not something-special time. Ordinary time.
In church terms, Ordinary Time is those weeks of the year which,
basically, aren’t anything else. It’s not Advent, Christmas, Lent,
or Easter. It’s just . . . ordinary.
This period starts on the Monday after Pentecost, and
continues until the Saturday before the First Sunday of
Advent.
The website Catholicism . about . com tells us that Ordinary time is
one of the most confusing seasons in the liturgical year. They’re
not kidding: quite apart from anything else, Ordinary Time starts
with the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. And this is
why: Ordinary Time begins on the Monday after the first Sunday after
January 6th. (So far so clear). In most years,
that Sunday is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. However,
where the celebration of Epiphany is transferred to Sunday, if that Sunday is January
7 or 8, Epiphany is celebrated instead. Epiphany would displace
a Sunday in Ordinary Time. Thus, the
first Sunday in the period of Ordinary Time is
the Sunday that falls after the first week of Ordinary Time, which
makes the First Sunday of Ordinary Time the Second Sunday of Ordinary
time.
Sometimes I think it must be much easier to lead worship in a church
with a fixed calendar. Sometimes I realise I’m wrong.
However, here we are in Ordinary Time.
Having realised today was nothing special in the mainstream church
calendar, I turned to the moon-phase calendar which hangs in my
kitchen.
As well as the phases of the moon – more useful than you might think -my
calendar lists all the festivals and celebrations from the following
traditions: Baha’i, Balinese, Christian,
Hindu, Islamic, Jain, Jewish, Mayan, Pagan, Persian, Roman, Sikh, Theravad
Buddhist, Tibetan Buddhist, Zoroatrianism, and various secular traditions, as
well as national celebrations in a huge number of countries. It
tells me about gems such as Excited Insects Day, and National ‘Sorry’ Day, in
Australia, International Mountain Day, and the World Naked Bike Ride day.
And for August 11th 2013, my calendar lists Absolutely
Nothing. Not a single celebration. All those cultures and
traditions, and there’s nothing. It’s one of not many days in the
year where that happens.
I actually found myself feeling a bit sorry for August
11th. And then I realise it’s a day in the calendar, not a sentient
being, so I pulled myself together.
But today, genuinely, is nothing special. Just an ordinary
summer Sunday.
I bet you’re glad you bothered to get up and come to church, now.
Just like in the shock ending of the children’s story – where, although
it was, you’ll have noticed, considered to be a Great Day for Up, the main
character thought they wouldn’t bother after all: we get days where it just
seems a little pointless. And today –
11th August – International Day of Nothing Very Special, International Ordinary
Time Day, might well seem like one of those.
But, actually, I’ve been a little disingenuous about Ordinary Time in
the liturgical year. The Anglican
Liturgy Office website is at great pains to tell us that Ordinary doesn’t mean
‘boring’, or ‘normal’, it just means “weeks which are counted rather than
named.” You may think that’s much the
same, and I might agree. But it also
goes on to point out that Ordinary Time is about celebrating the whole of
creation, the whole – in Christian terms – of Christ’s work and ministry. One Catholic website says this (I’ve adapted
it slightly):
Ordinary Time is the season of the Church year
when we are encouraged to grow and mature in daily expression of our faith
outside the great seasons of Christmas and Easter.
Ordinary Time is a time to deepen one's
prayer life, read the Scriptures, unite more deeply with God and become a more
holy and whole person.
Ordinary Time is a period when average people
like you and me strive to become the extraordinary messengers that we have been
commissioned to be.
Ordinary Time is this day, this moment.
Now.
So, actually, Ordinary Time isn’t about nothing. It’s not about not celebrating or marking nothing,
it’s about celebrating and marking everything.
So it really was worth getting up for.
Part
Two:
You’ll probably all know that song “I wish it could be Christmas every
day”?
If I’ve just given you an earworm – and a very nasty one at that – I
apologise.
But you know that feeling, that if it was always Christmas, or always
your birthday, or you were always on holiday, or, basically, it was always
carnival, everything would be super and lovely and you’d never be bored or
frustrated again.
It’s something we definitely think when we’re children, and I think at
the back of our minds we still think it as adults. If you’re having a particularly lovely
holiday somewhere peaceful and your whole family is getting on well and you’re
relaxed and happy and feeling healthy and you’re not stressed, of course you’re
going to think ‘I wish this could last.
I wish I didn’t have to go back home.”
It’s normal.
But of course it can’t last. And
even if it could, it would soon stop being special.
A few years ago, my then-partner and I were evacuated from our flat
because of subsidence. It was all
terribly exciting and we had two hours to get out and no one in the block knew,
for several days, what was going to happen.
But the powers that be handled it brilliantly, and we were accommodated
in a rather nice hotel for the full eight weeks (apart from the two we decided
to go to Spain). And the first, maybe
the first week or so, it was rather nice.
Meals were provided, someone else made our bed, our bathroom got
cleaned, it was sort of like being on holiday – admittedly, a holiday where
you’re waiting to hear if your home is going to be pulled down with all your
possessions still inside it, but still, a holiday of sorts. But after that first couple of weeks – the
normal length of time of most holidays, we – and our other neighbours who were
in the same block, all started realising that we wanted to go home and hoover
something. We wanted to make our own
breakfast the way we wanted it. We
wanted to not bother with breakfast and not have anyone know.
Nothing awful was happening. In
fact, lots of it was rather nice. But it
wasn’t ordinary. And we need ordinary. We all know, after all, that when the Chinese
say “may you live in interesting times” it’s a curse, not a blessing.
Does anyone know much about theory of carnival? Carnival is about those ‘other’ times. It’s about literal carnivals, but it’s also
about festivals – Christmas, Easter, holidays – and about the fact that they
only work because they are temporary.
In a lot of classic carnivals things are turned upside down. The powerful are made foolish, fools are put
in charge, rules are deliberately and joyously broken, and there’s a licensed
madness. But that licensed madness is
strictly limited. Just like Christmas
has Twelfth Night, carnivals have an ending.
We have to go back to normality.
And more than having to go back to it, we have to learn to love it.
Psalm 118, verse 24 says (anyone?):
This is the day which the Lord
hath made. We will rejoice and be glad
in it.
That’s actually a good thing to wake up and think to yourself – and it does,
actually, form part of my morning prayer practice. Again, if you’re not that theist, just “oh
good, another one!” will do.
But I think there’s another interpretation of that verse, rather than
the one we tend to think of. We tend to
think it says “this day is glorious, this is another wonderful day which God
has given us, and we will therefore, because it’s easy and obvious, rejoice and
be glad in it.”
And on a glorious day – on your birthday, when it’s sunny and you’re
only expecting good things and everything seems fabulous in your world, it’s
very easy to wake up and be glad in the day the Lord made for you.
It’s not so easy when it’s the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time and it’s a
bit overcast (or pouring with rain, or too hot to think) and there’s nothing to
celebrate particularly and you’re probably going to have to pay a bill and everyone’s
a bit grumpy with you and you with them, and it’s absolutely months til it’s
next Excited Insects Day and even more months til World Naked Bike Ride
Day.
Those days, it’s a bit harder to rejoice and be glad in it. We don’t tend to rejoice at the ordinary.
But the other way I think that Psalm can be interpreted is this, and it
only needs a change in how you say it. I
find myself wondering if what the Psalmist meant was something less like
“wow! What a glorious day! Rejoice!” and more like “Okay, this is the
day the Lord hath made. This one, this
not particularly glorious one. This
slightly difficult one. This very
ordinary one. This is what God has chosen
to give us as our today. So, we will
rejoice and be glad in it. Because we
might as well.”
I was trying, while I was writing this, to come up with a far more
elegant way of saying “this one, this day, this is the day the Lord made, so
suck it up.” But I sort of failed.
These Ordinary days are really important. They’re also glories in their own right. Whether you believe God gave them to us or
not, whether you believe there’s any intention in there being a today, you
can’t deny that today happened. You
can’t deny that you woke up and saw today. That there was food for you today,
and clean water, company, if you want it.
That you are well enough to have come here, that there is a here to come
to, that we are free to worship here together, that however Ordinary it might
be, today is happening and you are here to witness it.
Like the poem reminded us earlier:
there are people longing for an ordinary day. For what we, in the pampered west, think of
as an ordinary day. There are people,
close to us here and on the other side of the world, who are not having an
ordinary day. Who are having a
terrifying and hungry and pain-filled day, and who would give a lot to be able
to be slightly bored by the humdrumness of this one.
So let’s not find this Ordinary Time to be too much of a boring
nuisance.
This is the day which the Lord has made – or which, anyway, has
happened. So let us – however Ordinary
it is, and however Ordinary we are – rejoice, and be glad in it.
Amen.
We sang:
The spirit lives to set us free
Now we sing to praise love’s blessing
The harvest of truth
For the splendour of creation
(this isn’t one really bizarre Unitarian hymn, by the way: it’s the titles of four non-bizarre ones).
Our readings were:
Being
Boring, by Wendy Cope:
And an adaptation of Let Me Hold You While I May, by Mary
Jean Irion:
It’s been a normal sort of day — common, like a rock
along the path. Nothing about it would make one stop suddenly, pick it up and
exclaim over it as one might do with a shell or a glistening piece of quartz.
What was it really, this normal day? It was routine
mostly.
It was pleasant now and then.
It was irritating now and then.
It was deeply joyous now and then.
It was sobering and frightening now and then.
It was blessed with love throughout.
Just a normal day.
A normal day?!
Holding it in my hand this one last moment, I have
come to see it as more than an ordinary rock.
It is a gem, a jewel.
In time of war, in peril of death, people have dug
their hands and faces into the earth and remembered this.
In time of sickness and pain, people have buried their
faces in pillows and wept for this.
In time of loneliness and separation, people have
stretched themselves taut and waited for this.
In time of hunger, homelessness, and want, people have
raised bony hands to the skies, and stayed alive for this.
Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.
Let me learn from you, love you, savour you, bless you
before you depart.
Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and
perfect tomorrow.
Let me hold you while I may, for it will not always be
so.
One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury
my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky,
and want more than all the world your return.
And then I will know what now I am guessing: that you are, indeed, a common rock and not a
jewel, but that a common rock made of the very mass substance of the earth in
all its strength and plenty puts a gem to shame.
The spoken prayers went like this:
Please join with me, now, in a time of prayer, and reflection. Call it what you feel the most comfortable to
call it. This time is for drawing closer
to the eternal. For communicating with that which you may call divine.
Be comfortable. Be calm. Be wholly within your own being.
Let us think, for a moment, of the glories of the ordinary.
Of the minute, invisible, unthinking miracles that take place a million
times even on this most mundane of days.
Let us think of the birthing, and the growing, and the flourishing and
the developing and the showing.
And let us think of the love, and the companionship, and the community
and the caring, and the praying.
And let us think of the air, and the light, and the breeze and the rain
and the warmth.
Let us think of the talking, and the laughing, and the hugging, and
also of the weeping and the mourning
Let us think of the seeing, and the touching, and the hearing and the
tasting and the smelling.
Let us think of the reading, and the learning, and the debating and the
meditating and the thinking.
Let us think of these ordinary, commonplace glories, and the blessing
that comes to us from ‘normal’.
And let us, too, think of those for whom these days are not
ordinary. For those who long for
ordinary, as a break from heartache, and sickness, and misery, and
imprisonment.
And let us think, now, our own thoughts, and pray our own prayers,
together, in the quiet of this sacred space and in the company of our beloved
community.
Amen.
And I think it was a good service . . .
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