Dear Friends,
You may think it’s Ordinary Time, that long green* season between Pentecost and Advent, and you’d be right. If the time period between Advent and Pentecost is all about telling the story of Jesus’ life and work, this season of Ordinary Time is something else: a time to hear stories and reflect on our own discipleship. It’s about how we progress in our own faith journey and live into being the Church, given what we have learned from Jesus’ life and teachings. Even though Ordinary Time can stretch for somewhere between 23 and 29 Sundays, if we think of the work we’re called to do during that time – how we understanding our relationship with Christ and how we function as a faith community – 23 to 29 Sundays doesn’t seem nearly enough. It’s such a good thing that this season of our own growth comes every year!
Even within the whole of Ordinary Time, there are subsections with specific focus. Today, we enter into a season of talking about bread. Not just any bread, but Jesus, who is the Bread of Life. For five weeks, we’ll be hearing parts of the Gospel of John where the subject of bread is front and center. You may end up truly tired of hearing about bread by the last Sunday in August!
The sustenance we get from a basic food like bread will be juxtaposed with the metaphor of spiritual sustenance. As these weeks progress, you might ask yourself “what is it that is sustenance for me? What gives me strength? What inspires me to keep on keeping on?” For me, it’s long talks with my husband and children and grandchildren. It’s knitting and iconography. It’s reading. It’s a good meal…without bread, unfortunately, since I’m pre-diabetic and have to limit my carb intake. Most of all, it’s time in contemplative prayer, listening for God’s voice in the midst of all the noise of the world.
I’m thinking a lot about how we sustain ourselves these days. How we’ve found a path forward and have done things for which there was no precedent or script in the midst of the pandemic. I’m thinking about your faithful lay leaders, who kept a steady hand on the rudder while you did not have a priest on board. It’s front and center in my mind because last night, Susan Buckner and Susan Forbes completed their term as Senior and Junior Warden, during one of the most challenging of times. No priest to lead Epiphany. A pandemic that raged and continues to cause havoc and grief. They kept things going, leading staff and vestry in the ways that they discerned were right and good. They are to be applauded and thanked for their faithful ministry. Especially in times like we have been experiencing, it’s often impossible to please everyone. It’s often necessary to make hard decisions. They did that, along with the rest of the Vestry, knowing that some would not like all the decisions — but the communal discernment of the vestry was that it was right. Because they worked together to get me here to serve as your Interim Rector, I’m particularly aware of some of the stresses of your parish life over the past seventeen months and how they did their best to manage them as God would hope for.
So when we think of long seasons, the 29 weeks after Pentecost that mark Ordinary Time this year with six whole weeks of hearing me preach on BREAD, perhaps we can remember the long season that Susan Buckner and Susan Forbes have had – seventeen months of leading through COVID without a priest on board – and rejoice in all that they did for Epiphany.
And just as Ordinary Time always leads to Advent, and Advent to ChristmasTide, another season begins: we’re blessed to have Heather Modzelewski and Myron Liable as our new Senior and Junior Wardens, respectively. We will enter into a new kind of work while I am with you, and when your next permanent rector is called.
Be blessed, and be a blessing –
Mary+
*Note how the colors of vestments and decorative fabrics in our worship space are all green during this time!