An Introduction To The Ordinary Time After Pentecost

The season from Pentecost to the beginning of Advent is ordinary, or nonfestive, time. During this season, the church focuses on its vision for witness to the world and on God's continuing work in bringing about his kingdom.

Once the festival seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost are over, a long stretch of time known as the non-festive season, or ordinary time, spans through the summer and fall months until the festive cycle begins again. Ordinary time has a character that is distinctly different than that of the festal season, particularly in the fact that the various Sundays are not connected by a particular theme. In Advent we await the coming of Christ; during Christmas, we celebrate his arrival; and at Epiphany, we proclaim that Christ is manifested to the world as Savior. During Lent, we prepare for the death; in Holy Week, we reenact his death;, then in Easter, we celebrate his resurrection and complete the Easter cycle with the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit. But in the nonfestive season of the church year, there is no unified theme that ties the Sundays together. What is primary during the season after Pentecost is the simple but powerful meaning of Sunday. Every Sunday is the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the paschal mystery through which we and the world are saved. In this celebration is the promise of a restored human person and a re-created world. Because Christ dethroned the power of evil on the cross, we live in the expectancy of his ultimate triumph over evil and the redemption of the world from the kingdom of darkness. The festive time of the church year is also rooted in the paschal mystery, but it concentrates on a certain aspect of that mystery: the longing of Israel, the incarnation of the Savior, the manifestation to the world, the expectancy of the death, the events surrounding Christ's death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Thus while every Sunday of the festal season does celebrate the entire paschal mystery, the seasonal themes emphasizes one aspect of the whole. No such seasonal themes exist for the other half of the church year. Nevertheless, the Common Lectionary has been laid out in such a way that sermons can move through a larger portion of Scripture in a series on a particular book of the Bible, picking up book themes. For example: Scriptures:

Year A:
O. T.	Epistle	Gospel
Genesis	Romans	Matthew
Exodus	Philippians
	1 Thessalonians
Year B:
O. T.	Epistle	Gospel
1 & 2 Samuel	2 Corinthians	Mark
	Ephesians
	James
	Hebrews
Year C:
O. T.	Epistle	Gospel
1 & 2 Kings	Galatians	Luke
The prophets	Colossians
	1 & 2 Timothy

Preachers and worship planners should be aware that it is not good planning to force a unified theme out of the readings for the nonfestive time, for no such theme exists. And no particular theme is intended by the arrangement of texts in the Common Lectionary. The theme is the paschal mystery, the death and resurrection of Jesus, the central fact and proclamation of the church. And the various texts serve this theme in their own way.