Ordinary Time

The Season IS the Reason

For tomorrow morning, the season is the reason, epiphany is clear in the 1st Samuel reading (“Samuel! Samuel!”) and in the Gospel of John reading (“thou art the Son of God, thou art the king of Israel” and “can anything good come out of Nazareth” and “behold, an Israelite in whom is no guile” and other levels). It's all epiphany, it's all season.

With a stretch, one can even see that the unfortunate butchering of magnificent Psalm 139 actually does link OT and Gospel in traditional lectionary fashion as intended. 

On the other hand, there seems to be nothing specially epiphanic in the 2nd Lesson, what we used to call “the Epistle is written in the ... .” It’s from 1st Corinthians, and doubtless, a determined preacher could get a sermon out of it (the members of my Lutheran seminary class could always wring a sermon out of Paul); but that’s not the point. The point is, this is the Epiphany Season, when we look for epiphanies everywhere, especially in the Sunday lectionary selections. 

However, epiphany is not evident in tomorrow’s 1st Corinthians 6:12-20 reading: 12Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean that it's spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I'd be a slave to my whims. 13You know the old saying, "First you eat to live, and then you live to eat"? Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing, but that's no excuse for stuffing your body with food, or indulging it with sex. Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body! 14-15God honored the Master's body by raising it from the grave. He'll treat yours with the same resurrection power. Until that time, remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master's body. You wouldn't take the Master's body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not. 16-20There's more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, "The two become one." Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never "become one." There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for "becoming one" with another. Or didn't you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don't you see that you can't live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body. (The Message).  For the 2nd Lesson, then, we see that the season is NOT the reason. 

Why are we reading this, then?

Actually, the season IS the reason. Not the Epiphany Season, but the other name for the season, Ordinary Time. During Ordinary Time Year B, the Revised Common lectionary has us reading serially through 1st Corinthians, then (when Ordinary Time resumes late spring/early summer after the Easter Season) 2nd Corinthians, Ephesians, the Letter of James, and Hebrews. Of course, learning this about the lectionary may be epiphanic for some folks.

For Episcopalians meantime, Epiphany is a season for realization, perception, discernment. So, tomorrow morning when Jesus sees right through Nathanael, I’m going to be wondering uneasily what He sees in me.

TW+