Sunday, June 6, 2021 – 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Revised Common Lectionary passages for the Lord’s Day are:
– First Reading: I Samuel 8:4-11 (12-15) 16-20 (11:14-15)
– Psalm 138:1-9
– Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
– Gospel Reading: Mark 3:20-35

The liturgical color for the day is: Green

This crowd that was chasing after Jesus was the wrong crowd.  It was why he was clearly, in the family view, out of it.  He had lost it.

This crowd did not comprise the rich or the famous.  It did not comprise the landowners or even the semi-successful.  It was, instead, the poor.  It was the disabled.  It was the ones who did not make it in that society and that system.

That crowd with Jesus was those who longed for justice.  That crowd was those who wanted a better day where fairness and justice would be the way the world worked.  Instead they lived in a world where the rich got way richer and the poor got even poorer.  They had been taken advantage of, they had been used and abused by the system of that society and culture.  Those are the ones who were in this crowd.

If Jesus were to be a success by the world’s standards this was not the crowd he needed.  This crowd was from the wrong side of the tracks.  This crowd was from the side of town people move away from.

But, here’s the reality of this crowd:

• They sought Jesus out.
• They knew Jesus could help them in ways that no one or nothing else could.  It is, in Mark’s Gospel, the crowd that recognizes who Jesus is what he can do for them.
• They were open to the “new day” God was bringing and passionately believed Jesus was taking them there.

May we both be in the crowd from the wrong side of the tracks and inviting others along the way.

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[Just a note about the shift into Ordinary Time:  The great stretch of time between Trinity Sunday and Christ the King Sunday begins with this Sunday – the 10^th Sunday in Ordinary Time.  There are two periods of time that fall under that label of “Ordinary Time.”  The time we are now in and the time that stretches from the Sunday after the Epiphany to the Transfiguration of the Lord.

The designation “Ordinary Time” sounds so—well, ordinary.  Too often we think of “ordinary” in the way that designates it as common or uninteresting.  The different perspective on “Ordinary Time” is that it is ordered time—and orderly time when we consider the growth of the church and take deliberate steps to growing the church.  Hence, the liturgical color is the color of growth—green.}

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Rev. Dr. Daris Bultena
General Presbyter and Stated Clerk