Kelsi Vanada

Dear Friends in Christ,

In our lectionary, the readings for any given day often necessarily begin or end in the middle of a story (especially if you haven’t been keeping up with the Daily Office, which is nearly always the case for me). That’s the first thing I noticed about today’s readings: we’re in the middle.

In 1 Samuel 16:14 ̶ 17:11, we get the story of Goliath challenging Saul’s terrified army, but verse 11 cuts off before David defeats him. The story in Acts 10:17-33 picks up right after Peter’s vision of a large sheet full of all kinds of animals, clean and unclean. The verses actually appointed for today begin with Peter musing about what the vision means.

My boyfriend and I are reading Emily Wilson’s (fantastic and very readable) translation of The Odyssey aloud to each other this summer—it’s long, and as we read a little here and there when we can, we are perpetually in the middle of the story.

My birthday is coming up, and I’ve been feeling out what it means to be nearing “middle age.” Even the heat of summer and the ways it changes our daily patterns also feels like the long, slow middle of the story.

And we’re in Ordinary Time, the part of the church year that falls outside the major seasons. It’s a kind of middle, and it’s also the longest season. In Ordinary Time, we live out our faith in our regular, everyday lives. We spend most of our lives in the middle!

But what of today’s Gospel reading? In Luke 24:36-53, we read of Jesus’ reappearance among his disciples following his Resurrection (that delightful detail when he asks for something to eat!), and then his Ascension. The reading takes us to the very end of the Gospel of Luke, and Jesus is taken back into Heaven.

But it’s not the end, because the middle of the story is us. How are we living in light of Jesus’ teachings and his Resurrection? As Jesus says, “You are witnesses of these things.”

In the middle with you,

—Kelsi