The Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Random acts of kindness.  The extraordinary from the ordinary.  Little blessings in the mundane throughout the day.  In today’s gospel, Luke recounts an episode around a month after Jesus’ birth that calls us to seek out God’s vision of love in the world, observing the Spirit’s work around us — in the things we might otherwise overlook or take for granted.

Please pray with me.

Eternal God, we thank you for today, for the opportunity to gather together in community and study your word.  I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts in this place be acceptable in your sight, Oh God, our rock and our redeemer.  Amen.

During my orientation week at the seminary earlier this summer, we broke off into small groups to walk around the Hyde Park neighborhood.  Our instruction was simple: at the end of the walk, be prepared to share both where we saw God, and where we didn’t.  For some of us, the lists were pretty equal in length.  But, being in an inner-city environment, most had lists heavy on where God wasn’t present and light on those where God is present.  But its stuck with me, because its a challenging exercise.

Its easy to see the absence of God.  The boarded-up buildings, clearly occupied by those who can’t afford to rent a home of their own.  The man begging for spare change on the corner next to the busy Starbucks.  Seeing the presence of God is more difficult.  We expect God in magnificence, in the extraordinary.  We expect the event to be astounding, something with special effects and trumpets.  Its God, after all.

Perhaps that’s the difficulty with Luke’s story today.  Jesus is presented at the temple by his parents in an entirely, thoroughly routine fashion.  According to the prescribed laws and customs, Mary and Joseph made the appropriate offering for their lower class status and presented Jesus for a blessing as the first-born male child.  In his writing, Luke wants to emphasize here the devotion of the Holy Family, that Jesus was born in order that the law would be fulfilled for the salvation of the world.

An extraordinary blessing out of what would otherwise be routine.

Simeon knew this wasn’t a routine child in a routine family.  He recognized God’s hand at work in all of this.  “Master, you are dismissing your servant in peace,” he prays.  “My eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples.”

The laws and customs were established to create sacred spaces, a recognition of the holy in everyday life.  Practices of purification, to modern ears, seem odd and antiquated.  We still seek out the same differentiation in today’s living, ascribing the holy to certain times and places.  For example, we are gathering here together today in this sanctuary, comforted by the familiarity of the beautiful stained glass windows, participating in a traditional rhythm of worship that dates hundreds of years before our time.  Its the same way that a clump of nutrient-rich dirt is great in a garden, not so much in a pile in the middle of a living room.

In antiquity, the first-born male children were presented to God reflecting the Exodus context of the Israelites held in slavery.  Children born to a slave master were considered the master’s property.  By commissioning the child to God, the young one takes on a new identity as belonging to God.  Today, us as Christians are sealed as heirs of God in Jesus Christ through the waters of baptism — another example of God’s presence in the everyday matter of water.

We read a book in one of my courses this semester written by Brazillian Catholic theologian Leonardo Boff, a profound storyteller.  In it, he encourages the reader to look past the ordinary to the extraordinary — to the connection between the individual and the divine in every object, in every action.

Simeon praises God for the child Jesus and offers a blessing upon Mary and Joseph.  Next comes Anna, an elderly widow who remains in the temple participating in a traditional mourning fast.  She mourns not for her husband, but for the whole people of God.  Upon seeing Jesus, she changes her mourning into praises for God for the redemption of the people.  We don’t have a record of Anna’s words directly, we just know that she went around singing praises and telling many people of God’s work in Jesus Christ.

Something interesting in all of this is that Jesus is identified by name only once in the passage — in verse 27.  The language thoughout places the emphasis on Jesus as “the child.”  This continues to stress the wholly un-specatular setting of God’s plan: the savior of the world embodied in an infant, born in a stable, living in a family that can only provide the offering prescribed for the poor.

We finish the Advent season of waiting and anticipation with… More waiting and anticipation.  We wait to see how the story plays out — how the child grows and develops.  We anticipate greatness.

And as we wait we grow frustrated.  Our attention spans are challenged.  We grow weary and cynical at the world around us in the interim.  We identify the weaknesses and shortcomings, while failing to recognize the strengths and successes.  We remain entrenched in present worrying instead of placing our faith wholly in God’s plan.

It is also entirely appropriate that God’s redemption of the world is through a child.  What better way to demonstrate hope, kindness, compassion, observation and visions of the future than through a child?  A child’s insatiable imagination defaults to hope.  Many of their actions bring peace and kindness.  We get glimpses of the future in the youngest generation, and look upon it with awe and reverance.

Simeon and Anna looked beyond the baby and saw the Christ, the Promised One, the Messiah.  What would happen if we looked for the presence of God in every situation, in every person?  How could the transformative power of the Christ-child be released in our lives and world?  What if we saw our lives unfolding through the Spirit’s power in ways unimagined?

On the Web site of the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, there is a section where Internet surfers can provide their own stories.  This one comes from Cindy:

“The other day when I was at the drive-thru… I noticed a guy that I teach with in a car behind me. This guy has really been down on his luck this past year or two, yet he works everyday and never complains. I asked the girl at the window if I could wait until he ordered and pay for his too. She asked what she should tell him and I said, “Tell him to share his nice smile with someone.”

As I walk around Hyde Park and elsewhere, I intentionally look for God’s presence as I travel.  It can be in the smile of a stranger, the sound of a bird’s song, the laugh of a child.  It can be in the contrast of the leaves against the sky, or the crunch of the snow beneath my feet, or in the renewing rain flowing down the curb-gutters.  It can be God working through me in simple acts, like holding the door open for other people, or saying “please” and “thank you” at the coffee shop, or purchasing a co-worker’s lunch in the cafeteria in exchange for a smile.  And, like Simeon and Anna, I rejoice in the presence of God-with-us, Jesus Christ, looking forward to the hope that is ours as children of God.

To God alone be glory.

Amen.