{"id":4143,"date":"2024-06-25T08:35:50","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T15:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/coloringoutsidethelines\/?p=4143"},"modified":"2024-06-26T10:11:21","modified_gmt":"2024-06-26T17:11:21","slug":"most-ordinary-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/coloringoutsidethelines\/2024\/06\/most-ordinary-days\/","title":{"rendered":"In these most ordinary ways, grace fills in the cracks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yesterday, my day went like this: Make some coffee. Walk the dog. Read a book. Take a shower. Make some food, eat some food. Volunteer at Guns to Gardens, a gun buyback event that takes surrendered guns and forges them into garden tools. Play around in the garden. Send some emails. Answer some texts. Bake some banana bread. Make homemade pizza. Write a sermon. Watch a movie with my family.<\/p>\n

Image by Andreas Riedelmeier from Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Repeat, repeat, repeat. <\/em><\/p>\n

It was nothing short of a most ordinary day \u2013 these most ordinary days the grace that fills in the cracks in the story of our lives.<\/strong><\/h4>\n When I was younger, I remember an aunt telling me I shared the same Achilles Heel as my grandfather. I looked at her quizzically: What same Achilles Heel? The need be famous. <\/em><\/p>\n I wanted to make it big in the world. I wanted to write a book, and after I wrote that book for said book to land on the New York Times bestseller list. I wanted to preach a sermon, and after I gave that sermon for those words to land me in the speaker\u2019s hall of fame. Wow! She has a way with words! <\/em><\/p>\n I wanted, I wanted, I wanted. I wanted to be bigger than I ought; I wanted to be famous; I wanted my story to matter, because if my story mattered just a little bit more, then that would make all the difference, wouldn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n But as this <\/em>story goes, I\u2019d forgotten these ordinary days, these ordinary moments, make up the stories that really matter in the end. This coffee-making, garden-keeping, email-sending, movie-watching days is the grace that fills in the cracks of my life, and I imagine, in yours as well.<\/p>\n And is this not what we see in this week\u2019s gospel reading?<\/p>\n In Matthew 9, Jesus walks. He sees. He calls out to a man named Matthew. He says, \u201cFollow me.\u201d He sits. He hears. He reminds the Pharisees who he\u2019s all about. He follows a man from the synagogue who has a sick daughter. He gets interrupted, this time by a woman who\u2019s been bleeding for 12 years. He turns. He sees. He heals. He says, \u201cTake heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.\u201d He holds a little girl\u2019s hand. He sees her get up. He listens as the people laugh at him in disbelief.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n As I read through this week\u2019s passage, I was struck by the ordinariness <\/em>of it all. Jesus wasn\u2019t trying to make it big, even though, in the scheme of world religions and Most Important People to Ever have Graced the Earth, he did make it pretty big in the end.<\/p>\n But most of the time, most of these verb-filled moments, weren\u2019t very big. <\/em>They were just him \u2013 doing what he does, being who he was meant to be. They were just him being his ordinary self, leaning into the God-man he was brought to earth to be: the Word who became flesh and blood, who moved into the neighborhood, who gave us an example of what it means to show up in the world as we <\/em>are.<\/p>\n Because that too is what we\u2019re invited into: we\u2019re invited to just be our ordinary, everyday selves. To do what we do, to be who we <\/em>were meant to be. To lean into the example given to us by the one who showed up in the world as a fleshy human.<\/p>\n Who then were you created into be? Who then were we <\/em>created to be, as a people, together? \u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n I suppose today\u2019s sermon could be a plug to get involved: to find a ministry that speaks your language, that surely needs your help \u2013 to give of your time and resources because that\u2019s what we\u2019re supposed <\/em>to do when it comes to being a part of the church.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not what this sermon is about. What if leaning into our identity as followers of Jesus isn\u2019t as much about what we can do or how we can give back, but instead, is about naming and honoring and leaning into our ordinary, God-created selves \u2026these same selves that are invited to listen and honor our blessed human existence.<\/p>\n Image created on Canva by Cara. Share it!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Because today\u2019s passage, after all, starts with an invitation to follow \u2013 and this is an invitation that I don\u2019t think we should miss.<\/p>\n Matthew 9:9 says, \u201cAs Jesus was walking alone, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, \u201cFollow me.\u201d And he (Matthew) got up and followed him.\u201d This singular interaction \u2013 of Jesus walking and seeing and calling \u2013 was rather ordinary, as luck would have it, especially if you break it down to the three verbs present in the single verse: walk, see, and call.<\/p>\n Because walking, seeing, calling: that\u2019s what we do every day. Whether we use our legs or the wheels of a chair, we go from here to there, moving and flitting and being <\/em>in this world in all the many places we call home: our gardens and our neighborhoods, our places of work and our children\u2019s schools, our senior centers and this holy building too. In these many places, we have the opportunity to open our eyes and see, to notice Beauty alive in the world around us: we see the blossoms growing on tomato vines (because y\u2019all know I can\u2019t get through a summer sermon without talking about tomatoes); we notice the green and gold and brown flecks in our neighbor\u2019s eye; we see the person sitting all alone, the one who hasn\u2019t yet been remembered and called by name. And then, the most magical, the holiest part of all arrives: we heed the invitation to follow.<\/p>\n Follow me, <\/em>Jesus says, then whispering: Pick up the phone and call the person who keeps coming to mind. <\/em><\/p>\n Follow me, <\/em>Jesus says, then whispering: Ask the unhoused man who always sits outside your neighborhood grocery store if you can buy him a cup of coffee. <\/em><\/p>\n Follow me, <\/em>Jesus says, then whispering: Bake a pan of lemon squares for your new neighbor, welcoming her to the neighborhood, remembering her name.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n In all of the whispers that accompany the words \u201cFollow me,\u201d the whispers that are oftentimes personalized for <\/em>each one of us, for God is speaking to us.<\/p>\n God is inviting us into God\u2019s work in the world. God is making God\u2019s self known through us, <\/em>individually and collectively<\/strong>.<\/strong> <\/em><\/h4>\n And I don\u2019t doubt that we\u2019re then participating in God\u2019s work in the world as we do these things. After all, we\u2019re just doing what Jesus did \u2013 walking, seeing, following. But two thousand years after the Great Teacher walked the earth, it\u2019s a little bit different for us: instead of seeing him model this first-hand, we do so by leaning into the Spirit, one footstep, one seeing eyeball, one heart-thumping God-whisper at a time \u2013 being and becoming who God created us to be on God\u2019s most holy turf, earth.<\/p>\n It may not be splashy and shiny, and is instead, utterly, extraordinarily ordinary, <\/em>but in these most ordinary events, grace shows up. Grace fills in the gaps. Grace squeezes its way in and makes itself known.<\/p>\n It\u2019s us just being us, leaning into our not-so famous, but my God, utterly loved and celebrated and gorgeous, child-of-God selves.<\/p>\n And that, I\u2019d say, is a pretty good place to be.<\/p>\n Amen.<\/p>\n \u2014<\/p>\n This is from a sermon preached on June 11, 2023 at St. Paul\u2019s Episcopal Church<\/a> in San Rafael, California. If you liked this post, you might also like \u201cI am asking\u2026\u201d<\/a> Now, go be your gorgeous, child-of-God self!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday, my day went like this: Make some coffee. Walk the dog. Read a book. Take a shower. Make some food, eat some food. Volunteer at Guns to Gardens, a gun buyback event that takes surrendered guns and forges them into garden tools. Play around in the garden. Send some emails. Answer some texts. Bake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3607,"featured_media":4230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[173,1472,1557,1554],"class_list":["post-4143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jesus","tag-matthew-9","tag-matthew-99","tag-ordinary-everyday"],"yoast_head":"\nIn these most ordinary ways, grace fills in the cracks<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"God is inviting us into God\u2019s work in the world. 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