01/14/24 - God Calls the Ordinary - Westminster Presbyterian Church Westminster Presbyterian Church | Serving God and others with open mind, hands and heart - 01/14/24

01/14/24 – God Calls the Ordinary

GOD CALLS THE ORDINARY

1/14/24
1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20), Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, John 1:43-51
Second Sunday of Epiphany
Rev. Tim Mitchell

In response to Phillip’s invitation to come and see Jesus, Nathanael utters the now famous, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” It was a snooty way of challenging Jesus’ pedigree. We have no historical record to indicate that Nazareth was such a terrible place. We know that Nazareth was just another common, insignificant, small, dusty town. Leonard Sweet says this: “Nazareth was unremarkable, undistinguished, unconsidered. It wasn’t remarkable for being unremarkable. It was what it was.”

The message I take away from this resides in the same category as Jesus being born in a stable. Jesus has not come to live in some class far above us but rather wants to communicate that he makes himself available to all; “the common, unremarkable, undistinguished” people. So, out of Nazareth—the ordinary, comes Jesus.

So many of us here find ourselves counted with the ordinary, the common, unremarkable, and undistinguished. And Yet, out of the ordinary comes the life of Christ. Jesus, when he chose the 12 disciples, chose ordinary people. He chose from among the nondescript at least seven fishermen and Matthew, a tax collector tradesman. Jesus was not a scholar or an educated Rabbi; he was just a semi-skilled carpenter making his living with his hands.

Tomorrow, we will celebrate Martin Luther King Day. How could we forget how God uses ordinary people to change history? Tired from a full day’s work, Rosa Parks boarded a Montgomery bus on December 1, 1955. When she refused to obey the driver’s order to give up her seat in the “colored” section for a white person, she was arrested for civil disobedience. Parks’ defiance and the subsequent firing from her job led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott that followed, which is recognized as a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement.

And we don’t often hear of what happened nine months before Parks’ historic action. A 15-year-old teenager named Claudette Colvin did the very same thing. She was arrested, and her case led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s order to desegregate Alabama’s bus system.

On June 4th, 1989, a mysterious man bravely stood in front of a column of tanks after the Chinese military forcibly quelled the Tiananmen Square protests the previous day, killing thousands of students. He impeded the movement of the ‘lead’ tank and several others, and his actions were caught on camera and broadcast worldwide. Nobody knows the fate of this courageous activist, but he especially changed the world and became the symbol of the Tiananmen Square protests that were held by students fighting for democratic reforms, freedom of speech, and the press.

There are many more examples of ordinary people following the spirit of Christ and making such a powerful impact. The unremarkable or ordinary who are willing to follow Christ with uncommon faith will change their world and perhaps the whole world. But even ordinary people who do extraordinary things make mistakes. A businessman ordered flowers to be sent to the opening of his friend’s new branch office. When the businessman arrived, he was shocked to see the flowers with the inscription. “Rest In Peace.” He was so outraged that he stopped at the florist to complain.

“It could be worse,” the florist said, “Just think: Today, someone was buried beneath a floral arrangement with the inscription. ‘Congratulations on Your New Location!’ ”

Psychologist Eugene Kennedy is famous for talking about “the wonder of the ordinary.” He observes that “when persons suffer mental illness, they lose something of their individuality, they exhibit common kinds of behavior that we call ‘symptoms.’ Because of the similarity of their symptoms, people can be classified as having the same kind of illness.” But that is not the way with ordinary people. Healthy people cannot be put into categories for a startlingly simple reason. They are all different from one another. Nobody exhibits the same predictable, patterned responses. In other words, the wonder of the ordinary is that we are all extraordinary.

We, the ordinary, are called, and even our calling is ordinary. I, for one, am thankful. Megan Hill wrote an article entitled “My Boring Christian Testimony” in Christianity Today.

In that article, she talks about hearing testimonies from recovering drug addicts, atheists, or party people whom God has rescued. She began to question her relationship with God as she could not pinpoint the exact time she “became a Christian”. Listen to her testimony of God’s Grace.

“In December 1989, I approached the church elders and asked to become a member. They, who had heard all kinds of stories from all kinds of people, declared my testimony to be a work of God. A few weeks later, I stood in front of the congregation and received the right hand of fellowship… My testimony may have been boring, but it was welcomed.”

And I was also thankful for grace. As Puritan preacher Thomas Watson wrote:

“The Lord does not tie himself to a particular way, or use the same order with all. He comes sometimes in a still small voice. Such as have had godly parents, and have sat under the warm sunshine of religious education, often do not know how or when they were called. The Lord did secretly and gradually instil [sic] grace into their hearts, as dew falls unnoticed in drops.”

Megan, continues, “I knew that I had been blessed. I found tears in my eyes when, as a teenager, still sometimes doubting that my testimony was valid, I sang the words of Isaac Watts: “Why was I made to hear thy voice, / And enter while there’s room, / When thousands make a wretched choice, / And rather starve than come?” But it still seemed a bit prideful, a little rose-colored, to stand up and say I was practically born with “Jesus Loves Me” on my lips and in my heart.

It wasn’t until I became a parent, at 27, that I began to see that in all testimonies, it is not the outward circumstances that are amazing. It’s the grace. And that grace happens in ordinary, everyday interactions.

Leonard Sweet writes, “How often do we fail to see in life the wonder and mystery that is there because we do not appreciate the ordinary. How often do we reject the good news because its music is not as obvious as a marching band. Some people seem to expect that God’s presence in the world should be a march orchestrated by John Philip Sousa. They think that God’s presence should be like the Statue of Liberty, its torch lighting the darkness for miles around. Else God simply does not exist. Do not miss the wonder because of the average. Do not let the miraculous skip you by because of the common. Subtlety and restraint are signs of good taste, and God has good taste. For God has put wonder in the ordinary.”

Jesus comes out of Nazareth—the unremarkable and to you and me the ordinary.

My Story

“Why am I a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church? Two words keep floating up in a rather persistent way – “home” and “family” – and I realized that it is an inescapable fact that is what this church means to me. During my 40 years here, so many life events have happened and Westminster has been there for me through all those times – good and bad. It has been my home and family. They say “home is where the heart is” and I’ve found the heart of Westminster to be as open and warm as a family’s!”