Mundane Miracles

Scripture: Luke 2:22-40

Preached 12/28/2014

Take a deep breath.  Pat yourself on the back.  You made it.  The presents have been unwrapped; cookies eaten, and relatives and friends have gone home. However it happened, the celebration ended.  And now you’re sitting here in a church pew, as your life as you usually live it begins again.  Vacations too are ending, and the excitement of Christmas that built for weeks and even months has died down.  We’re slowing down again, like the little wind up toys in many stockings.  It’s time to get back to what we do every day, back to work or school, appointments and errands; back to normal.

This is just what Mary and Joseph are doing when our scripture reading begins. That night of miracles, the birth of God in the form of a little baby, the shepherds’ arrival and the angels’ songs, that’s all over.  Mary and Joseph are well into the mundane reality of life with a new baby.  Feeding the baby. Changing the baby.  Playing with the baby.  Hoping the baby sleeps.  And repeating that, over and over and over.  This little baby is indeed God incarnate, but he still come with all the mundane realities of infant care.  And now, Mary and Joseph are about to do more of the mundane stuff of life.  Mundane, but brave with a new baby, they are about to set out to- you ready for this exciting thing here- run an errand.

Luke takes pains to make clear that there is nothing special going on here.  The trip to the temple wasn’t a special celebratory one, it was just one to carry out the required cultural rituals that take place for mother and son eight days after birth.  Remembering of course that Jesus and his  parents were Jewish, they were just doing what any Jewish family would be doing on day eight.  And then on this trip that is supposed to be unremarkable, we meet Simeon and Anna.

They, too, are set up as normal, every day people.  They not rich.  They are not powerful.  People would encounter them every day and not have a second thought about them.  So here’s our set up- we have a family running an errand, and two older people who hang out at the temple a lot.  It’s not exactly thrilling, is it? It doesn’t exactly leave us expecting much.  It would be as if we were to open a Christmas card from a friend, expecting exciting news and highlights of their year, only to find an account of their recent trip to the grocery store.  This state of mind- this let down, this kind of lull, may well be the state we find ourselves in at this time of year.  The big excitement has passed,  and the mundane has returned.  Like with the Luke story, we aren’t prepared to expect much from the mundane reality of every day life.

However, there’s a character in our scripture passage we haven’t addressed yet, and this character steps in and shakes up everything, showing us the miraculous in the mundane.  Suddenly and unexpectedly, this story is changed from errand running to a story of God’s glory being revealed—and even Mary and Joseph are surprised.  The character who shakes everything up, in case you didn’t catch it in the reading, is the Holy Spirit.  Don’t feel bad if you missed it.  The Holy Spirit often escapes our recognition, both in scripture and in our lives.  In fact, throwback to seminary here, in my Christian Doctrine class, the section on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was the section that got cut when the professor realized he had days in the schedule that were not possible to have class. 

There is something very subtle about the nature of the Holy Spirit- it slips past us, around our grasps, perhaps as intrinsic to its very nature as ephemeral. So this tricky character, this Holy Spirit enters and rests upon Simeon.  And the Spirit reveals to him the chance to see the messiah, and guides him to the temple.  Though we have no direct reference of the Holy Spirit in the verses that refer to Anna, we do have the description of her as a prophet, meaning literally, one who is gifted by the Holy Spirit to proclaim God’s word.  It might be a little subtle to our ears, but the Holy Spirit’s role is deeply woven throughout this scripture passage, just as the Holy Spirit is woven deeply in our lives.

However, just like you may have missed the Spirit’s role in this scripture passage, we can miss the Spirit’s role in our lives.  And if we let the Spirit slip past our notice entirely, we miss out on a lot.  We miss out on God’s active presence in our midst, and we limit God to only having acted in the past or only active in the very largest of miracles.  We miss what I see as one of the most amazing parts of God-- God is actively present with us here and everywhere; now and always.

As we sit here in church, our situation is not that different from the one scripturally described.  Yes, we are in a special place, in the middle of performing the rituals of a worship service, much like what Mary and Joseph were doing.  Though we are in a sacred place, we cannot deny the coexistence of the mundane.  Every single person here has, at least once during worship, mentally checked out and thought about something they need to do after they leave.  Admit it.  I do it too.  But you’re in worship.  You came here.  And I wonder- why?  Why did you leave your warm homes, take off comfortable pajamas, and make the journey to this place?  Did you hear the Spirit whispering in your ear, nudging you to come and worship the messiah?

And what did you, or do you, expect to find in this place?  Do you expect the ritual of worship to be mundane, something you trudge though, or did you come with expectations that the Holy Spirit would break through, whether in song or prayer, or sermon- hey a preacher can dream here- and give you a glimpse of the miraculous, right in the middle of your every day life?  Friends, our expectations matter here, because with eyes closed tight to the miraculous we may well miss it in front of our faces.

True, we may not have ecstatic prophecies take place before us, or angels sing miracles in our midsts.  But we still have every reason to expect the Divine, the miraculous, and the absolutely incredible. We can experience amazing gifts of God at any moment. As Christians, we believe in the Holy Spirit and its power to shake things up, so we may be wise to expect miracles at any mundane moment.  Or, at least to keep our eyes open, and when caught unaware as we often are, to accept and wonder at the miracles in our midst even if we didn’t expect them. 

A young man, in his early twenties decided to attend church with his new girlfriend. He hadn’t attended a church service in over a decade, and didn’t have much spiritual or religious connection in his life, and was really going just to spend some time with her.  Following the service he attended, there was a congregational meeting.  The girlfriend immediately began to regret her decision to ask him to attend this particular service.  The meeting was long, and quickly turned into a series of escalating arguments.  When it finally ended, she was apologetic.  This thing that was supposed to be a good experience for them to share turned into, in her eyes, the worst of the mundane.  No way was he ever going to return to church with her, right?

But he saw through different eyes.  He was thrilled.  This was what his spirituality had been missing—opportunities for discussion and disagreement, valuing of different voices, diversity in thought embraced.  The young man began regularly attending church, eventually joined, and is in a lay leadership position in his own church today.  What had seemed so mundane to the girlfriend had been an occasion for the Holy Spirit to connect to the young man, and for the girlfriend to reconnect to the miracle of a familiar happening.

Now that Christmas Eve and day are over, we can get back to our normal lives.  However, it is in our normal life experiences that the miraculous is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. It’s not just angels, prophets, miraculous births that show us the inbreaking of God.  God can and does use what we think of as mundane to surprise is with the miracles that surround us. As you go about your routines this week, be on the lookout for the Holy Spirit’s presence your midst.  The mundane may not be so mundane, and the miraculous may not be so far away.