Being Ordinary

3rd Sunday after the Epiphany; Yr. C, January 27, 2013

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

Sermon preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

Jesus has been baptized in the Jordan.  A dove descended on Jesus, a sign of his difference, a sign of his specialness.  He has arrived on the scene for a particular purpose, to lead the way of repentance that John has been telling everyone about.  Jesus is to be the embodiment of repentance, the embodiment of a life continually being reoriented toward God.  Here is the one who will show us how to live fully into our humanity.  Immediately following his baptism Jesus is driven into the wilderness.  What better place could there be to process that kind of revelation about yourself.  There, he is tempted by the devil repeatedly to forego his calling, but he resists everything the devil throws at him … hunger, security, honor. 

Still filled with the Spirit that helped him through those desert trials, Jesus travels to Galilee to fulfill his vocation.  Jesus leaves his family, and his hometown.  He begins teaching in synagogues, healing the sick and sending demons on the run.  In time he ends up back in Nazareth, his hometown.  Like any good Jewish boy he goes to the synagogue, and on this particular day he is the one who reads from the Torah scroll.  It's a passage from Isaiah, and it proclaims the upside down world we have come to recognize as God's trademark.  Captives set free.  The blind healed.  The poor given hope.  And most surprisingly of all, Jesus adds ... it will all be fulfilled in Him.  He announces what he has come to believe about himself and his calling … what the dove revealed, what the desert affirmed.  Jesus claims his vocation.

In the desert Jesus came to terms with who he was and what he was called to do.  He struggled with the decision of whether or not to accept his calling, whether to claim that vocation.  We all have the opportunity to do something like this.  God gives us each skills and talents that make us more suitable to excel in certain kinds of work in the world than in others.  We are none of us, good at everything to the same degree. None of us enjoy every task we're given.  We have preferences.  We have dreams.  We have a calling.  We have to claim it.

My daughter has had a dream since she was four or five.  She wants to start Hannah's World Cafe.  She's talked about it for years now, dreamed about it, and drawn pictures of it.  At first she talked about wanting to be a waitress.  Now we’re hearing more about wanting to own it,, build it and run it.  Will she be able to fulfill that dream?   Will she even want to in ten years?  I don't know.  Her vocation is still being revealed to her, and to us.

On Friday, we had the privilege of attending a niece's graduation from Navy Basic Training.  She's in her early 30's.  She decided that she needed to think about the future, hers and her family's.  She has been considering a military career for a while now.  It was time to claim it, even though that path has been difficult.  She needed a vocation, and the military offered that opportunity.  It was an opportunity that kept presenting itself, and now seems a good fit for her at this time in her life.  As she was discerning her options, she called the important people in her life and listened to their wisdom and worries.  Then she thought about all she had heard, and made her decision.  She claimed it for herself. 

We have a tendency in our society to place vocations in a hierarchy.  Those who choose to be engineers or doctors or lawyers or financial managers are deemed "most likely to succeed" in our world.  Those professions provide opportunities for advancement, often higher salaries, the ability to provide for a more comfortable lifestyle with more expendable income.  Is that how we define success?  If these vocations are the only ones where people are destined for "success", then we’ll sure have a lot of unsuccessful people in our world. 

I think God's definition of "success" is quite a bit broader.  In God's eyes, success is discerning and claiming our own vocation, whatever that may be, and living into it with all our heart and mind and soul.  Success is using the gifts and talents we possess to help usher in the kingdom of God more fully.  We're given gifts to bring joy to one another, and to end suffering that causes us all to suffer.

I've begun reading a book called The Blessing of a Skinned Knee.  It's written by a woman who is both a mother and a psychologist.  In her counseling practice she realized that she was meeting more and more concerned parents who were bringing their kids to her for evaluation because they were just average, even though they were being given "every opportunity" to excel.  Parents were sad to hear that their child fell within normal ranges after evaluation.  Sad because there was no pill or procedure that would help them do better than they were.  The parents were going to have to settle for an "average" child.  Dr. Mogel concluded that too often parents expect their children to be good at everything they try.  We want to give our kids every opportunity for "success", and we're disappointed when they don’t meet those expectations.  Who's proud to boast about their ordinary child?  She asked.  

The reality is ... we're all ordinary people.  Jesus was the special one.  We're unique, but still ordinary.  Ordinary is perfectly okay.  Average is what most of us are.  It's uniqueness that really matters!  Our uniqueness is the gift God gives us for the world.  What a shame it would be if we were all the same.  It's kind of like God sending us out to build a new house in the world and the only tool he puts in the toolbox is hammers.  No screwdrivers, no pliers, no wire cutters, no pipe wrenches, no saws ... just hammers.  There won't be much building going on if that’s the case, if all you have is a hammer.  That's why God has given us a variety of gifts, gifts for each of us.

Dr. Mogel adds this thought from her Jewish tradition.  Your child is not your masterpiece.  According to Jewish thought, your child is not even truly "yours."  In Hebrew there is no verb for possession; the expression we translate as "to have," yesh li, actually means "it is there for me" or "there is for me.". Although nothing belongs to us, God has made everything available on loan and has invited us to borrow it to further the purposes of holiness.  That includes our children.  They are a precious loan, and each one has a unique path toward serving God.  Our job is to help them find out what it is. (Mogel, Wendy.  The Blessing of a Skinned Knee.  Penguin Books, New York, NY, 2001. p. 43)

Whether you're a child on the inside, or a child on the outside, you can be sure that this is true.  As children of God, we are given gifts and called into discernment.  As parents we are called to help our children discern.  Childhood and adolescence is no more about being good at everything you do then it is in adulthood.  Our lives are about learning and discovering who we are and what we are capable of doing well, so that God's glory shines through us.

That means we need to try lots of things and feel free to "fail fast" without fear of ridicule, or "I told you so's".   It’s a gift we can give each other, and most especially to our children.  Maybe we need to rethink our whole concept of what it means to be a "success".  Maybe success is being willing to explore a variety of vocational callings, and engaging a multitude of opportunities to gather experiential information for our discernment.  Maybe success is about how well we reflect on each experience to discern the fulfillment we received from it, and to discern whether it drew us toward God and our neighbor or away from God and neighbor.  God has called us onto the grand stage of the divine dream.  Each of us has a part to play in its many scenes.  But we'll never get the role that's right for us unless we're willing to look for it, and finally to claim it for ourselves.  That discernment is a life long endeavor. 

So friends, whether you're retired or school age, a parent or a child or both .... keep reflecting on those things you do each day.  Keep seeking to discover what God has given you for the world, and how you might claim that vocation as your own.  Revel in being ordinary and let your uniqueness shine.  For we are all of One body, and we cannot claim to be separate from it.  When one suffers, we all suffer.  When one has joy, it is meant to be shared.  In that way, God binds us to one another and to God's very self in love. 

Amen.