What follows is an old sermon of mine, borrowing freely from a Dynamic
Preaching sermon, along the lines of your topic of "ordinary."

Peter K. Perry
Prescott United Methodist Church
Prescott, Arizona USA
mailto:pkperry@cableone.net
http://www.prescottumc.com


The Holiness of the Ordinary
A Christmas Eve Meditation
December 24, 1992

There is a legend about Zacchaeus, the tax collector. It says that in later
years he rose early every morning and left his house. His wife, curious,
followed him one morning. At the town well, he filled a bucket with water
and he walked until he came to a sycamore tree. There, setting down the
bucket, he cast away the stones, branches, and rubbish that lay about the
foot of the tree.

Having done that, he poured water on the roots and stood there in silence,
gently caressing the trunk with his hands. When his amazed wife came out of
hiding and asked what he was doing, Zacchaeus replied simply, "This is where
I found Christ." (HOMILETICS, October-December 1992, p.41) It was just an
ordinary tree, but something that happened at that tree made it holy for
Zacchaeus. It was there that he had met Christ.

Tonight is just an ordinary night. It happens to be the twenty-fourth night
of December, the 358th night of the year 1992. A night just like any other.
But something happened on this night, something happened a long time ago,
which makes this night holy despite the ordinariness of it all. What
happened, was that on this night, ON THIS NIGHT, the world met Christ.

You are all here tonight celebrating Christ's birth. You know that though
this is a night like any other winter's night, there is something special
about it. You know it is special not because this is the night Santa comes
for a visit, but because this is the night that God came to stay. All of
you have undoubtedly seen the signs that say "Keep Christ in Christmas" or
"Jesus is the Reason for the Season." But you know that there are many
people who observe this holiday, this holy day, who have no idea at all who
Christ is and why his birth is worthy of celebration.

It's like one family I read about. They were gathered to celebrate the
holiday without much thought to its significance. It had been a difficult
day. Three generations gathered in the home. Daughter and father had been
estranged for years, but came together at Christmas because of the
granddaughter. Little Charlotte, who had been raised as part of the MTV
generation, who lived in a home where God was seldom mentioned, was gulping
her milk at dinner. She put down her glass and pointed her fork toward her
grandfather like a microphone and asked, "Grandpa, why is today called
Christmas?" The child's question came like a peal of thunder.

"Out of the blue it fell crashing into the dining room just as though,
indeed, the roof might be collapsing." Did the little girl have any idea
what she was asking? After what seemed like an eternity her grandfather
said, "Perhaps your mother could give you a better answer than I could."

The mother frowned, but answered her daughter, "Today is called Christmas,
Charlotte, because it is the birthday of Jesus Christ."

She then gave a brief explanation. Something special happened as she
recited the story for her daughter. The woman spoke almost as though she
had just discovered the origins of Christmas herself, as if in that very
moment such knowledge had been revealed to her. It was a magical moment.
Charlotte's mother looked at her father. Tears welled in the old man's
eyes. She reached across the table and took his hand. Charlotte asked,
"Grandpa, why are you crying." I'm crying because I'm happy," he said.

Charlotte's face glowed like a little angel's. There was no more talk of
Jesus that evening. And yet, it was as if the Lord Himself, like a master
goldsmith, had devised exactly the right setting in which the mere mention
of His name might shine forth like a spectacular jewel, like a diamond
against a black velvet cloth." (based on a story in DYNAMIC PREACHING,
December 1991)

It was holiness in the midst of the ordinary. God present in the midst of
common people like you and me. We always expect God to work in mysterious
ways, in supernatural occurrences, with miraculous events. But far more
often God is at work in our midst in common, familiar, ordinary ways.

God was working in those common ordinary ways in the birth of Jesus. The
people who came to see Jesus saw only a man. He lived like a man and he
died like a man. And yet, through the eyes of faith we see him as King of
Kings and Lord of Lords.

In a rehearsal in Barbara Robinson's delightful story, THE BEST CHRISTMAS
PAGEANT EVER, a question arises over what to name the Christ child. One
little boy offered the names found in Isaiah , "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty
God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." One of the children, Imogene
Herdman, spoke up and said, "He'd never get out of the first grade if he had
to learn how to write all of that!"

Well, he didn't have to learn to write all that. For Jesus was a baby like
every other baby. He was a baby who nursed and burped, whose swaddling
clothes had to be changed periodically. Later he was a kid like every other
kid. He grew to be a man. And yet, though just like us, God was present in
this baby-child-man in a
way that no one can fully explain. It is called the incarnation. God
become human, like you and me. Holy, but ordinary.

What happened on that first Christmas was that God became really and truly
present among us. He didn't come like some great Greek warrior God, hurling
lightening bolts and shouting with voice like thunder. He didn't come as a
white-bearded judge sitting on a golden throne, dispensing judgment on the
good and the evil. He didn't come as a ghost-like apparition, walking
through closed doors and beckoned by séances and sorcery. He came as a
child, a simple, plain, ordinary baby, born to peasants on a town no one
here would have ever heard of had he not been born there. Oh, to be sure, we
are told that some incredible things happened on the night he was born.
Shepherds were visited by an angel choir. And Persian kings followed an
unusually bright star to his birthplace. But the fact remains that God came
to us in an ordinary way. God came as a boy, who would grow up to be a man,
who would teach the people about love and life, who would give his own life
as a witness to the things he had taught and an atonement for the evil that
hides in every man.

A holy happening in an ordinary setting. That is the way God came on
Christmas. And that is still the way God comes today. In the midst of our
ordinary existence, God comes. God is made real, not in the spectacular but
in the things of everyday life, not in the supernatural, but in the common.

These are ordinary days in which we live. Tonight, as we gather here to
worship, men, women, and children are walking in the streets of our cities
looking for warmth and a place to sleep. Children are dying in Somalia.
Atrocities are being committed in what was once Yugoslavia. Bombs are being
built and planted in Belfast and London. Palestinians and Israelis are
shooting at each other. Weapons of mass destruction are still pointed at
large cities filled with innocent civilians. People are still being taken
to hospitals or lying in lonely beds in nursing homes. Nothing much has
changed just because tonight is Christmas Eve. And yet God's spirit is
present in all the places and with all the people we have just recalled. It
is a spirit that calls us to hope, a spirit that calls us to share, a spirit
that calls us to believe that light will always shine in the dark and good
will always triumph over evil.

Frank Hinnant, head of his own multimillion dollar contracting business,
thought he had no use for Christmas. He never gave Christmas bonuses to his
employees. But Adele, his wife, loved Christmas and loved to decorate.
Each year they had arguments about decorating around the house. "It's
nonsense," Frank would
say bitterly, "Christmas is for children."

One brisk, December morning Frank decided to walk to work. As he was
walking through town he noticed a group of people standing in front of a
department store window looking at Christmas displays. Frank paused at one
window to see Mary, Joseph and the shepherds in colorful costumes. And
there was the Child. Seeing the child made the emptiness in Frank's heart
hurt.

Frank turned away. As he started to move on he noticed a sign across the
street. "Holy Innocents Home," it said in large brown letters. Frank stood
there staring at the orphanage -- yet in his mind he saw something else. He
remembered years before a Sunday School teacher telling the class about King
Herod and all the male children under two. He remembered how innocent
children were killed. Then it dawned on him. "There's more to Christmas
than syrup. There's misery too." At that moment Frank remembered his own
son who had died at the tender age of eighteen months. David had died some
twenty-two years before. It was still difficult for Frank to even mention
David's name aloud -- although he thought about him a million times.

That evening, Frank and Adele dined alone. "I went to visit an orphanage,"
he told his wife. She never imagined that he would do such a thing. He
told her about the conditions he found inside, "really a dungeon, cramped
and dismal." As he was visiting, a little boy came up to him and stroked
the sleeve of his coat. "I'll never forget it," Frank told Adele. "You know
full well what I've always said about Christmas," he said. "Christmas is
for children! Well, it's about time people started doing something for
them. Today I gave that place some money. They're going to build a wing
with it." Adele was swept away by his kindness. She was unprepared for his
next statement, "They're going to name it for David," he told her. (from
Guideposts Christmas Treasury, quoted in "Way Down in Egypt's Land," DYNAMIC
PREACHING, December 1992.) Somehow, God managed to break through the man's
hardened shell. As with Dickens's Scrooge, something holy happened where no
one was expecting it to happen. Holiness, once more, in the midst of the
ordinary.

It happened one Christmas eve during the fourteenth century. The greatest
pestilence of history was sweeping through Europe. It was the "Black
Death," the plague, and it claimed its victims by the hundreds of thousands,
in every country, in every city, and every hamlet. In that dreadful time,
men sought to save their
lives through isolation. Since a simple touch, the sweep of a passing
garment, might bring death, many barred themselves up in their houses, with
such provisions as they could gather, and sustained a strange siege against
the invisible enemy without. In such a manner did one of the citizens of
Goldberg, in Germany, save his life until Christmas eve 1353. He thought
himself the last inhabitant of the plague-stricken city, and as the time of
the joyous festival approached he could not but recall how many of his old
companions had joined with him in merrymaking in the past years; and now he
was left alone in the midst of desolation. The thought must have been borne
in upon him that his life was not worth saving at the price of such
loneliness, for he unbarred his door and went out into the street to take
the plague, if God willed it, and to die. As he went forth he sang the old
Christmas songs that he had sung in the old days before the plague. He was
astounded to hear a voice respond to his own, and in a little while another
citizen had unbarred his door and sang with him; as the two went down the
street they were joined by another, and another, until, when they had come
to the far end of the road at the Neiderring, a hill close to the town,
there was a band of twenty-five, men, women, and children, all that was left
of the town of Goldberg. Whether it was that the plague had spent its
violence or, which is more probable, that the minds of the survivors were
more serene and less afraid of death, none of this little band died of the
black Death. They returned to their homes, set their houses in order,
buried their dead, and the town began to prosper anew. But each Christmas
eve for centuries after this event, even to this very year, the inhabitants
of the town gather together for worship at midnight, and then march
together, singing, to the Neiderring. (from THE HEART HAS ITS SEASONS, W.P.
Webb, p.70)

That is just one of the special things that happen on this holy, yet
ordinary, night. God moves in the midst of people, and we remember the
story of God become real. God moves in the hearts of people, and we share
love as we rarely do. God moves in the minds of people, and we dare to hope
once more for peace and mercy. God is real, God is present. This is a holy
night in the midst of our ordinary lives. Let us rejoice and give thanks
for the miracle of Jesus Christ. Amen.