Exalting the ordinary

When we look for motifs in the Bible and in church from which to make inferences about God's nature, one that does not get much notice is the way that God  -- and his people -- make a big deal out of ordinary things.

I noticed this first in the little apocalypse (Mark 13), which Evangelicals are constantly citing to prove that these are The End Times:
           ⁷ When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed.  Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ⁸ Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be   earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.  (NIV)

Well, that certainly sounds like today.  But, of course, it sounds like every day since the beginning of human history.  Jesus has taken the (perhaps little noted) everyday state of the world and raised to a special status -- the beginning of The End.  The point is probably that no one knows when The End will come, so live every day as though you were about to stand before The Judgment.  But perhaps also that everyday really is the Judgment Day for someone. By bringing it into The Story, Jesus sanctifies or sacramentalizes each day to make them special.


Another, rather extreme case, occurred to me when someone was complaining about all the impossibilities in the Birth Narratives and the Creed, "conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit" as though some spook could provide a complete male DNA strand.  But then, in the magick world of Christianity, every conception is by the power of the Holy Spirit --  as is everything else, for that matter.  Here again, the quotidian, even universal, is made special in one instance and thus raised in our consciousness to a sacrament.  If, as Nietzsche says, the Immaculate Conception maculates all conceptions, Jesus' conception, by emphasizing the role of the Holy Spirit, sanctifies conception again and points to God at the beginning of life as well as at the end and throughout. And yet -- certainly for my skeptical friend -- it was an ordinary event.


Which, by some trick of mind, brings me to The Real Presence.  In this case, an ordinary event -- setting out the wine and crackers for a party -- has already been sacramentalized and, indeed, dramatized.  Mid clouds of smoke, ringing bells and flowing, glowing robes, someone breaks some bread and pours out some wine, once, at least, perfectly ordinary acts, now given added significance.  Or not.  The whole show has become the ordinary stuff of  Sunday morning.  So the church needs to resacramentalize it.  And this they do by insisting that this bread and this wine really are The Body and The Blood of Christ, that Christ is really in there somehow.  But of course he is.  And without priestly hocus pocus, but simply because he is in everything in creation. The ordinary highlighted to seems special, but calling attention -- when properly done -- to the extraordinary nature of everything.

Last week's Gospel (Lent 4A) is yet another case.  The man was born blind not because of sin but so that God might be glorified.  But God is always and everywhere glorified, whether we notice or not.  Jesus now calls our attention to this fact by a very visible act. an overt glorification.  And on the Sabbath!  A day set aside for glorifying God is seen to be not different from other days, but another time for actually showing God's glory.

And finally we get an explanation for ordained clergy.  they too are just ordinary folks, without special powers to do something special.  Except that their presence makes what goes on special, it exalts the ordinary acts of feeding and events of God's presence, in the hope that, seeing them so magnified, we will come to notice them in their ordinary guise as feeding and God's presence in everything.