2 weeks Ago
Spring announces itself in the Lowcountry with rising temps, omnipresent and rather annoying yellow dust and the first real signs of the coming tourist season. Spring also comes with significant spiritual events in the world’s major religions. March 13-14 saw the celebrations of both Purim (Jewish) and Holi (Hindu).
The monthlong Islamic celebration of Ramadan concluded with Eid al-Fitr just last week on March 30. And by this time next week both the Jewish Festival of Passover and the Christian “Holy Week” (Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter) will be underway. Today, though, is just an ordinary Sunday.
There's nothing wrong with ordinary days, of course. Most days, by definition, are. Most people of faith are ordinary, too.
Most people of faith aren’t in vocational ministry, don’t leave family and friends behind to serve in faraway places and won’t be remembered as martyrs or heroes or seminal examples of piety. As a Christian — especially this time of year, as we head into the season of the year most focused on Jesus' death, burial and resurrection — I think a lot about the ordinary-ness of the faith to which Jesus called people. Jesus’ own life was far from ordinary.
Even those who don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus would agree that his life and influence on the world was and is extraordinary. But the life he called his followers to lead, the faith he called them to have, was quite ordinary: Love God and your neighbor. Be generous with your time, talent and treasure.
Gather regularly to worship with a local church. Tell others about Jesus. When you sin, repent.
Pray. Obviously, there’s more than that to living out the fullness of a life of faith, but the basics are pretty, well, ordinary. Aren’t they? If you read through the biblical accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry, they are anything but ordinary.
Scholars though, estimate that only about 50 days of Jesus’ roughly three-year ministry are chronicled in the New Testament. That’s less than 5 percent. Now, those 5 percent days changed the world.
But still, the other 95 percent must have been, for lack of a better way to describe them, ordinary days. Jesus was still fully God and fully Man on those days, but maybe he just walked on a dirt road that day instead of on water. He was still full of grace and truth on those days, but maybe he just talked with his friends over dinner instead of preaching the Sermon on the Mount.
The same is true for people of faith. Easter, Christmas, baptisms, communions, weddings, funerals — there are all kinds of “big” days in the life of believers and local churches. Every person, and every church, has days they’ll always remember for one reason or another.
But that’s not most days. I think that must be why Jesus commended childlike faith and faith no bigger than a mustard seed. I think he knew that it was the faith people lived out over the course of those other 95 percent days that best revealed their hearts.
I’m a Christian pastor, and the church I lead puts a lot of emphasis on big days; rightly so, I think. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead deserves to be the focus of our faith. Those 5 percent days in Jesus’ ministry deserve the weight we put on them.
But I think God sees and delights in the ordinary faith, of ordinary people, on ordinary days. So yes, and amen, please celebrate on the holiest of days this spring. But live out your faith on those other ordinary, nothing-much-happened, they-all-run-together, days, too.
Nothing pleases God more than when living your life by faith is just, ordinary. Pastor Chip Robinson Pastor Chip Robinson is originally from Kentucky, graduated from CofC and serves as the Lead Pastor at King's Cross Church on Clements Ferry Road in Charleston. He and his wife, Kristen, have three beautiful daughters and one mercurial Boykin Spaniel.
.
