Ordinary and Extraordinary Jesus
I’m not sure about you, but angels have not shown up at my place of work, but that’s precisely what happened to the shepherds who were keeping watch in the field on the very first Christmas. (Luke 2) Can you picture it? Can you think about what you would have done? It must have been an extraordinary moment out of a thousand ordinary days keeping watch over the sheep by night. Long nights to be exact.
And, oh, what a night it must have been. Jesus, the Son of God, a baby? Wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger? In a barn that is so ordinary where the extraordinary arrived in the still of the night. It gets me every time I read it, every time I hear the message or sing about it in a Christmas hymn. Every. Time.
An extraordinary scene in our ordinary church Christmas musical got me every time. At every practice. At every performance. The pomp and circumstance of the elaborate costumes of the wise men, the animals being paraded down the aisles, the gifts of pretend gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and the singing of the actors saying, “Glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory to God.” As the musical scene reached a crescendo, all the lights went out except the spotlight on the baby, an ordinary baby we selected for their first acting job.
And to make it all ordinary in the extraordinary, the baby cried and sometimes cooed, but this real ordinary baby was dressed in a standard white cloth of swaddling clothes. The acting coach didn’t need to direct the baby because what the baby would do each performance was the extraordinary expectation of the evening. A baby simply being a baby.
Every night, the ordinary audience response was the same at the exact extraordinary moment. When the lights hit the “actor” baby Jesus and the “glory to God” realization comes upon us that the baby, two thousand years ago, is God incarnate, in the flesh, helpless and ordinary—extraordinary God, a gasp and awe would release from the audience.
And the wonder of that moment, the realization that God in the flesh understood every common thing about being human, begins to tap at our ordinary heart and life that God is in the business of the ordinary. We want to see him in the extraordinary, but he’s right there most of the time in the mundane. Simply waiting for us to recognize him.
I can count on one hand the number of extraordinary things that have happened to me, but the ordinary is where I live. I’m not anything special in my ordinary life, but the Spirit of God dwells in me and makes my life extraordinary. It calls me to have eyes of faith, to receive the promise, to live in peace, be the light for the world, and to pass the extraordinary God that I serve on to others who have no hope.
At the time of Jesus’ birth, Shepherding was the most ordinary job. A manger was less than a commonplace to lay a baby. And a baby was the most minuscule way that the religious people thought the son of God would arrive, but he did. The shepherds found him precisely as the extraordinary angels said that they would.
Charles Wesley, who wrote the Christmas hymn, Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, wrote hymns to teach the poor and illiterate sound doctrine. About a year after his conversion, walking to church one Sunday morning and inspired by the London church bells, he penned the words of the “Hark” poem.
The ordinary lyrics at the end give us great hope, “Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings; Mild, he lays his glory by. Born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth. Hark, the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King.” Oh, Jesus is present this day to give our current world peace, righteousness, light, healing, and the hope of second birth (new life) through Him.
God calls us to remain faithful in the ordinary of the day, which is really an extraordinary thing in a world that remains dark.
So, the angels asked the shepherds to go and see, but God compels us to go and do. Do what? The answer is to do the ordinary every day and do it every time. Show up, be present, bring peace, add joy, shine brightly, walk humbly, and do justly.