Ordinary Matters

Ordinary Matters

Ordinary Matters - Audio/Visual 

Who believes what we’ve heard and seen? Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this? The servant grew up before God — a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. (Isaiah 53:1-3 – The Message)

The little, pint-sized Joseph scurried across the church stage wearing sandals, a robe and his best attempt at an anxious face. He raps on the door his dad had built for the children’s Christmas play, then shifts from one foot to the other. The innkeeper answers wearing a gunny sack for a robe, a towel for a turban, and an elastic band securing the false beard to his face. He looks at Joseph and tries not to giggle because just a couple of hours ago the two boys were in the yard playing catch. In fact, their moms had to tell them twice to get dressed for the Christmas Eve service.

So, here they stand. The innkeeper crosses his arms while Joseph’s waving his. He turns and points in the direction of the pillow-stuffed nine-year-old girl standing next to him. She waddles onto center stage with her best imitation of pregnancy pain but she’s a child herself. The crowd chuckles while Joseph looks at the innkeeper, the innkeeper looks at Mary and we all know what happens next. Joseph urges. The innkeeper shakes his head. His hotel is packed. Guests occupy every corner. There’s no room at the inn. But rather than hurrying to the next scene, Joseph pleads his case. “Mr. Innkeeper, you’d better think twice about your decision because you have no idea who you’re turning away. That’s God inside this girl! You’re closing the door on the King of the universe. You’d better reconsider or else you’ll be remembered as the guy who kicked heaven’s child to the curb.”

The innkeeper reacts. “I’ve heard some desperate appeals for a room before, but God inside a girl? That girl? She has pimples and puffy ankles. Doesn’t look like a God-mother to me. And you don’t look too special yourself . . . uh . . . what’s your name? Oh yeah, Joe. Take your tall tale somewhere else, Joe. I’m not falling for that one. Sleep in the barn for all I care!” The innkeeper huffs and turns. Joseph and Mary exit. The choir sings “Away in a Manger” as stagehands roll out a pile of hay, a trough and some plastic sheep. The audience smiles, claps and sings along. They love the song, the kids, and they cherish the story. But most of all they cling to hope – the hope that God indwells the every-dayness of our world.

The story drips with normalcy. The couple doesn’t caravan into Bethlehem with camels, servants, purple banners and dancers. Mary and Joseph don’t have any political connections, and they have the clout of a migrant worker with the net worth of a minimum wage earner. Their life is difficult but not destitute. It’s just that they inhabit the world somewhere between royalty and rubes. They’re, well . . . normal. Normal has calluses like Joseph, and stretch marks like Mary. Normal stays up late doing laundry and wakes up early for work. Normal drives the carpool wearing a bathrobe and slippers. Normal is Norm and Norma, not Prince and Princess.

Norm sings off-key, and Norma works in a cubicle, struggling to find time to pray. Both have stood where Joseph stood and have heard what Mary heard. Not from an innkeeper, but from the coach in middle school, or the hunk in high school, or the supervisor at work. “We don’t have room for you; time for you; space for you; a job for you; an interest in you. Besides, look at you. You’re too slow; too fat; too inexperienced; too late; too young; too old; too ordinary.” But then comes the Jesus story — Norm and Norma from Normal, Nebraska, plodding into ho-hum Bethlehem in the middle of the night. No one notices them. No one looks twice in their direction. Trumpets don’t blast and bells don’t sound.

What if Joseph and Mary had shown up in furs with a chauffeur? And what if God had decked out Bethlehem like Hollywood on Oscar night? Had Jesus come with pomp and circumstance we would have read the story and thought, My, look how Jesus entered our world. But since he didn’t, we can read the story and dream, My, could Jesus be born in my everyday world? Because isn’t that where you live? Not a party world, or a red-letter-day world. No, you live an everyday life. You have bills to pay, beds to make and grass to cut. Your face won’t grace any magazine covers, and you aren’t expecting a call from the White House. God enters the world through folks like you and comes on days just like today.

Step into the stable, and cradle the baby wrapped in rags. Run a finger across his chubby cheek and listen as one who knew him well puts lyrics to the event: “In the beginning was the Word.” (John 1:1) The words, “In the beginning” take us to the beginning. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) The baby Mary held was connected to the dawn of time. The baby was born, but the Word never was. “All things were made through him.” (1 Corinthians 8:6) Not by him, but through him. Jesus didn’t fashion the world out of raw material he happened to find at the thrift store. He created all things out of nothing. Jesus: the Genesis Word, “the firstborn over all creation.” (Colossians 1:15) He is the “one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom God made everything and through whom we have been given life.” (1 Corinthians 8:6)

And then, what no theologian ever conceived, or rabbi ever dared dream, God did. “The Word became flesh.” (John 1:14) The Artist became the oil on his own palette. The Potter melted into the mud on his own wheel. God became an embryo in the womb of a village girl. Christ in Mary. God in Christ. Astounding, this thought of heaven’s fetus floating within the womb. Joseph and Mary didn’t have the advantages we have today with ultrasound. Have you ever seen one? Frankly, the black-and-white image on the screen looks more like a Doppler radar than a child. But with the help of the doctor, you’re able to see the arms and hands, and as the doctor moves the instrument he or she takes inventory. “There’s the head, the feet, the torso . . . . Well, everything looks normal.”

Mary’s doctor would’ve made the same announcement. Jesus was an ordinary baby. There’s nothing in the story to imply that Jesus levitated over the manger or walked out of the stable. Just the opposite. He “dwelt among us.” (John 1:14) John’s word for dwelt traces its origin to tabernacle or tent. Jesus didn’t separate himself from his creation; he pitched his tent in the neighborhood. The Word of God entered the world with the cry of a baby. His family had no cash or connections or strings to pull. Jesus, the Maker of the universe, the one who invented time and created breath, was born into a family too humble to swing a bed for a pregnant teenager. God writes his story with people like Joseph and Mary . . . and with people like Sam Stone.

In the winter of 1933, a curious offer appeared in the daily newspaper of Canton, Ohio. “Man Who Felt Depression’s Sting to Help 75 Unfortunate Families.” The article recounted the story of a Mr. B. Virdot who’d promised to send a check to the neediest in the community. All they had to do was describe their plight in a letter and mail it to General Delivery. After the stock market crash of 1929, the still-plunging economy had left fathers with no jobs, houses with no heat, children with patched clothing, and an entire nation, it seemed, with no hope. The appeals poured in. “I hate to write this letter . . . it seems too much like begging . . . my husband doesn’t know I’m writing . . . He is working but not making enough to hardly feed his family,” one person wrote. Another said, “Mr. Virdot, we are in desperate circumstances . . . No one knows, only those who go through it.”

All of Canton knew of Mr. Virdot’s offer but, oddly, no one knew Mr. Virdot. The city of some 105,000 citizens had no listing for a B. Virdot. So, people wondered if he really existed, yet within a week checks began to arrive at homes all over the area. Most were modest – about five dollars. All were signed “B. Virdot.” Through the years, the story was told but the identity of the man was never discovered. Then in 2008, long after his death, a grandson opened a tattered black suitcase that had collected dust in his parents’ attic and that’s where he found the letters, all dated in December 1933, as well as 150 canceled checks – twice the number of family’s as advertised. Mr. B. Virdot was Samuel J. Stone. His pseudonym was a hybrid of Barbara, Virginia and Dorothy, the names of his three daughters.

There was nothing privileged about Sam Stone. If anything, his upbringing was marred by challenge. He was fifteen when his family emigrated from Romania. They settled into a Pittsburgh ghetto where his father hid Sam’s shoes so he couldn’t go to school and forced him and his six siblings to roll cigars in the attic. Still, Stone persisted. He left home to work on a barge, then in a coal mine, and by the time the Depression hit he owned a small chain of clothing stores and lived in relative comfort. He wasn’t affluent, or impoverished, but he was willing to help. He was an ordinary man living in an ordinary place who chose to be a conduit of extraordinary grace. In God’s story, ordinary matters.

And so do you.

Grace,

Randy