Grace Shows Up

Here’s a sermon for you, preached on June 11, 2022, at St. Paul’s Episcopal in San Rafael. Enjoy! 

Yesterday, my day went like this: Make some coffee. Walk the dog. Read a book. Take a shower. Make some food, eat some food. Volunteer at Guns to Gardens, a gun buyback event that takes surrendered guns and forges them into garden tools. Play around in the garden. Send some emails. Answer some texts. Bake some banana bread. Make homemade pizza. Write a sermon. Watch a movie with my family.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

It was nothing short of a most ordinary day – these most ordinary days the grace that fills in the cracks in the story of our lives.

When I was younger, I remember an aunt telling me I shared the same Achilles Heel as my grandfather. I looked at her quizzically: What same Achilles Heel? The need be famous.

I wanted to make it big in the world. I wanted to write a book, and after I wrote that book for said book to land on the New York Times bestseller list. I wanted to preach a sermon, and after I gave that sermon for those words to land me in the speaker’s hall of fame. Wow! She has a way with words!

I wanted, I wanted, I wanted. I wanted to be bigger than I ought; I wanted to be famous; I wanted my story to matter, because if my story mattered just a little bit more, then that would make all the difference, wouldn’t it?

But as this story goes, I’d forgotten these ordinary days, these ordinary moments, make up the stories that really matter in the end. This coffee-making, garden-keeping, email-sending, movie-watching days is the grace that fills in the cracks of my life, and I imagine, in yours as well.

And is this not what we see in this week’s gospel reading?

In Matthew 9, Jesus walks. He sees. He calls out to a man named Matthew. He says, “Follow me.” He sits. He hears. He reminds the Pharisees who he’s all about. He follows a man from the synagogue who has a sick daughter. He gets interrupted, this time by a woman who’s been bleeding for 12 years. He turns. He sees. He heals. He says, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” He holds a little girl’s hand. He sees her get up. He listens as the people laugh at him in disbelief.

As I read through this week’s passage, I was struck by the ordinariness of it all. Jesus wasn’t trying to make it big, even though, in the scheme of world religions and Most Important People to Ever have Graced the Earth, he did make it pretty big in the end.

But most of the time, most of these verb-filled moments, weren’t very big. They were just him – doing what he does, being who he was meant to be. They were just him being his ordinary self, leaning into the God-man he was brought to earth to be: the Word who became flesh and blood, who moved into the neighborhood, who gave us an example of what it means to show up in the world as we are.

Because that too is what we’re invited into: we’re invited to just be our ordinary, everyday selves. To do what we do, to be who we were meant to be. To lean into the example given to us by the one who showed up in the world as a fleshy human.

Who then were you created into be? Who then were we created to be, as a people, together?  

I suppose today’s sermon could be a plug to get involved: to find a ministry that speaks your language, that surely needs your help – to give of your time and resources because that’s what we’re supposed to do when it comes to being a part of the church.

But that’s not what this sermon is about. What if leaning into our identity as followers of Jesus isn’t as much about what we can do or how we can give back, but instead, is about naming and honoring and leaning into our ordinary, God-created selves …these same selves that are invited to listen and honor our blessed human existence.

Because today’s passage, after all, starts with an invitation to follow – and this is an invitation that I don’t think we should miss.

Matthew 9:9 says, “As Jesus was walking alone, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he (Matthew) got up and followed him.” This singular interaction – of Jesus walking and seeing and calling – was rather ordinary, as luck would have it, especially if you break it down to the three verbs present in the single verse: walk, see, and call.

Because walking, seeing, calling: that’s what we do every day. Whether we use our legs or the wheels of a chair, we go from here to there, moving and flitting and being in this world in all the many places we call home: our gardens and our neighborhoods, our places of work and our children’s schools, our senior centers and this holy building too. In these many places, we have the opportunity to open our eyes and see, to notice Beauty alive in the world around us: we see the blossoms growing on tomato vines (because y’all know I can’t get through a summer sermon without talking about tomatoes); we notice the green and gold and brown flecks in our neighbor’s eye; we see the person sitting all alone, the one who hasn’t yet been remembered and called by name. And then, the most magical, the holiest part of all arrives: we heed the invitation to follow.

Follow me, Jesus says, then whispering: Pick up the phone and call the person who keeps coming to mind.

Follow me, Jesus says, then whispering: Ask the unhoused man who always sits outside your neighborhood grocery store if you can buy him a cup of coffee.

Follow me, Jesus says, then whispering: Bake a pan of lemon squares for your new neighbor, welcoming her to the neighborhood, remembering her name.  

In all of the whispers that accompany the words “Follow me,” the whispers that are oftentimes personalized for each one of us, for God is speaking to us. God is inviting us into God’s work in the world. God is making God’s self known through us, individually and collectively.

And I don’t doubt that we’re then participating in God’s work in the world as we do these things. After all, we’re just doing what Jesus did – walking, seeing, following. But two thousand years after the Great Teacher walked the earth, it’s a little bit different for us: instead of seeing him model this first-hand, we do so by leaning into the Spirit, one footstep, one seeing eyeball, one heart-thumping God-whisper at a time – being and becoming who God created us to be on God’s most holy turf, earth.

It may not be splashy and shiny, and is instead, utterly, extraordinarily ordinary, but in these most ordinary events, grace shows up. Grace fills in the gaps. Grace squeezes its way in and makes itself known.

It’s us just being us, leaning into our not-so famous, but my God, utterly loved and celebrated and gorgeous, child-of-God selves.

And that, I’d say, is a pretty good place to be.

Amen.