A weekly chat about life together as the people of God here on the East Coast
This week I want to kick the conversation off by taking a lead from Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. He once gave a famous speech called ‘Here’s to the Crazy One’s’. I’ve been thinking about church life and I think we need to say “Here’s to the ordinary”. Take a read and see what you think:
Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.
(Blaise Pascal)
Question: What are the outward means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption?
Answer: The outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption are his ordinances, especially the word, sacraments and prayer; all which are made effectual to the elect for salvation.
(Westminster Shorter Catechism)
The reformers coined a phrase that to our modern ears, sounds odd: ordinary means of grace. By this definition, they referred to preaching (and reading) of Scripture and the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Ray Ortland, commenting on these means of grace said: ‘How do I, as a believer, access the grace of the Lord for my many needs? Where do I go, what do I do, to connect with the real help He gives to sinners and sufferers here in this world? …at a practical level, how do I come to Him for His grace?’ This is where the term ordinary means of grace comes in. They are the ordinary (everyday) means by which we receive the grace of God and the ordinary means by which we know God and his ways.
Here’s the rub; for many in our culture, these ordinary means are just a little too … ordinary! Where’s the sparkle? Where’s the excitement? Where’s the unusual? Where’s the fizz and pop?
Ordinary is, as I’ve already said, a little too… ordinary.
However, here’s my plea; maybe we should cherish the ordinary means of grace because, for the vast majority of us, our lives are … you guessed it… ordinary! I know social media wants us to believe that we are something special (compared to the rest of the human race). I know our culture is trying to frame how we view the world as beholden to us, but for most of us, in fact almost all of us, life is very ordinary. We work ordinary jobs, some of which are just rubbish. We get ordinary smelly breath and have ordinary saggy bellies. We live in ordinary houses and have ordinary holidays and buy ordinary cars and shop at ordinary supermarkets. We are basically very ordinary people and that, according to today’s culture… sucks!
Yet, what if there is something beautiful about how God uses ordinary means, like ordinary preaching and ordinary baptism and ordinary bread and ordinary wine to communicate his extraordinary grace? What if God is cutting a very different groove to that of our culture, including much of our church culture? What if God is way more concerned with what I have termed elsewhere ‘bread and butter Christianity‘ than hyped-up festival Christianity? What if the day-to-day means of knowing God and receiving his grace are … ordinary?
How many of us might be overlooking the extraordinary, because it’s packaged in the ordinary? In fact, this is not that dissimilar to how Jesus was overlooked in the gospels because he didn’t fit the messiah stereotype that many people were looking and longing for.
So here’s to the ordinary! Here’s to the everyday. Here’s to the simple and straightforward. Here’s to the bread and butter. Why? Because what we need most in this life is not the fizz and pop of spiritual experiences but the life-transforming power of grace and if God has, in his sovereign will, chosen to wrap that grace in the ordinary clothes of preaching, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, then here’s to ordinary preaching and ordinary baptism and ordinary bread and ordinary wine because in (or by) these ordinary means, the extraordinary grace of God is revealed to us!
So, one last time… here’s to the ordinary!