“All things are inventions of holiness.
Some more rascally than others.”
– Mary Oliver

Milestone Sunday…what a day! It was a day filled with both silly and sacred stories. I love to think about how God can take and shape anything and everything into “inventions of holiness”.

Our staff team had a grand plan of using a large, bright blue pool for baptisms this Sunday… those plans were replaced with a small, unassuming cold plunge tank instead. I may be stretching the imagination a little here, but doesn’t this sound like a familiar story? We (the human species) love grand, over-the-top displays that captivate others’ attention and make us the center of attention (subtly, of course). We do our best to craft an image that is desirable and worthy of people’s attention and time. We start to expect the best things to show up in a beautiful, captivating, and timely fashion. I want to name this is appropriate and is what is most natural to us. It’s the story we tell ourselves, but is it the story we ought to tell ourselves?

I want to suggest there is another way to see. Another way of going about living in the world. Another kind of expectation we can have. Another story. A story of expecting and encountering God in the ordinary, in the silly and the sacred, in the small and unassuming. This is the story God invites us to experience over and over again. The Story is one of remembrance. We often forget this story… the way God came into this world and chose to share eternal life with us… in small, unexpected and unassuming ways (a baby in a manger, a rabbi in the desert, a cross on a hill, an empty tomb)… the story of Jesus Christ,

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

Let’s practice together letting go of the pretense, prestige, and perfectionism that weighs us down and exhausts us endlessly. Let us learn from Jesus, to live gently and humbly, to take on the yoke that is easy and light, to enter into a life where we will find rest. Let us laugh together, serve together, and be raised to new life in ways where we expect, encounter, and experience holiness (perhaps in ways “some more rascally than others”)!

— Pastor Michael Taber