蜜芽传媒

Good Morning.聽 I recently conducted a funeral for a man who in the course of his long life had been a husband, father, salesman, and rugby coach. When his eulogy was tearfully read, I heard little that I hadn鈥檛 heard many times before. Although his life was special to those who mourned him, it might be summed up thus: 鈥淗e was an ordinary man, who lived an ordinary life in an ordinary town.鈥�
After his burial on a cold afternoon in near horizontal rain, I reflected on other funerals I鈥檝e conducted and eulogies I鈥檝e heard. There鈥檚 wisdom to be gained by listening to people recount with love the lives of those they鈥檝e lost. They express the commonplace experience of living, loving, and being loved.聽
Funerals have taught me that though we may want to escape the ordinary, it鈥檚 actually in that reality that we grow and are shaped.聽
The trick, though, is to find meaning in living well with the ordinary people around us. Here, we have (according to Paul) Jesus as a perfect model, 鈥渨ho though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.鈥澛�
This passage suggests that Jesus is the opposite of those who seek to exchange their commonplace lives with something more godlike. If Adam and Eve fell by seeking to become gods, then Christ saved us by choosing to become ordinary.聽I can think of no better lesson than that on All Souls Day, when we commemorate the faithful, yet ordinary, dead.
Almighty God, whose Son became an ordinary carpenter and suffered death as an ordinary criminal, help us to find our calling amidst our commonplace lives where we live, love, and are loved. Amen.