In the Middle of the Mundane

Romans 12:1 ESV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Introduction

I recently began listening to a podcast and the title of the episode provoked all kinds of feelings. The episode title was “For better or worse...” The episode was well articulated about how we bring so many expectations with us into our marriage.

When we stand at the altar we make these necessary and incredible vows to our spouse.

For better or worse

In sickness and in health

For richer or poorer

And I was thinking about the dichotomy of these professions. We are mentioning the highs and we are mentioning the lows. And for every young couple at that altar, of course the only thing they are thinking about are the highs. They are thinking about their honeymoon trip, and anniversaries, and vacations, and houses, and babies, and all of the highs of marriage.

And then, there are the seasoned cynical saints that are watching and thinking to themselves, let’s see how they do when they have their first real fight. Let’s see how they do when life REALLY hits them. Let’s see how they do when the mother-in-law wants to move in or when the unemployed brother who plays video games all day wants to borrow money. Let’s see how they do then!

Transition

And today, I’m not even going to preach about that juxtaposition. You see, there’s a lot of material out there about how to survive the highs and how to survive the lows. You can find book after book that can help you live through the extremes of your marriage and the extremes of your family.

No, today I want to deal with what I believe is where you will spend most of your time in your marriage. I want to talk to you about the middle.

What I want to talk to you about as we close this series is how do we survive In the Middle of the Mundane.

As a matter of fact that is my sermon title for today; In the Middle of the Mundane.

The Mundane

So what is the mundane? Let me give you a definition of what the mundane is.

The mundane is something that is dull; something that lacks excitement.

When you are on vacation, that’s exciting!

When you are fighting, We’ll, that’s exciting too. It’s a different kind of excitement.

But the mundane? What is the mundane?

The mundane is doing laundry. Again, and again, and again, and again...

The mundane is washing dishes. Again, and again, and again, and again… and I am especially talking to the Hispanics in the crowd, because for some reason the only thing we use our dishwashers for is to store things. White people use their dishwashers. But Hispanics? Nah, that’s just another one of the shelves… So there you go washing the pots, washing the plates, washing the cups, over and over again.

That’s the mundane is getting up every day and going to your job. You didn’t think you’d be here. You thought you’d be working somewhere and feeling like your job is making a real difference in this world, but you got security and you make a good salary, so off you go. Again, and again, and again, and again… As a matter of fact you are so disinterested in your job that when people ask about your job you simply, “Eh, It pays the bills...”

The mundane, young people, is waking up every morning, and eating the same uninspired breakfast over and over and over again before heading out the door and going to school. You are learning about things that I can personally guarantee you that you will never use in life. I’m sorry. I hate to be the one to break it to you. But unless you are a physicist, you will never use Calculus in your career. I know that. You know that. We all know that. But you gotta do it. It’s the mundane in this season of your life.

The Mundane is REAL LIFE

And I really don’t want to stand here and kill your aspirations for your life. That’s not my point in saying this. My point is that far more of your life will lived in the mundane than it will be in the momentous.

And, I have to share this with you because many people don’t have this expectation of their family. As a matter of fact, they have some Disney-painted expectation of their family, and when it’s not what they imagined they do things that destroy their families. So let me be your truth broker and inform you that your marriage is going to feel mundane at times. Raising your family is going to feel mundane. Will there be highs and lows, of course! We talk all about the highs and lows as you are making your vows. But what doesn’t get talked about is the mundane.

And that’s concerning… because our Bibles are full of stories of what God does in the middle of the mundane.

Jesus Chose the Mundane

Can we just talk about the birth of Jesus for a second? Can we just start off by acknowledging that God chose the mundane?

You see, as we read the story of time we encounter a God who is actively working in the lives of His creation. The Lord, who John informs us is a Spirit, continues to work in the lives of His creation. He raises up men and women to lead us and point us to a relationship with our creator. The Lord not only is working through the lives of people, but one writer says that all of his creation points to His existence. We cannot see Him, because He is a Spirit, but he is alive and demonstrates His power.

He demonstrates His power when sent plagues to Egypt when they put the nation of Israel in slavery. He demonstrates His power by parting an entire sea. He demonstrates His power by causing water to flow out of a rock. He demonstrates his power by sending food every morning as Israel wandered in the dessert. He demonstrates His power by countless times in History sending an Army of Angels to fight against Israel’s enemies when they had no chance of survival. He raised up Kings and Kingdoms, and he disposes them when they have accomplished His purpose.

How does He do this?

Well, He is God all by Himself. He created time, therefore He is outside of time.

He is omnipotent because He has all power.

He is omniscient because He is all knowledge.

He is omnipresent because as a Spirit He is everywhere, always.

He told the writer, that there is no God beside Him. He looked to the right and there was no one. He looked to the left and there was no one. He looked in front of, and behind of Himself, and there was no one.

He alone is God.

And yet...

2000 years ago he decides that it was time for Him to step into our world; the world He created.

John said it this way, “And the word became flesh and dwelled among us...”

The omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent one decided that He would walk into the mundane.

Jesus Chose the Mundane

Jesus chose Joseph and Mary. An ordinary couple that was about to be married. They were not royalty. They were not prominent people in the community. This was not a noble family. Joseph was a carpenter. Joseph worked an ordinary job. Mary was just an ordinary girl. There was nothing special about them…

And yet, in the eyes of the Lord, they were exactly who He was looking for.

Your ordinary matters to God

In a world that is obsessed with influence, Jesus often worked among those who had none.

And as Jesus got older, and as he began to start doing miracles, and I want you to read the response of the people.

Matthew 13:55–56 NIV

“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?”

The people were unhinged because they could not see the Messiah piercing through the ordinary.

Miracles in the Mundane

But this was the way of Jesus. Just as he picked an ordinary couple, he also chose ordinary ways to demonstrate his power.

We read about the first miracle of Jesus in the Gospel of John.

Jesus is attending a wedding and father-in-law of the bride tried to cut corners and save money where he could and didn’t order enough wine. The wedding is about to end on a low-note. The family would be the talk of the town for all of the wrong reasons.

“Girl, did you see what they were serving at the wedding? They were serving water! They didn’t buy enough wine!”

And in this rather ordinary circumstance Jesus works his first miracle. He turns water into wine at a wedding. Not even a nobleman’s wedding, I’m talking about just a couple on the block that couldn’t stretch their finances far enough for the wedding. And Jesus, well he used ordinary water and pots. Ordinary things.

When there was crowd of 5,000 men, not to mention women and children, who gathered to hear Jesus teach they wouldn’t leave to go home and eat. Jesus, being concerned about something so ordinary, their lunch, decides to feed them. And what does he use? An ordinary sack lunch that a mother sent her son with. And the Lord took that little sack lunch of bread and fish and he broke it, and he broke it, and he broke it, and out of that mundane little sandwich, came a miracle.

I can go on and on about how Jesus used the ordinary, but here’s the point of it all, the Miracle is in the Mundane.

Here is this Mom waking up early to pack her son a lunch. This is the same thing she does every day. She wakes up early to prepare breakfast for her husband and for her kid, while she has a nursing infant at home who didn’t let her get much sleep. It would be easier to just send them off with some lunch money, but she gets up to the mundane. She begins to prepare the bread for her son. She grabs some left over fish that she prepared for dinner the night before, and she carefully wraps it so that it’s still warm when her son opens his lunch pale. She knows that her son wants Lunchables like all the cool kids, but this is all that she can prepare in the busyness of her mundane life.

She kisses her husband and sends off her son, and to her, the morning is over and the household chores begin.

But what she doesn’t know is that she is the unsung hero of this story.

You see, without her showing up and doing the mundane, there would be no miracle that day. The miracle was made possible by the love of a mother.

Here we are, over 2000 years later celebrating a mother who showed up.

We aren’t singing the praises of a mom who took her kid on an all inclusive trip to Cabo.

We aren’t singing the praises of a father who made sure his kid got every new release of Air Jordan’s.

We aren’t here preaching about the parents who put their kid in travel ball.

We are talking about a mom who saw value in the mundane. A mom who simply did what she always did… she packed a lunch for her son.

But Jesus, he saw the care and the consistency of that mother, and we now have a story that has lasted for generations.

What’s the lesson here Mom, Dad and students?

Keep showing up. Keep showing up. Keep showing up.

Jesus choses the mundane.

Jesus does miracles with the mundane.

So keep showing up.

Conclusion

I want to close with one more story from the Bible.

Jesus in Matthew 20 gave us a bar about being great. He said this, “…whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your salve...” Matthew 20:26b-27a NIV

What a line Jesus gives us…

But do you know what led Jesus to saying this?

Two of Jesus’ disciples, James and John, had their Mama come to ask Jesus if her sons could be seated at the right and left of Jesus in His kingdom.

Church, let me introduce you to the first helicopter mom ever recorded in scripture.

James and John are grown men.

And here comes Mama...

It wasn’t enough that her sons were handpicked by Jesus to be His disciples. No, Mama needed to make sure that Jesus also selected her two boys to be seated next to him.

And Jesus, has to let her know, that if her children were not fulfilled with being in this circle, then they could never be great in the Kingdom.

The Kingdom belongs to those who see ministry in the mundane.

I know that in the mundane we fail to see significance, but Jesus sees significance.

Jesus uses the mundane of laundry, dishes, and packing lunch to make a difference.

Jesus will work through the father who gets up everyday to get these bills paid and these kids raised.

Jesus will shine through you students as you show up to school every day, study for the class, and stay after school for your sports practice.

All of this matters to Jesus, and so it should matter to us.

This is why Paul tells us to be living sacrifice. All of these things that you call mundane Paul says is spiritual worship.

I’ll close with this same verse once again in the message translation.

Romans 12:1 The Message

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.