If we think that, nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus' Incarnation - his becoming one of us, putting on our flesh, our loves, our tears, our pain, our sweat, our hunger, our joys, our laughing and dancing, our burdens and our deaths - Jesus combining all of this in Someone both divine and human - showed us the truth: the sacred and the ordinary are one. One in One Person. One in all of creation.
To see the divine united with the human, indeed inherent in all creation, the love and gifts which are beyond our comprehension to fully understand and appreciate, all we have to do is look.
"One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life....God's revelations are through the concrete and specific.....The biblical revelation is saying that we are already spiritual beings; we just don't know it yet, and we have to be shocked into it. The Bible tries to let us in on the secret, by revealing God in ordinary human affairs and conflicts. That's why so much of the text seems so mundane, practical, specific, and frankly unspiritual! ....The Incarnation proclaims that matter and spirit have never been separate. Jesus came to tell us that these two seemingly different worlds are - and always have been - one." (Fr. Richard Rohr)
Sometimes when we read Scripture, we are thoroughly shocked by the very ordinary lives, joys, sins and failings of these people whose stories have been around for us to read for thousands of years. These stories could have been written today! Murder, adultery, war, conflict, sibling rivalry, childless mothers and motherless children, prostitutes and thieves, banquets, and weddings, and first loves, and sickness, and intrigue, and death and funerals.
What is so sacred about all that! Everything. Simply everything. Because every episode, every ordinary life in Scripture, is shot through with and inundated in the Presence of God. God works with, in, and through the scoundrels and the saints, who are very often the same people. And it's in our everyday ordinary lives that we too meet God. In fact, one great saint was asked "What would you do if you knew you were going to die in the next minute and meet God?" His answer: "I'd continue to shoot this game of pool." Yes, God meets us in the pool hall as much as He meets us in the Church hall.
Last night, Paul and I drove out to East Aurora to see our grandson Ian perform in a middle school play, a '60's "take" on Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." It was a joy to experience! Sixth, seventh, and eighth graders performed with zest and a real sense of playfulness - one of the boys couldn't stop giggling for a good part of the play. What they lacked in sophistication and finesse was more than made up for by their enthusiasm and group spirit, their projecting the characters they were playing with delight. We were enchanted to see Ian -an eighth grader - stand so erect, and poised, and deliver his lines with conviction and an inner peacefulness that flowed from his thoroughly enjoying himself. No one worried unduly about missing lines or entrances or exits; there was always someone back stage to coach them through everything.
Tonight, I asked myself, "So where did you meet God lately?" And I thought "In Ian's play - in the script and in the actors/actresses." Because all of us are God's children. We miss our lines, our entrances, and exits on that great stage of life ("All the world's a stage," Shakespeare taught us.) We giggle at the serious parts, we freeze and forget what to do next, we even get clumsy and knock over the scenery of situations and have to prop them back up (with a pat to make them stay there.)
Like those lovely characters the students inhabited for a night, it takes our entire, brief "stage runs" to begin to flower into our identities. We fall in love with the wrong person, then the right person. We form into little - or big - cliques, fight, then have to be tricked into seeing each other as real people just like ourselves. We have to learn how to share the stage with others. We get mad and have to figure out how to make up. We dance through life - maybe not like always-graceful professionals, but with lots of sass and zing. We fall down trying to shoulder heavy burdens that are our little daily deaths, and then spring up to enjoy the new joys in life that are our little daily resurrections. That's the pattern, the "script," of our daily, ordinary lives.
If we're wise, we remember that we're children, and don't take any of our mistakes or failings too seriously. Because we know that God is just around the corner in the wings, patiently coaching us in the right lines, and encouraging us on our entrances and exits. God is in that "character" standing next to us who gazes meaningfully into our eyes and encourages us to become even more of who we are. God is in us, interacting with joy and enthusiasm with others to create a truly superb production. Not perfect - not by a long shot. But perfectly full of love and laughter and the beauty that resides in sincerity. And God is in the dancing, even loose '60's hippie, jock, and nerd dancing, because God IS the Dance, the ordinary Rhythm of our ordinary - and divine - Lives.
And at each of our "curtains," if we have entered with full and whole hearts into the Dance between God and His creation, He will greet us with "Well done, good and faithful servant. You brought down the house!"