In praise of routine

But today we're thinking about a different problem; when people regard the regular, ordinary routine of days to be boring – that life is merely a succession of one stupid, dull thing after another, things that we see again and again.

In a word, it is boring.

Day after day Anna and Simeon are in the Temple, doing the same things: recite the regular prayers, observe the regular sacrifices, watch the priests at their regular work.

Too old to do much else, they may as well be there as anywhere else; at least the routine is predictable.

Except there is this one thing.

Simeon has received a promise by a vision that he would see the Lord's Messiah before he died.

So the day after day in the Temple is not boring.

There is a point to it all, there is anticipation, there is expectation.

Is this the day that the Lord fulfills his promise?

No?, well maybe tomorrow.

What should my prayers be today with that in mind?

What should I be doing in my daily routine that will be congruent with that expectation?

Are we talking about Simeon, or ourselves now?

Both, isn't it! We're not stuck in a rut as was the baker in the old commercial: “Time to make the doughnuts.”

We're living with a promise that enlivens our routine.

We live with time to craft the prayers in lively hope.

We live with time to write the sermons in confidence that our utterance is to be taken by the Spirit and shaped and molded and conveyed as God's Word as it gets to a listener's ear and heart and mind.

We live with time to visit the hospital patient with the promise that God is the one with the resolution of all our ills firmly in hand.

We live with time to wrestle with the decisions that councils and committees and leaders must make about property and finance and personnel and program.

We live with the time to draft a mission statement that is accurate, concise, and points to our present opportunities from the vantage of the outcome of the whole church, the body of Christ.

Routine? Yes, but not as the persistence of the past, the same thing over and over just because it has always been that way.

Omniscience would be quite handy when God wants to consider all things all at the same time, but we can't manage that.

We're lucky if we can think clearly about one thing at a time.

Routine is thus a management tool for us in our human weaknesses.

Since we encounter Anna and Simeon in the Temple, it

seems appropriate that we should seek Good News in the routine of worship, that is, in the Ordinary and Propers of the liturgy.

We don't have to have clever new inventions in worship each week.

Nor do we regard the liturgy as a burden imposed from the past.

Its routine becomes the place where gifts of God are unwrapped.

As we sing and recite, read and pray, and bathe and eat in Christ's name, we encounter God's salvation.

I know that for me, sometimes it will be a phrase which I have read a hundred times will on a particular occasion be the one which jumps out and speaks to me, opening a new future.

It is not something which we can program; it will happen in God's good time.

But we can make it a little easier for the Lord as well as easier for ourselves, if we keep ourselves within the framework of the church's regular routine of gathering for worship.

When youth are preparing for District Band or Orchestra, one of the things that drives them crazy is the requirement that they learn major and minor scales and be able to play whichever ones the audition judges ask them to play.

So the students sit for hours going over those scales until they can play them without thinking about the fingerings; the successful performers make it sound effortless.

“Why do we have to do this?” many a student has lamented. “This is boring.”

Several reasons: the first is the sheer discipline of following through in a task, sometimes unglamorous.

There is the technical knowledge gained about how music fits together.

Then also there is the observation that portions of those scales are used in the various compositions that they will play together, and thus knowing the scales makes those passages much easier to learn.

It is not just about me and what I like at any given moment; it is what we do together when the conductor's baton calls us to action, and further, what message and effect our work together will have on those who listen to the music.

Over and over we listen to those 200 or so portions of scripture each year in the 3 year cycle.

Again and again we sing the 200 or so hymns each year until they become familiar, and perhaps some parts memorized.

I'm doing a series of study sessions now with a half dozen folks on the background and technical aspects of the Ordinary and Propers, and the folks are fascinated enough with it to keep coming back.

But it is not about me as a leader or even about all of us together as readers, listeners, singers and the rest.

Rather it is about what the Lord will make of it all, hw he will use our speaking and singing to call new people to faith, and how he will teach us that these are the initial rehearsals for the heavenly chorus.

And so we will continue with our regular routine of reading and singing and praying, because great things can and will happen in God's good time, and we will be able to sing with Simeon's joy fulfilled: O Lord, now let your servant depart in heavenly peace. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.