Solomon Grundy

There’s a children’s nursery rhymed entitled, "Solomon Grundy." I think I have quoted it to you before. Nursery rhymes make good sermon illustrations, and I remember Solomon Grundy from my own childhood. Today’s gospel brought it to mind for me again.

Is Solomon Grundy a tragic figure, or a comic one? He is certainly a familiar one. His life followed the course that we pretty much expect all lives to follow. The unique brevity of his life is extraordinary and makes for a good nursery rhyme, but the progression of his life is very ordinary. Very predictable. In fact, if you look at the portion of the Prayer Book which covers the Pastoral Offices, you will find Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child, Baptism (because of its special importance, it is actually in a different part of the Book), The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage, Reconciliation and Ministration to the Sick, Ministration at the Time of Death, and Burial. Born on Monday. Christened on Tuesday. Married on Wednesday, Took ill on Thursday, Worse on Friday, Died on Saturday. Buried on Sunday.  It's all right there in the Prayer Book.

We don’t know, of course, whether or not Solomon had the benefit of the church’s ministrations during the course of his life. If he did, we might say he actually lived a full and faithful life. What more could anyone seek or expect?

Could anyone expect or imagine, for example, that Solomon Grundy might actually be the Son of God? The incarnate presence and power of God made real in this man? It’s a starting thought. His life was so ordinary, so routine, so familiar, so unremarkable. Just like everyone else’s life.

That’s what they said about Jesus in Nazareth. Oh, that’s just Mary and Joseph’s son. We might say of Jesus that he was born on Monday, and circumcised on Tuesday. He was expected to follow the predictable routine: go through his bar mitzvah, take up his father’s trade, marry, settle down in the village, attend the synagogue when he could, until finally he, like all other flesh and blood human beings, would ultimately fall ill and pass into the bosom of Father Abraham. The people of Nazareth couldn’t believe that Jesus could ever be more than the ordinary folk they were. They refused to believe that God’s own presence, God’s own power, could dwell in the flesh of an ordinary man. After all, he was just like them.

Listen to a wonderful prayer from the Prayer Book: "O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ…"

God, who wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature. Human nature. We don’t often use that as a really complimentary term. After all, it generally refers to all of our human flaws and human limitations. Human nature—it’s what makes us ordinary, predictable, unremarkable human beings. You and me and Solomon Grundy. With Jesus’ birth, God took what was human, an ordinary man the people of Nazareth recognized as no different from themselves, and united that human being with the full presence of God. A human being was made holy with God’s presence. God took ordinary, unremarkable human nature and gave it divine dignity.

Jesus didn’t come to this world, our world, just to preach or even work miracles. Others had done those things, and they continue to do them. He didn’t come just to give things to human kind in various transactions from God to us… a word of wisdom here, a healing touch there. Jesus isn’t just a holy bank teller, enabling us to make deposits or withdrawals in heavenly currency. God became human in Jesus Christ to transform human nature. To take the very nature of human beings—ordinary, predictable, unremarkable—human beings and make that humanity holy. Remember the collect: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity. That is what Jesus offers us. Because Jesus has built the bridge, because God has shared our human lives, we may share God’s divine life.

The people of Nazareth couldn’t believe that something so extraordinary could come out of something so ordinary. They refused to believe that someone they knew, someone ordinary who was just like them, could be the bearer of God’s life within him. They refused to believe that their own ordinary lives could be filled with the presence and power of God. They refused to believe, and so Jesus walked away from Nazareth.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge first coined the phrase "a willing suspension of disbelief." The people of Nazareth were not able to suspend their disbelief… their disbelief that the Son of God could come to them in the guy next door. Jesus was amazed at their unbelief, Mark says. And, ultimately, because they could not suspend their disbelief, Jesus could do little among them and he turned away from Nazareth and went on to other villages.

For us also, faith is often about suspending our disbelief. If only we could suspend our disbelief… if only we could suspend our disbelief that the awesome, transforming power of God could be found in the very midst of what is most ordinary, routine and familiar in our own lives.

So let us pray today that we may suspend our disbelief… suspend our disbelief that in the Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday routine of carpools, jobs, and shopping we could possibly share in God’s divine life.

Let us pray that we may suspend our disbelief that the rather ordinary person, whom we may know well, sitting next to us in the pews or at the bridge table or at the dinner table, could ever be a bearer of God’s presence and power to us.

Let us pray that we may suspend our disbelief that we could be the bearer of God’s presence and power to others.

Let us pray that we may suspend our disbelief that this small, humble parish could really shine like the brightest sun out into the world with the light of Christ.

Let us pray that we may suspend our disbelief that the saving power and love of Christ would really make a difference in our lives.

Let us pray that we may suspend our disbelief, and that Jesus therefore may stay and abide with us.

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