MARK 6:3
You awoke today to a common day. No butler drew your bath. No maid laid out your clothes. Your eggs weren’t Benedict, and your orange juice wasn’t fresh squeezed. But that’s okay; there’s nothing special about the day. It’s not your birthday or Christmas; it’s like every other day. A common day.
So you went to the garage and climbed into your common car. You once read that children of the queen never need to drive. You’ve been told of executives and sheiks who are helicoptered to their offices. As for you, a stretch limo took you to your wedding reception, but since then it’s been sedans and minivans. Common cars.
Common cars that take you to your common job. You take it seriously, but you would never call it extraordinary. You’re not clearing your calendar for Jay Leno or making time to appear before Congress. You’re just making sure you get your work done before the six o’clock rush turns the Loop into a parking lot.
Get caught in the evening traffic, and be ready to wait in line. The line at the freeway on-ramp. The line at the grocery or the line at the gas station. If you were the governor or had an Oscar on your mantel, you might bypass the crowds. But you aren’t. You are common.
You lead a common life. Punctuated by occasional weddings, job transfers, bowling trophies, and graduations—a few highlights—but mainly the day-to-day rhythm that you share with the majority of humanity.
And, as a result, you could use a few tips. You need to know how to succeed at being common. Commonhood has its perils, you know. A face in the crowd can feel lost in the crowd. You tend to think you are unproductive, wondering if you’ll leave any lasting contribution. And you can feel insignificant. Do commoners rate in heaven? Does God love common people?
God answers these questions in a most uncommon fashion. If the word common describes you, take heart—you’re in fine company. It also describes Christ.
Christ common? Come on. Since when is walking on water “common”? Speaking to the dead “common”? Being raised from the dead “common”? Can we call the life of Christ “common”?
Nine-tenths of it we can. When you list the places Christ lived, draw a circle around the town named Nazareth—a single-camel map dot on the edge of boredom. For thirty of his thirty-three years, Jesus lived a common life. Aside from that one incident in the temple at the age of twelve, we have no record of what he said or did for the first thirty years he walked on this earth.
Were it not for a statement in Mark’s gospel, we would not know anything about Jesus’ early adult life. It’s not much, but just enough thread to weave a thought or two for those who suffer from the common life. If you chum with NBA stars and subscribe to Yachting Monthly, you can tune out. If you wouldn’t know what to say to NBA stars and have never heard of Yachting Monthly, then perk up. Here is the verse:
“Is not this the carpenter?” (Mark 6:3).
(Told you it wasn’t much.) Jesus’ neighbors spoke those words. Amazed at his latter-life popularity, they asked, “Is this the same guy who fixed my roof?”
Note what his neighbors did not say:
“Is not this the carpenter who owes me money?”
“Is not this the carpenter who swindled my father?”
“Is not this the carpenter who never finished my table?”
No, these words were never said. The lazy have a hard time hiding in a small town. Hucksters move from city to city to survive. Jesus didn’t need to. Need a plow repaired? Christ could do it. In need of a new yoke? “My neighbor is a carpenter, and he will give you a fair price.” The job may have been common, but his diligence was not. Jesus took his work seriously.
And the town may have been common, but his attention to it was not. The city of Nazareth sits on a summit. Certainly no Nazarene boy could resist an occasional hike to the crest to look out over the valley beneath. Sitting six hundred feet above the level of the sea, the young Jesus could examine this world he had made. Mountain flowers in the spring. Cool sunsets. Pelicans winging their way along the streams of Kishon to the Sea of Galilee. Thyme-besprinkled turf at his feet. Fields and fig trees in the distance. Do you suppose moments here inspired these words later? “Observe how the lilies of the field grow” (Matt. 6:28) or “Look at the birds of the air” (Matt. 6:26). The words of Jesus the rabbi were born in the thoughts of Jesus the boy.
To the north of Nazareth lie the wood-crowned hills of Naphtali. Conspicuous on one of them was the village of Safed, known in the region as “the city set upon the hill.”1 Was Jesus thinking of Safed when he said, “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matt. 5:14)?
The maker of yokes later explained, “My yoke is easy” (Matt. 11:30). The one who brushed his share of sawdust from his eyes would say, “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matt. 7:3).
He saw how a seed on the path took no root (Luke 8:5) and how a mustard seed produced a great tree (Matt. 13:31–32). He remembered the red sky at morning (Matt. 16:2) and the lightning in the eastern sky (Matt. 24:27). Jesus listened to his common life.
Are you listening to yours? Rain pattering against the window. Silent snow in April. The giggle of a baby on a crowded plane. Seeing a sunrise while the world sleeps. Are these not personal epistles? Can’t God speak through a Monday commute or a midnight diaper change? Take notes on your life.
There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not recognize him. . . . See [your life] for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, and smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.2
Next time your life feels ordinary, take your cue from Christ. Pay attention to your work and your world. Jesus’ obedience began in a small town carpentry shop. His uncommon approach to his common life groomed him for his uncommon call. “When Jesus entered public life he was about thirty years old” (Luke 3:23 MSG). In order to enter public life, you have to leave private life. In order for Jesus to change the world, he had to say good-bye to his world.
He had to give Mary a kiss. Have a final meal in the kitchen, a final walk through the streets. Did he ascend one of the hills of Nazareth and think of the day he would ascend the hill near Jerusalem?
He knew what was going to happen. “God chose him for this purpose long before the world began” (1 Pet. 1:20 NLT). Every ounce of suffering had been scripted—it just fell to him to play the part.
Not that he had to. Nazareth was a cozy town. Why not build a carpentry business? Keep his identity a secret? Return in the era of guillotines or electric chairs and pass on the cross? To be forced to die is one thing, but to willingly take up your own cross is something else.
Alan and Penny McIlroy can tell you. The fact that they have two adopted children is commendable but not uncommon. The fact that they have adopted special needs children is significant but not unique. It’s the severity of the health problems that sets this story apart.
Saleena is a cocaine baby. Her birth mother’s overdose left Saleena unable to hear, see, speak, or move. Penny and Alan adopted her at seven weeks. The doctor gave her a year. She’s lived for six.
As Penny introduced me to Saleena, she ruffled her hair and squeezed her cheeks, but Saleena didn’t respond. She never does. Barring a miracle, she never will. Neither will her sister. “This is Destiny,” Penny told me. In the adjacent bed one-year-old Destiny lay, motionless and vegetative. Penny will never hear Destiny’s voice. Alan will never know Saleena’s kiss. They’ll never hear their daughters sing in a choir, never see them walk across the stage. They’ll bathe them, change them, adjust their feeding tubes, and rub their limp limbs, but barring God’s intervention, this mom and dad will never hear more than we heard that afternoon—gurgled breathing. “I need to suction Saleena’s nose,” Penny said to me. “You might want to leave.”3
I did, and as I did, I wondered, what kind of love is this? What kind of love adopts disaster? What kind of love looks into the face of children, knowing full well the weight of their calamity, and says, “I’ll take them”?
When you come up with a word for such a love, give it to Christ. For the day he left Nazareth is the day he declared his devotion for you and me. We were just as helpless, in a spiritually vegetative state from sin. According to Peter, our lives were “dead-end, empty-headed” (1 Pet. 1:18 MSG). But God, “immense in mercy and with an incredible love . . . embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us!” (Eph. 2:4–5 MSG).
Jesus left Nazareth in pursuit of the spiritual Saleenas and Destinys of the world and brought us to life.
Perhaps we aren’t so common after all.