By Reverend Laurie DeMott

Yet when Jesus took that bread from the hands of the disciples, and lifted it toward heaven and blessed it, the common became holy and we have never looked at loaves and fishes the same way since.

Jesus had a way of ennobling the common, to use Abraham Heschel’s words. In Jesus’ hands, the ordinary became sacred. He saw saints hidden behind the scruffy beards of fishermen. He pointed to the sparrow that hops unnoticed around parking lots and imbued it with such meaning that we could see heaven’s love in the sparrow’s wings. Mustard seeds became, in Jesus’ hands, signs of holy hope. A cup of wine dripped sacred tears of blood. Jesus did not see the world as we see it – dull dusty rusting mundane, ‘let’s just get through the day so I can say I survived another one’ kind of world; he saw holiness bursting out everywhere he looked, even in common bread and ordinary fish.

The great spiritual thinker, Howard Thurman, who was a professor of theology at Howard University, wrote in his autobiography about his wedding in 1932 to Sue Bailey. Baily and Thurman had decided to hold their ceremony at Kings Mountain in the Piedmont Hills because Sue had been instrumental in organizing a joint conference at Kings Mountain of the YWCA and YMCA from black colleges across the nation and so the place held special memories for both her and Howard.

Thurman wrote, “The ceremony was scheduled to take place on a hillside sacred to us because of the vesper services held there each year, from which students beyond number had gone forth to live out the visions that had visited them in that place. But barely an hour before the service was to begin, the rain came down in sheets. We worked like quick-change artists with an expert crew to prepare the refectory [ – the cafeteria –] for the ceremony. We gathered hillocks of laurel leaves and wildflowers which were banked behind tall pinewood candelabra, forming the altar, with a center aisle of Queen Anne’s lace down which the bridal party would come. We did not realize then the symbolism of that moment – that in a thousand instances, we would spend the rest of our lives turning [cafeterias] into chapels.”

Since I read that passage in Thurman’s autobiography, I have often looked for those moments when cafeterias turn into chapels, when in the midst of a most ordinary place or a most common circumstance, a divine presence enters and the very air becomes sacred. Perhaps you have sensed this at times in your life. I know our Wednesday noon book group has felt it -- every week we meet in a cramped classroom in the Church Center to discuss a chapter in a book and most weeks we wrestle over the same questions or veer off the subject. Usually we laugh, and occasionally we argue, and our discussions are always helpful but mostly it’s a pretty ordinary kind of helpfulness where we can say, “Hmm, that’s interesting,” and then go on to lunch at the Terra Cotta; but occasionally an exquisite thought is shared, a moving word uttered, or even a momentary silence falls, and we know that something has changed. Suddenly, we are no longer sitting in a ordinary parlor but in a chapel in the presence of a most holy spirit.

When have cafeterias turned into chapels for you? Maybe you have felt it in the wind sweeping across an unremarkable meadow when for no reason abruptly perfect beauty stings your soul. Maybe you felt it when you read “Runaway Bunny” to your son for the 200th time but that time, as you glanced at him lying peacefully in bed and read, “‘If you become a little boy and run into a house,’ said the mother bunny, ‘I will become your mother and catch you in my arms and hug you,’” the bedroom became a chapel with the love of God hovering over your child’s bed.

A pastor by the name of Victor St. George wrote about the death of his father-in-law and described this sudden sense of the holy.

“At 12:45 AM this morning,” Victor wrote, “Bud breathed his last.... The family gathered at about midnight last night and ... I led them in prayer. It seemed somehow that the family gathering, the holding of hands around the bed, the sound of the oxygen machine - all these things somehow found a way to turn the deathbed of C.M. (Bud) Haldorson into a holy place. I know that God was present with us.”

Cafeterias turned into chapels. Hospital rooms turned into chapels. Bedsides turned into chapels. Classrooms turned into chapels. The sharing of coffee, the hug of a child, a field of goldenrod, fish, wine, bread -- ordinary things transformed into channels of the holy.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning observed that “Earth is crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God; and only he who sees takes off his shoes; the rest sit around and pluck blackberries.”

Those moments when heaven and earth touch are precious to us, and often we can remember those moments for a life-time because they were so unexpected and rare, but Jesus did more than wait for those moments to happen – Jesus made those moments happen. He actively reached for heaven and brought it into the most ordinary of circumstances. Howard Thurman understood this. He didn’t say in his autobiography, “... in a thousand instances, we would spend the rest of our lives experiencing [cafeterias] turned into chapels;” he said, “.... in a thousand instances, we would spend the rest of our lives turning [cafeterias] into chapels.”

It is a wonderful thing when God suddenly and unexpectedly transforms an ordinary moment into an instance of beauty but as Christians, we are charged to do more than simply stand waiting for heaven to come down. We are charged to bring heaven to earth through the way in which we live in devotion to Christ; to take even the most ordinary tasks of our lives and make them expressions of holy compassion for others.

Think of the ordinary things that you do throughout your day-- life’s business. You feed the dog. If you have kids at home, you get them packed up for school and out the door on time. You greet your co-workers, asking, “How’s it going?” You measure out your wife’s pills for her every evening. Really ordinary stuff, that, yet when you do each of those things with intentional kindness those events become holy. For example, you can ask your co-worker, “How are you?,” with no concern for how she really is, throwing out a customary greeting in a trivial way or you can take that common place greeting and ask it in a way that actually invites an answer. As you listen carefully, your concern becomes a conduit of heavenly compassion and you have transformed a “cafeteria into a chapel”. An unremarkable greeting leads to a sacred moment. A popular proverb encourages us to practice random acts of kindness, but Jesus charges us to practice intentional directed and constant acts of kindness that bring a sacredness into the most familiar parts of our lives.

Imagine a man unjustly slandered by a neighbor, who approaches his neighbor with a shovel in his hand, and instead of beating him over the head in anger, uses that shovel to clear the neighbor's driveway of snow. He turns a driveway into a chapel as he lives out Christ’s command to love his enemy.

And can’t we see a bit of heaven in the endurance of parents, in their willingness to grapple their way through the confusion of child-rearing, spend hours in deliberation over questions of discipline, drag tired bodies to open houses, and give up rest and independence? The next time you are slogging through the trials of parenthood, reach up and pull heaven down. Make and view your commitment to your children as a reflection of God’s commitment to us. God gives and forgives so that we may be strengthened in our soul; we give and forgive so that our children may be strengthened in character.

When he fed the crowd of thousands, Jesus turned a desert place into a banquet by bringing people together in community and compassion and by looking for sacred opportunities in very ordinary circumstances. He looked at fish and bread and saw love and fellowship. Christ calls us to do the same -- to seek opportunities to turn cafeterias into chapels; allowing the common circumstances of our lives to become conduits of heavenly blessings for others.

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1. With Head and Heart, by Howard Thurman, p. 86 [I reluctantly changed “refectory” to “cafeteria” because the average person is not familiar with the word refectory.]
2. From Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary List (PRCL-L@listserv.louisville.edu)