Built by Repitition

This week I came across a Tablet Magazine article by Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern about the humdrum holiness of the ordinary.

In it, he tells the story of ancient rabbis being asked what they believed was the most important verse in the Bible.

Some chose the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

Others chose: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus, of course, brings these two together as the heart of the law: love of God and love of neighbor.

But another rabbi, Shimon ben Pazi, offered a much stranger answer. The most important verse, he said, was this:

“The first lamb you shall sacrifice in the morning and the second lamb you shall sacrifice in the evening.”

It is such a wonderfully odd answer. Not a mountaintop moment. Not a soaring theological statement. Not even a verse most of us would remember.

But perhaps that is the wisdom. Faith is not only formed in rare moments of inspiration and exuberance. It is formed in ordinary, repeated practices. The life of God takes root in us through what we return to again and again. Morning and evening. Prayer and table. Offering and attention. Small acts of love that become a life.

The storyteller Martin Shaw writes, “We are ceremony people, no matter how spontaneous we think we may be.” Even when we imagine ourselves unstructured or free from ritual, we are creatures of habits and repeated gestures. There is comfort, sturdiness, hospitality, even a kind of grace that comes through repetition. The same meal around a table. The same prayer before sleep. The same walk. The same faces at church. We may long for dramatic transformation, but often we are changed through what is humblery, steadier, ordinary, and even a little humdrum.

This feels especially fitting as summer begins at All Souls.

Summer tends to be a little leaner around here. We cut things back to the essentials. We gather on Sundays to pray, hear Scripture, confess, sing, and celebrate the Eucharist. We gather in homes to share meals and stories. We linger a little longer. We keep tending the ordinary things.

And maybe that is not a loss.

Maybe it is an invitation back into our Rule of Life.

To attentiveness: noticing God in the ordinary hours, in our bodies, in our neighbors, in the needs right in front of us, at the table every Sunday.

To hospitality: making room at the table, in our homes, in our calendars, and in our hearts.

To restoration: allowing our souls, our families, our friendships, and our bodies to be gently mended by God’s patient love.

To shalom: joining God’s work of peace in our homes, our city, and our world, not only through grand gestures, but through small acts of faithfulness.

The Eucharist teaches us this if we will let it. Week after week, we come with ordinary hunger and ordinary lives. We stretch out our hands for bread we have received before, and yet somehow we are changed by returning.

Love is built by repetition. Friendship is built by repeated presence. Prayer becomes prayer because we return to it. Community becomes community because we keep showing up.

So this summer, let us not despise the small things.

Come to the table.

Share a meal.

Pray, even briefly.

Stay after church a little longer.

Offer kindness in ordinary ways.

Practice attentiveness. Extend hospitality. Receive restoration. Seek shalom.

Perhaps redemption arrives not only in flashes of lightning, but in the quiet faithfulness of morning and evening, bread and wine, prayer and friendship, over and over again.

Peace and all goodness to you, 

Bliss+