April 26, 2026 - Fourth Sunday of Easter: The Holy Quotidian: Awakening

April 26, 2026  Fourth Sunday of the Season of Easter
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Mark 1:9-11 and Galatians 3:26-29
“The Holy Quotidian: Awakening”
Douglas T. King

There is a topic I can make fifty arguments for and fifty arguments against each and every day.  Depending on the day and which way the wind blows I can land on one side or the other.  So, what is this dynamic and controversial topic which causes my opinion to sway from day to day?

The quotidian.  It is a word that is the antithesis of an onomatopoeic word, a word that sounds like what it is. Quotidian is a word that sounds exactly opposite to what it means.  It sounds exotic.  But besides being an excellent scrabble word, quotidian refers to the stuff of our daily routines, the recurring activities that fill our lives.  For me, every day starts at 6 AM; stretching and then exercising on my old school Nordic Trac cross country skier, shave, shower, breakfast of kale, carrots, chia seeds, and an apple.  Every day.  Every single day. How exciting.  Sometimes I appreciate my daily routines and sometimes they feel like a boring burden to be borne.  
 
Today is the start of a sermon series entitled, “The Holy Quotidian.”  In other words, I will be preaching about how our daily routines and ordinary living can bring us closer to God.

Kathleen Norris writes this, “It is a quotidian mystery that dailiness can lead to such despair and yet also be at the core of our salvation…We want life to have meaning, we want fulfilment, healing and even ecstasy, but the human paradox is that we find these things by starting where we are…We must look for blessings to come from unlikely, everyday places.”

The place to start our quotidian conversation is with the activity we do each and every day at the start of each and every day, waking up.  Sometimes the “how” of our waking up is beyond our control.  The alarm or a young child blares at us and we are wrenched from REM sleep. We reluctantly make the quick swim from the depths of our dreams to consciousness.  Other times, the return to consciousness is gentle and gradual as we slowly awake with the coming of sunlight into our bedrooms.  But every time we awake in the morning we orient ourselves.  We pull together who we are and where we are.  Oh, yes, I am a married lawyer who lives in Ladue.  Or, I am a retired schoolteacher visiting Chicago to see my daughter.  And as we pull together who we are we begin to run through the list of the upcoming events of the day, the meetings, the deadlines, the luncheon date, the schedule of how we will spend our waking hours.  

In remembering who we are and what our day is scheduled to be, evaluations and judgments are inevitably made.  And unfortunately, it is not unusual for those judgments to be less than glowing.  I am vice president in the company, but I should be an executive vice president. Ugh, my day is filled with tasks for which I have no passion to complete and I am not sure I am up to them anyway.  If I could only lose twenty pounds I would not dread getting dressed in the morning.  Why can’t I be a better parent to my children?  It does not take more than one or two of these thoughts to have us starting our day with an ennui driven by vague dissatisfaction with ourselves and our lives.  

The Anglican Priest Tish Harrison Warren has an antidote to this potential malaise.  She notes that Lutherans are taught to begin each day by making the sign of the cross as a token of their baptism.  Why is this important and how does it relate to our getting up in the morning?  

As we begin each day we put on a variety of identities, we have professional identities, personal identities as spouses or partners, identities as parents, identities as friends, all of which can be rich and rewarding, and also disappointing and challenging.  But before we play any of these important roles we have been marked and claimed by the divine as beloved children of God.  We have been claimed by God before we have done a single thing in this world to create an identity of any kind.  And long after many of the ways we define ourselves in this world, have ceased to be, the divine will still claim us as beloved.    

The tangible symbol we have been given to be reminded of our role as the beloved children of God is our baptism.  As Presbyterians we baptize babies because we trust deeply that God’s grace is so powerful, that we are loved so deeply and  completely by God before we have any chance to even make a choice to turn toward God.  Baptism teaches us that no matter what, God loves us.  

When we wake up in the morning and remember our identity as baptized children of God we start our day as a beloved and precious one.  When we wake up in the morning and remember our identity as baptized children of God we are given the gift that we have been forgiven for whatever has come before.  When we wake up in the morning and remember our identity as baptized children of God we are given a fresh start, we are a new creation, the old life has gone, a new life has begun.

Martin Luther challenged each member of his community to regard baptism “as the daily garment which we are to wear.”  So let us do just that.  Let us bring a reminder of our baptism into our daily routine of waking up.  Let us start each day as people that are perfectly loved, completely forgiven, and free to live a new life.

So how do we get there?  We could follow Martin Luther’s example and make the sign of the cross.  But that is not everyone’s cup of tea.  Perhaps remembering our baptism each morning as the water pours over us in the shower.  We could think about that water enveloping us as divine love, as grace-filled forgiveness, as an invitation to a fuller and richer life than we have ever known.  

Every day we have to wake up and then we engage in the ritual of starting our day.  The quotidian.  We cannot escape it.  And every day we define ourselves, whether we realize it or not.  What we can do is seek to imbue it with spiritual significance.  We are just as beloved by God as that adorable Max we just baptized and there is no more important identity than that.  And no better way to start our day.  As you are leaving the sanctuary following worship, remember you are welcome to come to the font here or the old font at the intersection of the two hallways leading to the sanctuary, dip your finger in the water, and make the sign of the cross on your forehead, and be reminded of your belovedness.
 
When we wake up tomorrow morning let us remember we are perfectly loved, completely forgiven, and free to live a new life.  It could become more important than that first cup of coffee.  It could change our day in ways we have yet to envision.

Thanks be to God. Amen.  

Warren, Tish Harrison, liturgy of the ordinary, IVP Books,
 Illinois, 2016.