“Practice, Practice, Practice”

Luke 13:31-35    Philippians 3:17-4:1

February 28, 2010     Second Sunday in Lent

First Congregational UCC/Reverend Deb Davis                  

     Several of us drove to Fort Wayne last Sunday afternoon … to listen to a panel discussion called People of the Book … sponsored by the Indiana Center for Middle East Peace.

     The panel consisted of a Muslim … Imam Tamir Rasheed … a Jew … Rabbi Marla Spanjer … and a Christian who many of us know … our friend Dr. Michael Spath … who I’ve invited to be in this pulpit a few times over the past 10 years.

     It was an interesting discussion … that provided lots of information about the three Abrahamic faiths … about how similar they are … and about the places where they diverge.

     At one point a member of the audience asked each of the three to speak to their views of the afterlife.

     I found that what the Rabbi had to say gave me pause.  Not so much when she talked about what the Jewish faith says about the afterlife – which runs the gamut … just like Christianity.

     Rather it was her own, personal belief I found interesting. The Rabbi explained that for her, worrying about an afterlife is like being invited to the most wonderful party … where you are given all the best food and all the best gifts. And then - as the party ends - asking: “Is that all there is … isn’t there anything else?”

     The Rabbi said she would rather look at the gift of this life we are living … and be grateful … instead of stepping over this life so to speak … for what might or might not come after.

     Hers was a thought similar to what I heard at a conference I attended last year … a conference called The Soul of the Congregation … a conference that I have spoken of before.

     There the main presenter said he believes Christians have spent too much time worrying about the afterlife … so much time worry about what comes next … that we have forgotten about the importance of this life.

     The point of this life is not getting to the next one, he said … rather the point of this life – is this life … the point is getting this life right so we can begin living eternally with God right now.

     In fact … he said our goal should be … to live so much in God’s presence now … that when we die … it will hardly register.

     In the biblical texts Jim read for us this morning … there is a great deal of lament over the ways we get this life wrong … over the choices people make … first from the Apostle Paul’s jailhouse letter to the Philippians … and then from Jesus … as he laments the city of Jerusalem.

     In his letter … a teary-eyed Paul asks these new Christians in Philipi to “join in imitating me …” a suggestion Paul makes not because he was so satisfied with himself - but because he was in such anguish over those folks who were living their lives as what he calls “enemies of the cross” – choosing a way of life that did not follow the way of Jesus … that did not take them closer to God.

     Paul had himself experienced that way of life before his own conversion experience on the road to Damascus … before that experience turned his life in a different direction – and changed him from a persecutor of Christians to an apostle of the faith.

     And so Paul makes it clear in this letter that there is a difference between the two ways of living. He knew firsthand what it meant to first live as an enemy of the cross and then to live as a friend of the cross … to live as if this life matters.

     And then … in our Gospel text … Jesus is lamenting the fact that Jerusalem is not the sacred, holy city it should be … not a city filled with God’s people … that instead it’s something else entirely.

     Instead it’s a city that has killed God’s prophets … a city filled with people who will not listen … who will not understand … how God calls them to live this life.

     And then Jesus makes that poignant statement … quoting his own scriptures … “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings … and you were not willing.”

     Paul … challenging Christians to become citizens of heaven instead of citizens of this world … Jesus … lamenting the city that killed the prophets … the citizens of that city who paid no heed to the prophets’ calls over the centuries to commit to the ways of the living God instead of the ways of the false gods of their cultures.

     In those dusty days of Roman occupation when Jesus was alive … when Paul was alive … it must have seemed that the glory of God found little expression in human society. And in our day … the glory of God still seems pretty dim.

     And so we have to ask ourselves how is it that we – by the daily choices we make - may be hindering God’s desires for this world. Would Paul cry over … would Jesus lament over … the state of our lives as well?

     Lent is a time to ponder that … a time the church sets aside for us to think about our daily choices … the rhythm of our lives … and to discern whether or not they line up with the way of Jesus … whether or not they honor this very life we have been given.

     We all know how important practice is if we want to get better at something. We practice the piano every day if we want to play well … If we play baseball or soccer … we practice at least once a week … … and if we are going to be in a theater production … we might practice night after night ... until we get it right.

     If we want to become proficient at something … at anything … we have to practice.

     So if we want to become proficient at being what Paul calls citizens of heaven … if we want to become proficient in our relationship with God and neighbor in this life … what is it we need to practice?

     This morning’s bulletin cover gives us a place where we might start … with these words from Fred Plumber … who is the executive director of The Center for Progressive Christianity in the United States.

     Plumber says that over all the years he has himself searched for a meaningful spiritual path … he has come to realize … that what it is we are trying to become… has to go from our thinking to our being … has to go from mere talking to daily practice … has to go from having to think about it … to just being it.

     And then Plumber says this: “I often wonder as I look out over the religious landscape in our world today how many people who call themselves a Christian actually practice being one. I don’t mean by going to church every Sunday, or memorizing the Bible or wearing an obvious cross around your neck.

     “I don’t mean honing a tight, absolute argument about what one has to believe about Jesus to be a Christian or blindly reciting creeds. I mean when someone gets up in the morning, do they start the day by actually practicing being a Christian … based on the teachings of Jesus?”

     And then Plumber lists these seven practices that are printed on the front of this morning’s bulletin … simple to list, he says, but we all know they are difficult to do … unless… unless … we practice them.

     So let’s ask ourselves this morning: Where do I practice compassion? … Where do I practice trust? … Where do I practice forgiveness? … Where do I practice non-judgment? … Where do I practice generosity? … Where do I practice thankfulness? … Where do I practice joy?

     All of these are good and important and worth our practice time …all of them will take us closer to God and neighbor … … but that one about thankfulness … perhaps that one especially gets at what the Rabbi was saying last Sunday … at what the presenter was saying at that conference.

     What would it mean to practice thankfulness … thankfulness for the very gift of life … thankfulness for waking up each morning and being offered another day … a thankfulness that says this earthly life matters to God and so it should matter to us … a thankfulness that understands we can live eternally in God’s presence right now … today … if we practice making different choices … if we live … as the apostle Paul would say … as friends of the cross.

       And then perhaps, if we can begin to see our own life as a great gift … we might begin to see all life as a great gift … treating our lives as sacred … treating other life as sacred.

     So here’s a tangible assignment for this second week in Lent. Let’s practice thankfulness this week … by trying to love everything … even those things … and those people … that seem to get in our way.

     In a poem I read recently … the poet suggests seeing every obstacle that comes our way not as an obstacle … but as an opportunity.  

     Here … in part … is how the poet says it: “Try to love everything that gets in your way … Try to love the teenage girl lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo that says, ‘This life is mine’ in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep. Be glad she’ll have that to look at the rest of her life … and keep going. Then swim by an uncle in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew how to hold his breath underwater, even though kids aren’t supposed to be in the pool at this hour.

     “Someday, years from now, this boy who is kicking and flailing in the exact place you want to touch and turn may be a young man at a wedding on a boat, raising his champagne glass in a toast when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.

     “He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now, but he’ll come up like a cork, alive.”

     Then this poet adds: “Let your moments of impatience … bow in service to the larger story … because if something is in your way … it is going your way …”

     The Gospels make it clear that Jesus was a citizen of heaven … that his total commitment was to God and to the building up of God’s kingdom through love and self-sacrifice … in this life.

     The condition of this world was Jesus’ main concern … and that’s why he was always healing the outcasts, touching the untouchable, calling for a more just world … and calling us to follow him to all of those places.

     We hear from Jesus, in this morning’s text, that he is willing to show us the way … that he offers us a different way. He offers to gather all of us up - as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings … to shelter, to protect, to love, to nurture, to guide. He offers us the promise of a mother’s care.  

     And so these Lenten texts from a teary-eyed Paul and a lamenting Jesus - invite us to ask questions of the way we are living our lives … and challenge us to practice, practice, practice … until our Christian beliefs go beyond theory and into action.

    Who is it that God wants you to touch with love? What is it that God wants you to say to friends when they are in distress? Where is it that God wants you to go so that you might be a blessing to others – and perhaps receive an even greater blessing yourself? Where do you need to allow your impatience to bow in service to the larger story?

     Let’s practice imitating Jesus until we get it right … until all the parts are working together so well that we no longer have to imitate him … because we have turned our hearts – in the right direction. Amen.