May the words of my mouth and the
meditations of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our
strength and our redeemer. Amen.
The
refrain found in Psalm 103 today is “bless the Lord.” Today, I’d like to
consider what it means to bless the Lord. It is often assumed that God is the
one who blesses us. Blessings are usually seen as signs of divine favor and providence
towards us, so why are we being told to bless the Lord? The word “bless” in
Hebrew is very closely related to the word for “knee.” So the Hebrew people
would be on their knees in prayer, and the word for that action became bless. Blessing
is not something we just do with our words, not a few thoughts throughout the
day, but blessing is taking time to be with God, it is something physical. So
when we hear “bless the Lord”, it is not that God needs our approval, but
rather that we offer ourselves to God. A fitting message for Lent- bless the
lord.
Our
theme at St. Francis this season of Lent is practices of faith, or perhaps in
the words of the Psalmist, our theme is blessing the Lord. Practices of faith
though are not something that our culture often makes time for or appreciates.
Practices of faith are not productive in the sense that there is no tangible
product with which to sell and market. Practices of faith are not about us,
something difficult for the narcissist in us all to deal with. In his book Religious Literacy, Stephen Prothero
traces our cultural history of religion and practices. He notes that families
used to take seriously practices of faith and teaching their children about
faith. And they had to because ministers would only come by their village on
horseback every few months. But over the years, people moved from the country
into cities and they found regular clergy. Then in the early 20th century,
the Sunday School movement began and we essentially “outsourced” the Christian
formation of our youth to the Church. Instead of families taking ownership for
faith, we relegated it to one hour a week. And our lives started became
inflated with busyness and slowly the disciples of faith were squeezed out, or
were at least made a lot harder to maintain.
I
bring this up because there is some research that suggests that it takes 10,000
hours of practice to become a true master in a particular field. So to be the
world’s top golfer would take 10,000 hours of practice. But even if we discount
that research and go with a much lower figure, say 5,000 hours, it is a
substantial amount of time. Or perhaps being a master isn’t our goal, but just
being competent is what we can live with. In that case, at the rate of one hour
a week spent in Sunday School, it would take 96 years to get to 5,000 hours of
practice. The point is that we don’t have time to fit discipleship into our
schedule, you just can’t do it. But we can live a life of practices in which we
do other things. But practices must come first.
When
I was a young boy I fell in love with baseball, and I dreamed of being the
greatest baseball player ever. One of my idols was Greg Maddux who pitched for
the Atlanta Braves. I had his jersey, I used the same equipment that he did,
and I tried to mimic his pitching style. But none of those things made me the
next Greg Maddux; in fact, I was terrible at pitching. The problem is that it
doesn’t work to just copy someone. And in our discipleship, we have confused
following Jesus with copying him. It’s part of the reason why I think the What
Would Jesus Do? movement is so harmful to Christianity. It doesn’t really matter
what Jesus would do in a given situation, but what does matter is what we do as
his followers. And the only way to follow Jesus is to practice.
In
the Episcopal Church, we often say lex
orandi, lex credendi, which is often paraphrased as meaning “praying shapes
believing.” The prayers that we offer in our worship shape what we believe about
God. If we pray that God is loving, compassionate, and caring, then we will
likely believe in a loving God. But if we pray to a vindictive and vengeful
God, then we will likely believe in a God of wrath. St. Paul in his letter the
Thessalonians tells them to “pray without ceasing,” meaning that all of our
life is a prayer. What is prayer if not relationship with God? And don’t we say
that God is always with us? So then, all of our life is a prayer. How we
respond to being cut off in traffic or given a compliment at work is a prayer.
What we do when we are alone is a prayer as much as what we do when we come to
church. So the question then is- what are you praying? In our practices of
faith, or lack thereof, what are we communicating to God?
In
fact, practicing our faith is the assumption of Jesus. Note that in our Gospel
reading today, Jesus doesn’t say “if you pray, if you fast, if you give alms”
but instead he says “when you pray, when you fast, and when you give alms.”
When, not if. The idea of being
religious or spiritual without daily practices of faith would have made no
sense to Jesus’ audience. Jesus also condemns the hypocrites. The meaning of
the word “hypocrite” is a “stage actor.” A hypocrite is someone who pretends to
be something they are not. A hypocrite is someone who does not practice what
they preach. Jesus is placing a lot of emphasis on keeping genuine practices of
faith.
And consider
the words of St. Paul in our reading from 2 Corinthians, “See, now is the
acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” One theologian has astutely
remarked that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives, and what we are
doing at this moment, in this hour, is what we are doing with our lives. And so
it is. How many of us though turn around to look at what has happened in the
past and wonder “where did the time go?” “Whatever happened to putting more
emphasis on God and coming to church?”
Lent
is the season of the Church year that falls between Ash Wednesday and Easter,
and it comes from the root word meaning “lengthen” because the days are getting
longer this time of year. But I would suggest that this root meaning also
encourages us to lengthen, or deepen, our practices of faith. To decide each
day to practice our faith so that we might spend our life being closer to God
and God’s love and transformative power.
Joe
Anybody was the only Protestant to move into a large Catholic neighborhood. On
the first Friday of Lent, John was outside grilling a big juicy steak on his
grill. Meanwhile, all of his neighbors were eating cold tuna fish for dinner.
This went on each Friday of Lent. On the last Friday of Lent, the neighborhood got
together and decided that something had to be done about Joe. He was tempting
them to eat meat each Friday of Lent, and they couldn't take it anymore. They
decided to try and convert Joe to become Catholic.
So they went
over and talked to him and were so happy that he decided to join all of his
neighbors and become Catholic. They took him to church, and the priest
sprinkled some water over him, and said, “You were born a Baptist, you were
raised a Baptist, and now you are Catholic.” They were so relieved, now their
biggest Lenten temptation was resolved.
A year later, the
first Friday of Lent came, and just at dinner time, when the neighborhood was
setting down to their tuna fish dinner, the smell of steak cooking on a grill filled the air. The neighbors could not believe their noses! What was going on? They
called each other up and decided to meet over in Joe's yard to see if he had
forgotten it was the first Friday of Lent. The group arrived just in time to
see Joe standing over his grill with a small pitcher of water. He was
sprinkling some water over his steak on the grill, saying, “You were born a
cow, you were raised a cow, and now you are a fish.”
Transformation
happens not with words, or even with the best of intentions. That piece of beef
wasn’t a fish at its core. And we will not be transformed either unless we are
changed at our core. The word “heart” shows up both in our reading from Joel
and Matthew. Joel talks about “rending our hearts and not our clothing.” The
custom was the tear your garments as an outward sign of penitence, but Joel
challenges people to instead go inwards and examine their inner life. And
Jesus, in the same way, challenges our outward actions that we do for others,
and exhorts us to go deeper into our practices of faith. He says that “where
your heart is, there also will your treasure be.” The word heart, both in the
Hebrew of Joel and the Greek of Matthew, means a lot more than the organ which
pumps blood throughout the body. Instead, the heart was the core of your being,
it was your will, your inner life, your being. The heart is who you are at your
core, it is what you practice.
And so I hope
thus far that I’ve made a compelling case for the importance of practicing our
faith. But you might ask, how do I do that? Practice is a great word because it
has two meanings. On the one hand, when we practice something we are trying to
perfect our skills, so we practice our performances before they happen. And on
the other hand, practice also means something that you do. So lawyers practice law,
doctors practice medicine, pacifists practice peace. So on this second meaning
of “practice,” I would suggest that we practice our faith by making it a
priority in our lives.
This will be a
sacrifice in our busy lives. It will take discipline and endurance to daily practice our
faith so that instead of it being something we do, it becomes who we are. After spending several hours in prayer in a
chapel, someone once asked Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “you’re one of the most
sought after speakers in the world, you’ve written several books, and are so
involved with the work of the Church, how can you afford to spend so much time
in the chapel each morning?” And he said in response, “I can only do those
things because I spend so much time in prayer.”
And towards the
first definition of practice, I would invite you to our Wednesday night Lenten
program. We’ll meet at 6 pm for 5 weeks starting next Wednesday. We’ll have a
simple Lenten dinner together and then we’ll explore different practices of
faith such as prayer, reading the Bible, discernment, and evangelism. These are
important practices of faith, but recent studies have shown that they are very
loaded words and that many people have trouble defining them. And if you
struggle to define what prayer is, it’s awfully hard to actually do it. So on
Wednesdays we’ll start with the basics of practicing our faith, working toward
building a strong foundation for holy living.
The other
practice that I commend to you all is taking the Bible Challenge. Starting
today, and going for the next 365 days, we will be reading the Bible. I invite
and encourage all of you to join us. We will read two chapters of the Old
Testament, one Psalm, and one chapter of the New Testament a day. And while it
will take some intentionality to keep up this practice, it is manageable to
spend 15 or 20 minutes a day reading the Bible. The Bible is our story, it is
God’s story. The Bible is the one book that has transformed our world and
billions of lives like no other work. Whether you believe that the Bible is the
literal words ordained by God, or if you believe that it’s a collection of
humanity’s best efforts to capture their experiences of the divine in writing,
you are welcome to join us. Surveys have shown that Americans simply don’t read
the Bible, one reporter even suggested that our Bibles must be the most valuable
thing that we own, because we keep it in pristine, unused condition. Those who
follow Jesus ought to read the Bible because through it, we find our place in
God’s unfolding drama. And so at St. Francis, we are taking the Bible
Challenge. If you haven’t already emailed me to tell me that you’re signing up
for it, I anticipate getting an email from you later today. You can pick up a
reading schedule in the back of the church on your way out.
I invite you
therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent. I
invite you to consider how we are spending our lives. What are we practicing?
Are we being transformed by God? Do we know our story of faith? How do we bless
the Lord? I invite you to the observance of a holy Lent, a Lent full of
practicing and living our faith, that it might take deep roots within our souls
and enable us to be instruments of God’s love, redemption, and peace in the
world. I invite you to the observance of a holy Lent, that this Lent might be
another step in the journey towards living a holy life. Amen.
