LIFE PRACTICE
Job 42:1-5, Luke 14:25-33
[Since spoken communication differs from written, some of the grammar and syntax of this transcript may seem awkward in written form. To keep integrity with the spirit of the original delivery, the transcript stays close to the exact words spoken.]
This past month I took a motorcycle trip by myself up to Canada. Now don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with the details of my summer vacation. But I wanted to share with you something about my motorcycle journey, because it has something to do with the message for today.
I found this past Spring, in my prayer life, that there was this desire that sort of welled up inside of me; this yearning to get away from the tyranny of the "To Do" list, meeting everyone's expectations, trying to look competent even though you don't always feel that way…to sort of leave the circumstances of my conventional life behind, and take to the open road.
When I shared my plans with some folks, many of you out there, a lot of people thought I was nuts. Some people practically throttled me, as they told me their "dangerous motorcycle" story. And indeed it is a very dangerous activity--a member of our community died about two weeks ago on a motorcycle. And so I took that very seriously, and I prepared. John MacDonald came into my office and personally delivered a copy of Proficient Motorcycling and insisted that I read the thing cover to cover, and he would test me on it. And Rick van den Heuvel lent me his Yamaha V Star 650, a really manly bike, and I practiced on that thing. And I got ready. What a great gift it was to take that time, that Catherine gave me that time, to go by myself and take to the open road.
So I took off, with just a Bible, and a journal, and some clean underwear....I took my iPod, too…but that was it! Nothing else. I was just a guy, on a motorcycle, and it was amazing. It's the closest you can get to flying without leaving the ground (or one hopes you don't leave the ground). And I met such wonderful people. And I was able to be real with them, because I was just a guy, on a motorcycle. When they asked what I did, I told them I was a sociologist. I only bent the truth a little bit--because you say you're clergy, and people lock up on you. They stop really talking about their lives.
It was a terrific experience, and I'm sharing it with you because it was, for me, a deep experience of faith. Leaving the circumstances of my conventional obligations and taking to the open road, with no plan but to go to Canada, was for me a way to connect the faith that I think about, and pray about, and read about all the time--with real life. It was an experience of faith, and not just the thinking about it.
It was not a time of not just thinking about Providence, but experiencing it. I ran out of gas in upstate New York in the middle of nowhere, and I didn't know what I was going to do. And then some guy in a truck pulls up, and I find he's a fellow biker--I was a member of the fraternity of bikers that week; it was fantastic--and he helped me get some gas. And that's what that whole trip was like: an experience of trusting God, and not trying to tie my life down by planning it.
This summer, that trip, and my reflection, my study…it's a dangerous thing to give your pastors time to reflect and study, because we start thinking about stuff…I started thinking about, "What are we doing here? What does all this mean?" And I want to share with you that a kind of revelation came to me in that process. It's a very simple revelation--a very simple thought. It’s really the only point I'm making in my sermon this morning. This is what it is: that faith always has to connect with real life. That faith doesn't exist in the eight inches or so between our ears (I got it wrong last time--I said it was 12 inches--I think it's actually more like eight).
Let's talk about Job for just a minute. Job, after all the talking with his friends about the meaning of his suffering, and his railing against God trying to figure out why he's suffering, and talking to God…God talks then at the end of the book to Job. Job has an experience of the God of the Universe, who becomes not just someone he thinks about, but now someone he experiences. And he says, "I didn't know. I heard with my ears. I had a second-hand idea about you, but now my eye sees you."
In the Gospel narrative, when the disciples of John hear about what Jesus is doing, he sends a couple of disciples to ask Jesus, "Are you the Messiah, or should we ask somebody else?" And what does Jesus say? He doesn't give them a theological treatise. He says, "Look around. The blind see; the deaf hear; the lame walk; the poor get Good News preached to them." People are experiencing the Messiah. Look around in order to answer the question.
Faith is a ride. I like that image, because I used it in the first sermon I preached here at this church. It's an image from Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard says that real faith, real life, is not falling asleep on a hay wagon under the illusion that you're driving. Real life and real faith is like riding a wild stallion, and holding on and seeing where it will take you. And you know, like for Job, it may not be a pleasant ride, but it's a ride that we hope will lead to an experience of God.
And so faith isn't just talking, or thinking. Faith is a practice. The kingdom of God is an open road. The question is, "Will we take it? Or will we just talk about it?"
And here's the thing. Taking that journey requires preparation. It requires a real commitment. It means that if we're going to live this kind of life, we need to practice. The Greeks have a word for this kind of thing, practicing for life. It's called arete. There's another word you can throw out at a cocktail party and sound impressive. The Greek word arete…if you looked it up in Wikipedia, you might find the definition in English to be "excellence." But that's not really what the Greeks are talking about, and Christians, later on, used that term in our theology as well. But arete--we might explain it this way. Let's say one of your kids, or maybe it's you--want to learn to play a musical instrument. And you know, in that process--learning to play the violin or the flute--it takes a lot of practice. A lot of sour notes you have to suffer through in learning to play the violin. But you're trying to attain a certain level of competence and excellence at that activity. Well, arete is the same thing, applied to life.
What if we said, "Life requires practice to live it in a way that is competent, or fruitful, or joyful." And so we need to practice to attain that kind of life. Can you imagine your son, "I'm sorry, Jimmy can't go to the party, he's got life practice." I wish that some of our parents would say that, actually. "He can’'t go to soccer practice, he's going to church, he's going to life practice here." But that's how we should think about what we're doing here, together: practicing for life--tuning ourselves for the living of life. I believe that that's what Jesus invites us to do when he invites us into the Kingdom of God.
That practice is tough. If you heard what Mike read this morning, it's not for the faint-hearted. Jesus says, "Unless you hate sister and brother and mother and father and children and even life itself, then you can't go on this ride." It's pretty harsh. What Jesus is saying is all those secondary obligations, that really seem in your life so often like the primary ones…you need to renounce them. You need to say, "That’s not the primary focus of my life. The primary focus of my life is this ride--is this life I'm trying to live."
The most joyful life we can imagine is life in the Kingdom of God, but it doesn't come cheap. That's what I trust we're about, as a congregation. And so my challenge for us--a friendly challenge to the congregation, but mostly it's a challenge to me…and I won't include Mary Alice in this. But to me, as I preach, my challenge is to look at this book and really try to focus on: "Where does this get traction in our lives?" And I'd like to invite members of the congregation this year, actually, to give me stories about how that might be happening for you. Maybe there's a situation at work, an ethical dilemma, that you've faced, and somehow this book came into play in your dealing with that situation. Or you're having a tough time as a family, and because you were reading this book, and participating in this community of faith, somehow a sort of grace came into your life that you weren't expecting. I'd love to hear those stories. They may end up actually in the sermon.
We also (a little plug here) just redid our website. And one of my hopes is that we can create an area there where people can share those kind of stories, about how faith is taking root in your life--your real life. I think it's so important to get clear about the fact that that's really what we're about.
Our friend Jack Stewart--who was a long-time participant in this congregation, a professor down the road at the Seminary who's since moved to Michigan--had quoted Peter Drucker, a business writer, a few times during his teaching here. And it really struck me, this Peter Drucker quote. Peter Drucker says the most important thing any organization can do, whether it's a church or a business, is ask, really, two questions. The first is: what business are you in? And once you've answered that: how's business? I think those are really great questions as homework for all of us, this year, this coming year, to chew on. And of course, I have some thoughts to "wet the wick" a little bit for us.
I want to suggest that the business that we're in, as a church, is not about filling these pews. It's not about having a lot of baptisms, or a robust budget, or beautiful buildings. And you know what? Those are important things, and we're actually doing rather well at them. We should give God a big pat on the back for those blessings that we enjoy here. They're very important, but that's not why we exist. I want to suggest that we exist as a community of faith to change lives, and to change life. I wish we could measure our success by how we do that. By the number of acts of compassion in Christ's name that happen, because people are here, trying to practice life in the kingdom of God. Through how many houses we help rebuild in the Gulf Coast. Through tutoring kids in Trenton because we love Jesus. Measuring our success by how we help people here, in this community of faith, deal with real-life issues like depression. How we help in dealing with issues of mental illness in the family. Dealing with recovery. Maybe this one could cover many of us, if not most of us: dealing with the grinding poverty of affluence, and the soul-draining busyness that our modern life seems to require. Maybe that's how we could measure our success together--how we help each other with those real-life issues.
And maybe there's one more. We could measure our success by how we reach out to the people in our community, hungry for that message that will give them life--hungry for this practice. Because there are a lot of folks outside this building suffering under the yolk of meaninglessness and cultural nihilism, who are hungry for the bread of life, and yearning for the open road.
I think that's why we're here. It's about life practice. It's about living in the Kingdom of God.*****
But you know I'm too much of a Calvinist to end there, I'm sorry. There's a little more I have to say. This is the important thing to end on.
If you play an instrument, it takes a lot of practice, but if you know how to play an instrument or sing, you know there's a certain point when you give yourself over to the music itself. There's a certain point when you know it's not about your practice or your effort--somehow it happens in you, and through you.
This past summer I also was working on my golf game. After 30 years of playing golf the wrong way, I decided I'm going to practice doing it right. And I have to say it's the most humbling, you might say even humiliating, process I've ever experienced. The miracle is--this may be a trite example, but--when it happens, when you hit that ball right (which is hard to do) it's almost like you didn't do it. It's almost like something happened through you. The practice is really important, but in the end, when it happens right, it's as if you didn't do it!
That's the heart of our faith. It doesn't depend on us. We have to practice living, so that we prepare ourselves for an encounter with grace, which meets us at every moment of life. But succeeding in this business of life isn't because we're good at it, or we have a lot of advanced degrees in this congregation that make us feel smart…but because God's power, somehow, dwells among us; it's God's spirit at work among us.To the open road!
Amen.
September 9 , 2007
Jeff Vamos
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