The Practice of Faith

This story is the opening of a book that has been important to me.  It’s written by two authors named Dorothy Bass and Craig Dykstra and is called Practicing Our Faith:  A Way of Life for a Searching People.

As they say of the person in the story—and so many of us like her, “the sighs are born [not just from having to much to do, but from] our yearning to understand what [it all] adds up to.”   The yearning is about questions of meaning and purpose and leading a life that matters.

The subject comes up in different contexts and for all different kinds of people.  Sometimes its in the context of all we see these days about our culture’s epidemic of loneliness and worries about mental health or addiction.  Sometimes its about the present and future of the church in our culture—why is a Christian way of life increasingly marginal; why don’t my adult children go to church, and what is there to do about that?  Some of us may be feeling deeply blessed and not so burdened by these concerns, but what about the generation that comes after?  Perhaps you notice, as I have, the anxiety out there about the future of our country and whether we will be able to pass on a good life to the generations that follow us.  All of these are spiritual questions and require grounding in faith.

While the world keeps changing, these questions are not new.  In today’s Scripture from the letter to the Romans, Paul writes about the yearning in his own life, and about his hope for the future.  He says, “the sufferings of this present time are not to be compared to the glory about to be revealed to us…”  “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…”  “creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay…”  He talks about a creation groaning in labor pains, longing for a renewed life, and that God knows the yearnings of our hearts, and longs to help us find that renewed purpose.  Paul wrote those words from a prison cell, where he had been placed for sharing the good news of Jesus Christ to a Roman Empire that was not ready to hear it; so he knew something about yearning for a life that one can imagine, but that has not yet arrived.  These yearnings are not new.

Here at Knox, one way we’ve heard these yearnings voiced is in listening to all of you as we worked in the last couple of years to create a new Strategic Plan for our congregation.  Strategic plans can be dry and corporate sounding, yes, but listen to the resonance with what I’ve been talking about:  The first and most important objective in our plan is to continue and enhance this congregation’s good work in helping people to grow in their spiritual lives.  We’re doing some fresh thinking here to be sure we don’t just keep doing all the same old things—though many of them are working quite well!—but that we’re committed to trying new things to stretch ourselves as we seek to know God.  We want to embrace the yearning in our lives for something deeper.

So in the first year of our new plan, we’re in what I’m calling a season of experimentation right now.  Even while we continue to do many of the things we know you count on and love, we’re trying new ones also.

Some of them are simple; you might have noticed that we’ve been asking you questions of intention at the start of worship and when you attend church events “Why was it important for you to be here today?”  It’s a little thing, but it’s a way we hope to remind you that what we’re doing here at Knox should be more than just a routine or responsibility—and if that’s what its become, we want to think together about how to change that.  We’re doing another experiment with a new contemplative prayer group that will launch this month—if you were struck by the quiet prayer time we shared in worship a few weeks ago, this may new group may be for you; it’s the first of a potential series of spiritual pathway groups to connect you with other members of the congregation who may find God in the same ways you do.  That may happen through prayer, or study, music, working for justice or time connected to nature.

As we introduce these experiments, I’ve been preaching this current series of sermons about the Practice of Faitha—and we’ve been holding Wednesday evening gatherings on the same topic.  “The Practice of Faith”—What the heck does that mean?  Well, practices of faith are all kinds of regular, everyday pursuits that, when done with intention, can help us find God’s presence in ordinary life.  How we care for our bodies, what do we buy with our money, how do we think about rest and recreation…life is full of regular things, which we often do without much thought, but which we can also approach with intention, and then become surprised that God has been there all along.  The sermon series and the Wednesday nights started several weeks ago with a focus on things like “sabbath,” “care for creation,” and “saying yes, and saying no”—we have been inducing these examples of practices one at a time.

It’s important to acknowledge what the practices are not.   Christian Practices are not a list of additional things you must add to your already busy life in order to become a good Christian.  They are also not activities in which “practice makes perfect,” but are called “practices” on purpose, for like other practices like law or medicine, over time the intention doing of them can cultivate greater understanding.  And while each of the practices are the kinds of things that lots of people do, you don’t need to be practicing all of them in order to find their value; a little bit at a time is often quite enough.  We know that none of the practices will be for everyone, but we hope that we’ll catch your attention with a few of them.  In all of this, we hope that you’ll find not some additional task or another thing to worry about, but instead a way of tapping into God’s presence, already there for you in things you do every day.

Above all, practices of faith are an invitation to a way of life.  In this way of life, we are frequently surprised that life is full of what theologians call “thin places” places where the routine meets the heavenly, where God breaks in and makes herself known, if we are paying attention.  The examples are not profound, but are indeed wonderful, and are happening all the time.  One of the recent sermons got one of our college students interested in thinking about storytelling in great literature and movies, and we’re planning a class together to help the congregation see ways that the stories that grab you at your book club or on Netflix often have their foundation in the wisdom of the Bible.  As another example: Some of you who have done premarital preparation with me might remember an exercise I invited you to do looking for how God shows up in your everyday life, and how to talk about that with your spouse.  These are just a couple of examples about the kind of awareness and attention we’re hoping to heighten in this season of experimentation.

Of course, experimentation—as a church and in each of our lives—involves discovering both the things that are praiseworthy, and also things that are not.  As we try these new things together, we’ll find some we want to give even more attention, and we’ll do other things that don’t go well so we won’t do them again.

Isn’t that how life together works?  What an appropriate reflection for the weekend of our nation’s Independence Day.  This weekend, we consider the courage, wisdom, and vision of so many who have sacrificed so much for the sake of this land we call home—the story of our country that lends meaning and purpose to our shared history.  We also lament our tragic history of colonization, racism, and so many other sins that are also a part of who we have been and who we are.  The same thing was going on in the time of our other scripture reading this morning, the one from Jeremiah.  In a time when his own people were experiencing struggle and lostness due to their own sins, it was in their wandering that God stepped in and helped them see more clearly:  “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

These national holiday weekends are always a quandary for pastors.  Pastors are here at church to point not to nationalism, which always tilts toward idolatry, but to point toward God—the God of all nations and peoples who is alone is the Lord.  That doesn’t mean that pastors hate fireworks or that we disrespect the great deeds of courage wrought by so many who have served this country courageously.  It just means that when I choose our national songs to sing on these mornings, I’m grateful to the composers who have understood our history so well, who remind us America is beautiful when we keep asking God to shed grace upon us, and to mend our every flaw—because we need it; and who remind us as our closing hymn will do, that loving one’s own homeland does not mean conquering or demeaning another—perhaps someday we will learn how.

It is this same kind of humility and hope we want to have in our spiritual lives.  We are not here to feel guilty or defeated when we have failed to be good disciples, but to rejoice in the ways God keeps calling us to follow, imperfect as we may be.  Christian practices are about the courage to look more critically into the difficult questions of faith that lead to a fuller, richer spiritual life.

As I mentioned, this is a season of experimentation.  And we want you to be thinking about it and talking with each other, and with the church’s staff.  What is working, and what’s not?  While we decided on purpose to start some of these experiments before pausing as I am today to explain them, Elders and Deacons have been aware of this plan since the spring.  They are paying attention and listening to you.  In the fall we’ll be holding a leadership retreat to assess what we’re learning and consider what God is calling us to do next.

I’ll make just three reminders about the nature of Christian practices.  One is that practices of faith are not more things to do, but rather a different kind of intention or focus to help us find God in daily living.  The second is that you don’t have to do them all—find a practice that is intriguing to you and experiment with it; move onto another as you feel led.  And the third is that practices need to be done in community; there are some elements of them that happen on your own, but to really grow in them and reflect about them, you need a community.  All of these things, and a deeper dive with them, will be a part of what we do this Wednesday night at our weekly supper together.  Come join us.