Sermon, Sunday, October 17, 2010

“A Practicing Christian”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, October 17, 2010 at Church of the Ascension, Rochester, New York

I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message, be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable…(2 Timothy 4:1-2 )

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always, and not to lose heart. (Luke 18:1 )

This week I had occasion to lunch with a colleague with whom I hope to team teach a course in Buddhist Christian dialogue at the divinity school next year. She is a Zen Buddhist priest. We plan on offering a course of comparative theology, where we will engage theological and spiritual topics through both a Buddhist and Christian perspective. As we discussed the course, she reminded me that Buddhists are all about experience and practice, and much less focused on belief so that when we teach the course we will take time during the class sessions to engage in Buddhist meditation practice. I’ve attended Buddhist meditation at the Rochester Zen Center with my divinity school classes on numerous occasions. It is not as simple as it might appear. At the beginning of the session, a gong sounds as all the worshippers sit cross legged and erect on meditation cushions in the cool, dimly lit meditation room and silence falls upon the room. There is an altar with a statute of the Buddha, some candles and flowers in front of the practitioners. Practitioners usually keep their eyes slightly open but downcast, as they concentrate on their breathing, counting each inhalation and exhalation.

In my experience of Zen meditation I have found that before too long, my back begins to ache. I want to shift positions but am reluctant to cause any stir in the room. I become suddenly aware of bodily aches, pains and creaks that I usually don’t even notice. I suspect for most of us Christians, what is intended by Buddhists as a time for centering and spiritual nourishment that will ultimately lead to enlightenment is for us a painfully awkward experience of physical discomfort and mental wanderings. Clearing our minds of random thoughts and inner dialogue is as difficult as maintaining anything like a meditative physical posture. What for me is often a very difficult exercise, both physical and mental, is for practicing Buddhists the way they begin and end each day, usually with 75 minute sitting sessions morning and evening.

If I have learned anything from my time with the Buddhists, it is that one does not master their form of prayer without a tremendous amount of discipline and hard work. Meditation is no walk on the beach, it is a very rigorous physical and mental exercise. Our lectionary readings today have quite a bit to say on the topic of discipline and persistence in spiritual life. In the pastoral letter to Timothy, the author advises his reader to be persistent in the faith, to teach, study, to be faithful in spreading the word of God. He reminds the reader that the scriptures are inspired by God and are meant for our edification and learning, as a source of teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. And in the strange parable of the poor widow and the unjust judge, the author of Luke’s gospel tells us that the point of the story is to remind us to be persistent in prayer and not to lose heart.

While it is a strange little story, as are many parables that Jesus told, this one does leave us with one clear message, which is that in prayer we are to keep at it, even when it seems fruitless or meaningless or pointless. Persistence is something that we are not real good at in this culture, at least we modern American mainline Protestants, especially where our faith is concerned. While we might stick to a diet religiously, or engage in some regular exercise routine for cardiac health, or regularly meet our friends for golf, or bridge, or soccer, or to see a movie, having a similarly faithful routine for Bible Study or prayer or even attending corporate worship is not seen as a high priority by the vast majority of folks who call themselves Christian.

The idea that our religious life might actually require discipline, hard work, and even some tedious times when only grit and persistence will keep us going is one that is foreign to most of us today. In the world of church growth stories, the huge megachurches are held up as the ideal, even though what passes for religion and religious practice in many of them is nothing more than entertainment. The notion that to be a practicing Christian actually carries with it some rigor and a disciplined approach to prayer, study and worship is a tough sell in today’s world. Except in the fundamentalist churches, a church notice that there will be a Bible study held at a particular time is likely to be met with complete indifference on the part of the vast majority of church goers.

In the summer of 2003 our General Convention passed resolution A135 which is entitled “Stewardship: Holy Habits”. It calls on all members of the Episcopal Church to commit to the tithe as the standard for financial giving with the practice of proportional giving as the first step in that direction, and also commits Episcopalians to daily prayer and study, Sabbath time and regular corporate worship. These commitments are the “holy habits” that are integral to our growth as disciples and the living out of our Christian baptismal covenant. This resolution recognizes that a mature and lively spirituality comes only from a committed and disciplined life of prayer, worship, and study. Like everything else in life, we only get out of our faith what we put into it.

William Willimon, author and Bishop in the United Methodist Church, makes an astute observation about our tendency in the modern world to treat our religion as if it were a peripheral nicety to be engaged in, if at all, at our convenience and with little real effort or hard work. He wryly notes:

Instant oatmeal. The three-minute boiled egg. One hour dry cleaning. Twenty minute pizza delivery. An oil change in less than an hour. A meal in a microwave in four minutes. Excellent health in just 20 minutes a day, only three days a week. A sense of well being after only a weekend in a seminar to gain enlightenment. A relationship with Christ in only an hour a week. Why not?

Why not indeed! Discipleship, as Jesus frequently reminds us, is something that requires commitment, and persistent discipline. Jesus himself was a practicing Jew. He knew the holy scriptures of his religious tradition. He attended corporate worship regularly. Even during the years of his itinerant healing, teaching and preaching ministry, he took time out of his busy schedule to go away from the crowds and spend time in prayer. He taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer to give them a tool to use in their own prayer life. In today’s parable he urges them to be persistent in prayer and not give up, even when it seems pointless or even simply boring.

If there is one thing I have learned in my interfaith work, it is that we mainline Protestants are somewhat lazy in our practice of our faith. We don’t demand enough of ourselves or our children. For example, Jewish teenagers who are having the Bar or Bat Mitzvah at age 12 or 13 are called upon to lead the congregation in worship on that special day, chanting prayers and significant chunks of the Torah in Hebrew, and even giving a short homily on the scripture passages that are read as part of the service that day. Their preparation for that event takes several years and includes religious instruction as well as instruction in Hebrew. At the Islamic Center, young children and teens are expected to attend religious instruction on Saturday and Sunday mornings, where they learn Arabic so that they can learn to recite the Qur’an in the holy language of that text. It takes a lot of boring and repetitive work to learn the language and work through the text of the Qur’an itself. On top of that, these young people engage in prayer five times a day, and observe the fast of the holy month of Ramadan even when they are in school or participating in sports. Discipline, persistence, study, prayer – in all religious traditions these things are an integral part of spiritual growth and maturity.

Douglas John Hall, Canadian theologian writing about Christianity in North America in the 21st century eloquently calls for mainline Protestant Christians to become serious about their faith. He calls Christians to a new seriousness of purpose about their religious faith. He says:

[T]he gift of a future will have to be met by a new, cheerful, and disciplined readiness on the part of Christian individuals, congregations, and “churches” to take responsibility for its implementation. That is, the church will have to become the ‘disciple community’ all over again, and in great earnestness.
And for churches in the United States and Canada, it seems to me, that means one thing in particular: they will have to seek to deepen. And they will only deepen if they are ready to become communities of theological struggle, contemplation and dialogue. …Thought is of the essence of the cross that North American Christians today are called to pick up and carry!

The author of the letter to Timothy was arguing for the same thing way back 2000 years ago and Jesus’ parable about the unjust judge and the poor widow ties right in. Life with God requires discipline, prayer, study, commitment and persistence. The scriptures and our religious tradition are given to us to guide and nourish us on our journey to God, but we have to take the initiative and make the hard work of spiritual development a priority in our lives, “so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” To be practicing Christians, we need to take seriously these religious obligations, so that we can “carry out our ministry fully” and not fall into the illusion that we’ve done all we need to do when we said “I believe.”