“Practice”

     I used to hate practicing.  I had to practice my violin 20 minutes every day.  I tried to avoid it, but my parents always called me into the house sometime after dinner, usually when I was doing something else more fun.  To avoid arguments, my mother set a kitchen timer to exactly 20 minutes.  [example of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, but played left-handed, and badly!].  When the timer dinged, I put that violin away as quickly as possible.

     In my freshman year of high school I decided to try out for the football team.  I loved to play the game around the neighborhood.  We just picked up sides and started playing.  But the high school coach seemed to have little interest in actually letting us play the game, because he had a sadistic delight in making practice as cruel as possible.  Lots of sit-ups and push-ups.  We also did something called wind sprints.  This was a one hundred yard dash, with the slowest five to finish having to do it again.  The worst practice activity of all was something called “frankensteins”, which involved running around the high school track, and the last person at the back of the pack had to sprint to the front of the pack.  I don’t think I ever actually played in a game, but I remember how tough the practices were. 

     What are some of the things you have practiced in your life?  Children practice with training wheels before stepping up to a full two-wheeler.  Student teachers practice in a classroom, student ministers practice in churches, and union apprentices practice electric and plumbing.  To learn a language you have to practice vocabulary, conjugation and conversational skills.  In the RCSD they had a class where students had to take care of an egg over the weekend, as the first practice for being a parent,  I wish parenting was actually that easy!  And on Friday we had a practice for a wedding that took place on Sunday.  It appeared that the practice made all the difference, the practice kiss looked a little tentative, but at the wedding there was much improvement. 

     If I was Jerry Seinfeld I would have some observational humor to share about practice at this point.  The place where my doctor works is called a practice.  Well, I don’t about you, but if a doctor is going to work on me I don’t it to be practice!  I want the real thing!

     I don’t play football anymore, but I have come back to the violin and I actually enjoy practicing and wish I had more time for it. 

     Would it surprise you to learn that our Sunday worship is a kind of practice?  What we have heard in the letter of James is a good reminder.  The hardest part of being a Christian is not hearing the word, but doing the word.  So worship is more than hearing what God has to say, worship is also a chance to try out these new ideas.  On Sunday morning we practice getting it as right as we can before taking out into the community and the wider world.    

     The things that we do in worship are practice for the way we live our lives in all the other places.  Here we practice prayers, and friendship, and generosity, and caring, and peacefulness.  We pray together so that we have skill and experience for praying on our own, or with others outside of the church.  We form friendships here, so that we form friendships in the school, at work and in the community.  We are very generous here, with our time, our money, our talents, and this trains us to be generous in the wider world.  We learn to care and be cared for here, so that we will respond to the needs of others in the community, too.  We practice peacefulness among ourselves here, knowing that in many other places it will be more challenging.  These things don’t always come easy to us.  But that’s why we practice. 

     I’m amused by people who tell me they are Christians but don’t need to participate in a church.  I’m amused because I know that I need lots of practice to be a Christian.  I wouldn’t want to be standing on the stage of Carnegie Hall with my violin if I had not practiced.  And I don’t want to be out there in the world as a Christian facing a tough situation without having had a lot of practice in advance. 

     Have you ever been the child who resisted coming to church the same way I used to resist my music lessons?  It even happened to me a few weeks ago.  After the alarm went off on Sunday morning, I said to Robin that maybe I could call in sick and stay home.  I think I’ve only missed two church services in 26 years – once after a blizzard blocked my street, and another time on Christmas Eve when I had the flu so bad I could hardly move.  Only two times in 26 years, so I thought maybe I  deserved a sick day.  But Robin just rolled her eyes, because of course I was completely healthy, and she told me to get out of bed and get moving!  I guess she thinks I still need a lot of practice being a pastor. 

     The Letter of James talks a lot about hearing the Word and doing the Word, and it touches on some arenas in life where we can be thinking about the practice we need:  in listening skills, in controlling the tongue, in managing our anger, in  resisting temptations, in caring for the weak and vulnerable.  These are things we need a lot practice for!   [Ding!]