It just makes sense that to get better at something you have to practice.  And practice has to do with repetition -- doing something over-and-over-and-over again until it becomes instinctual and you no longer have to think about it.  The superbly trained athlete is able to step to the free-throw line with one second left and the game on the line, and ignore the shouting and waving of the crowd (as well as her own nervousness) because she has repeated that action hundreds of times before in a gym when no one was watching.  Her routine and instincts take over and she makes the shot to win the game.

 

That is just how skilled people function.  They never take performance for granted but they learn the art of preparation and of practice, so when the time comes they are ready.  Of course, we have all known people whose egos have gone into overdrive because they have assumed they are “naturals”.  It all comes so easily and effortlessly.  We have all known people who get good grades without studying -- why should it be so easy for them and hard for us?

 

Well, I guarantee you that sooner-or-later everyone hits the wall.  Everyone reaches that place of brokenness where it doesn’t come easily, where you have to reach back to tap that bank of resources and experiences that have been accumulated through the hard work of practice and preparation.

 

And I am here to tell you that it is like that with God too!  I know that some of you think that God just goes around zapping people and that they come away with this wonderful glow and assurance that everything will be okay -- that some people are just naturally Christians in their feelings and their outlook, and that there is something wrong with the rest of us who have to work harder at it, and who struggle, and for whom the answers to life’s great questions are not that clear.

 

We have said as we move into our future that we want to be a more spiritually directed church.  I suppose that made its way into our strategic objectives because that just seems to be a good thing for a church to say and for a church to be about.  But what it looks like in our day-to-day life may be less clear.  Nevertheless, knowing the heart of this church I know that this is a goal that we do not want to take lightly.

 

We want to be the kind of church where people feel they are growing spiritually.  We want to be the kind of church where when you enter our doors, attend our worship, meet our people, and engage in our outreach -- you feel the presence of God.  The skeptic says that is all well and good but how do you program it?  Answer:  You don’t program it but you can practice it.

 

This is what I believe Jesus is teaching in our scripture passage of the morning.  I believe that here we are getting some pretty practical tips from the Master himself.  If there was anyone who carried the aura of the presence of God, it had to be Jesus.  And yet we know that he regularly took time in his ministry to renew himself -- engage in practices that kept him connected and nourished by those life-giving waters that flow from the eternal fountain.

 

Therefore, if we listen carefully to this passage, I think we can hear some helpful hints about how to practice the presence of God.

 

I.                 We Practice in Private

 

The first one that is practically shouted out is that we are to do our practicing in private.  That suits most of us just fine because we prefer to keep our religion a private matter.  The fact is that most of us can say a loud “Amen” to this teaching of Jesus because we want to keep our inner most thoughts and feelings private.  We have been taught that ostentation in religion equals fanaticism.  The trouble is that too often this extreme privacy about religious matters equals an absence of spiritual practice.

 

It is fine not to say our prayers on street corners and to subscribe to the idea that we will only say them in private, but this can also lead to a lack of accountability.  Of course, there is accountability before God because it says that, “Your father who sees in secret will reward you.”  We will get to the reward part later because all of us are just human enough to be motivated by the carrot at the end of the stick.  But for now we have to ask if this human lack of accountability will make us lazy and subsequently spiritually flabby.

 

Enter something that those of us in the Protestant tradition are not that well-acquainted with but which our Catholic brothers and sisters have used for some time.  I speak of the role of the spiritual director.  The concept of a spiritual director is rooted in the ancient monastic system where the novice monks were placed under the guidance and direction of one more senior and experience.  The idea of a mentor probably comes to mind but this relationship was much deeper than that.  This one was a confessor and a referee in spiritual struggle and a guide along the path into an intimate relationship with God.

 

There are some in this congregation who have been trained as spiritual directors at the Dominican Center. This is one way to be accountable even as we practice the presence of God in private.  Others have chosen the more distinctly Protestant expression of group formation -- a small group that gathers regularly for sharing and prayer.  We have a number of these at Westminster and our Small Group Ministry stands ready to form more as the demand increases -- no doubt as a result of this sermon.

 

II.             We Practice in Public

 

A second way that we practice the presence of God is in public.  I can see some of you scratching your heads.  Jesus seemed to make such a big deal about avoiding public displays of religious fervor -- where does this come from?  Frankly, I am looking at what has become a very public prayer for all Christians -- “The Lord’s Prayer”.

 

Because Jesus himself was part of the organized religious practices of Judaism, because he attended a synagogue regularly, made his pilgrimages to the temple, and worshipped as a devout Jew, we know that there was a public dimension to his faith.

 

Here the Lord’s Prayer is offered in the same passage “heaping up empty phrases” before God is condemned.  We have taken it as a model prayer -- certainly one that is lean and spare and without the frills of ornamental clichés.  It helps us to understand in our private praying that quantity is less important than quality, length is less important than content, and perhaps even that spontaneity is less important than thoughtfulness.

 

An unwritten part of the job description of every professional minister is the ability to pray on a moment’s notice the quick spontaneous prayer that is appropriate for every occasion.  How many times have I heard, “The Reverend is here, let him pray.”  And frankly we get a lot of undeserved spiritual credit for this ability to draw upon a deep reservoir of religious clichés.  I would not want you to think that those prayers are not sincere and offered from the heart.  But the truth is that we get a lot of practice and it isn’t necessarily a mark of our deeper spirituality.

 

By giving us the Lord’s Prayer, I think that one of the things that Jesus is helping us to understand is that when we pray in public, and when we worship in public, spontaneous ness is not necessarily a virtue.  I remember offering an opening prayer at a Rotary Club some years ago.  When called upon I deliberately and openly took out a piece of paper from my coat pocket and read the words I had written upon it.  Since that was my normal practice on such occasions, I was caught off guard when after the meeting I was accosted by a member who accused me of offering something less than a prayer because it was written down.

 

I think some people feel the same way about public worship; in fact I know they do.  And if they do, they become Pentecostals or Baptists who place a premium on such things.  I am sure that there are some who come to Westminster who feel that we cannot be “spirit-filled” because we have printed prayers and a more scripted form of worship.   But I remember a preaching professor telling us once, “There is no reason why you cannot be filled with the spirit writing your sermon on Tuesday as well as walking into a pulpit on Sunday morning having given hardly a thought to what you will say.”

 

The Lord’s Prayer teaches us many things not the least of which is that we practice the presence of God in public with thoughtfulness and preparation.

 

III.         We Practice on the Mountain-Top

 

I said I would get to the reward for all of this, because if you haven’t figured it out yet -- it is hard work to practice the presence of God.  The truth is being in the presence of God is its own reward.  When one is in the presence of God, there is a sense of well-being, what the Bible calls “the peace that passes understanding”, a sense that all is right with the world and a sense of perfect harmony.  It is summarized in the words of the Confession, “In life and in death we belong to God.”

 

This is what some people call a spiritual mountain-top experience.  The problem with such an experience is that when you have it you never want to let it go.  This is what happened when James and John and Peter were with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration.  It was such an overwhelming experience of the presence of God they thought they could capture it by building three monuments.  Others who have had such experiences try to bottle and pass it on with books like Twenty-five Steps to Heaven and the like.

 

Mountain top experiences come packaged in many forms but they are impossible to pass on.  It was quite an experience when a tribe of Indians from the American plains saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time.  They had seen streams and rivers, lakes and ponds, but they had never seen an ocean.  History records that when they saw this wonder in the Pacific Northwest, they were eager to find a way to take the experience of it back with them so that others could share in the awesomeness of that experience.

 

They decided to get a container -- a quart jar as it turned out -- and they tried to put the ocean in the jar.  But they soon realized that such a container was inadequate for the experience.  It is wonderful to have mountain-top experiences.  They can draw us closer to God and revitalize our faith.  But there is no container large enough to capture them and hold them and keep them.  Words are often used as containers, but words too are inadequate to describe the experience of God.

 

It’s not that there isn’t a place for such experiences or that they are not meaningful to those who have them.  When they come, they should be received humbly as a gift from God and not as a mark of higher spirituality. The flip side is that these special experiences of the presence of God may be more frequent than we give God credit for.  Who can experience a summer sunset over Lake Michigan without feeling a tingle and uttering a prayer of gratitude!  As a new and grateful grandfather, who can hold a new life in your arms without experiencing unspeakable joy!

 

IV.          We Practice in the Valleys

 

Before I stop speaking or you stop listening, I need to touch on one more thing.  Another place where all of us need to practice the presence of God is in the valleys.  Of course that is just an image for those times of hardship and suffering.

 

Edward Beck is a Catholic priest and his book God Underneath is a must read for any of you who want to reflect further about what it means to practice the presence of God.  Please indulge me as I share an extended quotation from that book.  Beck’s mother is dying and this is his description: “Once again it was a lesson to me of the contagious power of faith.  My mother was peaceful because of a spiritual haven she had cultivated through years of prayer and commitment.  She drew strength from that center, a wellspring of fortitude and replenishment to which she returned when depleted.  It was as if she had squirreled away grace for a rainy day, and when the rains came, the grace provided a place of dryness and warmth. 

 

I wanted such a place of my own.  And I wanted to know how she had gotten there.  Her example encouraged me to cultivate my own center, and to visit it more frequently.  You don’t learn that from theology school.  You learn it by going there, after traveled people show you how.”

 

Edward Beck is right!  One of the things that I have learned from those “traveled people” is that you practice the presence of God by looking at everything through the lens of faith.  My friend and colleague Tom Tewell talks about an 80-year-old woman who walked through the famous “Gates of Central Park” and found it to be a deep spiritual experience.  You may have seen some of the publicity on those gates a few years ago -- how it took Christo and Jean Claude 21 years and $21 million to get that project into Central Park.  There were 7,500 of them, a 23 mile trail of 16 ft. high gates with saffron-orange nylon hanging 8 ft. down from each one.  This woman covered all 23 miles and walked through every gate.  She said she went every day for an hour or two and took it slow.

 

On the meaning of that experience she reflected, “I thought about all the gates of my life, the gates that opened and the gates that closed.  The gates of childhood and growing up, the gates of jobs, the gates of getting married, and now the gates that have closed with the death of my husband.  As I was out there walking through the gates, I realized that the same God who opened gates in my past will guide me through the gates of the future.”

 

My friends, it doesn’t happen all at once, but if we practice, if we practice the presence of God, we too will come to that kind of faith and confidence.  May it be so!

Amen.