My first car was a Toyota Corolla. Not bad cars but in those days, some Corollas had 1200cc engines that were completely gutless. I had a 1200cc model! Driving around town was fine but most North American highways were an adventure for my underpowered machine. I found this out very specifically on a road trip to New York City. A friend of mine from Ireland was visiting relatives there and one of my Toronto friends and I decided that we’d go on a road trip. We were 19 years old and had nothing better to do. So we planned the trip and decided to skip the New York Throughway for the lesser roads. We looked at our maps (long before GPS) and thought camping at Watkins Glen and stopping around the Finger Lakes would be nice. I was glad we did for the scenery was quite stunning, but then we got back on the road and into some challenging hills in the Adirondacks. I remember one in particular, the little car struggled and struggled. One quarter of the way up, the top gear (4th) just wasn’t cutting it, I had to drop it down to third. Half way up, the engine was struggling again and our speed was dropping and dropping. At 20 mph, I dropped down to second and had to continue the rest of the hill in second gear. Embarrassment set in; the poor car was barely making it. The big V8s behind me were lined up, honking their horns. I did not dare pull over, fearing I’d never get going again. With foot to the floor, the little engine was doing the best that it could.
Well John and I had many an embarrassing hill to climb in that car. I can recall dropping into a valley and picking up as much speed as I could to help the process of going up the hill on the other side. Down and up we went, over and over again, and the same on the way back. By the time we crossed the mountains on the return trip, the little Toyota sounded like a Volkswagen (Beetle) and I can tell you that wasn’t a good thing. I had to start praying that we would make it back to Toronto and, thankfully, we did. The first thing I did when we got home was take my car into a service station. It needed a tune up, and as it turned out, a rather serious and expensive tune up, to return the engine to Toyota quality sound.
Some of us are probably thinking about changing the tyres and getting our cars tuned up as we come out of a long Toronto winter. Winters can be hard on cars. As I was thinking about making an appointment for my “old box,” it struck me that sometimes the Christian life can be a lot like that first Toyota. We may have been through “a challenging road trip,” or perhaps haven’t been to “a service station” for a long, long time. Sometimes, the Christian experience gets old and worn, our Christian lives are not what they used to be, our “engines” aren’t running as they should, and we just sputter along in need of a garage and a good mechanic.
It struck me too that Lent can be like a garage for our Christian lives. Lent can be a time when we pop “the hood,” evaluate whether or not the “Christian engine” is running well, whether we need “an oil change,” or “the spark plugs replaced,” or worse, “major engine work.” That, of course, brings up the broad question, “What exactly are Christian lives supposed to look like?”
I love the imagery around the short account of Enoch in Genesis 5. “Enoch,” we are told, quite simply, “walked with God.” What does it mean to “walk with God?” Paul seems to give us another general statement in Colossians 3 when he says, “Set your minds on things that are above.” Perhaps, however, if we are to really understand what Christian lives should look like, we should look at Jesus and the lives of those who followed Jesus.
Philosopher and churchman, Dallas Willard, has been writing about Christian discipleship for many years and he fears that many churches aren’t talking much about some aspects of how Christians are supposed to live. Back in Jesus’ day there was a simplicity to it. Primarily, it meant going along with Jesus, hearing what he said, following what he said, observing what he did, and following that too. Jesus said, “Come follow me,” and people would just give their lives over, they would follow, they would learn, and they would draw closer to God in the process. It could be a costly adventure, because Peter and James, and John and others left their livelihoods to follow. Maybe we can’t do that to the same extent today, says Dallas Willard, but the priorities and the intentions of the Christian life, the heart and inner attitudes of those who would walk with Jesus should be similar. There should be desire, a decision, an intent to draw closer to God.
There’s a widespread thought in some sectors of the church these days that if you simply believe the right things, you’re good; or if you live a decent life most of the time, that’s all you need. But when we look at Jesus in the Gospels, when we think of the life he modelled, when we look at what his disciples did, there’s more to it. There’s a spiritual aspect to the Christian life and if we really want to understand what Christian lives are supposed to look like, we have to include times of praise, and prayer, and devotion to God. These frequently get left out these days, yet, Jesus, the disciples, Paul are all depicted as spending time in the word and prayer. Paul we find singing hymns of praise even from a prison cell. Dallas Willard goes on to specify that walking with God, “above all else, desires to be like Jesus … and dwell in his “faith and practice.”
So the question for this morning is, “Are we doing that?” If I were to ask you to describe your spiritual health and fitness at the moment, how would you respond? Would you say, “It’s great, I’m doing well;” or would you say, “I need a bit of a spiritual tune up. Perhaps, if the latter is your response, we could look at Lent, and today, as a trip to the garage.
Well, have you ever noticed when your car goes in for a tune up, it has to stay in the garage for a while, sometimes a day, sometimes longer? If we are thinking about a spiritual tune up, one of the things we need to talk about is giving it a little time – taking time to be still. Immediately we run into problems because our lives can get very full, very busy, and it’s hard to break out of that and take a little time. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that most of us associate activity and “doing” with good, and inactivity with bad, or laziness. We don’t feel like we’re accomplishing anything if we try to be still for a moment. Yet, God comes along and says, through the psalmist, “Be still and know that I am God.”
I read an article the other day about a young woman who has gone “offline” for Lent. She has set aside her computer, her smart phone and any other means of transporting data. She’s written an article on an old typewriter and quoted Christina Crook who suggested that fasting from the internet can awaken us and take us out of a numbed distraction. I don’t know about you but I find computers can be horrid time wasters. I love to read the sporting news and every morning, coffee cup in hand, I try to find out what’s new in “Manchester United land.” During March Madness, I’m all ears about the Kentucky Wildcats because I lived in Lexington for several years. But I find the Internet ridiculous, five minutes can turn into twenty quite easily, reading one online article can turn into another and another. Jen Michel, the author of the article I read, said that initially she resented the inconvenience of not having the Internet and Wi-Fi but, eventually, she learned to appreciate that there’s so much good that can be found in not hurrying. Her relationships, her marriage, and her spiritual life, things that seem to advance slowly anyway, are on an uptick because she has recovered time.
It doesn’t have to mean a loss of the Internet, of course, but we do need a bit of time if we are to get anywhere with God. A spiritual tune-up can be like sitting in a garage, waiting for the car, and maybe we need to do that with some regularity.
But being still does not have to be totally devoid of activity. One of the things that happens when we take our car to the garage is that we talk to the mechanic, we tell him what we’re experiencing and what may need fixed. Likewise, it is important for the Christian to talk to the Greater Mechanic who has brought all things into being and has given us life. Prayer, talking to God, that’s not easy either in this busy world.
A colleague in ministry told me a few days ago that he had been in the habit of praying throughout the day as things came up. It had been a while, however, since he had assigned a specific time every day to talk to God. So, for Lent this year, he decided to pray for at least five minutes every day before getting out of bed. He said that he thought it would have been easy because it was only five minutes. But what he has found is that its been hard. His calendar or forgetfulness get in the way. Some mornings he’d have things on my mind, or an early meeting to attend and eleven or twelve o’clock arrives and he realizes that he’d forgotten to pray. So he’ would stop and take the time. I liked what he said next, he said that it’s been more difficult than he had thought but it has also been much better than he’d thought. The consistent time with God led to more consistent prayer for his family members, friends, for people who are ill or in need. Some days, he said, five minutes isn’t enough and it’s gone to ten or fifteen minutes because there is quite a lot to pray for.
Then he told me about one of his children; he’s been praying for them specifically. Apparently, he has a child who hasn’t been in church for years (I know how he feels). The other day, much to his surprise, this child posted something on Facebook. It was so unbelievable that one of his other children was walking out the door and showed him the post on her smartphone. “Have you seen this?” she asked. It was a simple post. It went like this, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” He said that he didn’t know what had caused it but it warmed his heart and he’s now determined to keep up this practice of consistent prayer. We all need to spend time talking to the Great Mechanic.
When you own a car, there is something that you really should take a look at and it’s called “the Manual.” Among other things, the manual will tell you what kind of tune up you need at any given time. There’s a manual for the Christian life also. It’s called the Bible and it’s a great thing for spiritual tune-ups. Unfortunately, the Bible has fallen on hard times, it’s not picked up by many who call themselves Christians. In 1992, the United Church published a document entitled, The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture. On page 1, the authors, a sub-committee of the General Council, wrote that few Christians (including United Church members) regularly read or study the Bible anymore. In my own academic work, I’ve engaged people in questionnaires and interviews and found that to be largely true. I’ve asked lay leaders of various churches about what things influence them when they make theological decisions on behalf of their churches; only 9.5% said that the Bible was the chief influence, only 23.6% said it was even among the top three influences on them. The Bible is indeed experiencing hard times within the community of faith and yet on Sundays we read it and say, “The word of the Lord, thanks be to God.”
Another thing that I have found is that most of those who know even a little about the Bible will state quite clearly these days that they don’t agree with all of it. Most reduce it to a few well known principles like “God is love” and that sort of thing. They focus on a few “good bits” and they decided what the good bits are.
Perhaps you know the name, Maurice Boyd. Maurice was one of the top United Church preachers of the last generation, and a good friend of my parents in his younger years. Maurice told a story when he was minister of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. He said that when he lived in Canada he used to listen to a classical music station of the sort that might be advertised as “the best of” Mahler, or Beethoven, or Wagner. What we heard was all the nice bits, the sweet tunes and soft melodies, the great adagios, the good parts. Listening to it was pleasant enough for a short while, but the music soon began to cloy. Ultimately, it trivialized the composers’ works and left the listener dissatisfied. It was all very pleasant, but it wasn’t deep. Mahler’s Sixth Symphony and Vaughan Williams’ Fifth Symphony, for example, have lovely melodies; but they also have movements filled with tension, struggles and anguish. To leave these movements out may tickle the listeners’ ears, but it is superficial and sells short the composer, performer and listener. Depriving the symphonies of their dark movements makes them sentimental, like having Easter without Good Friday, or looking up the answers before we have felt the weight of the questions. I think that it is that way with the Bible too. We love to reduce it to the nice bits, the warm bits, the loving bits, and reduce God to something we choose and like in the process. But it’s when we take it as a whole that we really begin to understand the depth, and how nice those nice bits really are, and what it cost to get there.
Now, I wouldn’t recommend reading the Bible as often as you read the manual in your car. I’d recommend turning to it much more regularly because I think that a spiritual check-up necessitates that we make the word of God like a close friend. Jesus has shown us that he was familiar with the scriptures, and we should follow him. In Acts 6, the disciples commit themselves to two things, prayer and the service of the Word, and those things are important for us also.
But I also want to point you briefly to one other thing that is important for a spiritual tune up. It’s something borne in the fact that although we may have manuals for our cars, mechanics have more detailed materials in books and online that help them with the various parts and problems with cars. I’m not going to push the analogy too far and say that we have materials at our disposal that are more detailed and deeper than the Scriptures. They are not, but we do have helpful material from the hands of many great people throughout the history of the church, people who have struggled just as we have, people who have come out the other side and succeeded in faith, people who have gone before us and can help us as we try to walk with God now. There’s a lot to be learned from St. Augustine, Confessions or the writings of St. Cyprian, or those attributed to St. Patrick. More recently, we can learn from C. S. Lewis, William Sangster, Leslie Weatherhead, Henri Nouwen, or Philip Yancey. Seeing how others walked with God can help us walk with God too. I’m going to speak to Dr. Stirling and we’ll put a few possibilities down for you in one of the upcoming Orders of Service or on the church web site.
Here we are, continuing through Lent. We’re drawing into the last couple of weeks and I wonder if we can ask ourselves during this time about the quality of our Christian lives. Are our spiritual engines running well, or do we need a tune up. We will all gain a great deal if we can uncover some time to be still, set aside time to talk to the Great Mechanic, read the Christian manual regularly, and perhaps some other helpful material from those who have walked with God before us.
It takes a bit of effort and a bit of time. One writer compares it to setting out on a hiking path near his house. He said that its paved and predictable but it’s a joy to walk. A few years ago, he walked it every day, week after week, month after month for most of a year and, although it became familiar, every day it revealed something new. He loved to see the way the leaves and wild flowers developed in the spring, how the sun progressed on its path and altered its height in the sky as the seasons changed. The fall, of course, brought change. The leaves of some trees would turn early, other trees changed later in the season, and then there were those few days when the fullness of the autumn colours shone at their brightest. He walked that path every day and found there was always something new to see and learn about.
I think it’s similar with walking with God. It’s a day-by-day thing. Frequently we’ll be going over old ground, paths we’ve trodden before, but just as Neil Wiseman found new things in the familiar, so God will keep bringing us new light, brighter spiritual colours and richer texture. And then as we keep walking one day the winter of life will come upon us. There will be times when it is hard to get out on the path of life any more. And just as nature sleeps, so we must sleep. “Enoch walked with God, then he was no more, because God took him.” Paul puts it a different way for us, “seek the things that are above … and when Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.”
I love the way John Wesley spoke of it. He wrote, “I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God: just hovering over the great gulf; till a few moments hence, I am no longer seen! I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing (while here), the way to heaven: how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way; for this very reason he came from heaven…” Let us follow him. Let us walk with Jesus.