Learn by doing

My dad taught me to drive in a baby blue 1962 Chevy Custom 10 pick-up truck.  Actually, he didn’t really teach me to drive.  That is, there wasn’t a lot of instruction. 

He was a priest and he took me to work with him one Saturday just before I turned 16.  He drove the truck to the large lower parking lot of our church.  He parked in the middle of the vast expanse of asphalt.  He turned the engine off.  He handed me the keys and said, “I’m going up to my office to work for a while- you drive the truck around the parking lot.  Come get me when you get it figured out.”

            I held the keys in my hand as dad walked across the lot towards the building.  That wonderful mix of fear and unbridled excitement every teenager gets when they are first left alone with the keys and the car swirled in my head and belly.

            I slid over from the passenger’s seat, took my place in the driver’s seat and gripped the wheel expectantly.  It was a standard transmission, three on the tree.  Nothing on this truck was even approaching automatic.  I looked down at the floorboard – clutch brake gas – here I go.  I stalled immediately.  I lurched and jerked all over that parking lot for the better part of the afternoon, and slowly but surely I got into the rhythm of driving that old stick shift truck.

            When I got to the point where I could handle the clutch and shifter and smoothly move from gear to gear - 1, 2, 3, I parked the truck and went inside to find dad.  I knocked on his office door.

            “Dad, I think I’ve got it.”

            He looked up from his work.  “Good,” he said, “Good, learn by doing.  I couldn’t explain to you exactly how to handle that old truck, but now that you’ve got if figured out you can drive just about anything on the road.”

            Learn by doing.

*

The children at my house are learning to pray.  They can’t explain much about prayer.  They don’t know a whole lot about depth of meaning.  They don’t know much about the mystery of the Trinity.  They don’t understand theology, salvation, or the Nicene Creed.  But, they can say the Lord’s Prayer and Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

            When I pray with Summer, if I don’t include myself in the list of God Blesses, she always says, AND God Bless Daddy, and she points her little finger into my chest as she says it.  If you ask her what God Bless Daddy means she doesn’t have an answer, not yet.  But she is learning by doing.  And so far she’s got it figured out that when it comes to the God Bless prayer everyone should be included in the list.

            The Lord’s Prayer and the God Bless list are a part of her nightly routine now and my prayer is that she will persistent in saying them over and over, for ever and ever, and across the course of many years she will grow in her understanding of how prayer propels, comforts, and shapes her as she moves through life.

            Learn by doing.

*

People often ask me when their child should             begin taking communion.  Some say, “I want them to understand what they are doing before they do it.”

            I don’t say this, but I often think, Well, then most of us should probably quit taking communion!  Sometimes I feel like I understand some of the communion mystery, how that bread and wine the body and blood of Christ move salvifically in my life and body, and sometimes, frankly, I don’t have a clue!

            I tell parents “that most importantly, the first communion decision is theirs to honor and make that is, they should prayerfully and thoughtfully determine when they are comfortable with their little one first taking communion.”

            None of us should judge that decision.  “However,” I continue, “consider this, Perhaps your child will learn best about what Holy Communion is and means for them by doing.  That is, perhaps they will grow richly to understand the reception of communion by week in and week out lifting their growing hands up to take the bread.”

            Maybe the time for our children to begin taking communion is when they can put their hands together and lift them up, and the time for them to understand will unfold over all the rest of their lives.

            Learn by doing.

            The disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray.  And he taught them the opening bit of what we call the Lord’s prayer.

            He said, “Father, Hallowed be your name.  Your kingdom come.  Give us each day our daily bread.  Forgive us our sins.  Do not bring us to the time of trial.”

            And interestingly, he didn’t teach them about the meaning of every little piece of his prayer.  That is, he didn’t go line by line saying, “this means this, and that means that.  Now, you understand, now you can pray.”

            I think he suggested they learn by doing, over and over again because…. he followed the prayer with two curious little sayings about persistence.

            The first was a short and difficult story about a man who wakes his neighbor up knock, knock, knocking on his door asking for bread to offer to a visiting midnight guest.  Only because the knocking man is so persistent -- the sleeping neighbor comes to the door finally and gives the man what bread he has.

            The second saying is a familiar one.  Jesus said always remember this -- Ask and you shall receive, Search and you will find, Knock and the door will be opened.

            He gave them the ask, seek, knock instruction like a piece of poetry or song that they/we could turn over in their heads and hearts over and over again.  Indeed, one of our most well known songs is – Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, which contains the ask, seek, knock teaching.

            This morning’s gospel piece is third in a set of three famous Jesus’ scenes one following right after the other in Luke’s gospel.

            We read the first 2 weeks ago – The story of the Samaritan who stopped.  Last week we read the second – The story of Sit and Listen Mary.  And today, the third –  the teaching on persistent prayer.

            These three taken together provide a rather meaningful routine for Christian exercise.  Each one dovetails nicely into the other, yet, each is unique and valuable in its own right.

1. Go and Do – take action on the Way following Jesus.

2. Sit and Listen – stop, be still and quiet listening for voice of God and the movement of  

     the Spirit.

3. Pray persistently – talk to God.

Repeat these three persistently, like moving through the gears on my dad’s old pickup truck, one after another, over and over again, across the course of a lifetime and I reckon we’ll find ourselves along the way riding smoother and smoother into the wide embrace of God.

            Learn by doing.

            This morning’s passage helps us see that the Christian Way is not about right belief, proper understanding, correctly worded creeds, or answers to mysteries, rather, the Christian Way is about persistence, that is, always making moves toward God

            Go and Do

Sit and Listen

Pray

            Ask

Seek

Knock

            and the Christian way is equally about believing the beautiful truth that God is always moving towards us too.

            Although I don’t expect I can fully convince you of that in the space of this sermon, it’s something we have to learn by doing.

            Amen.