Mastery

Christianity is a faith that has emphasized, well, faith. But as James's letter describes, there is a "doing" aspect of the faith as well. In fact, as James says, faith without works is a dead faith.

I enjoyed Mark Crider's sermon today which began with a short clip from Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon." My own martial arts movie experience is pretty limited. When I first saw the movie, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", I was drawn in by the film's highly technical fight scenes between karate masters who had become so sublimely identified with their art they could perform it almost magically. Chase scenes portray the characters running up the sides of walls and making heroic leaps off of rooftops. There's one scene where the fighters demonstrate their amazing self-mastery and balance fighting on the tips of tree limbs.

This is all fiction, of course. It's just a movie (as I so often tell my children when they're trying to figure out the film's "magic")! But think about it. Don't the great masters often appear to possess something vaguely magical when they practice their craft? Watch a you-tube video of Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic back in the sixties. Or picture Michael Phelps swimming for the gold. Ever seen Chet Atkins or Steve Patterson, for that matter, pick the guitar? We know that what appears to us as "magic" emerges out of thousands and thousands of hours of rehearsal or training or study. It doesn't come easy. It is patient, painstaking work to achieve mastery.

I wonder if in our agreement with Luther the Reformer, we've sold the practice of our faith short? Can Christians develop a form of mastery over the "spiritual disciplines" of their faith - prayer, fasting, study, promoting justice, serving, community-building? What could the church look like if believers took the exercise of their faith as seriously as the karate master takes the perfection of karate forms? Maybe then we could move mountains with faith or shift entire cultures toward recognition of a loving and empowering creator.