Spiritual Athletics: Scrimmages, Drills and Individual Training
I've been thinking over the summer about our spiritual lives, about how we grow on our own religious journeys. The Anglican tradition has some particular ideas about this sort of spiritual growth. These ideas are not necessarily what you might expect if you belong to another denomination or another religion, and I want to look at some of them in a series of sermons over the next several weeks.
There is a technical name for the study of spiritual growth--it's called "ascetical theology." The reason I mention that term is that the word "ascetical" actually gave me an idea for how to look at the whole issue. "Ascetical" comes from the Greek word "askesis," which means "athletic training," and it seems to me that athletic training gives us a good way of thinking about spiritual growth today, just as much as it did the early Christians who first used the word.
Here's what I mean. When I was coaching soccer, there were three basic parts to preparing a team for our games, and I am sure that the same three things are the basic elements of preparation here, too. Those three are drills, scrimmages, and individual training. Almost all of you are on athletic teams, and you know what I mean by these three terms. Drills concentrate on the team working together, or in small groups, on particular skills; scrimmages, on the other hand, imitate a real competition by putting together the individual skills into a free-flowing game situation. Generally, in my experience, soccer teams prefer to scrimmage more and drill less, whereas their coaches would like to see things the other way around. But in either case, even though scrimmaging and drills both build up individual strength, endurance and skill, everyone understands that each athlete needs to have his or her own training program going on besides the team practices. Now the Anglican understanding of spiritual growth has three parts that correspond pretty closely to those three parts of athletic training. Those three parts are daily corporate prayer, the equivalent of drills; the Eucharist, equivalent to a scrimmage; and an individual spiritual life, the equivalent of a personal training regime.
Daily corporate prayer is like team drills. We come here every morning to work on two things: praising God and praying for the whole world. This daily prayer is not quite the same as athletic practice, because our praise and our prayers actually count, in a way that athletic practices don't; but on the other hand, even though it does "count," daily prayer isn't exactly the same as what we're practicing for. For one thing, our eventual destiny is to visibly join with the angels and all God's people from all time in the worship of God--but now, even though our prayers and praises count along with theirs, we don't see that larger group that we are a part of. Then, too, even though prayers and praise are central parts of God's plan for us, they aren't the whole of our destiny: there is more to our eventual team goal, and we don't see that larger plan in daily prayer, either.
Thinking about daily prayer as team drills in praise and prayer does help to clear up what goes on in the services. For instance, all of the praise and almost all of the prayer in the Episcopalian daily service--what we call the "Daily Office" in Episcopalian language--happens in forms set out ahead of time, sometimes in very old forms like the Psalms and other parts of the Bible, and sometimes in forms that have been developed more recently but are required or recommended for the whole Episcopal church. Clearly, anyone could praise God or offer prayers in his or her own words. The point of using ancient forms like the Psalms or wide-spread forms like the prayers in the Prayer Book is precisely that we are working on praying and praising God along with all of God's people and all the holy angels: this is small group practice, training for our place as part of a larger team. Another point is that the Daily Office is meant for prayer and praise and not for education. You can add a sermon to the service, and most Episcopal churches do add one if they use Morning Prayer for the main service on a Sunday (asI am doing now): but the Daily Offices do not ordinarily contain a sermon from one day to the next. If you are used to attending a Sunday service in a church where the main focus is on a sermon, then the Episcopalian daily office will seem to be missing something. Again, sticking with the athletic image, this is meant to be team practice, not a chalk talk.
The Holy Eucharist, then, is like a scrimmage. If the "big game" is our eventual destiny, God's final plan for us, then the Eucharist is not exactly that big game, but it is a hint of it. It's a foretaste, as we say, of our ultimate destiny. Already in the Eucharist we see the guarantee of the positions we will play in the real game. Again, as with the Daily Office, the Eucharist is a corporate activity of the whole Church, and for that reason uses ancient forms that have changed little over the years since Jesus commanded his apostles to "do this for the rememberance of me." In fact, the dialogue between the priest and the congregation at the beginning of the Euachristic Prayer--"lift up your hearts," and so on, is just an English translation of the Latin translation of the very early Greek translation of what Jesus would have said to his friends at the last supper when he invited them to stand for the blessing. It's an old rule in Anthropology that the more important something is to a culture the less likely they are to change it, and Christians have indicated the importance of the Eucharist by keeping its forms and structure largely the same for two thousand years. I should probably mention here, too, that the Eucharist is at least partly a teaching office. A sermon is optional for the daily office, but required for the Eucharist. I think that fits into the athletic image, too: at least in soccer, the best coaches don't let a scrimmage just run on and then send everyone back to the showers--they either stop the play during the game, or keep everyone around after it's over, in order to teach something about how everyone is or was working together.
The third part of this athletic image is individual training. If you are on an athletic team, the coach expects you to work on fitness and individual skills on your own, and will tell you, sometimes with a good deal of emphasis, that coming to drills and scrimmages without attending to your own preparation is not a very good use of your time or anyone else's. You still get something out of it, of course, but not as much as you would if you were keeping yourself in shape, if you were being an athlete all day rather than just during practice time. In just the same way, the Daily Office and the Holy Eucharist are based on the assumption that we will be working on our spiritual fitness at other times and in other places. We still get something out of coming to these corporate services even if we do nothing else, but real growth as Christians depends on our acting like Christians all day, not just during the team practice time, and that means having an individual spiritual life. In my next four sermons, I'll talk about what such a spiritual life can be like.
--John Wm. Houghton
I've been thinking over the summer about our spiritual lives, about how we grow on our own religious journeys. The Anglican tradition has some particular ideas about this sort of spiritual growth. These ideas are not necessarily what you might expect if you belong to another denomination or another religion, and I want to look at some of them in a series of sermons over the next several weeks.
There is a technical name for the study of spiritual growth--it's called "ascetical theology." The reason I mention that term is that the word "ascetical" actually gave me an idea for how to look at the whole issue. "Ascetical" comes from the Greek word "askesis," which means "athletic training," and it seems to me that athletic training gives us a good way of thinking about spiritual growth today, just as much as it did the early Christians who first used the word.
Here's what I mean. When I was coaching soccer, there were three basic parts to preparing a team for our games, and I am sure that the same three things are the basic elements of preparation here, too. Those three are drills, scrimmages, and individual training. Almost all of you are on athletic teams, and you know what I mean by these three terms. Drills concentrate on the team working together, or in small groups, on particular skills; scrimmages, on the other hand, imitate a real competition by putting together the individual skills into a free-flowing game situation. Generally, in my experience, soccer teams prefer to scrimmage more and drill less, whereas their coaches would like to see things the other way around. But in either case, even though scrimmaging and drills both build up individual strength, endurance and skill, everyone understands that each athlete needs to have his or her own training program going on besides the team practices. Now the Anglican understanding of spiritual growth has three parts that correspond pretty closely to those three parts of athletic training. Those three parts are daily corporate prayer, the equivalent of drills; the Eucharist, equivalent to a scrimmage; and an individual spiritual life, the equivalent of a personal training regime.
Daily corporate prayer is like team drills. We come here every morning to work on two things: praising God and praying for the whole world. This daily prayer is not quite the same as athletic practice, because our praise and our prayers actually count, in a way that athletic practices don't; but on the other hand, even though it does "count," daily prayer isn't exactly the same as what we're practicing for. For one thing, our eventual destiny is to visibly join with the angels and all God's people from all time in the worship of God--but now, even though our prayers and praises count along with theirs, we don't see that larger group that we are a part of. Then, too, even though prayers and praise are central parts of God's plan for us, they aren't the whole of our destiny: there is more to our eventual team goal, and we don't see that larger plan in daily prayer, either.
Thinking about daily prayer as team drills in praise and prayer does help to clear up what goes on in the services. For instance, all of the praise and almost all of the prayer in the Episcopalian daily service--what we call the "Daily Office" in Episcopalian language--happens in forms set out ahead of time, sometimes in very old forms like the Psalms and other parts of the Bible, and sometimes in forms that have been developed more recently but are required or recommended for the whole Episcopal church. Clearly, anyone could praise God or offer prayers in his or her own words. The point of using ancient forms like the Psalms or wide-spread forms like the prayers in the Prayer Book is precisely that we are working on praying and praising God along with all of God's people and all the holy angels: this is small group practice, training for our place as part of a larger team. Another point is that the Daily Office is meant for prayer and praise and not for education. You can add a sermon to the service, and most Episcopal churches do add one if they use Morning Prayer for the main service on a Sunday (asI am doing now): but the Daily Offices do not ordinarily contain a sermon from one day to the next. If you are used to attending a Sunday service in a church where the main focus is on a sermon, then the Episcopalian daily office will seem to be missing something. Again, sticking with the athletic image, this is meant to be team practice, not a chalk talk.
The Holy Eucharist, then, is like a scrimmage. If the "big game" is our eventual destiny, God's final plan for us, then the Eucharist is not exactly that big game, but it is a hint of it. It's a foretaste, as we say, of our ultimate destiny. Already in the Eucharist we see the guarantee of the positions we will play in the real game. Again, as with the Daily Office, the Eucharist is a corporate activity of the whole Church, and for that reason uses ancient forms that have changed little over the years since Jesus commanded his apostles to "do this for the rememberance of me." In fact, the dialogue between the priest and the congregation at the beginning of the Euachristic Prayer--"lift up your hearts," and so on, is just an English translation of the Latin translation of the very early Greek translation of what Jesus would have said to his friends at the last supper when he invited them to stand for the blessing. It's an old rule in Anthropology that the more important something is to a culture the less likely they are to change it, and Christians have indicated the importance of the Eucharist by keeping its forms and structure largely the same for two thousand years. I should probably mention here, too, that the Eucharist is at least partly a teaching office. A sermon is optional for the daily office, but required for the Eucharist. I think that fits into the athletic image, too: at least in soccer, the best coaches don't let a scrimmage just run on and then send everyone back to the showers--they either stop the play during the game, or keep everyone around after it's over, in order to teach something about how everyone is or was working together.
The third part of this athletic image is individual training. If you are on an athletic team, the coach expects you to work on fitness and individual skills on your own, and will tell you, sometimes with a good deal of emphasis, that coming to drills and scrimmages without attending to your own preparation is not a very good use of your time or anyone else's. You still get something out of it, of course, but not as much as you would if you were keeping yourself in shape, if you were being an athlete all day rather than just during practice time. In just the same way, the Daily Office and the Holy Eucharist are based on the assumption that we will be working on our spiritual fitness at other times and in other places. We still get something out of coming to these corporate services even if we do nothing else, but real growth as Christians depends on our acting like Christians all day, not just during the team practice time, and that means having an individual spiritual life. In my next four sermons, I'll talk about what such a spiritual life can be like.
--John Wm. Houghton