Fundamentals

This is a youtube clip of the last shot Michael Jordan ever took in a playoff basketball game.  The shot gave the Chicago Bulls an 87-86 lead in game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals.  A few seconds later, the game ended and the Bulls hoisted there 6th NBA championship trophy in 8 years.

What I want you to pay attention to in the video is how Michael Jordan keeps his right hand held high in the air even after the ball has left his hand.  After the game, Jordan was asked why he did that and his response was something like this:
"I was tired.  I was just going through all the fundamentals in my head and making sure everything was perfect because I knew I couldn't miss that shot."

The greatest basketball player to ever play the game was thinking about his fundamentals as he took the game-winning shot in the NBA Finals.  He was thinking about the parts of the game that he had learned as a 5 year-old kid; the parts of the game that he had probably practiced everyday of is life.
 
Practice is often a tedious process, one that we wish we could avoid, but any good musician, athlete, or writer will tell you that the key to success is quite simple: practice, practice, practice.

In our lives of faith, we talk about "spiritual practices" and "practicing our faith" but often without great clarity.  One thing that I am really interested in is the idea of Orthopraxis.  Orthodoxy is a word we're used to hearing religious people talk about - it means "right thinking".   But, Orthopraxis is a word that means, "right practice".  I have found that the church often spends so much time ensuring that people believe and think correctly, and not enough time helping people practice their faith in effective ways.

"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." - Acts 2:42

This passage from Acts talks about the early church and how they devoted themselves to orthopraxis -- to the simple, basic, fundamental practices of their faith.  These practices themselves don't grant salvation or God's favor, but they do help strip down the walls that keep us from seeing God's enduring presence with us.
 
When Michael Jordan took that final shot he had played 103 basketball games over the course of the previous 8 months.  As he admitted later, he was really tired, and so he went back to the fundamentals that he had been practicing for nearly 30 years.

In the same way, the fundamental practices of breaking bread, reading scripture, and praying together sustained the early church for years.  And these fundamental practices of our faith can and will sustain us
when we're hurting
when we're lost
when we're feeling hopeless
when we're tired.

May we be practitioners of the fundamental elements of our faith, and may these practices reveal to us God's steadfast faithfulness. Amen.