Matthew 19:16-22
Luke 12:13-22
During lent this
year, we will be focusing on Spiritual Disciplines. I want to start by
clarifying that discipline does not mean something painful or harsh or
unpleasant. Instead they are called
spiritual “disciplines” because they are ways of organizing, committing to and structuring
our dedication to a behavior or way of being.
Spiritual disciplines are activities that bring us closer to God. The purpose of the disciplines is to help us
focus on our relationship with God for a specific period of time, and to invite
us to ask, with our behavior, Where is God in our experience? How do we discern God’s presence? And what is God doing anew in our lives? The disciplines are for the purpose of
relationship with God. Therefore it is
very important that they be about relationship and not about being rigid or
stuck in a behavior. Richard Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline, who
is known as an expert on spiritual disciplines put it this way, “The way to
death is to turn spiritual disciplines into laws.” They are meant for our good, and they are
meant to enhance our faith and relationships with God.
There are 12
spiritual disciplines that Foster identifies.
Four are considered inner disciplines and those include prayer, fasting,
meditation and reading or study. Then
there are four outward disciplines: simplicity, solitude, submission and
service. Finally there are four disciplines
that are considered communal: confession, worship, guidance and
celebration. Some of these - prayer,
reading, confession, service and worship, in particular, we practice regularly
in the church. Others you might do on
your own – meditation, for example, or seeking guidance. But others we are less familiar with.
Of those twelve
disciplines, fasting, or the giving up of something intentionally, is the one
we most often focus on during lent. But
I would invite us to try to add or to focus on any of these spiritual
disciplines during lent as a way to intentionally deepen and focus our
relationship with God. There are twelve,
and yet we tend to focus on the one of fasting from something in particular. But I would like to encourage all of us to expand our way of
thinking about these disciplines, and instead of thinking of giving something
up, think of adding a practice into your faith commitments.
Each week I will
focus on one of the spiritual disciplines in particular as well, and today I
would like to start our Lenten focus by talking about simplicity. The idea behind simplicity is that we become
enslaved to the complicated things in our life, in particular the “things”, the
possessions that clutter our lives. Most
of our fear in this world seems to be directly tied to anxiety about losing our
stuff, our possessions and therefore the things that we think make us
secure. And as a people, we are
controlled by that fear. It enslaves
us. Therefore, the spiritual discipline
of simplicity calls us to let go of the fear, that bondage and enslavement to
our stuff. To trust instead that we can
survive, truly, with nothing but God. Our
fear, and our desire to protect ourselves with possessions, separates us from
God. Our desire to hold on to our things
separates us from truly relying on and trusting God. The spiritual discipline of simplicity calls
us to be intentional about letting go of those things that build a wall between
ourselves and God, that separate us from God.
I have mentioned before that there have been a number of
studies that show that the richest people in the United States give a
shockingly small percentage of their incomes to charities, while the poorest
people in our nations give a huge percentage.
An article came out in a few years ago in Forbes Magazine that looked at
giving and indicated that this trend is on the increase: the poor are giving
more and more of their resources and the rich are giving less and less. I’ve
shared with you before the joke about the poor man who begged God for money
with the promise that he would give 10% of everything he earned. After finding 10$, he faithfully gave one
back. Then he found $100 and faithfully
gave back $10. He soon found a job and
was making $10,000, and faithfully returning $1000 of it. But when he got to the place where he was
making $100,000 and had to give $10K of that back, or later when he made
$1,000,000 and had to give back $100,000 to keep his promise, he began to feel
very uneasy. He went to the local priest
to ask how he could get out of his deal with God. The priest responded, “Well, I don’t think
you can get out of the deal. But I’m
sure God would be happy to return you to making only $100 or so, if you’d be
more comfortable only giving $10.
It is clear that it should not be the case that the poor
give so much more than the rich. And the reality is that we could go a long way
towards ending suffering if the rich were to give even a small percentage more than
they currently give. We could easily end
world hunger. We could fix the water
problems around the world. But the reality
is that the more we have, the more fearful we seem to become about losing what
we have. So fearful, as I said, that we
hold on tighter and tighter to what we believe is “ours” forgetting completely
that nothing we have is ours – all of it belongs to God. We are stewards of God’s resources, and as
such, are called to use the resources entrusted to us for the good of all
people, not the good of ourselves alone. I am reminded of the parable Jesus
told of the servants who were given the talents of differing amounts. Do we bury the resources we are given? Do we SPEND the resources we are given on
ourselves? Or do we share them, grow
them, use them for God’s good which is the good of God’s creation?
Simplicity, learning
to live with less stuff, learning to depend less on our things and more on God
teaches us that God really is all we need and that forming idols from our
things does not make us happy, healthy or whole.
If we decide to take
this on, then, as a spiritual discipline, where do we start?
There are specific things we can do towards the goal of
simplicity:
a.
Buy
things for their usefulness rather than simply because they are pretty or
because we like them.
b.
Reject addictive things
c.
Get used to giving things away
d.
Refuse to be propagandized
e.
Enjoy things without owning them (library books,
videos, skates, etc.)
f.
Appreciate creation
g.
Pay for things now, not later – incurring debt
is not conducive to simplicity
h.
Use simple speech: in other words, don’t use big
words when simple ones will do. Don’t
feel the need to say in a paragraph what can be said in a single sentence. Don’t repeat yourself.
i.
Reject things that oppress others – this includes
ideas as well as things that put some people in an oppressive position: women,
people of color, hierarchies of relationships.
This includes being aware of the chain of events that leads to each
product that you buy, and make care to buy from places and from people and
specific objects that do not hurt people in order for you to obtain them: don’t
buy things made with child labor or slave labor. Buy things that are purchased fairly and that
pay the actual workers fairly. Don’t buy
products that harm the environment or that are made by harming the
environment. Be aware of where you buy
things and how things come to be on your shopping list.
j.
Shun things that distract you from God: social
media, TV, or anything that takes you away from God.
None of these things
are easy. But as a Lenten discipline, I
think the intentional choosing of simplicity is an act that can have a radical effect
on how a person relates to God.
Rev. Mark Scandrette
said this in the study, "Animate", “Shortly after I began working as a pastor, I had a moment of
crisis. One Sunday morning I was standing in the pulpit preaching and as I
looked out on the congregation, I saw people falling asleep and fidgeting in
their seats anxious to get home to watch the game or to get to the restaurant before
the noonday rush. I knew that no matter what I said people would come through
the line after the service, dutifully shake my hand and say, “good message
pastor” or maybe make a comment about a funny story I’d told. The possibility that I might spend a life
time of Sundays reenacting this script made me want to scream, “Is anybody
listening?! This should really make a
difference in how we live our lives!”
And then I thought about myself that I could preach a sermon about love
and then go home and be crabby with my family.
Or talk about God’s heart for justice knowing that I wasn’t in
relationship with anybody in poverty or struggle myself. This was all going through my mind while I
was speaking and I wondered, is anyone actually listening to what I’m saying?
Is what we are doing here making a difference for any of us? Do I really know what I’m speaking about from
lived experience with God? Or am I just
regurgitating what I’ve read? Maybe
we’ve forgotten that Christianity isn’t just something to believe, but it’s a
way of life that we are being invited to practice. It seemed to me that we were being invited
not just to (rehash) the Christian story but to become part of it, joining what
our maker is doing to bring healing, restoration and hope to our world. It’s what Jesus described as the kingdom of
God or what I call Jesus’ revolution of love. I realize that many of the ways
I’ve learned to be religious didn’t naturally move me towards transformation
for the good of the world. It was easy
to get stuck in my head. There was a huge gap between how I wanted to live and
how I actually lived. My practices
tended to be individualistic, information driven and disconnected from the gritty
details of life. Slowly I began to
realize that if I was going to be part of the revolution of love that Jesus embodied and promised, that I would need
to be more honest, more active and more connected with other people. … We won’t learn how to practice the way of
Jesus without taking tangible steps to walk in his way. The promise of the gospel is that we can
learn a whole new way to be human, to live without worry, fear, greed, lust or
anger. To live a life animated and
empowered by love. This is the kind of
life Jesus lived and invites us to experience. ….”
Mark Scandrette
talked about a number of things his congregation did and does as a way of
following Jesus. One of them had to do
with the Lenten discipline of simplicity and that was the “have two, give one
away”, which simply means if you have two of something, give the second one
away. The congregants met weekly for two
months, talking through the stuff that they had, what they really needed, and
what could be given away or sold to help those who have less. In the process of selling and slimming down
and giving away, they raised thousands of dollars to help overcome
poverty. But as Mark realized, the
practice probably did not make a big dent in the world’s poverty. Instead, it changed those who engaged this
practice of simplifying. They came to
really look at their stuff in a different way: as resources, lent to them by
God for the use of all of God’s people, as objects that could be used for God’s
glory, or could be simply selfishly held on to for one’s own pleasure.
My last congregation tried a similar project. We worked together and supported one another
in going through our things and collecting objects for a huge rummage sale with
the idea that we would not be selling these objects to one another, but really
getting rid of things that were no longer useful, had no purpose other than self-gratification,
were cluttering and complicating our lives in a time when we were called to
simplify and cut back. All of the money we raised then went towards hunger
issues. I would encourage you all to consider doing the same. Go through your things this winter and
spring. Really look hard at what you
have that you don’t use or don’t need, see what you have two of that you only
need one of. Again, this is for OUR
benefit. We may not change the world by
it, but we can start to change ourselves as we strive to be closer to God and
more active in our following of Jesus. This
is just one way, but I find that the de-cluttering of our lives, the simplifying
of our lives is an amazing step towards overcoming fear and greed in
particular. It is an invitation to rely
more fully on God. It is an invitation
to trust. It is a call to be more fully
present with God. And that is a gift
indeed. Amen.
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