“Simplicity”
Matthew 6:25-33
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
6/7/15
Early in
my ministry I had a recurring and disturbing dream. In the dream, I step into a
pulpit on Sunday morning. It’s time to preach, but when I stand up, I
realize that I have prepared nothing! Nada! I look out at the congregation,
and all those eyes press in on me. But I have nothing to say! I begin to
sweat. My mouth turns to cotton. My pulse races.
Then, I wake up, and it is
2:30am on Tuesday! I want to shout Hallelujah!
I’ve been redeemed!
But I’m Presbyterian. So I just
say, “Glad that’s over with,” and I go back to sleep.
Anxiety can
become so much a part of our lives that we do not know how to live without it. So,
hearing Jesus say, Don’t worry, is
like hearing him say, Don’t breathe. The
barns of our lives are laden with concerns. Many of us manufacture our own
anxiety, feeling, I suppose, as if worry, like busyness, actually justifies our
existence.
Into our
angst Jesus says, ‘Stop. First of all, seek God’s kingdom, and God’s
righteousness. Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘Trust me.’
That is more easily said
than done in the early 21st century when anxiety has become a kind
of religion unto itself. Airwaves and cyberspace are crammed with the
evangelists of anxiety who urge us toward the violent saviors of competitive
fear and greed. Then again, these evangelists get a lot of attention because
the questions are real. Will my job last? If it does, will I even be able to afford
retirement? What kind of life will there be for kids growing up in a world racked
by so much turmoil? Where is God in all this? Is there a God in all this?
When those questions begin
to own us, we become ravenous, frenzied beasts – gnawing at everything, tasting
nothing.
“Seek first the kingdom of
God,” says Jesus. Then you and the things that matter will find your way to
each other.
Jesus calls us to rearrange
our out-of-whack, anxiety-driven priorities so that we begin to understand what
is both truly needful and genuinely possible in life. He invites us to practice
the spiritual discipline of simplicity. Christ-like simplicity connects the
spiritual and the physical so intimately that we begin to discern God’s
presence and purpose even in the most mundane experiences, while anxiety
complicates us into spiritual numbness.
When I have
dreams like the one I shared with you, the fear that wakes me is not some noble
humility gone awry. The fear that wakes me is the fear of rejection and failure. The
stark truth is that I often give more attention to what I think you think of me
than what the life of Jesus reveals about what God thinks of us. When I focus
on what I get, I no longer seek God’s
kingdom or righteousness. Then those simple but challenging words – Love, trust, serve, and rejoice – get tangled in my efforts to
dress them up in clothing fit for Solomon, clothing intended to draw attention
to me rather than to direct our attention to God’s kingdom which is at work
within and around us.
I
imagine that most of us play this game one way or another. Do you ever dress up
some part of your life, some God-given gift, some hobby, or relationship, or possession?
Do you shine it and display it? To use the old cliché, is it something that you
own, or something that owns you?
There
are many ways to get at this, but I think that there are two conflicting postures
that distinguish a simple approach to living from the complicated habits of
anxiety. And they are pride and gratitude.
When rooted
in fear, pride manifests as the antithesis of Love. So we can turn Paul’s
description of Love around and say that pride tends to be impatient, unkind,
“envious…boastful…arrogant…rude…insist[ent] on its own way…irritable [and] resentful…”
Pride tends to play fast and loose with the truth and to be fundamentally
hopeless. Pride will even brag on its own humility.
Pride creates material
kingdoms, kingdoms of excess and violence that siphon our time, abilities, and resources
away from the search for God’s kingdom. Material kingdoms have their allure,
but they feed our egos rather than our spirits. And while we need healthy egos,
overfed egos only get hungrier. They are never satisfied, and the more they demand,
the busier, the shallower, the more complicated, and anxious our lives become.
Living in material kingdoms is, to borrow Frederick Buechner’s memorable image,
like the craving of salt of a person who
is dying of thirst. When overcome with material hunger and thirst, we get
stingy with our energies and resources because we’re spending everything on
ourselves. But hey, says Loreal, We’re
worth it. Besides, says Canon, Image
is everything. And most importantly, it does not matter how much we get;
we’ll never have more than we need, just
more than we were used to.
I don’t remember what
product that last slogan was trying to sell. And it doesn’t matter. For the evangelists
of greed, selling a product is always secondary to selling the anxiety that without
the right stuff and the right appearance, we are nothing.
I don’t think that we can seek,
much less find, the kingdom without living more simply. And the process of
simplifying begins with the humble act of gratitude.
Living gratefully means
more than politely thanking everyone who does something kind for us. Living
gratefully means resisting the temptation to believe the imprisoning lie that getting
more is a sign of God’s favor. Indeed, to live a grateful, kingdom-seeking life
usually requires us to let go of stuff, because we recognize and enter the
kingdom not by getting, but by giving. So Jesus, the holy gadfly, goads us: “Is
not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” “Those who lose their
life for my sake will find it.” (Mt. 16:25)
During this lifelong search,
we become more aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit and of the workings of God’s
kingdom. As our ability to trust increases, anxiety may not end, but it does dilute
within a new shalom. As anxiety ebbs, and we discover belonging in God’s
kingdom, God’s righteousness supplants our own righteous indignation. Sharing
becomes less threatening. And when we focus on sharing rather than getting, we experience
the true God-shaped need within humankind. And what we need, I think, is to see, hear, and touch the fundamental holiness,
the “original blessing”1 in the creation.
We call it a meal, but The Lord’s Supper is just a
tiny pinch of bread and a thimble-full of grape juice. It is enough, though. It
is enough to see, to taste, and to touch. Enough to remind us of our deepest
hunger and thirst. Enough to remind us that a meal need not be an elaborate
affair, but a simple experience of gratitude and hope.
The table is set with grace,
with the tidbits of God’s mysterious Enough.
Come to the table, and prepare to be made hungry and thirsty for the search –
the search for the satisfying generosity of the kingdom of God.
1Matthew
Fox uses this term to speak of the basic nature of human beings. At our core is
God’s “original blessing” rather that our own original sin. I came across the term in one of Richard Rohr’s
meditations: http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Richard-Rohr-s-Meditation--Incarnation-Is-Already-Redemption.html?soid=1103098668616&aid=UAkzlHSN7BE
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