“Growing in Christ: Simplicity” Ecc 7:30 Proverbs 11:28 Luke 16:13

“We need to live simply, so that other’s can simply live.” The catchy phrase used by Pastor Mike Slaughter for the “Christmas Is Not Your Birthday” campaign at Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church. However, there is truth in that simple statement that rubs against our consciousness.

The spiritual discipline of simplicity is hard, because it requires untangling our lives from that which complicates them and distracts us from God. In its purest form, simplicity is the art of letting go - and that is difficult. 

When I was younger, I had a problem with necklaces. The problem was that  I had a gift for getting them tangled in lots of knots. Knots that my parents would often spend countless hours trying to workout with the aid of toothpicks at our kitchen table. For as soon as one knot was freed, it seemed like another would quickly appear. 

So it is with many of our lives. As soon as we start to untangle ourselves, seeking simplicity in one area of our lives, we find just how much we are bound up in other. Perhaps as you loosen your attachment to items you realize just how much your heart is tied up in the concepts of owning or having. Or maybe as you seek to free your schedule, you realize just how much time you spend not with family or friends, but doing things that don’t really matter in the end, wasting time. Or maybe as you seek to eat more simple food, you realize just how much you overindulge, not just in eating, but in speaking or entertainment. Our lives are complicated and the discipline of simplicity asks us to confront that complication directly instead of using it as an excuse, thus freeing us to be generous. 

In the verse from the gospel of Luke today we find Jesus telling his disciples that you cannot serve two masters. He is speaking about the danger of serving money instead of God, but really in today’s world we serve oh so many masters. To figure out just who you serve, look at your checkbook and your calendar. Or think about the very personal question of “what do you squander?”. Many of us like to keep up the facade of serving God only, but when we get to the heart of the matter, we see that our stewardship of time, talents, money, and resources often disappear in favor of self-promotion. We squander what we have been blessed with so that we make sure that we have enough, in the meantime setting aside more money for retirement than we could ever need or buying food in excess so that it goes to waste. 

Of course, we didn’t start out our spiritual journey wanting to serve two or more or many masters. We started out wanting to serve Christ. But somewhere, often around the middle of our spiritual pilgrimage, we stop living for Christ and more persistently live for what the world has defined as success. We feel like we love God, but when actually start to examine our daily lives, we don’t find a whole lot of places where we have left room for God to be present and in control. We find our time and treasurers tied up in work, not because we believe that God has given us work and purpose, but so that we can earn more to spend more, never really having time to enjoy the simple pleasures of life that God is trying to bless us with. 

The enemy to simplicity is envy. When we start to look around, comparing ourselves to others, we find ourselves wishing that we had more opportunities like that person or more money like our neighbor. Envy blocks us from having gratitude for what we have. When we have envy in our hearts, we become anxious in our spirits, and let that envy and anxiety dictate our behaviors instead of God’s desires for us. 

Another enemy to the simple life is not having people around us who champion or encourage simplicity. All too often we are bombarded by ads that tell us that we need to have more, be more, and do more. When we have the right people around us, they can remind us just how foolish of a life that type of attitude is setting us up for. Instead, they can remind us of our need to let go in order to live an un-abandoned life for God. 

Simplicity asks us to set aside things that will fade, as described in Proverbs, and to seek after eternal things. Such simplicity brings us closer to the reign of God by loosening the hold that culture has on us. The problem is that we have become confused about what will fade and what is important. We have confused the Kingdom of God with the kingdom of this world, and we need to look no farther than the songs we hear and sing to emphasize this confusion. We sing about poor boys growing up to become rich more than about rich boys growing up to become voluntarily poor in possessions but rich in Spirit. 

According to Pastor Mike Slaughter, there is one new birth, but many conversions. And many of us today are in need of a conversion about simplicity. We need to see how we live our lives as God sees them - that we are oppressed men and women, tied down to our things instead of freed for the work of the Kingdom. We’ve become slaves to what we own, what titles we possess, and how others see us. And sadly we are more comfortable being in slavery than embracing the possibility of freedom. We’ve made the gospel about having control instead of surrendering all we are and have to God’s purposes. 

We’ve bought into the lie that the Bible doesn’t have much to say about simple living or that it doesn’t apply today. But the truth is God is very clear through the Word about simplicity and finances. We are to buy things for their usefulness, not their status. We are to buy only what we need. We are to share what we have. And above all scripture tells us that simplicity is an outward manifestation of our inward reality. 

Brothers and sisters, it is time to embrace the counter-cultural stance of simplicity, not to be different, but in order to free ourselves for God’s purposes. Its time to be freed to be generous. To be freed to de-accumulate. Freed to reject that which breeds the oppression of others. Freed to shun that which distracts from seeking after the Kingdom of God first and foremost. 

And that freedom is going to look different in each of us. For some of us we need to let go of our anxiety around money. For others, we need to ask God to help us let go of our own self-image and titles. And still for others it means that we need to downsize our possession. Whatever are of our life that God is leading us to simplify, we will find that in reality, one step will lead to another, which leads to another, as we learn to trust God more fully. So that we can live into the promise of the Shaker Song “Simple Gifts” for ourselves, 'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free, and into the promise for our brothers and sisters here and beyond that we “live simply so that others may simply live.” Amen.