Live simply, that others may simply live

Sermon preached at Holy Trinity Parish, Decatur, Ga., on Sunday, Feb. 27, 2011 (the 28th anniversary of my baptism), the Eighth Sunday of Epiphany, Year A. (Matthew 6:24-34).


She stands in the upstairs, attic-loft of the shelter, giving a tour to one of her newest volunteers.

“And this is where we keep the extra coats,” she says, pointing to a motley assortment of puffy parkas stuffed tightly into cardboard boxes and shoved into a room behind the walls made of chained-link fence. “Here we have sheets... we’re down to only a few sets, but we’ll get more in soon,” she says confidently.

She moves further down the central hallway, pointing out the holding places where supplies are kept for the guests of this shelter.

“Where do you get your donations?” the new volunteer asks. “How do you know you’ll be getting more sheets soon?”

“Oh, they’ll come,” the shelter employee says with a smile. “One of the things I’ve learned through working here is that God will provide for whatever we need. We like to have butter for the guests every night at dinner, out on the tables. But if we run out, ok, we just go ahead without butter for a few nights. And inevitably, some butter will be donated within a few days or a week. When we need butter, the universe sends us butter.”

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”

Have you ever been in a place where you weren’t quite sure where the money was going to come from to pay that electric bill? Or when you didn’t know how or when you’d get your next meal? If you have, then you know something about trusting God. I mean, really trusting God. Not just saying you trust God because it sounds nice and looks good to your church friends but then doing everything within your power to guarantee you will be able to provide for your own needs, thank you very much, God. I’m talking about really being dependent on other people for your very survival – as the disciples of Jesus were when he sent them out, instructing them to take nothing with them – “no, purse, no bag, no sandals” (Luke 10:4) – but to depend entirely on the generosity of those to whom they ministered.

Folks who live on the street know about being dependent on others, and the ones who aren’t completely numb and cynical usually know something about trusting God. In fact, I’d dare to say that they know quite a bit more about trusting God than folks who have only trusted God as a matter of personal piety, who have never had to trust God as a matter of life and death. Ask the folks down at the Church of the Common Ground about trusting God, and you’ll likely get an earful.

Of course, despite our illusions that we are able to provide for our own needs, we are -- all of us -- dependent on one another for survival. As one of the collects for Compline says, “grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil.” And we are ultimately dependent on God for our very being. Still, knowing all that intellectually isn’t the same as living with it in your everyday reality.

Perhaps this is why Jesus encourages us to give up our possessions and speaks of the poor as “blessed.” Perhaps it’s why he says it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Our savings accounts, our IRAs, our insurance policies – all set up to ensure our financial security, to protect us and to maintain our standard of living – actually prevent us from experiencing our utter dependence on God and fool us into thinking we can care for ourselves. They are hindrances to our relationship with God.

We store up treasures for ourselves on earth because we believe that it will give us peace of mind. “If only I had more money, I wouldn’t have to worry so much,” we think to ourselves. But the irony of it all is that the more we have, the more we worry about losing it. Monastics take a vow of poverty out of the recognition of this dynamic that Jesus so poignantly illustrates throughout his teachings: the less we have, the less we have to worry about, the less we have to distract us from our relationship with God and from giving ourselves over completely to him. There is freedom in having less. It frees our souls to trust more and opens us to deeper spiritual growth.

But don’t get me wrong – my point is not to romanticize extreme poverty or to downplay the very real hardships and traumas that people in such circumstances face. I’m sure those same folks on the street who would affirm that they have learned to trust God through losing everything would also balk at any suggestion that their poverty – and by extension, the extreme wealth of others – is all part of God’s plan and is for their own good. This smacks of the kind of twisted theology that keeps the oppressed oppressed in the name of spiritual growth. “You may have hardships now, but your reward is great in heaven,” the church has told slaves, and women in abusive relationships, and gay and lesbian people – which has had the effect of justifying the status quo and denying their full membership in the body of Christ and their full flourishing as human beings.

I don’t believe that kind of acceptance of society’s injustices was what Jesus was talking about when he pointed out that having less frees us to be more open to God. I don’t think that was an invitation to endorse or turn a blind eye the horrendous conditions of those in extreme poverty because such conditions are “good for them” and will bring them “closer to God.” No, if that’s what we get out of reading the Gospel, I think we’re entirely missing the point.

Jesus doesn’t just call “the poor,” or those who have less, “blessed” and stop there. No, he calls “the rich,” or those who have more, to give up what they do have in order to experience some of the freedom of having less and to connect more deeply with God. But giving up possessions to address a personal spiritual need has the effect – whether intended or unintended – of meeting a larger, societal need as well.

Think about it. In a world of limited resources, how much we consume has a direct effect on others around us. If we choose to give up some of our possessions, we not only open ourselves more to God, we also leave more available for others to have. By eating less, buying less, using less energy, we allow others to benefit from the generosity of God and distribute it more equally amongst God’s people. Living more simply helps bring about the kingdom of God both within us and around us.

No, I don’t think that the Gospel endorses the status quo of our class system by holding up the blessedness of the poor or by pointing out that we may need to have less in order to really learn how to trust God. Rather, I believe that if we truly follow Jesus, we will find ourselves significantly rearranging that system.

Jesus calls us all to live more simply and thus to experience the freedom of knowing our dependence on God. But as those of us with more choose intentionally to live more simply, we may find that we are able to meet the needs of those in extreme poverty. As a saying attributed to Mahatma Gandhi goes, we should “live simply, that others may simply live.”

Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said, “strive first for the kingdom of God... and all these things will be given to you as well.”