“A Simpler Way”
Matthew 22:34-40
Luke 12:22-32
John 13:3-9, 12-15
Somewhere along the way—actually, many times and places along the way—the life of faith got complicated. Life with God got complicated. Beyond the Ten Commandments, which really are nothing more than boundaries to help us love God and one another—more than a thousand specific laws detailed what to eat, what to wear, when to rest, how to worship, how much to give.
For every broad guideline such as “remember the sabbath day and keep it holy,” there were dozens of detailed requirements specifying exactly what that meant according to some people. Not because God is a stickler, mind you, but because we humans are always looking for work-arounds and, in the process, forgetting the bigger point.
And so we got detailed instructions, which then became an end unto themselves. And so we got legalism and the near-worship of rules, which seems to me to violate the most important law of all, which has to do with having no gods other than the one true God of many names.
Same with the church. It started out so simply: Follow Jesus. Love God and one another. Love your enemies. The realm of God is near.
But before we knew it there were creeds and catechisms, sacraments and doctrines—again, not because God required them (as far as I can tell), but because well-meaning (yes, I’m going to assume they meant well) leaders thought the people needed clarity and control.
They seemed to hold at least several understandable but—in hindsight—erroneous beliefs: One, that the church as an institution was more important than the community of Jesus followers; two, that following Jesus was about believing some key points of human-formed doctrine; and three, that unless individuals believed the right things and behaved in certain ways they were not welcome at Christ’s table.
So wrong. So abusive, oppressive and exclusionary. So complicated.
May God have mercy on us all.
It is a wonder of God’s grace that, despite all that, the church can still be a force for good in the world. It is a wonder of our divine heritage and hunger that, despite all that, we are still here—still wanting to connect with the Holy, still wanting to find meaning and hope, still trying to follow the way of Jesus, still gathering around Christ’s table, still trying to usher in the realm of God on earth by working to be in community with each other.
And still, because we so innately want to belong to Love, because we long so deeply for redemption and connection and peace, most of us have tried at one point or another—and some of us are still trying—to follow all the complicated rules and understand all the mysterious theology.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. But I do want to share with you the good news that they way of Jesus is, in fact, relatively simple. Wondrously simple. Joyfully simple.
Following a hermeneutic of Jesus and considering what we understand to be the teachings of Jesus, I’m going to suggest this morning that the Jesus way boils down to three simple things: love, trust, and service.
They are interrelated, of course, but let’s begin by taking them one at a time:
As we talk about loving God with our entire being, loving our neighbors, loving ourselves, loving even our enemies, it seems like a good time to clarify one important thing: To say that something—the way of Jesus, for example—is simple or simpler than something else, does not mean it is easy.
Right?
To say that something is uncomplicated and straightforward does not at all mean that it is easy. In fact, the more challenging and difficult something is to do, the more likely we are to complicate it.
When Jesus said, for example, that the entire Jewish law and all the teachings of the prophets can be boiled down to love of God and love of neighbor, he was immediately asked—and not in good faith—to clarify the term “neighbor.” When faced with both the simplicity and the difficulty of what is required, the questioner instantly began looking for escape clauses. He wanted to hear that he was required to love only people of his race, of his religion, of his politics or gender identity, of his sexuality or food preferences.
Instead, Jesus told him the parable of the Good Samaritan, which was his way of saying, “Let me make this simple. No matter how different from you someone is, you are to love them. No matter how badly someone treats you, you are to love them. Neighbor, enemy, stranger, the least, the lost, the good, the bad: You are to love them all.”
Jesus didn’t say we have to like everyone or be best buddies with the people who work our last nerve. What he said was, in essence, that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that involves loving and caring for all the people and things that are of God. God’s children, God’s creation, God’s world, God’s dream of justice and peace, connection and abundance, healing and reconciliation.
It sounds so simple, and yet it can be so hard.
And so I challenge you this week to see every person you encounter as a beloved child of God. To choose to see the love-light of God in every person you interact with. To say to yourself, every time you feel righteous anger toward some political figure, “He (or she), too, is a child of God, made in the divine image.”
Yes, it is hard, but the Spirit of God dwells within you, empowering you to do things once considered impossible. So be intentional about it. Pray for God’s help.
Prayer brings us to another foundational element of the Jesus way, and that is trust. Sounds simple, right? But it too, is hard. It takes practice and intention. It takes hope and humility. And for many of us it requires a certain amount of un-learning a lifetime of believing that everything is up to us, that even in those situations we don’t control, we need to try to control as much as we can.
Jesus knows it’s hard to trust God’s providence more than we rely on ourselves, our resources, and our hard work.
So Jesus proposes what’s known these days as a spiritual practice: Look at the birds of the air, he says. Consider the lilies of the field.
Poets call that paying attention. Therapists call it re-direction. Mystics call it contemplation. The psalmist calls it meditating on God’s wondrous works. Neuroscientists call it rewiring our brains away from the bad and toward the good.
Whatever we call it, trust seems to involve choice—choosing where and how to direct our love, time, and attention. Choosing to believe that, despite all the evidence, God’s grace and goodness are yet at work in the world.
We can also choose to pray about everything that worries us, everything that scares us, everything that breaks our hearts. When we feel anxious or stressed—which scientists have determined is caused by rising cortisol levels, which are caused by uncertainty— we can choose to practice. We can be religious about our routines—not because there’s something holy in them, per se, but because predictability lowers uncertainty, which lowers stress, which makes it more possible to feel safe, which makes it easier to trust God with all that we can’t control. We can pray even to be more trusting, to be more grounded in the goodness and hope and mercy of God.
“Prayer,” said the biblical scholar and peace activist Walter Wink, “is a means of focusing for action, and of creating action. … This is the politics of hope. Hope envisages its future and then acts as if that future is now irresistible, this helping to create the reality for which it longs.”
Meantime, while our prayers are inviting God’s spirit to heal and change us, and thus changing the world, we can engage in a third element of the simpler way of Jesus: acts of service and justice.
Serving others, like most spiritual practices, makes a difference on many levels. Yes, it may relieve—at least temporarily—the suffering of the person we’re serving. It may relieve—at least temporarily—the suffering caused by an unjust system.
Most of us seem to think that service is something that good, enlightened, selfless, heroic people do. Mother Teresa referred to service as “the fruit of love.”
And I would say that love is a fruit of service.
Jesus knew that service paves the way to love. Serving others changes us. Walking with and standing beside people in need helps heal us. It builds trust between peoples and it nurtures our capacity to trust God. It makes us grateful for what we’ve been given. And, most important, it opens and softens our hearts, making us more compassionate and enabling us to love God and one another.
When liking someone or a particular group of people feels impossible, serving them with humility and openness makes it possible for us to love them with God’s love.
This is why Jesus told Peter and the other disciples, “Unless you let me serve you, you can’t understand who I am and what I’m doing. And unless you find ways to serve your neighbors and your enemies, and unless you let others serve you, the walls between you will grow only higher and the misunderstandings between you will grow only deeper. Unless you humble yourself enough to serve, you won’t be able to trust that God is with you, and until you are able to trust that most fundamental of truths, you won’t have the security to love with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.”
Friends, the way of Jesus is not easy, but it is so much simpler than we make it.
The way of Jesus is not without its challenges, but the fruits and joys it bears are beyond our imagining.
The way of Jesus is not always a straight path, but we can trust that it leads to compassion, forgiveness, understanding, reconciliation, love, justice, and peace.
So let us love. Let us trust. Let us serve.
