Author Archives: Jeff Rudy

Among the sources I consult in sermon preparation, two I investigate for nearly every sermon are The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, which compiles writings from the fathers and mothers of the first few centuries of the Church, and John Wesley’s Explanatory Notes on the Bible. I’m considering adding a third – The Poetical Writings of (John and) Charles Wesley. It’s not that I go by the “three points and a poem” philosophy of sermon-writing, but often I do find times that there are meaningful lyrics from a hymn (sometimes well-known, sometimes more obscure) that speak to the point I aim to convey in a message.

When it came to the fifth Sunday in Lent in Year A of the lectionary cycle, with the Gospel lesson that tells the story of Lazarus’ death and Jesus bringing him back to life (John 11:1-45), I found myself drawn toward the way Jesus engaged the grieving community and expressed grief himself. It is more than a mere fascination with the theological questions that arise from the statement that “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). It is that grief has been hitting rather close to home and it feels as though the community I pastor has endured more than its fair share of untimely deaths. Because it is part of the time-tested liturgy of death and resurrection, I have said multiple times recently, “Jesus said, ‘I am resurrection and I am life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, yet shall they live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die’.” Words that come directly from this Gospel lesson. But the liturgy also says, “We come together in grief, acknowledging our human loss.” When I read and when I hear, “Jesus wept,” I see that Jesus comes together in grief with us, and acknowledges our human loss. As John Donne said, “If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less.”

Poetry speaks in ways that prose cannot, especially in times of grief. So I did some searching to see if Charles Wesley ever mused specifically on this passage, particularly about Jesus weeping. I knew that he occasionally used the phrase “vale of tears” in hymns. In one of my favorites of Charles’ meditations on the mystery of the Incarnation as revealed in his Hymns for the Nativity of Our Lord, he speaks to the empathetic nature of the Incarnation:

Glory be to God on high, And peace on earth descend;
God comes down: He bows the sky, And shows Himself our Friend!
God the’ invisible appears, God, the blest, the great I AM,
Sojourns in this vale of tears, And Jesus is His name.

I dug around some more and found one in a collection of hymns written for families. These hymns, like the psalms, come from or speak to different experiences – some quite specific, others more general – and they express a wide variety of feelings toward God, ranging from thanksgiving and adoration to supplication to bitter grief. The hymn I came upon that had a reference to Jesus weeping was under the heading of “For a Child in the Small-Pox.” In the midst of what would have been an agonizing time for the parents as they prayed through tears that God might bring healing to their child, Charles offered lyrics that help us to embrace this sort of grief and to not hold back in pouring out our hearts to God:

…Human tears may freely flow
Authorised by tears Divine,
Till Thine awful will we know,
Comprehend Thy whole design;
Jesus wept! and so may we:
Jesus, suffering all Thy will,
Felt the soft infirmity;
Feels His creatures sorrows still

Father of our patient Lord,
Strengthen us with Him to grieve.
Prostrate to receive Thy word,
All Thy counsel to receive:
Though we would the cup decline,
Govern’d by Thy will alone,
Ours we struggle to resign:
Thine, and only Thine, be done.

Life and death are in Thine hand:
In Thine hand our child we see
Waiting on Thy benign command,
Less beloved by us than Thee.
Need we then his life request?
Jesus understands our fears,
Reads a mother’s panting breast,
Knows the meaning of her tears.

Jesus blends them with His own,
Mindful of His suffering days:
Father, hear Thy pleading Son,
Son of Man for us He prays:
What for us He asks, bestow:
Ours He makes His own request:
Send us life or death; we know,
Life, or death from Thee is best.

There’s the internal struggle of agonizing desire for the child to be made well versus the feared need for resignation that it might not turn out the way the parents want. There is wonderment and humility expressed in the admission that this child is loved even more by God than by the parents themselves (“Less beloved by us than Thee”). But it all centers on the sympathy and empathy of the Incarnation – of Jesus’ familiarity with our fears, our hopes, and yes, our tears.

And then I dug just a bit deeper and looked in the collection for what I see as Charles’ version of the Explanatory Notes – only in hymnic, or poetic, form: Hymns on the Four Gospels. And here he pictured it so beautifully in what I would call “a hopeful grief.”

And now, if you’ll allow me to step onto a soapbox, I think that’s Paul’s point when he told the Thessalonians to “not grieve as those who have no hope.” He wasn’t telling them not to grieve at all. Some must think that he did because I see those poems on the back of funeral announcements sometime that just make me want to scream – something like “Don’t cry for me, for now I’m free…” It’s sentimentalized in the popular notion that humans become angels when we die (not a biblical concept). It’s conveyed in the statement that, “it was just their time” or, “they’re not really there/that’s just a shell/that body isn’t her (or him).”

To rebut this, I am reminded of the wisdom of a boy, who when told that the body in the casket isn’t where his grandfather was, said in reply, “What do you mean, that’s not my grandfather? Those hands cared for me. Those are the arms that took me up and hugged me. Those are the lips that spoke to me; the eyes that searched for me; the chest on which I fell asleep, knowing I was safe in his love. Everything I have ever known of my grandfather was through this body.” To tell someone not to cry, however well-intended it might be, is to deny them the dignity that even Jesus embraced – “Jesus wept” or “Jesus began to weep” or “Jesus burst into tears.”

However voluntary or involuntary it might have been, we see that Jesus grieved. And here’s the irony – he grieved with the likely knowledge (or at least confidence) in what was about to happen – Lazarus made alive again. Why, then, does Jesus cry? To grieve with us – as Charles Wesley surmised – to see our tears: that death is real. And yet, hope lives. That’s the paradox. Our hope begins, mysteriously, in the tears of a weeping Lord. A grief that hopes. Here is Charles’ take. (If you want to sing this, it fits well with several well-known tunes quite nicely, including: Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, and Hymn of Promise to name a few.)

Jesus weeps, our tears to see! Feels the soft infirmity;
Feels, whene’er a friend we mourn, From our bleeding bosom torn:
Let him still in spirit groan, Make our every grief his own,
Till we all triumphant rise, Called to meet him in the skies.

“What if I get nothing out of Lent?”

We’re so pragmatic!

We want results, or if nothing else, explanations. It is so like us to approach in this way even these times in the liturgical seasons that urge us to take a break from something for a few weeks. “What sort of epiphany am I going to discover through this practice? What golden nugget of truth will I dig up by giving up chicken nuggets and their kind during these 40 days?”

Or even if we’re in some other season of life that is awfully burdensome and beyond our control, we are so frequently prone to think, “What am I supposed to be learning in this time?” or “What is God trying to teach me?” Often these ponderings come from a premise that is more cliché than it is true – “There’s a reason for everything.” Really?

Thomas Merton once wrote: “We cannot avoid missing the point of almost everything we do. But what of it? Life is not a matter of getting something out of everything. Life itself is imperfect. All created beings begin to die as soon as they begin to live…” Well, that’s awfully morbid, Fr. Merton! But these words are not all that different than the ones I spoke to those who gathered for the imposition of ashes last week: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Numerous people come forward who have just lost a friend to death from pancreatic cancer four days prior. Another with tears in her eyes just brought her husband home from the hospital…a husband who had pancreatic cancer six years ago and still has days and weeks where the effects take their toll on his health. Children looking up at me in their innocence with a smile on their face as I kneel down and tell them the same thing I tell the 90-year-old woman who makes her way forward with a walker to the chancel to receive the ashes: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It is closer for some than others.

“What am I supposed to be learning in all this? What can I get out of this?” And I’m wondering if I need to learn to be content with this response: “Perhaps nothing.” I’m not trying to be nihilistic, but I wonder if lingering too long looking for some hidden meaning or hoping for an epiphany might not provide the satisfactory explanation I desire. Perhaps the only desire that can only be fully satisfied, as Merton had said earlier, is “…the desire to be loved by God.”

One of the passages for that somber day – Ash Wednesday – is from the prophet Joel, who speaks to a people who are coming to grips with their own frailty as a nation – threatened by either: (1) a mighty Assyrian empire with an overpowering military; (2) a plague of locusts that would devour their crop and drastically affect their livelihood and health; or (3) both. Speculation can abound as to theodicy – why was this evil coming upon them? “It’s punishment from God for their unfaithfulness.” “It’s to enter into suffering so they can grow in their awareness and dependence on God.” And so on. For Joel’s situation, there seemed to be a clear explanation as to why – they understood it as punishment for their unfaithfulness, their lack of trust in God to provide whatever they needed.

The explanations might look different in our frail circumstances. But what stands out to me is that his response gives utterance to a resignation from trying to control the outcome and rather to simply do the right thing – to repent in dust and ashes. After the call to repent, to return to the Lord, Joel offers up a rather peculiar, ambiguous outcome. “Who knows whether [the Lord] will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him…” (Joel 2:14). Quite an interesting level of uncertainty in the prophet’s words. “Who knows…?”

In grief, in contemplation and a growing awareness of our own mortality, in view of circumstances that are beyond our control, in humility, and in repentance of past mistakes, we turn to God with ashes on our heads in the shape of the cross – the ultimate sign of mortality and the reminder of what it cost our Redeemer Jesus to rescue us from the pit of death.

And so, among other things I’m giving up for Lent, I’m trying to give up the search to find some other hidden meaning. Perhaps I won’t get anything out of it. We don’t enter into the Lenten season practicing disciplines in order to achieve a particular return. It’s not an investment. Fasting and praying are not disciplines that we engage in in order to “cash in” on some prize later. Whether we offer the prepared prayers of the liturgies or in extemporaneous manner, it is not for the sake of getting what we want, as if God were a vending machine sort of divine being – but our prayers, our fasting, our disciplines…these are for the sake of training our minds and bodies and souls to grow in our desire to be loved by God and to take one step closer in our desire to faithfully follow Jesus. And when the former is realized, the latter may be more likely to become a part of who we are as we find ourselves embracing those who are poor or grieving or meek or lonely or embattled or any other attribute so given by Jesus in the beatitudes – and doing this in compassion, carrying on our foreheads, but more importantly in our hearts and actions, the sign of the cross.

Who knows? Maybe there’s nothing more to get out of it than to know that we are loved by God. Isn’t that enough?

‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:

father against son
    and son against father,
mother against daughter
    and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
    and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’

He also said to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?’ – Luke 12:49-56 

I don’t know how much thought went into my parents naming me what they did. I do know that my middle name, “Martin,” was carefully chosen; it is my father’s middle name, my grandfather’s middle name, and was also the first name of my grandfather’s uncle and goes back at least one more generation. The name Martin means “warrior” or “warlike” and alludes to the name “Mars,” a Roman god of war. You can think back to several named Martin and how fitting this is – that they fought through some difficult times – Martin Luther King, Jr., Martin Luther, Martin of Tours, to name a few.

But my first name is Jeffrey, which has roots in German and Greek and is a name that means “peaceful” or “the peace of heaven.” So, when you put my name together it means “a peaceful warrior.”

I’m a walking contradiction.

But there’s something funny for many people: even if there wasn’t a great deal of intention by the parents regarding the name’s meaning of their child, children grow up and their personality or character seems to fit their name meaning anyway. I feel that way about myself. I’m typically a pretty peaceful person. In fact, one of my greatest dislikes, aside from mushrooms on pizza, is conflict – I will try to avoid it like the plague, though at times, my “Martin” side kicks in and I have to fight for a cause. But typically, I’m Jeffrey. I like peace. I like keeping the peace. I love those passages that say, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God,” “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth,” “He shall be called…the Prince of Peace,” and “My peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you.” I typically sign off my emails by typing, “Peace…”

So when I come to a passage like what we’ve read today, I cringe a little bit. It strikes a dissonant chord within me, because my nature is to long for peace and goodwill. Why, Jesus, do you have to come in here and say, “I did not come to bring peace but a sword!”? Doesn’t this seem so contradictory to what we know of Jesus elsewhere? Even at the beginning of this gospel, Luke indicated through Zachariah that Jesus would “guide our feet into the way of peace,” and at his birth “peace on earth” was declared. At the end of this same gospel, Jesus in his resurrected body says, “Peace be with you.” How do we reconcile these seemingly contradictory statements?

Peace or division? Which is your mission, Jesus? Which is your kingdom about?

Do you feel the tension? I think it comes from a couple of different ways of understanding the concept of peace. One route that people take when talking about the different meanings of peace is to distinguish peace as the absence of conflict from peace as a sense of shalom, or wholeness, realized by the presence of God. That is a valuable conversation and distinction, but I think Jesus is dealing with something other than this here. You see, peace in the ancient world wasn’t just about an internal feeling or sense of serenity; it had to do with territorial influence and how a kingdom would exert that influence or power. In Latin, the word for peace is “pax” and if you remember anything about the Roman Empire from your history classes you might remember about the Pax Romana or the “Peace of Rome.” It was that period of time when Rome was “at peace,” meaning there weren’t any significant military powers or governments that challenged their reign over the world. Subtly, that might seem like a situation that is well and good. It is comfortable, but it is only comfortable so long as you comply with the expectations of those in power. You see, the Pax Romana was more about exerting its power than walking in a sense of peace and reconciliation.

If I might call it something that would resonate with us today, I would call this the “Peace of the Status Quo.” Things are all well and good, so long as those who have power and authority maintain it and it doesn’t ever get challenged. To rephrase, it was as though Jesus said, “I have not come for the Peace of the Status Quo.” No, Jesus was bringing a peace of a different sort – the peace of Christ, the Pax Christi, which Paul would say surpasses our understanding, a peace of a kingdom that brings good news to the outcast, to those without power – the lost, the last, the least – a peace at odds with the Pax Romana, at odds with the status quo; and this led to the conflict on which Jesus’ life would be taken by the Pax Romana on a Roman cross.

The peace of the status quo, if we seek to maintain it, will cost us our very souls. William Wilberforce, an 18^th century Englishman, knew and exposed the evils of the slave trade, a system bent on maintaining power over others for the sake of a false sense of peace and prosperity. The reality was that many others knew its evils but chose to look the other way because their lives were comfortable. In his address to the House of Commons in 1789 when he continued his quest to abolish the slave trade, Wilberforce said: “The nature and all the circumstances of this trade are now laid open to us; we can no longer plead ignorance, we can not evade it; it is now an object placed before us, we can not pass it; we may spurn it, we may kick it out of our way, but we can not turn aside so as to avoid seeing it.”

The founder of Methodism, John Wesley, in his last written document, wrote a letter to Wilberforce six days before his own death. Wesley spoke of the great cost of Wilberforce’s mission, but in his encouraging message pointed out, albeit implicitly, that Wilberforce had chosen the Pax Christi, the peace of Christ, which stood at odds with the status quo of the slave trade. Wesley wrote: “Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them stronger than God? O be not weary of well-doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might.”

And so we come to the heart of the tension. When the peace of Christ’s kingdom is at odds with the peace of the kingdoms of the world, the peace of the status quo, then lines get drawn, a sword gets wielded. This is not because of any inherent antagonism of Jesus’ way, but rather because the world will invoke its power and use force to do so whenever something or someone comes along that dares to get in its way or claim allegiance to another sovereign.

So how does this affect us? How does this impact how we live for the coming kingdom even now? A peace at odds? I think this takes a great deal of discernment on a day to day basis, but it’s based primarily on a loyalty to Christ that is unfading, and it is unwilling to live in such a way that shows that anything else is more important than Christ’s reign and being a follower of Jesus. While this sort of loyalty might bring or seem to bring division now, there is a deeper unity, a deeper peace that is beyond our sight and understanding, in which our hope anchors us in the knowledge that there will come a time, as the prophet Isaiah envisioned, when swords will be turned into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.

To sum up, I return to one of the Martins I alluded to earlier. Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformer, on the Eve of All Saints’ day in 1517, nailed a document called the Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. Listen to the last two statements:

94. Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, death and hell.
95. And thus be confident of entering into heaven through many tribulations rather than through the false security of peace.

Let us so follow Christ. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.”

Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!”The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.

They were all filled with awe and praised God. “A great prophet has appeared among us,” they said. “God has come to help his people.” This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.

-Luke 7:11-17

I have a confession to make: until this past winter, I never could maintain the attention span to make it through a single viewing of It’s a Wonderful Life starring Jimmy Stewart. I’d always fall asleep at some point. Something about black and white films have the tendency to make me sleepy. But that all changed, I think, when my son and daughter auditioned and were cast for the play It’s a Wonderful Life last December. My son played the role of ‘Young George’ and my daughter was Zuzu Bailey, and got to deliver the beloved line “Listen, Daddy! Teacher says, ‘Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings’.”

I fell in love with the redemption story of George Bailey as I saw the rehearsals leading up to the performances. So when it came time to start our routine of watching Christmas movies, I was eager to see the movie with a renewed sense of interest. I noticed something unique about George Bailey’s attire right after his father died and he stood up to Mr. Potter, who was trying to take over Bedford Falls, at the board meeting. (My friend Elizabeth, who heads up Wesleyan Accent, recently posted about this and that came to mind as I was working with this text.)

George had this black band around his left arm. Many of you are aware of the significance of that piece of fabric in yesteryear – it was a public display of an individual or a family, that they were in a time of grief. It served as a reminder for others to give you space to grieve; an acknowledgement that you’re not entirely okay and that is okay. In times past, women would also wear mourning jewelry, which would often have a locket with the picture of the loved one who had died on one side and a locket of hair weaved through fabric on the other side.These bits of attire served as a reminder to you and an indicator to those around you that you were in a season of sorrow; that all isn’t well with your soul, and that that’s okay.

At some point these things waned from popular use and we typically don’t have these sorts of public expressions today. I suppose the closest thing we have is the ability to turn on your hazard lights on your car as you process behind the hearse from the church or the funeral home to the place where your loved one will be interred or their ashes scattered. When you’re in such a procession, people sometimes steer over to the side of the road as the procession goes as a sign of respect, to give space and acknowledge the grieving party.

At the church where I am serving, it seems like we’ve had a good deal of that recently. While we’ve had lots to celebrate this year in the life of Jackson (TN) First UMC, and we’ve celebrated some very good milestones recently – 16 young people making their commitment to be disciples of Jesus Christ as they were confirmed in the faith, many who have experienced healing from various diseases via surgeries or treatments of other sorts, people have been told that their cancer is in remission, families are growing through birth and adoption – there is so much for which we have to be thankful – but there is another reality that continues to strike at and break our hearts – mortality. This church experienced some of its greatest growth and flourishing in the mid 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s. Do the math and you’ll realize that many of our church’s members have approached life expectancy. And so, it seems that the opening words of the liturgy of a service of committal are quite appropriate for this season we seem to be in – “In the midst of life, we are in death; from whom can we seek help?” The response to this question in the liturgy comes from the Psalms: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

Celebration and grief. Life and death. And so the stage is set for this encounter Luke portrays in this morning’s gospel lesson. Two competing atmospheres are approaching one another: one, a festive celebration of joy and triumph at the wondrous things that have occurred through the ministry of the man Jesus from Nazareth, whose popularity is still growing; the other, a funeral procession headed by a woman who had already lost her husband and now whose only son had died, leaving her utterly desolate, without sustenance and financial support for the rest of her life, which might not be very much longer given what has transpired.

The funeral procession has already gone outside the town limits and it is outside the city gate, where it’s more likely to be lonely and isolated and outcast, where the two groups meet. No cars, no flashing lights, but there was apparently some clear indicator of who the widow and childless mother was – something like a black armband, or mourning jewelry. Or perhaps, I suppose, it was likely the manner in which she was weeping that gave her away – the mourning that only a woman who has lost a child could let out, but something evoked a visceral reaction in Jesus. The Message reads it thusly: “When Jesus saw her, his heart broke.” Or as the NRSV puts it, “…he had compassion for her…”

I was asked this week by a dear friend and mentor of mine: “What is the difference between passion and compassion?” It might’ve seemed like a smart-aleck response, but I said, three letters. Yes, probably deserving of an eye roll. But those first three letters “com-” are significant, for in Latin “com” means “with”; hence, where “passion” means “to suffer,” “compassion” means “to suffer with”. Having that preposition “with” means that compassion has everything to do with relationship. John Phillip Newell sees a connection between the word compassion and the mathematical compass, which has two points—a needle and a pencil—and also measures distance. A compass, and hence compassion, has everything to do with the relationship between two points – or two persons – or two parties. There’s always a connection.

What was the connection between Jesus and this woman? Maybe this is mere speculation but I wonder if, when Jesus beheld the grief of the widow who had lost her son, that he pondered the future grief of his parent, his Father in heaven when he would die. Or perhaps he considered the grief and vulnerability that his own mother would experience when he would die, at which time he would present one of his disciples to his mother as another son (John 19:26-27).

In any case, he was moved with compassion to do something. Rather than steering his parade away from the procession, he did the opposite: he steered toward the pain. That was the advice given to Fleming Rutledge by the leader of a seminar on how to be helpful to suicidal people: Steer toward the pain. That’s the picture of genuine Christ-like compassion – steering toward the pain, suffering with the other. And behold how his compassion doesn’t stay on the emotive and passive side like we tend to do by merely clicking on the “sad” face on a Facebook post (not that that’s a bad thing, but that’s not the heart of compassion). Compassion, in the Jesus way, is active – it steers toward the pain, joins folks in the valley of the shadow of death and finds some way to point to the hope of the resurrection.

Look at what Jesus said and did. He first says, “Don’t cry” to the mother – which sounds like a rather insensitive remark. (Let me interject one piece of pastoral advice here – never tell someone who is grieving “Don’t cry” unless you are going to raise their loved one back from the dead, too.) But when Jesus said this, it was in reality a prelude to the action of raising her son. But note how he does so, and here compassion takes on a different, challenging quality – by touching the bier, a sort of stretcher on which they carried the dead—what might be somewhat the equivalent of a coffin or casket in our day. But in that time the body was out in the open and Jesus was running a great risk as he approached the bier and touched it. Jesus was willing to make himself ritually impure, but that’s Jesus for you – disregarding his own societal and religious status and acting on behalf of those who have none – emptying himself (think Philippians 2:5-8) and suffering with us in death, for that is where we were and where we find ourselves – in order that we might have the hope of new life, of restoration, of resurrection. That’s what compassion does – it calls us to run the risk of steering toward the pain and entering the hard places so that others might find a glimmer of hope.

One of our lay people at Jackson First UMC, Abby Lackey, experienced the death of a stillborn child five years ago. In the season that followed she started a non-profit organization, Heaven’s Cradle, which has developed into a comprehensive perinatal hospice care program. For more information about Heaven’s Cradle, visit this website: http://www.heavenscradle.org/. Her experience of loss, the compassion she received was contagious as she found herself equipped to be compassionate toward others in the same way – this compassion is uncomfortable, says Abby, calling us to places that at times we’d rather not go.

Having this sort of compassion is risky – it will stretch us in ways that we will find uncomfortable; we might have to run the risk of getting our hands dirty or having our reputation take a hit. But that’s what active compassion does. The other two times in Luke’s gospel where this word for compassion is used are in probably the two most popular parables Jesus shared: the good Samaritan and the father of the prodigal son.

• When the Samaritan saw the man who had fallen into the hands of robbers, he was moved with compassion and steered toward the pain (whereas the others steered away), put himself in harm’s way and got his hands dirty – put ointment on and bandaged the man’s wounds and took the man to an inn and covered his hotel and hospital bills. That’s active compassion.
• When the father of the prodigal son saw him a long way off on his way home, wearing rags and walking barefoot, the father was moved with compassion, would have to have hiked his robe up in what would have been an undignified manner, ran through the town so that the townspeople couldn’t shame the returning son, threw himself around his long lost son and ordered for sandals to be put on his feet, a robe for him to wear and a ring for his finger. That’s compassion.

Where does this put you and me? I think what William Brodrick once said about how we have to be candles fits with this idea of an active sort of compassion. Listen to what he said:

“We have to be candles, burning between
hope and despair, faith and doubt,

life and death, all the opposites.
That is the disquieting place where people must always find us.”

So… when “in the midst of life, we are in death,” when the parade of festive celebration meets the procession of death, we find Jesus, we find God in both, but he is steered toward the pain – compassionate. It is because only in the procession of death, the pain and grief, where resurrection is possible. May that be where we steer, in compassion, nearer to where we find God:

Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee!

E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,

Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to thee;

Nearer, my God, to thee; nearer to thee!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the activities my wife and I like to do from time to time is to put together puzzles. It can be a calming and centering exercise…unless…unless…you draw near to the end of making the edges or even close to completing the puzzle and discover there is a missing piece. You turn the house upside down (or at least I do) looking for it but can’t find it anywhere. Frustrating isn’t it?

One time we were putting together a Doc McStuffins puzzle with Julianne and discovered that the puzzle we were putting together had an extra piece and was an exact duplicate of one of the existing pieces. I couldn’t help but wonder…oh, no! Somebody purchased this same puzzle and is missing this very piece. We empathized deeply! Because there is not much like the frustration of not having the closure of completing the puzzle such that it looks like what the outside of the box pictures. I hate to put an incomplete picture in your mind, but I want you to keep that image of a puzzle with a missing piece there for a few moments…

Carrie and I recently disconnected our cable service and while a great liberating feeling came in not having to pay for it and we couldn’t keep up with the DVR anyway, we’ve found ourselves wrapped into the benefits of Amazon Prime, which enables us to catch up on some things. Like Downton Abbey – we’ve been binge-watching the series, now about six years behind the curve. The truth is that Carrie and I had sworn off dramas and tried to stick to sitcoms when I entered the ministry because we figured, “Hey, there’s drama enough in the church, right?” Alas, we’ve fallen back into the trap. Anyway, I’ve found it interesting to trace the development of several characters and there is one character in particular that has grabbed my attention – Mr. Bates, the valet to his lordship, Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham, and the way Mr. Bates responds to the conniving ways of Thomas, who begins the series as a footman, jealous that Mr. Bates got the job of valet instead of him.

Mr. Bates, that I have seen to date, is plagued with a past of disappointment and crime, including theft, but has grown into an honorable and trustworthy gentleman. One day Bates caught Thomas stealing wine from the cellar and while he had the opportunity to do so, he did not report what he witnessed to the head butler. This is interesting as there had been quite a discrepancy between the records of how much wine they were supposed to have versus the actual inventory on hand. Thomas, in the meantime, found a way with a couple of accomplices to try to convince the head butler that it was Mr. Bates who was taking the wine and for a while it looked as though Mr. Bates was going to go down and be dismissed from Downton.

But the tables were turned when one of the accomplices came clean and told the truth that Thomas had told them to support his story against Mr. Bates without having witnessed anything. So Mr. Bates was proven innocent and the head butler gave him a chance to reveal anything he may have witnessed. Now here is where many of you, like me, who watch the show put yourself into the story and were yelling at Mr. Bates to turn Thomas in and reveal all…what more could be better than to exact vengeance on the one who intended him harm?

“Turn Thomas in! Get him out of there!” But what did Mr. Bates do? He remained silent. Argh! He had the chance right there! He could’ve brought closure! He could’ve completed the puzzle and revealed the truth! But he left the missing piece out.

What does Mr. Bates and an incomplete puzzle have to do with Jesus reading the Scripture and teaching in the synagogue?

Well there is something interesting that takes place. When Jesus completes the portion of Isaiah that he had chosen, Luke notes (4:20) that, “He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.” What I was curious about as I was studying this passage was to ponder if there was a reason why Jesus quit reading at the portion where he stopped and then rolled up the scroll. So I went to where Jesus quoted and I want you to see what I saw, so let’s compare the two:

Luke 4:18-19 (NRSV)

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Isaiah 61:1-2 (NRSV):

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn.

There were a couple of slight differences you might’ve picked up on – a topic to explore at another time, but I’m particularly interested in why Jesus stopped at “year of the Lord’s favor,” and did not continue on into “the day of vengeance…” After all, God’s vengeance is against God’s enemies, right? What would be wrong with that? Why wouldn’t Jesus go on and satisfy the vengeful longings of those who were looking for the overthrow of the world’s kingdom? It would be true! It wouldn’t be unjust!

He could’ve put that last piece in there, but he didn’t.

Consider this. I think Jesus chose deliberately to stop reading when he did because he came to teach and to live a gospel whose first word and last word – from beginning to end – is a word of love and grace, of good news to the poor and oppressed and of the favor of the Lord. That’s why it’s important that Luke notes the detail that Jesus “rolled up the scroll” before vengeance would have its say. Jesus was preaching a gospel of transformation where the people of God would lay down their desire for vengeance and cross over to love.

Rudy Rasmus, pastor of St. John’s UMC in Houston, tells the story of his crossing over to love. His daughter was harmed at the age of four, but he didn’t find out until she was 18. And when he found out, it challenged every aspect of his being to not just kill the guy that had hurt her. Here’s what he said:

I knew I was crossing over when I was in a place that I thought was Christianity, that place where everything is going really pretty good, and it doesn’t require any real effort to love. I knew I crossed over when I could love in spite of knowing that I have the capacity to hurt somebody that hurt my family. That’s when I knew. As a matter of fact, that’s when I told my congregation, ‘This week I became a Christian.’ That’s when I crossed over from knowing I had the capacity to do some damage and not do it…that was it.

Then Rudy went on to tell a test that he faced thereafter. He was driving and came upon a red light. And across the street right in front of his truck walked the guy who had harmed his daughter. And he said to himself,

Is this a blessing or a test? In those seconds, I was thinking ‘Man, I would really like to run over this cat.’ But he was talking to another guy who was crossing the street in front of me, though, and I’m thinking I really don’t want to run over the other guy, but really I don’t want to run over either one of them. So I let them both cross in front of my truck. And when they got to the other side, I called my daughter and said, ‘Guess who just walked in front of my truck?’ And she knew immediately. I said, ‘Guess what?’ She said, ‘Daddy, obviously he’s still walking.’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘That’s good daddy, because I would have hated to have lost twice.’ I think that day I passed the test.

Did you hear that? “I knew I crossed over when I could love in spite of knowing that I have the capacity to hurt somebody that hurt me, my family.”

The opportunity to proclaim and exact vengeance was right there before him. But he didn’t take it. The opportunity to proclaim the day of vengeance was right there before Jesus too; he was given the scroll; he could have kept on, but he stopped, rolled up the scroll and handed it to the assistant.

Where do we fit? I think we’re like the assistant. And now the scroll, the puzzle is back in our hands, and here’s the challenge. What happens when the scroll is placed in our hands and all of a sudden the piece of the puzzle that was missing – vengeance – is uncovered and you can place it back in.

Will you? Or will you allow Jesus to set the parameters of the gospel? Will you allow yourself to be won over, to cross over to the gospel of love – knowing that that was and is the way of the Christ, who, anointed by the Spirit, disarmed the powers not by vengeance and might, but by suffering, humility, forgiveness and love?

We know what Christ did with the whole realm of nature at his disposal. He renounced the spiritual forces of wickedness, rejected the evil powers of this world…accept the freedom and power God gave him to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they presented themselves. (Just go up to the previous episode in Luke’s gospel for proof.) And when we survey the wondrous gospel of love, in the suffering of the Christ, how do we respond when the whole realm of the puzzle is at our disposal?

Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small, love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all…

You see if you can cross over to love, the puzzle changes its shape and so are we shaped, such that we reflect the pattern after which we are fashioned – Jesus Christ. Then we will truly be “Christians” – which means “little Christs.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The sermon below comes from Rev. Jeff Rudy on the Reign of Christ Sunday at Jackson First United Methodist Church in Jackson, Tennessee.

https://vimeo.com/146702689

But now I want to lay out a far better way for you.

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

1 Corinthians 12:31b—13:13 (The Message)

It is our prayer that in this series on “Charisma” we have grown a deeper appreciation for one another and of our need for one another – that the task of fulfilling the mission of making disciples of Jesus does not belong to one of us, but to all of us together. It is our hope that you have been encouraged to not only discover but also find ways to put the gifts, talents, resources, and passions the Holy Spirit has given you to good use. But sometimes it’s that last portion where we often find the most difficulty if we don’t intentionally engage one another in conversation and find the right ways and places to exercise how God has shaped us for ministry in the world. And so we hope that you will take all this in, pray over the next few weeks about how God might be wanting to work through you in the life of this church if you’re looking for a place to plug in, and if you’re still struggling to discern how you might be gifted or shaped or how or where you fit, that you would consider taking a spiritual gifts inventory, which is a short survey designed to help people discover what gifts God has given them for the sake of ministry and the life of discipleship, and to engage us in conversation so we can discern together. Stay tuned for more to come.

But before we turn the page and take those next steps, we conclude this series on a note that seeks to bring this whole idea into completion and set our giftedness, our purpose, our mission in its right place and setting – something that Paul calls “The More Excellent Way.”

The story is told of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, when he was young and still living with his father, Leopold, who himself was a great musician, played a trick on his dad from time to time. Young Wolfgang would come home late from a night of hanging out with his friends. When he got home, his father would already be asleep and so Wolfgang would go to the piano and begin playing loudly a rising scale of notes, playing slower and louder as he reached the top of the scale, but he would stop, one note short of completing the scale, and go to bed himself. (No pointers, please, young people who still live with your parents.)

The notes would apparently make their way into Leopold’s dreams and imagination and he would toss and turn in bed at the frustration of having his musical senses aroused only to have them unresolved by the scale remaining unfinished. It was too much to bear. So eventually he would slumber out of bed, go downstairs and play the last note so he could get some peace of mind and restful sleep.

In a sense, I think 1 Corinthians 13 serves as the finishing note on this rising sense we ought to have in terms of discovering our purpose, because without this thing called “love” whatever else we would have played, whatever else we would have done will have been left incomplete. It completes the scale of 1 Corinthians 12, which Dan preached on to begin this series on “Charisma.” Dan began the series by alluding to the big changes that have taken place in the history of the Church, including what was lost in the movement of Christianity when it became the “official religion” of the Roman Empire in the wake of Emperor Constantine. In John Wesley’s sermon of the same title as mine today – “The More Excellent Way” – Wesley tied this era with the decline in the manifestation and exercising of spiritual gifts by saying that, “the love of many—almost of all Christians, so called—was waxed cold.”

In other words, it is the fire of God’s love in us that keeps the wax melting, that keeps the body doing what we’re supposed to do. Similarly, we’ve looked at Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, who at one point were apparently living well into their giftedness. Yet if you trace through the progression, or rather decline, of the church in Ephesus chronologically through the time in which the New Testament was written, you will find that after a few decades, in the words of Revelation to that church, “you have lost your first love.” (Revelation 2:4) Their love, too, had waxed cold.

But what is this love? The King James Version of the Bible uses the term “charity” throughout this chapter instead of “love.” But “charity” is hard to tear away from its connotations of giving to the poor, or non-profit charitable organizations. Yet one wonders whether “love” with all its sentimental and Hollywood baggage can be redeemed either. In English we just have this word “love” whereas the Greek language offers four different words that we translate into this one English word.

•storgē – affection, especially of parent to child

•philía – friendship, loyalty to family, community, etc.

•érōs – romantic; “in love”

•agápē – ideal, self-giving, self-sacrificing love

C. S. Lewis wrote about the differences between these in his classic The Four Loves. Of these four, only two show up in all of the New Testament (philía and agápē), but it is the ideal, self-giving agape love that Paul here uses throughout the chapter. This is the love found in the letter of 1 John where it says “God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

And so a good meditative practice would be to place “God” wherever it says “love” throughout 1 Corinthians 13. So hear it this way:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have God, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have God, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have God, I gain nothing.

God is patient; God is kind; God is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. God does not insist on God’s own way; God is not irritable or resentful; God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. God never fails.

It is this love that John Wesley was speaking of when he said to a friend of his: “beware you be not swallowed up in books,” for “an ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.”

It is this love that stirred St. Teresa of Avila to offer this important teaching about the transformation of our souls when she said: “The important thing is not to think much but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love.”

It is what Mother Teresa of Calcutta spoke of when she said: “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”

And it is the riskiness that comes along with loving with this agape love that made Lewis to make these remarkable reflections: “If I am sure of anything I am sure that [Christ’s] teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preferences for safe investments and limited liabilities…There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” (The Four Loves)

The life of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics recipient John Nash and of his wife Alicia was dramatized in the 2001 movie “A Beautiful Mind,” starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connolly. In case you’re not familiar with John Nash’s battles, he suffered with paranoid schizophrenia all his adult life, a battle that put to the test in every imaginable way Alicia’s ability and willingness to love her husband. Hear the words Nash gave, in the movie, upon receiving the Nobel Prize:

“I’ve always believed in numbers; in the equations and logic that lead to reason. But after a lifetime of such pursuits, I ask, ‘What truly is logic? Who decides reason?’ My quest has taken me through the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional and back. And I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most important discovery of my life: It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logical reasons can be found. [To his wife Alicia]: I’m only here tonight because of you. You are the reason I am. You are all my reasons.”

It’s kind of funny that 1 Corinthians 13 is so popular at weddings because of the beautiful and poetic language found in the description of love, yet what we have in Paul’s words to the church is in the context of being the heartbeat of the worship and mission of the church.

It’s not a romantic thing, though we might find ourselves in awe and ecstasy at the beauty when we see the bride of Christ living into her identity and mission. It’s not an affectionate thing, though we might find ourselves genuinely caring and compassionate toward others as we share deeply in the sacrificial love that Christ has given to us. It’s not a friendship thing, though we will find ourselves reconciled with the world, with our enemies when we discover that Christ has befriended us when we were at enmity with him. So that’s what it is.

The heartbeat of the Church is Christ. We’re only here because of him; because of his love. Christ is the reason we are. Christ is all our reasons.

And one day, as we will proclaim together in a few moments, as Leopold Mozart would do, Jesus himself will come and complete the scale – bring to consummation the love he began in us.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me; indeed, you were concerned for me, but had no opportunity to show it. Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. In any case, it was kind of you to share my distress.

You Philippians indeed know that in the early days of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you alone. For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs more than once. Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the profit that accumulates to your account. I have been paid in full and have more than enough; I am fully satisfied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God. And my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Philippians 4:4-20, NRSV)

What comes to your mind when you hear the word “simplicity”? Perhaps you think of the communities of people who we might describe as primitive or at least aren’t as bogged down by the “stuff” of the material world, like Mennonites and Amish or Quakers and Shakers, the latter being the tradition from whom comes the song “Simple Gifts” we sang earlier. Perhaps hearing the word simplicity calls to mind a particular nostalgic feeling of when things were far less complicated and messy.

I think of a rusted metal sign out in front of my Papaw and Granny’s old house that read “Friendship.” It was attached to a metal pole and sat inside a planter next to the sidewalk that led to the front door. My cousins and I would often go out in the yard during the summer and play whiffle ball. We would pretend to be announcers like the late Jack Buck and say, “Broadcasting today from Friendship Field, it’s a great day for baseball!” It was a simple time, but there is a story behind that “Friendship” sign. It paid tribute to a moment in my family’s history when things weren’t so great. Papaw owned several farms around Oscar in other nearby communities named “Monkey’s Eyebrow” and “Needmore” and a farm store he owned with my father in “Bandana”…and yes, those are real names of real places in Ballard County, Kentucky.

Well, the mid-1980’s were not so easy on a lot of small town farmers in rural areas like Western Kentucky. The business, all the farms, and even their house was in jeopardy of being lost and they would have lost everything if it weren’t for the community coming to our aid. The community sponsored an event at the local high school called “Bill Rudy Day” and raised enough funds to save the house and a few acres around it, though everything else was lost. And so, Papaw and Granny and the whole family came to an intimate awareness of the significance of “friendship.” That’s a time I think of when I hear “simplicity.” It has been quipped about the modern tendency of humans in Western civilization that, “we buy things we do not need with money we do not have to impress people we do not like.” Richard Foster adds to this that the pressure placed on those who desire to live in simplicity when he said:

We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality…[Consider that] The modern hero is the poor boy who purposefully becomes rich rather than the rich boy who voluntarily becomes poor. (We still find it hard to imagine that a girl can do either!)…It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity.

Persons who enter into a monastery have to take vows and they typically center on three virtues that become the benchmark for the life of a monk: poverty, chastity and obedience. There is a monastic community in the British Isles known as The Community of Aidan and Hilda that has reworded the first two, such that their three life-giving vows are these: simplicity, purity, and obedience. At a conference I attended several years ago in Edinburgh, Scotland, John Bell, a representative from Aidan and Hilda described how these vows are life-giving. He said this: “Simplicity leads us into a deeper experience of the generosity of God; purity leads us into a deeper experience of the love of God; obedience leads us into a deeper experience of the freedom of God.”

This ideal is so counter to the culture in which we find ourselves that we discover that the more and more inundated we become with “stuff” and the increased pace of the world, the more difficult it is to be contently serene with living in simplicity. Indeed, we could see it as challenging as Jesus’ injunction that to be his followers, we must deny ourselves and take up our crosses and follow him.

I used to think that the words “easy” and “simple” could always be used interchangeably because both words could be used to describe when a task didn’t require much mental or physical sweat – both meant “No big deal!” But now when it comes to living in simplicity, I’ve discovered that there is a tremendous difference between easiness and simplicity. We are so far from truly understanding Jesus’ admonitions in the Sermon on the Mount to not worry about anything but to do just one thing – seek God’s kingdom. We are so caught up in the modern cry for “more!” that we know next to nothing about Paul’s contentment that God’s grace is “enough!”

What comes to your mind when you hear “simplicity”? Listen to the wisdom from the ages: Thomas á Kempis said: “Simplicity and purity are the two wings that lift the soul up to heaven.” François Fénelon, a French theologian from the 17^th century who had an impact on the Wesleys said: “True simplicity is that grace whereby the soul is delivered from all unprofitable reflections upon itself.” In view of the modern tendency to find solace in the “stuff” of the world, Rabbi Abraham Heschel offered this: “There is happiness in the love of labor, there is misery in the love of gain. Many hearts and pitchers are broken at the fountain of profit. Selling himself into slavery of things, man becomes a utensil that is broken at the fountain.” And before we draw from the well of the Wesleys, hear this beautiful statement that has been attributed to such luminaries as Elizabeth Seton, Gandhi, and Mother Teresa – “Live simply so that others can simply live.”

I once knew a Navy pilot who fought in World War II who lived this simplicity well. He had that humility and valuing the betterment of his neighbors rather than seeking his own prosperity. His son said that he feared of having too much money more than he worried of not having enough. A quote is often linked to John Wesley that although there is no definitive proof he ever said it, yet it sounds awfully like something he would say. The line goes like this: “When I have money, I get rid of it quickly lest it find its way into my heart.”

However, we do have multiple references to how Wesley exhorted the Methodists to live in simplicity, specifically with regard to the contentment of… ‘for richer, for poorer’ when he gave these three simple rules: “Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” Some will abide by the first two suggestions, but ignore the third. Now here is where it’s going to start to sting a little bit, so don’t say you weren’t warned, but Wesley said this:

And yet nothing can be more plain than that all who observe the two first rules without the third will be twofold more the children of hell than ever they were before…Many of your brethren, beloved of God, have not food to eat; they have not raiment to put on; they have not a place where to lay their head. And why are they thus distressed? Because you impiously, unjustly, and cruelly detain from them what your Master and theirs lodges in your hands on purpose to supply their wants! So…as long as we gain and save, we must…we MUST give…otherwise I can have no more hope of your salvation than for that of Judas.”

Again, that’s Wesley, not me. So hold your tomatoes! And then this – again Wesley – “The Methodists grow more and more self-indulgent because they grow rich…many are twenty, thirty, yea, a hundred times richer than they were when they first entered the [Methodist] society. And it is an observation which admits of few exceptions, that nine in ten of these decreased in grace in the same proportion as they increased in wealth.” What does this have to do with a sermon series where we are supposed to be focusing on serenity? Sounds awfully discomforting to me! Let me give you an example, from among the early Methodists. (The following example is illustrated in Wesley’s Sermon, The More Excellent Way.)

A young man budgeted his yearly needs for living and determined that he needed 28 pounds to live on. The first year he earned 30 pounds, so he gave away the remaining two. The next year he received 60 pounds, he still lived on the 28, and gave away the other 32. The third year he received 90 pounds, he still lived on the 28 and gave away 62. The fourth year he received 120 pounds. Still he lived as before on 28, and gave to the poor 92.

I don’t know that I could do that. But here was a person who lived simply so that others could simply live. To bring this point home, Wesley suggests this piercing question as the guide for how to practice simplicity: “How can you on principles of reason spend your money in a way which God may possibly forgive, instead of spending it in a manner which God will certainly reward?”

Consider this – the first sin in the Bible is a sin of consumerism. A perceived need was portrayed to humans – “Hey you can be like God…just eat this fruit. Be powerful, live extravagantly; partake of its sweet juice.” It is as though you can hear the serpent saying, “Take and eat; this is how you become like God.”

In the story of our redemption, we have a Jewish man who grew up in a peasant family who lived and walked in simplicity, who on the night he was betrayed, offered a different vision of who God is and how we can be human, when in contrast to the perpetual temptation for love of gain, Jesus said, “Take and eat; this is how God has given and become like you.”

The redeemed, the serene, the peaceful ones who are reconciled with God will find our God-aimed identity not in what we buy, accumulate, save, or consume, but in how we give. And we will discover not a false security of peace, but a freeing life of simply enjoying and sharing of God’s friendship…God’s generous grace…for richer, for poorer. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Simplicity ain’t easy!

I used to think that “simple” and “easy” could always be used interchangeably. Like when asked about a particular task that didn’t require a lot of physical or mental sweat, one could say, “it was simple” or “it was easy” and both would mean the same thing: “No big deal!” But when it comes to what Richard Foster calls the “discipline of simplicity,” whatever other descriptors one may attempt to describe simplicity, “easy” cannot be one of them.

Persons who enter into a monastery take vows and they typically center on three virtues that become the benchmark for the life of a monk: poverty, chastity and obedience. A monastic community in the British Isles known as The Community of Aidan and Hilda has reworded the first two, such that their three life-giving vows are these: simplicity, purity, and obedience. At a conference on Christian revitalization I attended several years ago in Edinburgh, Scotland, John Bell, a representative from Aidan and Hilda, described how these vows are life-giving. He said this: “Simplicity leads us into a deeper experience of the generosity of God; purity leads us into a deeper experience of the love of God; obedience leads us into a deeper experience of the freedom of God.” This sort of simplicity is of a centering sort and narrows our focus in a similar way with what Wesley called “The One thing Needful.”

It has been quipped about the modern tendency of humans in Western civilization that, “we buy things we do not need with money we do not have to impress people we do not like.” Richard Foster adds to this that the pressure placed on those who desire to live in simplicity when he said:

We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality…[Consider that] the modern hero is the poor boy who purposefully becomes rich rather than the rich boy who voluntarily becomes poor. (We still find it hard to imagine that a girl can do either!)…It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity.

So it becomes clear that, as said earlier, simplicity ain’t easy!

A couple of years ago, I was honored to preach at the memorial service of a man who served as a Navy pilot in World War II. It wasn’t something that he talked about, for he was a very unassuming fellow who quietly lived out his days, not seeking attention or accolades for his achievements. But when I scripted his eulogy, I kept coming back to two characteristics that I felt defined his life: simplicity and perfection, both of which are central to Wesleyan theology and spirituality. Here’s why I say that…

There is a quote that is attributed to several people in the last few centuries, including Elizabeth Seton, Gandhi, and Mother Teresa that says this: “Live simply so that others can simply live.” When I think of that man who exuded simplicity so well, of course I do not mean he was simple-minded. Even unto the very end of his life as he struggled with severe Parkinson’s he had a sharp mind, keenly aware of his surroundings, of his identity, of his story, of Scripture and of his world. By simplicity, I mean in the way he lived and shared the grace of God he had been given. It was that trademark of humility and valuing the betterment of his neighbors rather than seeking his own prosperity. The man’s son said that he “feared of having too much money more than he worried of not having enough.”

This brought to my mind the wisdom about simplicity and stewardship shared by John Wesley, who is (falsely) attributed to have said, “When I have money, I get rid of it quickly lest it find its way into my heart.” Though this statement is nowhere in his writings, I think we can say that it at least sounds “Wesleyan.” Wesley did, however, explicitly lay out three simple rules to guide about the use of money/resources: gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can. Some will abide by the first two, but the mark of a true Christian is to follow it to the end, and give all you can. Whether this man knew that rule or not, he lived by it.

Now let me tell you one more thing about this Navy pilot and why he made me think of “perfection.” He flew fighter planes over the ocean that took off and landed on aircraft carriers. Because of the moving target that is an aircraft carrier, it is not that uncommon for a plane to be waved off, circle around and try again if the controller aboard the ship discerns that a safe landing is in doubt or question. Well, in over 900 landings, this pilot I knew never had to be waved around a single time. He always stuck the landing on the first attempt. Whatever negative connotations may be heard in the notion of “perfection” in today’s world, I can’t really think of any word to use to describe the fact of this man’s flawless landing streak other than “perfect.” Perfection, as any student of Wesley knows well, isn’t about an absolutist sort of ideal where there is no more room for growth. It is, however, about aiming at “the one thing needful.”

And so we come to see that living in simplicity goes hand in hand with a life in pursuit of holiness, or sanctifying grace. For if you do a word search of “simplicity” through Wesley’s works, you will quite often find that he speaks of it in relation to Mary’s action of sitting by Jesus feet, drawing deeply from the well of the “one thing” known as intimate discipleship rather than Martha’s actions of being concerned about “many things.”

To bring the point to a close, Wesley wrote in his sermon “Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity” the following:

Why has Christianity done so little good, even among us? Among the Methodists? Among them that hear and receive the whole Christian doctrine, and that have Christian discipline added thereto, in the most essential parts of it? Plainly because we have forgot, or at least not duly attended to those solemn words of our Lord, ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me’…The Methodists grow more and more self-indulgent because they grow rich…many are twenty, thirty, yea, a hundred times richer than they were when they first entered the [Methodist] society. And it is an observation which admits of few exceptions, that nine in ten of these decreased in grace in the same proportion as they increased in wealth.

So it is that when more and more resources become available to be used and disposed by us, the more and more difficult it is to live in simplicity. But to live as Christ would have us live means that we ought to define ourselves not by what we consume or possess, but how, in modeling our God who gave of himself, we deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Christ, giving ourselves for others.

That may be simple, but it ain’t easy!

May the Spirit empower us to live in simplicity!