Text: Luke 14:25-33
People
often remark how freeing it is to simplify your life by getting rid
of the stuff you don’t need and even the stuff you do need. I did
such a thing when I moved to Canada from West Virginia. I gave away
everything I had except for kitchen stuff, some personal stuff, my
books, and my computer. I came to Canada with only three carloads of
stuff. It truly was freeing to be rid of that stuff. I could have
had a great big yard sale, but I still would have had a few things to
give away and the couple of hundred made, to me, would not have been
worth the effort. I did experience getting rid of the stuff as
freeing. I knew that there were some things I would have to
reacquire eventually up here in Canada and when it came time to get
some basic furniture and stuff when I moved into the manse, somebody
not associated with this church gave me the essentials. Our Lord
does look after his own, and I truly believe that when you are at
bare minimum, having nothing to count on but the Lord, he comes
through. This should point us in the direction of simplifying our
lives of possessions in order to know what it is to have the Trinity
truly provide for us. Otherwise, we can naively believe that the
Lord provided for us when actually we did it ourselves.
Being
a disciple of Jesus Christ is costly and I’ve come to understand
that the cost is learning how to give and in order to do that we most
count the cost of what our possessions mean to us. Simplifying our
lives of possessions so that we have to rely on the gracious
provision of the Triune God of grace and the communion of saints is a
big step towards learning to live in the Kingdom of God. You see,
when we all have the means to acquire as well as actual possession of
everything we could possibly want, we totally take for granted the
things that we actually need and I would go as far as to say we
forget what our true needs are. In this age of Materialism and
Consumerism, the experience of having to rely on the Trinity and the
communion of saints is grossly supplanted by a false sense of
security which we call self-reliance. Bother me if I’m wrong, but
I think self-reliance is one of if not the most detrimental, indeed
idolatrous, characteristics of our culture affecting us each. Our
way of life, our economy, is built on the principle that everybody
should be able to provide for themselves, but…if you look at the
collective debt of every household in North America and beyond,
something is terribly wrong. Most of us are not self-reliant. It’s
an illusion. In fact, most of us are simply burying ourselves in the
slavery of debt while some very sick corporations and individuals
profit from it. But, then we have to ask what the alternative is
because if everybody decided to simplify their lives of possessions,
the consequence to the global economy would be utter disaster.
One
alternative, would be a more communal style of living in our
neighbourhoods. Farley Mowat’s first novel, People
of the Deer describes his
involvement with an inland Inuit people known as the Ihalmiut. They
numbered about 7,000 in the 1880’s and only 30 by 1950. They were
starving to death because White’s were killing the Caribou they
relied on en mass. One thing that struck me about Mowat’s
description of the Ihalmiut way of life was the utter lack of a
concept of private ownership. If there was a shovel, it belonged to
everybody in the clan and if you needed to use it, you asked around
until you found it. If we applied this way of life to our
neighbourhoods, can you imagine how much closer we would all become
with all the visiting that goes on while we try to locate a shovel,
or a lawnmower, or a ladder? I think that sort of a neighbourhood
vision is as counter-culture as we could possibly get in our culture,
but I think its very Christian and would prove to be very
evangelistic. But anyway, we’re not supposed to be talking about
being counter-culture. We need to talk more about the spiritual
problem of attachment to possessions and secondly, intentionally
trying to simplify our lives of them. The reason is that it is truly
freeing and does open up space in our lives inwardly and outwardly
for Jesus to display his Lordship.
A
few years back, a Quaker theologian and writer, Richard J. Foster
best known for his book The
Celebration of Discipline,
wrote The Freedom of
Simplicity in which he
rather nicely covers the spiritual problem we have with possessions
and what to do about it. Firstly, attachment to possessions is a
form of idolatry that affects us at the level of how willing we are
to give in order to meet the needs of others. In the new humanity
which is the Christian faith, the new humanity which is indwelt by
the Holy Spirit and becoming more and more the image of Christ, Jesus
is our model, Jesus of Nazareth who owned nothing and gave his very
life for all. He had nothing, but God the Father saw to it that he
had everything he needed. His life was all about being able to give.
We
live our lives completely differently. We teach our children that if
they want something, they must earn the means to buy it so that it is
their possession. We adults do the very same thing. We sell our
time for money to be able to buy and possess things we need or think
we need or simply just want for whatever reason. Yet, what happens?
Who here does not wish they had more time to do devotions, to spend
with family, to be creative, to just sit and look around and breathe
in the panorama and be thankful? How many of us find ourselves
waking up in the middle of the night with minds racing about all the
things that need to be done? How many of us simply no longer have
the mental space to deal with one more thing? This is what
attachment to possessions causes.
In
the second place, Foster gives an alternative for us and it is to
simplify our lives by giving away what we don’t need and being
intentional about living on the bare essentials from there on. This
frees up our inner worlds. It makes us realize how much we truly
have resource-wise that we could share with those who need.
Moreover, it simply frees us up to be able to give. But, there is a
catch. Foster says if we really want to address the heart of our
problem, we must identify those things that are most meaningful to us
and give them away and there is a profound reason for this: when we
examine our attachments to our possessions particularly those that
mean the most, we come to understand ourselves in a deeply profound
way; our brokenness, our idolatry, even our deep need for the soul
cleansing that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection provide.
For
a very simple example, two weeks ago I found an attachment that was
very important to me, William’s little blue stuffed puppy that he
has had maybe since day one. Saturday a week ago, William and I went
to do some errands and Puppy came along. That night at bedtime,
Puppy was nowhere to be found and I couldn’t recall if Puppy made
it back into the house. So, William in his jammies and I got in the
car and went searching and asking for Puppy. The next day either
Dana or I did the same. I was deeply affected by the whole thing. I
probably missed Puppy more than William did. I searched the Net to
see if we could get a new one. They’re not made anymore. Monday
came and Dana took William and Alice to get a new stuffy. William
got a monkey because he is affectionately known as a silly monkey.
Later that evening we had minister friends and their children over
for dinner. The children went down in the basement to play. All of
a sudden I heard William shouting, “I found Puppy. Mommy, Daddy I
found Puppy!” Up the stairs he came to show us. I about cried.
The
point isn’t that I’m going to have to give Puppy away because he
means too much to me. He’s William’s Puppy after all and one day
he’ll/we’ll figure out what to do with it. Yet, realizing my
over-attachment to Puppy made me look inside and ask why. Well, me
being the youngest of four, my stuffies were often used by my
siblings to be mean to me. Moreover, with my parents divorcing while
I was a small child my stuffies meant more to me than they otherwise
would have. And so, something I have to keep telling myself about
William is that he’s a happy kid in a healthy home and he will not
grow up with the same pains I did. To me, that is quite freeing.
But,
that’s an adult child pondering the meaning of stuffies. What
happens when our most meaningful possessions are cottages, boats, or
family heirlooms? Does this mean we are supposed to give them away?
Well, that’s between God and our self’s and not a matter to be
judged by others. The important thing is to examine the emotional
roots of the attachment. What does it say when, for example, people
know their cottage neighbours whom they see once or twice a year
better than their home neighbours whom they see nearly everyday?
Well,
giving away what we don’t need is a good discipline. It shows us
how and what we have invested our lives in. The end result truly is
a less cluttered and more spacious interior life. Just ask any
interior decorator how to make a room look bigger…remove one third
of the stuff that’s in it. I don’t think we need to give away
the most meaningful stuff, yet we should certainly ponder why these
things are so meaningful that we couldn’t just part with them.
That
leads us to intentional living: being intentional about keeping our
lives free by trying to live on just the basics and when we do go
beyond the basics, asking ourselves why we want what it is that we
want. Substance abusers trying to go clean have to make a conscious
effort to figure out why they want that substance. So, it is with
our attachment to possessions. One key way for us to open up space
in ourselves and in our lives for Jesus and for others is to simplify
and intentionally live simply. As I hinted earlier, with Jesus as
our model, the goal for us is to discipline ourselves to be more
willing and able to give, to give sacrificially. That, my friends,
is the cost of grace. Amen.
