Tis A Gift to Live Simply
(Rutgers Presbyterian church, April 25, 1999; Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A;
Invite-a-Friend Sunday)
Acts 2:43-47 (NT, p. 124); Luke 2:15; Matthew 6-24 (OT, pp. 76, 6);
Matthew 3:13–17; 4:1–11 (NT, p. 3)
It's been a horrific week of savage violence among humans - Kosovo, belgrade, Littleton. And the ferocity of it all has triggered such shock in us that we can't seem to stop dwelling on these events, perhaps because we have so little idea of what to do about them.
What's more, the media's preoccupation with Yugoslavia and Littleton has limited their reporting of the week's other significant events.
So, sadly, Earth Day '99 passed by last Thursday relatively unnoticed. Still, today is Earth Sunday, and I consider Earth Sunday to be one of the most important days on our church calendar, for I feel that the environmental question has become toe most urgent issue of our time. Indeed, with the viability of Earth's life systems hanging in the balance, I believe that our generation's moral decisions about whether to care for the environment or not will have more to do with the course of history than all the wars and violence that so powerfully capture our attention.
So in spite of the pressing nature of events in Kosovo and Littleton, I've chosen to give Earth Sunday its full due here today. there's an ancient Jewish story that goes like this (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7;13): God guided the first man and woman around the Garden of Eden and then said to them, "Look at my creation! See how beautiful and perfect they are. Make sure you don't ruin or devastate my world. for it you do, there will be no one after you to fix it."
Centuries after that story began to be told, the English poet William
Wordsworth recognized at the beginning of the western world's "Industrial
Revolution," that Christians had just not gotten it, just not internalized
that kind of message from God - the message: "don't ruin my creation;
there's no one after you to fix it." rather, Christian civilization
had become focused on gain and wealth and worldly goods and was living in a
tragically flawed relationship with nature. Wrote Wordsworth:
"The World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
the winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. - Great God1 I'd rather be
A Pagan sucked in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would me less forlorn..."
Wordsworth Believed that God had created nature and humanity to live with each other in harmonious community. Your see, he would have agreed with that Buddhist monk who's reported to have given thanks to the clouds whenever he put on his sweater, since the clouds provide the rain that raises the grass that feeds the sheep that gives the wool that's made into a sweater. Thus there is community between clouds and a person's sweater.
Yet Wordsworth foresaw that in the Christian west nature and humankind were not destined to live in harmonious community, that in the Christian West the growth of industry and of the capitalist economic system of production and consumption would lead not to our communing with nature's precious resources but to our exploiting of them for personal gain and profit.
And so it is, some 200 years later, that as we near the 21st century, not only western civilization but also, through our example and influence, much of the rest of humankind as well - we are all possessed by economic aspirations to wealth that are dependent upon an exponential growth in consumption that the realm of nature simply cannot sustain or endure.
For Earth's oceans are already being fished beyond their capacity to maintain a steady yield. Earth's water tables on every continent are already falling. Earth's rangelands are already being denuded thru overgrazing. earth's forests have been diminished by half in the last century. And the rate at which we've been depleting Earth's reservoirs of fossil fuels has increased 5-fold in just the past 2 decades, during which time the 13 warmest years on record have all occurred. "...Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; ...We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!"
The war in Yugoslavia is being fought, we say, to change the values and behavior of others. But the struggle to preserve the beauty + integrity of god's Earth requires of us something far more difficult than that - it requires of us that we change our own values and behavior.
That we must change our values and behavior suggests that the answer to the problem of the survival of our planet lies every bit as much in spirituality as it does in politics, or science, or economics. that we must change our values and behavior suggests that a large part of the answer lies in opening ourselves to being moved by God's Spirit to live not for the advancement of our individual selves but for the well-being of our wider community - the community of Earth and all humankind.
The earliest Christians were moved to live for the sake not of self-advancement but of community-interests. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles tells us, in this morning's First Lesson (2:544-45), that "All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distrubute the proceeds to all, as any had need."
The earliest Christians' zeal to share their resources with others was doubtless inspired by words spoken to them by Jesus himself, such unforgettably challenging words as those in our 2nd Lesson: (Luke 12:15) "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for ones's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." "Your cannot serve both God and wealth." (Matthew 6:24)
Perhaps it was by reflecting on these very texts that Presbyterians'
spiritual ancestor, the 16th-century Reformer John Calvin, was led to teach this
- listen:
"We are not our won. ...we are God's;
all the endowments which we possess are deposits
entrusted to us for the very purpose of being distributed
for the good of our neighbor..."
It is essential for the physical health of Earth and for the spiritual health of the contemporary Christian church the we do internalize these ideals, that we prove willing to share the gifts of God entrusted to us with the wider community - the community that embraces all of humankind and Earth as well.
the Worldwatch Institute estimates that humankind has a window of opportunity of just 30 years in which to voluntarily carry out major shifts in our patterns of consumption - shifts to patterns that can be sustained by Earth's limited resources. Otherwise we face a collapse of Earth's life systems on a grand scale, a collapse leading to widespread famine.
During this limited 30-year window of opportunity, then, our moral task is this: to recognize that life does not consist in the abundance of possessions, to realize that we cannot serve both God and wealth, to give over our hearts in love to Earth, and to offer to Earth and all of humankind a gift, a gift that is genuinely good news for the world - the gift of our living simply so that Earth and others may simply live.
This moral task for our generation entails a radical change from our old patterns of over consumption to new patterns that can be called "sustainable consumption," consumption at a rate that can be sustained worldwide, an change to patterns in which we live simply.
I do have hope that these changes can occur in the time we have.
A recent study commissioned by the Merck Family Fund finds that most Americans already believe that our nation consumes too much, wastes too much, and has lost sight of its spiritual values. People are ready, the study concludes, to begin serious dialogue about our national habits of consumption, serious discussion about the compelling necessity for living simply.
But I'm under no illusion that change will come quickly. the advertising world has already gotten the message that Americans are thinking of living more simply, and it has already tooled itself up to subvert the message of simplicity to serve the cause of over consumption instead of the cause of sustainable consumption.
A recent magazine ad for Accura, a luxury car by anyone's standards, featured the gleaming image of the automobile - and below it a single word - "Simplify!" the ad's real message is, of course: "Buy more than you really need."
One of the country's largest credit card operations, MBNA America, last December promoted this slogan: "Simplify your life in the new Year! ...consolidate your holiday bills." The ads unstated message is: "Buy too many things this month, t hen pay us 17% interest all next year!"
And Denny's restaurant chain has been urging us: "Simplify your life. Eat our more." The ad's implied message is: "Why eat at home, when you can pay more to eat more!"
It will be hard to accomplish the goal of simplifying our lives by cutting back on consumption when Madison Avenue is so busily trying to persuade us that the easy to simplify our lives is to increase consumption.
Perhaps we can find help in the example of the philosopher Socrates's way of life, a friend expressed to him surprise that he was carefully examining so many flashy wares in the local marketplace. Socreates replied to him: "I am always amazed to see just how many things there are that I don't need."
Following Socrates's lead, I suggest that from now on we think of malls not as stores but as museums - as places where we frequently say, "I really like that," but as places where we never say," I need that." The mall as museum. A place to look but never to buy. I really like that!
Friends in Christ, here is a simple truth: Earth cannot afford the lifestyles of the rich and famous; economies organized to suit appetites for "unlimited growth in consumption" are unsustainable and will ruin God's good Earth. More is worse. Less is better. the health of Earth requires that we adopt the principle that having is for sharing. It requires that we adopt a lifestyle that participates with others in a world-wide pattern of shared simplicity.
Living simply involves developing a consciousness, an inner awareness able to distinguish between what we need and what we want, between what we require and what we merely desire.
Living simply next involves weaning ourselves away from desire so that we can share with others the excess we do not require.
Living simply involves making conscious choices for less consumption - one by one, day by day, wee by week. "I don't need this." "I can forego that." - one by one, day by day, week by week, choices!
And here are some of the benefits:
Living simply pulls us back from compulsive extravagance and brings peace to
frantic spirits; living simply provides us with more time to cultivate personal
relationships + to be with others; living simply honors, what God has created
and heals and protects Earth.
Living simply offers us the integrity of the lifestyle of Jesus, it puts us into partnership with the Creator, and it accomplishes the work of the Holy Spirit, fostering bonds of community throughout the earth.
Living simply - 'tis our gift to God, "tis our gift to ourselves, "tis our gift to Earth, "tis our gift to to all of humankind.
Let us pray
O God, the Creator, show us the need to live simply;
O God, the Christ, grant us the will to live simply;
O God, the Holy Spirit, give us the power to live simply - that we may offer the
gift of our simplicity to Earth for its healing and to the rest of the humankind
for their well-being. Amen.
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