Sermons

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January 30, 2009

Creating a Simple Life Sermon Series

“The Christian discipline of Simplicity is an inward
reality that results in an outward lifestyle.” R. Foster

Sermon Series
(copies of Pastor Vickie's sermons can be found in sermon archives at right)

Jan. 18: Simplicity: It's American, Biblical & Christian Roots
(A brief overview)

Jan. 25: Multi-tasking ourselves to Death
(Reclaiming our Time)

Feb. 1: Conspicuous Consumers
(Evaluating our values)

Feb. 8: Expanding our Concept of Community
(Kingdom Sunday: Opportunities to experience our global community through new eyes)

Feb. 15: Living with All Things in Common
(Pastor Adam shares his experience of living in community)

Feb. 22: Living Simply on the Earth
(Healing ourselves, healing the earth)

“The simple life is both a component of and a pathway to the Abundant Life of which Jesus spoke.” M. Schut

God's Vision of Abundant Living
Through the divine Creation and Incarnation of God in Christ, we see the world as a loving creation-a creation intimate with its Creator. It is through this intimacy with God through Jesus Christ that we find our value and our worth.

The whole of creation contains all that is necessary to sustain itself and is an indication of God's affection and desire for re-creation. As United Methodists,
we are called to live toward God's vision of reconciliation through Christ Jesus. This reconciled world, or “new heave and new earth (Revelation 21:1),
includes creation healed-
…a creation where diversity is celebrated as a gift,
rather than resisted and destroyed;
…where loving relationships are supremely valued and the
resources of the world are shared equitably and justly;
…where all persons know their worth and value as children of God who seek the well-being of God's creation above their own greed.

It is a world where we live out of a theology of “enough.”
Our sense of personal value and esteem grow from our Christ-centered life;
allowing us to move away from worshiping the gods of
consumption and material need.

In living out a theology of “enough,” we will no longer expend our physical resources in consumption and our emotional resources in worrying over status. Our security and sense of well-being will be defined in relationship
to God, not by our possessions.

In the “new heaven and new earth,” we will choose a just lifestyle.
We will find gracious and fulfilled living in meeting our own basic needs and those of others.

(Portions reprinted from a statement in United Methodist Book of Resolutions 1996)

Posted by vickie at 08:54 PM

January 25, 2009

Multi-tasking Ourselves to Death

Creating a Simple Life Sermon Series
Week Two: Multi-tasking Ourselves to Death
Mark 1:14-20,

Welcome to week two of my sermon series, Creating a Simple Life. Last week, we spend some time exploring the vast historical roots of simple living, from an American, Biblical, and Christian perspective. If you weren’t here and would like to read it, I encourage you to visit our website which is listed in your bulletin. There’s a tab on the right side of the main page entitled, “Sermon Archives.” This morning we continue this idea of creating a simple life by taking on the hard task of sorting through all the demands and desires, responsibilities and rationalizations, busyness and business of our lives, specifically our time.

We live in stressful, hectic times. We are more connected to everyone and everything than we have ever been in history. While this is supposed to help us be more efficient and give us more time, I wonder if that is the case. What I have observed is that more people feel powerless about their time than ever before.

Our days are packed from beginning to end. We are constantly moving from one place, one event, to the next. The idea that time is something to enjoy, relish or savor seems to have disappeared from our American and our church culture. Time is to be endured, packed, and controlled. For those of us in the modern world, our image of time could be a student’s backpack. Every compartment is packed with something--text books, magazines, computer, electrical cord, extra clothes, notebooks, cell phone, and maybe a snack. There’s no room in the backpack for anything else. It weights down the student who is expected to carry it day in and day back and forth to school.

Christian simplicity is to let go of the idea that we can control time by managing it, working harder or smarter. Instead of trying to pack as much as we can into each 24 hours, we intentionally leave space for the unexpected to occur. Instead of giving away our time to everyone who is only too happy to take it, we claim moments for ourselves to rest and have fun. Instead of being resentful or anxious over daily responsibilities we cannot control, we reclaim the present moment.

With Christian simplicity, instead of being resentful or anxious over daily responsibilities we cannot control, we reclaim the present moment. Have any of you ever been to a time management seminar? One of the methods they use is to have participants think of their life as a pie chart. Usually the pie chart represents a 24 hour period and we are to calculate our activities and the amount of time we spend in a day doing those activities. For example—if you get 8 hours of sleep, then you have used one third of your 24 hours sleeping. Work accounts for 9 to 12 hours including commute time, eating takes a time, especially if you’re the one shopping for and preparing the meal, leisure or family time falls in there too. You get the idea.

The problem with this method of assigning value to our time is that our lives aren’t as compartmentalized as all that. And in 21st century America, it’s even harder to compartmentalize our lives because of two realities—the expanding role of women in our culture and the impact of technology. In a recent article in Newsweek, Dalton Conley, describes his reality as “Elsewhere.”

Listen to see if any of this sounds like your life. Conley opens his article by describing a moment in his life when he is working from home, helping his daughter with her online homework, saying something to his son, and texting his wife to find out what time she’ll be home so he can get to a meeting he has with a co-worker.

As Conley describes it, “today’s professional is constantly dogged by a feeling that he or she should be ‘elsewhere.” “Always on the go, we feel like we are in the right place at the right time only when in transit, moving from point A to B.” (1) What I’m trying to get at is this—it’s difficult to assign value to the hours of your day if the activities that make up each hour are blended with multiple roles—parent, employee, driver, and spouse.

Conley is focused on today’s professional, but I would submit that you need not be working outside the home to be experiencing “elsewhere.” This is where the Christian teachings of mindfulness can be extremely helpful.

Mindfulness is being fully present in the moment. It is a way of living that incorporates a deeper awareness of God’s activity in our lives. We all have responsibilities and aspects of our life that we must do—work, take care of others, plow the snow, etc. Instead of feeling as if we are supposed to be elsewhere, we can look deep into the present moment. Our attention to the present frees us to receive the messages and gifts found there.

There are two ways to experience time, chronos and kairos. Chronos time can be described as linear and single dimensioned. Henry Nouwen described chronos time this way. “A randomly collected series of incidents and accidents over which we have no control.” (2) On the other hand, there is Kairos time—Kairos means opportunity. Kairos time is fluid and moves in a variety of directions simultaneously. Imagine chronos time as a train speeding along a flat plateau to its destination, each car separate and locked in step one behind another. Then imagine kairos time as a hot air balloon that moves with the wind, providing a variety of vantage points and opportunities to see the world in a new way.

To practice the Christian teaching of mindfulness is to be a witness to God’s active presence in kairos time. It is to discover that texting on our blackberry, driving in traffic, preparing dinner, and walking the dog “are not a series of random events which prevent us from realizing our deepest self.”(3) It is to recognize that these activities actually contain in themselves a way to experience God.

To say it another way--to practice mindfulness is to look for the divine in the mundane of everyday.

With Christian simplicity, instead of giving away our time to everyone who is only too happy to take it, we claim moments for ourselves to rest and have fun. A simple life incorporates time for resting and having fun. “And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it.” (Genesis 2:2-3).

In the creation of the world, God worked for six days—and on the seventh day God rested. God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all living things on earth, in the waters, in the air; Everlasting God, Alpha and Omega; the first and the last; Invincible, Immortal Yahweh created for six days and on the seventh day, Yahweh rested (pause) but not you and I. We Americans work more hours than any other industrialized nation. According to one recent article, Americans work seven more hours a week then the Germans, and six weeks a year more than the French. (4)

Jesus carried on this tradition of rest as described in scripture when he frequently went off to pray. And in the Gospel of Mark chapter six, Jesus tells the apostles to come away with him and rest after having gone out to preach and heal. We rest in order to reflect back and to celebrate what has occurred. We rest to take in the beauty of creation in all its many forms. To rest and have fun is to intentionally put ourselves in a position to hear and experience God in all the ways God comes to us—and to not take ourselves too seriously!

One author captures the underlying principle of allowing ourselves to rest and have fun. We need to have trust. “Trust that forces greater than our own are circulating in the world, ‘silently working for good.”(5) We need to trust that we are enough just as we are. We are more than the sum of our work. We need to trust God. Our culture pushes the illusion that we must keep working up the ladder, keep pushing to get ahead, to stay on the treadmill.

God wants us to be happy, to enjoy life, and to have fun too. Remember how the religious leaders scorned Jesus for having too much fun? They criticized him for eating and drinking with people he should have known better than to hang out with. Would we criticize Jesus for having too much fun and hanging out with “them?”

I forget how rejuvenated resting and having fun can be, even for a short period of time.
Yesterday morning, I had made plans to meet some girl friends for coffee and to catch up. My sermon wasn’t done yet. It was taking longer than I thought. My sister and cousin were coming to our house for brunch around noon. I considered calling the gals and telling them I wouldn’t be able to make it, but I’d missed quite a few Saturday mornings lately and I wanted to go. So I did.

We huddled over coffee and muffins, talking over each other at first as we paired off to catch up. Then we settled down and listening to each other in deep and meaningful ways. We cried as someone shared news of a friend’s death. We prayed for Mary and thanked God for having known her in our lives. We quietly shared and then someone shared a story that had us all laughing so loudly that we got the stares. You know the stares that a group out having fun in public gets when they’re not being particularly quiet…

The rest of my day, had that fun, light quality to it. While I’d been gone, Mark had cleaned the majority of the first floor. It was a wonderful day. My sister and cousin arrived late, just as I was putting the finishing touches on the food. Make time for rest and fun. It frees us to experience the joy in life.

Lastly, with Christian simplicity instead of trying to pack as much as we can into each 24 hours, we intentionally leave space for the unexpected to occur. When was the last time you did anything spontaneous? Did you feel guilty? Probably! There’s someone out there who needs you to be spontaneous. God will invite you to do something one time. You can do it or not. The moment passes just as quickly as it comes. Either we respond immediately or the opportunity is missed—the opportunity to do something simple and compassionate for someone else.

I sent out a group email the other day following up on something I promised to do. One person on the other end of the email, spontaneously replied in a very loving way. It had been a difficult day, I wasn’t feeling very good. I was behind in my work. But the reply email lifted my spirits immediately. All because someone seized the opportunity to something simple and compassionate.

At the appointed time, Jesus came to the Old Irving Park neighborhood, as a homeless man, as a hungry mother with five children, as a pierced, tattooed teenager, as an undocumented worker, proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “The time is now, and the Kingdom of God has come near.” Jesus calls to us from the pages of Mark’s gospel—Follow me and you will experience such love and compassion that you will have to give it away to keep it. Will we follow Jesus? Will we respond immediately or wait until the next invitation, if it comes?

If a simple life is a component of and a pathway to the abundant life which Jesus professed, how will it appear to us? As Freedom. When we try to capture time, we lose it. But when we reclaim the present moment to experience and share God’s gifts of the now; when we claim time for ourselves to rest and have fun; when we leave space for the unexpected, we experience a kind of deep seated spiritual freedom that we witness in the life of Christ.

Choosing the abundant life that God offers does not come easy. It takes intentionality, being surrounded by like-minded people who are also looking for and sharing this abundant life. And it takes perseverance. But be encouraged.

Look around you here this morning (wait and give people time to look around at each other). We are here today because we are seeking something—maybe it is the abundant life that we witness in Christ. Be encouraged, like the first disciples, we are in this together. We are not alone.

Let me leave you with this image. When you start to feel as if time is getting the best of you, put down that overstuffed, back-breaking backpack. Pick up a new bag—your favorite bag. Maybe it’s your golf bag or your beach bag that contains a lawn chair and a good book. Maybe it’s a hockey bag or a bag with garden tools. Whichever bag you select, it’s not heavy. In fact the bag has room for other things that God will provide throughout the day…things that you will carry with you and things you will pass on to others.

Create a Simple Life Activity: Life is a series of interruptions. Practice mindfulness this week and every time you get interrupted by your co-worker, your child, a stranger or your dog, pause and invite God into your activity (say twice). If you want to share your experiences with me, give me a call or email me this week.

Let us pray—Creator God, you come to us in the stillness of this hour. Speak to us the word our lives need to hear. Grant us the space we need, turn us from frantic striving, and calm our drivenness. Help us to discern your presence through all of life and in all that you have made. Give us ears to hear, eyes to see, and hearts to know you grace. Amen.

Footnotes:
(1) “Welcome to Elsewhere,” by Dalton Conley in Newsweek Magazine. January 26, 2009 issue.
(2) “Contemplation and Ministry” written by Henry Nouwen in Simpler Living, Compassionate Life ed. Michael Schut. © 1999 Earth Ministry.
(3) Ibid.
(4)“Welcome to Elsewhere,” by Dalton Conley in Newsweek Magazine. January 26, 2009 issue.
(5) Longing for Enough in a Culture of More by Paul Escamilla. © 2007 Abington Press.

Posted by vickie at 10:00 AM