Will Fitzgerald
Kalamazoo Mennonite Fellowship
January 2, 2011
Welcome to 2011! As we start this year, I would like to do a series of teachings on the key values we have identified for our fellowship: those words which appear in our tagline, which is …
Simplicity. Service. Peace. Worship. Community. Jesus.
I hope this will help us in our life together, and as we tell others what we are about. It may be that we will discover things we need to add or modify from this short list. After all, there are six items, and it seems like we need a golden seven. And, of course, we must remember that “Jesus” isn’t one of our values, but the Lord and Savior whom we love and follow, so we want to be attentive to the Spirit of Jesus, following his call, and not just blurting out sweet nothings.
So, perhaps it is a bit ironic that our first word, the one I want to talk about today, “simplicity,” is not found in the Bible; that is, if you open up your King James Concordance or your New Revised Standard concordance, or look online, you won’t find the word “simplicity” listed. What you will find, though, is the word “simple,” and that’s not generally viewed as a positive thing in the Bible. Consider this passage from Proverbs, where the word “simple” appears the most:
14 The perverse get what their ways deserve,
and the good, what their deeds deserve.
15 The simple believe everything,
but the clever consider their steps.
16 The wise are cautious and turn away from evil,
but the fool throws off restraint and is careless.
17 One who is quick-tempered acts foolishly,
and the schemer is hated.
18 The simple are adorned with folly,
but the clever are crowned with knowledge.
19 The evil bow down before the good,
the wicked at the gates of the righteous. [1]
On the one hand, you have the good, the righteous, the clever, and the wise. On the other hand, you have the perverse, the evil, the fool, the quick-tempered, and the … simple.
So far, our tagline is not looking so good. We wouldn’t want our tagline to read: “Simplcity. Perversity. Evil. Foolishness. Anger. Jesus.” That would be wrong.
So, why do we think having “simplicity” listed as one of our values is a good thing? I think there are two main reasons, one which has to do with economic simplicity; and the other with a correct understanding of who we are before God, and a radical reinterpretation of being simple that Jesus calls us to.
Let’s take these in turn.
This may be truer for people who come to identify as “Mennonite” as adults in a certain era, but one of the most attractive Mennonite witnesses has been a certain cookbook: More with Less. The promise of this title to me has always been a promise that we will live better while using less. Living simply will free us up from complexity and stress. Using simple ingredients will make mealtime preparation less difficult. Eating simply will be more authentic.
For some people I have known who were raised in Mennonite families, economic simplicity has been a value in and of itself. You know the adage, “Use it up; wear it out; make it do; or do without”? Most Mennonites I know would state this is true and obvious, common sense and as plain as the nose on your face.
Another adage: “Live simply, that others may simply live.” And a third, right from Jesus: “What profit is there in gaining the entire world, if you lose your soul in the process?” And, I think, this gets more at the heart of what we are about. It’s good to eat well. It’s good to be less stressed. It’s good to not spend more than we need to. But as people who are called to love God above all things, and to love our neighbors as ourselves, we think more about what good it does for God and for others than what good it does for ourselves.
You know, simplicity wouldn’t be a tagline word for churches in other places and other times. It’s a particularly American word, that acknowledges that the complex technological, entertainment, military, and industrial society in which we live wants to usurp the rightful place that God should have in our lives. God calls us to come before him, but society calls us to spend time on Facebook, play games, watch movies, blow people up, make lots of money, find our worth in our work—so many complex calls on our lives that we have to cry simplicity to remind us that, in Jesus’s words, “One thing is needful,” and “Blessed are the pure in heart.”
And we need to remember our neighbors, both near and far. We are told time and time again that we must consider others who are in need. Jesus says, “If you have two coats, and you see someone who needs one, give him one of yours.” So, in the sense that it is more complex to have two coats than to have one, Jesus calls us to a simpler life. I will say, based on my own life experience, that having to consider the needs of others is actually more complicated than just considering my own needs. I have more than two coats; I think, in fact, that I have six, not counting suit coats. Should I give five away? Would anybody want them? Would it actually end up helping someone? Help me decide!
A second reason we can have “simplicity” in our tagline is that it can help us remember, in the sense we saw in Proverbs, that we are simple fools in comparison to God and the best of God’s people, and that we need instruction in wisdom and righteousness.
Scripture tells us that we ought to have a right understanding of ourselves, and that includes a rigorous moral inventory. We often confess our sins and our sinfulness together on Sunday mornings, not to beat ourselves up, but to know who we are, and what we have to do. In this sense, we want the opposite of simplicity: we want to be wise, clever about God and God’s life for us; in a word, we want to be good, but we need to start from where we are, and where we are is never quite as good as we could be.
Scripture actually does tell us to be simple and foolish about some things. For example, in Romans, Paul writes that he wants his readers to be wise about what is good, but simple about what is evil. Jesus, of course, said we are to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.
When Jesus says to come to him as little children, I think he is referring to both aspects: acknowledging our need, and declaring our innocence. When Bess takes care of her great-nephew, Miles, I often see Miles raise his arms to be picked up. He easily acknowledges his inability to get up to where he wants to be, that Bess is bigger and stronger than he is, that he can’t do everything himself. So also does God want us to acknowledge our need of him. We need God to pick us up at times. God is bigger and stronger than us, and God can carry us where we need to go.
Another friend recently posted a picture of her son, Joseph, on Facebook. Joe is quite the little cherub: round-faced and curly-haired. In one of his pictures, his face is covered in food. For Joe, this isn’t wasteful or bad; he is really innocent and naïve about food fights (now, at least). So also does God want us to be naïve about sin: we don’t really need to know the ins and outs of sinning (well, some of us—the pastors and counselors among us, might have to). And God wants us to be naïve about our acceptance before him: God delights in our company, I think, even when we’re messy with sin all over our face.
Another word for all of this is “humility.” For obvious reasons, it wouldn’t do to make “Humble” part of our tagline—you don’t want to brag that you’re humble. But humility is a virtue to which we aspire. As Paul writes in Philippians 2,
3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
So, in the end, I think it’s perfectly all right to keep “simplicity” in our tagline, as long as we remember that simplicity isn’t its own reward. Our church values people over things and money. Our church acknowledges our need for a strong God who will accept us as we are, and work to make us better. Our church desires to be wise, and pays attention to the Scripture and to the teachings so we will be less simple, less foolish in 2011 than we were in 2010; in 2012, we desire to be more innocent of evil and wiser about the good than we will have been in 2011.
What else is important about simplicity? Is living a simple life a goal of yours?
[1] The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Pr 14:14–19). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.