WHAT IS ENOUGH? Part 8 of You Are My Friends Nov. 15, 2015 Slide #2 INTRODUCTION: When you testify to something, you’re saying, “This is something which I, personally, have seen or experienced. I’m a witness to what’s going on here. I may not know everything, but this is something which I can never deny.” A spiritual testimony is also something personal; it’s something we have seen; it’s our response to something God has showed us. I like to think of testimonies as coming from the grassroots up, rather than being dictated from the top down. For example, we, as Quaker Christians, may have a very strong group or corporate testimony about peace but the testimony of the group is based on the experiences and convictions of individuals. What have we seen? What has God showed us? We share these experiences back and forth with each other and we listen to each other’s experiences with respect, and we share our own personal convictions with humility. What eventually emerges is a common statement or a corporate testimony. What we have talked about in this series, over the last 8 weeks, is what some of the major Quaker testimonies (or distinctives) have historically been and how we try to live them out today. One question you can ask as we consider this subject matter is: “What’s your passion? What do you really care about?” Another way to talk about these testimonies or distinctives is to ask, “What are you passionate about? What really matters to you? When your spirituality and your everyday life intersect, where do you feel God’s passion? In what areas of life do you keep feeling God persistently leading you?” Let me say this as an aside: We Quakers try to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit – not just in the way we feel, but also in the things we do every day. There are no rules. There’s no official list of things we should and shouldn’t do. And over the years, Quakers have found that God leads us by different paths from other Christians but in similar directions as all Christians. Over the last 8 weeks, we’ve looked at some of the ways in which we believe God calls us to live. We’ve used a helpful acronym to guide our study: S-P-I-C-E-S or Scripture, Peace, Integrity, Community, Evangelism, and Stewardship. This week, we are going to look as the unique commitment to stewardship that Quakers have historically been known for which is SIMPLICITY. Slides #3-4 WHAT IS SIMPLICITY? (“I want to be a Quaker” slide…) One way to look at simplicity is suggested to us by listening to Jesus when he says, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children…” (Matt. 11:25). Jesus had a passion for spiritual simplicity. He wanted God’s message to be understood and lived by everyone, not just by specialists and super- heroes. One of the major religious factions in Jesus’ time was the Pharisees who had a passion for observing every last detail of the Law of Moses. It took trained scholars to spell out and reconcile all of the hundreds of different requirements. It was beyond the power of most ordinary people to understand them let alone keep them. Jesus didn’t despise scholarship but He wanted the Good News to be for everyone, and especially for people who were poor or sick or hurt or oppressed or marginalized. Jesus used ordinary examples in all his teaching and he wanted everyone to feel that following God’s way was possible, that it was exciting, that it would heal them and inspire them READ Matt. 11:25-30: Slide #5 We try to follow Jesus’ example… we too have a passion for spiritual simplicity! We don’t want faith to be impossible to understand. If traditional creeds or traditional statements of faith don’t make sense to us, we’ll go with something simpler. If church practices and ceremonies have added on too many layers over the years, we’ll discard them. What we want is a simple faith and practice which any Christian can understand and which people of faith can follow. That may leave us with what seems like a stripped-down faith to some people, but that’s what matters to us. If it slows us down, get rid of it. If it clanks or rattles, ditch it. And if it destroys peoples’ faith, then we ask if that’s what God really means or wants. Quakers have gotten along just fine without a creed for almost 400 years. We get along without physical sacraments. We get along without priests or bishops. We get along without a complicated theology that says that women can’t be ministers. We get along without a lot of things, and we do it just fine. But simplicity expresses itself in other ways. Choose the “better way”: In the old days, 120 or 150 years ago, Quakers were a lot more concerned about the clothes they wore. Most Quakers wore very plain clothes – nothing fancy, no ornaments or extras, no fancy ribbons for women or lapels and collars for 1 WHAT IS ENOUGH? Part 8 of You Are My Friends Nov. 15, 2015 men. Quakers were not big supporters of the fashion industry. Most Quaker clothes were gray or black or brown. As I’ve said previously, you could pretty well spot a Quaker a mile away by the clothes they wore. Historical Example: Before the Civil War, Quakers were also very careful not to wear clothes which had been made by slave labor. That meant cotton (which was picked by slaves) and clothes dyed blue with indigo (which was made by slaves). A lot of Quaker Christians today have similar concerns about clothing and other products made in developing countries or other places where the workers aren’t paid fairly or are treated badly (e.g. we try not to purchase clothes made in Bangladesh; we try not to invest in companies that make weapons; we do try to buy products from companies that give back to 3rd world countries, such as Tom’s Shoes). Many Quakers go to a lot of trouble and extra expense not to buy clothing or other products which trouble their consciences. It’s not always easy in today’s world, but for many Quakers, it’s a life-long practice. The thing about simplicity is that it applies everywhere. In the early, early days of Friends, the focus was on how people dressed and spoke. Being plain was one of the outstanding Quaker virtues. And the passion for plainness almost became an idol for Friends. Margaret Fell (who became George Fox’s wife later in her life after her husband, Judge Fell, died), one of the early leaders of the Quaker movement, was very wise. She lived the testimony of simplicity and she suffered for it, but she also saw the danger in Friends passion for simplicity turning into a mistaken passion for uniformity: “Let us beware of this, of separating or looking upon ourselves to be more holy, than in deed and in truth we are. Away with these whimsical, narrow imaginations, and let the spirit of God which he hath given us, lead us and guide us; and let us stand fast in that liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. This narrowness and strictness is entering in, that many cannot tell what to do, or not to do. Poor Friends is mangled in their minds, that they know not what to do. But Christ Jesus saith, that we must take no thought what we shall eat, or what we shall drink, or what we shall put on; but bids us consider the lilies how they grow in more royalty than Solomon. But contrary to this, [some] say we must look at no colours, nor make anything that is changeable colours as the hills are, nor sell them nor wear them. But we must be all in one dress, and one colour. This is a silly poor Gospel. It is more fit for us to be covered with God’s eternal spirit, and clothed with his eternal Light, which leads us and guides us into righteousness and to live righteously and justly and holily in this present evil world” (Epistle against Uniform Quaker costume, 1700). Quakers gave up having everyone wear the same color and style of clothing around 150 years ago. I still think that most Quakers are concerned about living and dressing more simply, and we take that concern very seriously. But the focus is less on strictness and uniformity, and more on each of us deciding how to live that concern for ourselves. Bland “meeting houses”: By the way, you will also notice that our places of worship are usually very simple, even plain. We go in for a minimum of decoration, even for what might seem like religiously appropriate decoration. We like our worship spaces, and our worship gatherings, to be simple. Even the place of the facility doesn’t matter to Quaker Christians. The real riches are always inside us! That’s one aspect of simplicity – live more simply. Don’t be a slave to fashion. Don’t let your lifestyle hurt other people. Don’t be ostentatious in any way. But there are other ways to think about simplicity. Embrace freedom: The world we live in has grown very complex.