"The
Simple Life"
Scripture Reading: Amos 7:7-17; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37
Rev. Ross A. Aalgaard
Sermon on Sunday, July 11, 2004
Growing up, we have all been taught the rules for proper behavior. You know, simple rules like don’t talk with your mouth full. Chew with your mouth closed. Don’t interrupt when someone else is talking. Keep your hands to yourself. Say "please" and "thank-you." Don’t talk about politics or religion. (I never understood that one since politics and religion are two of my major interests and what my life centers around.) There are hundreds of rules and maybe even thousands of rules, if you add in all the implicit one’s, that we are expected to follow. All put together, there is a standard of performance which is created that you and me and everyone else are held to. We become somewhat annoyed and at times down right indignant when people do not follow these simple rules of behavior. Life can be pretty simple when we follow these rules and difficult when we don’t.
There is a FOX television reality show starring Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, two spoiled rich kids, called "The Simple Life." I’ve never seen the show and I’m guessing – with all of you who watch PBS, listen to MPR, and read instead – that most of you have not seen "The Simple Life" either. My understanding of the basic description of the show is that Paris and Nicole are two wealthy young women – emphasis on young – from celebrity families who are put into the homes and lives of common people. What seems routine and even natural to us becomes a fiasco for these two. They come from a world with certain rules and values and end up trying to exist in a world with – more often than not – completely different rules and values. Though they enter into a world that is very ordinary, it becomes very complicated. In the first season they were placed with a family in rural Arkansas. Many of the conveniences that the two young women had due to their money and where they lived were no longer available to them. They traded in the fast paced life they were used to with a more simple life. The irony of it all is that simple life ended up not being so simple for these two.
We might label life in rural Arkansas as simple because of its slower pace, but really it has it’s own rules, standards, expectations, and values that must be lived by. With these performance standards set, life can be equally as complicated, even though it moves a bit slower than in other places. Life isn’t all that simple no matter where you live.
We long for a simpler life because our busy lives are not providing us with the fulfillment and purpose we desire. In today’s Gospel lesson, we hear a lawyer ask the good moral teacher of wisdom, Jesus, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Without getting too bogged down with the term eternal life, we can safely paraphrase the question to, "Teacher, what must I do to find purpose and fulfillment in life?" Or "Rabbi, what must I do to discover depth and meaning in life? What can I do to live on a higher plain, in another realm, and within the Spirit?" Or even, "Jesus, how do I gain the simple life?"
The response that Jesus is reported to give reminds me of my spiritual director. He basically says, "The answer is within you. You already know." The inquiring lawyer was a learned person who was educated in the law. I’m thinking that this scholar could have recited the laws one by one. It would have taken some time because there were hundreds of them. However, the questioner’s analytical mind was able to sum up the entire law with simply, "Love God and love people."
Jesus commends the lawyer for the answer given; "Do this and you will live." Do this and you will find fulfillment, meaning, and purpose in life. Theologians, students of the Bible, and followers of Jesus spend hours, days, years, and even lifetimes studying the sayings and teachings and actions of Jesus. But Jesus’ work, life, and ministry can be summed up with "Love God and love people." Jesus was the founder of the Love Movement. If you’re trying to figure out what to do, just love. The songs that say, "What the world needs now is love, sweet love" and "All you need is love" can be attributed to the teachings of Jesus. It is what he was trying to get those who would listen to him to understand. If the world would focus more on "love God and love people" (and yes, included in that group of people is yourself) – if everyone in corporate America, in churches, on the highways, in schools, at the factories, and in politics – would just start working at loving God and loving people, the world would be a much better place. Love is the answer to having a meaningful life.
Some may scoff, "That’s too simplistic and romantic. It just won’t work." Well, that’s the response that has been given too long and look where it leaves us. Instead of approaching the world conflicts with love, our current leadership chose war, and look where it leaves us. Our standing with other nations has been harmed. Or that rift that remains between you and a friend or family member, is it there because you choose not to love? The world would be a different place if we truly followed the standard of love.
The lawyer thought that Jesus was being too simple when he said, "Love God and love people," so he asked another question. "And who is my neighbor?" Basically, there must be more. Clarify and explain this answer of love.
Jesus answers with a familiar story. A story that puts a Samaritan as the hero. Jesus picked an impure, unclean, dirty, rotten, cheating, half-breed, and the most politically incorrect person to be the hero of the story. It’s the scoundrel who is the example to follow. It’s the person who doesn’t know the rules, refuses to learn the rules, and lives without the rules who is the example to emulate. Marcus Borg says it this way, "What kind of world is it in which a Samaritan – a heretic and impure person – can be "good," indeed be the hero of a story?" Well let me answer that, it’s a world of love, a world of compassion.
It’s not being politically correct or well educated or creative or artistic or successful or living up to a certain set of standards that is going to give you a life of lasting fulfillment. It’s living the life of love by being a person who shows compassion.
We look at the two who walked by and left the man by the side of the rode, the priest and the Levite. We have learned to scoff at them. How rude! But they were just doing what the culture expected. They were doing what they were taught. They were following the rules of their time and remaining pure. They were obligated to maintain a certain level of purity. The wounded man was described as "half-dead," by going over to check it out they would have risked becoming impure by getting close to death.
It is the radically impure Samaritan who acted with compassion. It is the Samaritan who loved his neighbor as himself and thus fulfilled the law, the law of love. The lawbreaker is the example of the one living out the greatest commandment, to love. It’s not a list of rules that will give us life, it’s living within the relationship of love and going the way of compassion.
Remember the village in the 2000 movie Chocolat? The movie narrative starts by telling us, "If you lived in this village you understood what was expected of you. You knew your place in the scheme of things. And if you happened to forget, someone would help remind you. In this village, if you saw something you weren’t supposed to see you learned to look the other way."
The small French village of 1959 was kept "clean" and "pure" by the Comte de Reynaud and his family ever since the first Comte ran off the Huguenots. Reynaud controlled everything, even writing the young priest's sermons. He was meticulous, especially in observing Lent. But Vianne and her daughter, Anouk, come to town and open a Chocolate shop. They do this during Lent! The Comte knows she must be stopped. Soon some "River Rats" (including Roux, who romances Vianne) also come to town. There is a battle between those who follow the rules and those who don’t, those who are "clean" and those who are "unclean," those who are "pure" and those who are "impure," those who are politically correct and those who are not. But it becomes clear that those who are "unclean" are living out a life of goodness, a life of love, by going the way of compassion.
The young priest in the village, Pere Henri, sums it up in his Easter Sermon: "I want to talk about Christ’s humanity, I mean how he lived his life on earth: his kindness, his tolerance. We must measure our goodness, not by what we don’t do, what we deny ourselves, what we resist, or who we exclude. Instead, we should measure ourselves by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include."
Marcus Borg writes, "True purity is a matter not of external boundaries and observance but of the heart." Jesus calls the lawyer to a simple life, not one of numerous rules and laws. Instead, it’s simply a life of love by doing acts of compassion. That call is for us today, "Go and do likewise."