Jim Benfer

Sermo508 for Sunday 3-22-09

Scripture Reading: Matthew 22:34-40

One Simple Faith

A college physics professor was explaining a particularly complicated concept to his class when a pre-med student interrupted him. “Why do we have to learn this stuff?” the frustrated student blurted out. “To save lives,” the professor responded before continuing the lecture. A few minutes later the student spoke up again. “So how does physics save lives? “The professor stared at the student without saying a word. “Physics saves lives,” he finally continued, “because it keeps the idiots out of medical school.”[1]

It seems like the world is full of complicated things, and if you haven’t noticed it already, even religion has its complicated concepts. I don’t think for a moment that our God decided to blow our minds and give us complicated ways of thinking about faith, service, or love. I don’t believe your views on transubstantiation during Holy Communion will count one iota at God’s judgment seat. I do believe that study and knowledge of God’s word brings untold benefits to our lives, but do not be tempted to swallow the notion that we have to understand the uttermost intricacies of religious theory to understand a God who loves us or faith that even the simplest will grasp.

I believe that is exactly the point Jesus is making with his disciples when the crowds brought their children out to Jesus so that he might touch and bless them, but the disciples thought Jesus too busy to bother with children and began forbidding them. We know Jesus rebuked the disciples and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” [2]

One of the concepts that Jesus is trying to tear down so that the kingdom can be built in our world is that of deeming one person more important or worthy than another. If the Bishop visits our church we may revere him by his position of authority, but is he more worthy than any other sinner who comes to our door? By virtue of intellect or politics, is one life more worthy than another? Jesus’ answer is that we all have inherent value to God—in fact, it is not in lofty words that the kingdom is revealed, but in the child-like faith of the children that we have the greatest clue to what God desires of us.

Brother Bud has been preaching on the General Rules of the Church, written by John Wesley, and as redefined by Bishop Rueben Job, who called them Three Simple Rules. Those simple notions help us find ways to guide our Christian walk. Today I would like to take some of our complicated notions about faith and distill them as One Simple Faith, as we encounter the utter simplicity with which our heavenly Father desires our trust.

First, love is simple. Our scripture couldn’t be plainer about this fact. The Torah law and everything the prophets of the Old Testament wrote can be pinned on love. If we love God, wholly and completely, and having done this begin to love our neighbors as much as we do ourselves, we will find that we don’t need the law at all. Listen to this anonymous story posted on a web blog:

My wife called, ‘How long will you be with that newspaper? Will you come here and make your darling daughter eat her food?

I tossed the paper away and rushed to the scene. My only daughter, Sindu, looked frightened; tears were welling up in her eyes. In front of her was a bowl filled to its brim with curd rice. Sindu is a nice child, quite intelligent for her age.

I cleared my throat and picked up the bowl. ‘Sindu, darling, why don’t you take a few mouthful of this curd rice? Just for Dad’s sake, dear’.

Sindu softened a bit and wiped her tears with the back of her hands.

“Ok, Dad. I will eat - not just a few mouthfuls, but the whole lot of this. But, you should…’ Sindu hesitated. ‘Dad, if I eat this entire curd Rice, will you give me whatever I ask for?’

“Promise’. I covered the pink soft hand extended by my daughter with mine, and clinched the deal. Now I became a bit anxious. ‘Sindu, dear, you shouldn’t insist on getting a computer or any such expensive items. Dad does not have that kind of money right now. Ok?’

‘No, Dad. I do not want anything expensive’. Slowly and painfully, she finished eating the whole quantity. I was silently angry with my wife and my mother for forcing my child to eat something that she detested.

After the ordeal was through, Sindu came to me with her eyes wide with expectation. All our attention was on her.

‘Dad, I want to have my head shaved off, this Sunday!’ was her demand.

‘Atrocious!’ shouted my wife, ‘A girl child having her head shaved off? Impossible!’

‘Never in our family!’ My mother rasped. ‘She has been watching too much of television. Our culture is getting totally spoiled with these TV programs!’

‘Sindu, darling, why don’t you ask for something else? We will be sad seeing you with a clean-shaven head.’

‘Please, Sindu, why don’t you try to understand our feelings?’ I tried to plead with her.

‘Dad, you saw how difficult it was for me to eat that Curd Rice’. Sindu was in tears. ‘And you promised to grant me whatever I ask for. Now, you are going back on your words? Was it not you who told me the story of King Harishchandra, and its moral that we should honor our promises no matter what?’

It was time for me to call the shots. ‘Our promise must be kept.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ chorused my mother and wife.

‘No. If we go back on our promises, she will never learn to honor her own. Sindu, your wish will be fulfilled.’

With her head clean-shaven, Sindu had a round-face, and her eyes looked big and beautiful.

On Monday morning, I dropped her at her school. It was a sight to watch my hairless Sindu walking towards her classroom. She turned around and waved. I waved back with a smile. Just then, a boy alighted from a car, and shouted, ‘Sinduja, please wait for me!’ What struck me was the hairless head of that boy. ‘Maybe, that is the in-stuff’, I thought.

‘Sir, your daughter Sinduja is great indeed!’ Without introducing herself, a lady got out of the car, and continued, ‘that boy who is walking along with your daughter is my son Harish. He is suffering from… leukemia’. She paused to muffle her sobs. ‘Harish could not attend the school for the whole of the last month. He lost all his hair due to the side effects of the chemotherapy. He refused to come back to school fearing the unintentional but cruel teasing of the schoolmates.

Sinduja visited him last week, and promised him that she will take care of the teasing issue. But, I never imagined she would sacrifice her lovely hair for the sake of my son! Sir, you and your wife are blessed to have such a noble soul as your daughter.’

I stood transfixed and then, I wept... ‘My little Angel, you are teaching me how selfless real love is!’ [3]

The happiest people on this planet are not those who live on their own terms but are those who change their terms for the ones whom they love! Love is the simplest and most powerful of all laws.

Secondly, faith is simple. Unfortunately, by means of trying to explain the intricacies of this point many people have made faith difficult. So, let me tell you what faith is not:

· Faith is not a complicated formula of church dogma.

· Faith is not memorization and study of scripture.

· Faith is not perfect and righteous action.

· Faith is not pious devotion.

So, what is faith? Faith is trusting God just like an innocent child trusts their parents. That’s it. I didn’t say it was always easy, but it is ultimately simple.

The following letter was found in a baking-power can wired to the handle of an old pump that offered the only hope of drinking water on a very long and seldom-used trail across Nevada's Amargosa Desert: "This pump is all right as of June 1932. I put a new sucker washer into it and it ought to last five years. But the washer dries out and the pump has got to be primed. Under the white rock I buried a bottle of water, out of the sun and cork end up. There's enough water in it to prime the pump, but not if you drink some first. Pour about one-fourth and let her soak to wet the leather. Then pour in the rest medium fast and pump like crazy. You'll git water. The well has never run dry. Have faith. When you git watered up, fill the bottle and put it back like you found it for the next feller. (signed) Desert Pete. P.S. Don't go drinking the water first. Prime the pump with it and you'll git all you can hold." [4]

Fortunately, we don’t have to trust Desert Pete, we have someone who proved his love and caring by sending us Jesus, proving he had power over life and death.

Finally, our faith can be lived simply because of the church. I know the Lord must shake his head wondering how something intended to help those seeking God could ever become an impediment to it. Regardless of what you think the purpose of organized religion is, the fact remains that it is simply a structure to organize believers so that they can be nurtured, discipled, and sent out into the world energized for service. Akin to big government, denominational religion always runs the risk of becoming a bureaucracy that lives on to and for its own purposes.

John Wesley was a reformer of the church of the highest order. He himself was never a Methodist by church affiliation, because he was an Anglican priest. The Methodist church grew from a reform movement in Anglicanism that found its own authority when the British withdrew the Anglican priests during the American Revolution. However, the Methodist’s remained true to his conviction that faith ought to be simple.

In one of his most famous sermons, Catholic Spirit, preached in 1750, Wesley encouraged Methodists to “think and let think.” That was a reference to the great controversy between Protestant churches themselves and with the Roman Catholic church. It is because Wesley refused to judge others for their religious opinions that Methodists have been accused to this day of ‘not believing in anything.’ I commend Wesley for taking this tact because rather than loading down Christians with loads of dogmatic stances it freed them to serve God with the openness that Jesus taught his first disciples. In fact, Wesley based his acceptance of others who thought differently based on some simple questions: [and I paraphrase]

· Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, God over all, forever?

· Is your faith filled with the energy of love?

· Are you busy doing ‘not your own will, but the will of him that sent you?’

· Does the love of God cause you to serve with fear and reverence?

· Do you love your neighbor as you do yourself?

· Do you show your love by your works?

Wesley concluded that if you answer “yes” to these questions, your faith was indeed Christian and you a part of Christ’s catholic (or universal) church. He then says, “If it be, ‘give me thine hand.’ I do not mean, ‘be of my opinion.’ You need not. I do not expect nor desire it. Neither do I mean, ‘I will be of your opinion.’ I cannot…let all opinions alone on one side and the other. ‘Only give me thine hand.’” [5]

I don’t believe Jesus put new or old believers in God to memorizing any dogmas of systematic theology. Love is simple. Faith is simple. Following Jesus may be difficult, but thank God, it too remains simple. If you too, can agree with these simple truths, I, on behalf of the Church invite you to ‘take my hand.’ In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen!

[1] http://jokes.aspcode.net/Complicated-jokes.aspx

[3] http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:http://www.redmarbles.iblog.co.za/2008/10/08/selfless-love/

[4] Keith Miller and Bruce Larson, The Edge of Adventure, http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/f/faith.htm