A PLACE FOR SIMPLE PIETY
Micah 6:6-8; Matthew 6:1-13; 24-34
Somewhere at a younger age, and I really don’t remember when, I
remember that, not when, I played for church for the very first time.
My piano teacher was the regular organist and pianist for the church. I
think I played the prelude, maybe in night church, as we called it, and as
we had back then (and mercifully don’t any more). I don’t remember if it
was much more.
We had some great aunts of mine that lived in my great-grandparents
family home in Northeast Mississippi. We would go visit them often and
they were the kinds of folks that always found a way to keep up with all of
the nieces and nephews, great nieces and great nephews; and they were
always very interested in our lives.
Well, somehow in the midst of the conversations that went on, the word
never got out that I had played for church—and I decided somehow that
the conversation needed to be about ‘me.’ Finally, unable to stand it any
longer I said to my mother, “Momma, do you know why they needed
someone to play the prelude in church last Sunday?”
I was very young, really I was, and I somehow think I will long regret
telling this. But, I was grateful that my mother was more than willing to
tell my relatives that I had played for church for the first time. I was
grateful that no one weighed in with Jesus’ words we just read: “Beware
of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for
then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. When you give, do
not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your
Father who sees in secret will reward you. In fact, pray in secret, for your
Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
----------------------We’ve spent many weeks recently (and we aren’t done yet) in what is
called Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, his description of what it means to
be a follower of his, what his teachings for all of us are if we are to
identify ourselves with him. It was a common practice in his day for
teachers/rabbis to have students who wanted certain things that would
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identify them as disciples of these teachers—how to give, how to pray,
how to live.
And so Jesus gives, as it were, his picture of piety. Note, he doesn’t say,
don’t practice piety. Rather, in some ways he rejects being pious. Pious
for Jesus can mean being holier-than-thou, parading one’s righteousness.
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was once described as a person who
was pious, but not principled.
Unlike being pious—parading public religion while living lives far from
the life Jesus calls us to live--piety is about character, specifically the
character of faith, the practices, attitudes, that identify us as followers of
a certain way of being. “What would Jesus do?” is an expression of piety.
Jesus does not condemn piety. He condemns the pious. When you
practice your piety, don’t do it to be seen by others. Still give, still pray,
but in a way that is concerned with what God sees, what God thinks, not
what others see or think.
-------------------At the heart of Jesus’ piety is what John Calvin later called simplicity. As
John Leith writes: “Simplicity is a recurring theme in all of Calvin’s
writings…He was the enemy of the ostentatious, the pompous, the
contrived, the needlessly complicated…Simplicity is closely related to
Calvin’s emphasis on authenticity and sincerity.”*
Simplicity was at the heart of how Jesus taught the faith, and simplicity
isn’t far from integrity, that being the same inside and out, in public and
in private. And I think that’s what Jesus is about in these words he gives
about how his followers should look and behave—namely, simply,
honestly.
When you pray, don’t heap up words, he said, go into your closet and
pray the simplest prayer that you could ever pray to your heavenly
Father. Pray for the big things—God’s kingdom to come, God’s will to be
done. Pray for the small things, daily bread. Pray for help—lead us not
into temptation, deliver us from evil.
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Don’t make it complicated. Keep it simple. And I wonder if that’s what
Jesus is getting at when he starts to talk to us about worry. “Do not worry
about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your
body what you will wear. Life is more than food, the body more than
clothing.” Maybe he’s telling us that if we keep things simple, we have
less to worry about—Jesus says it better (he usually does), Do not worry
about tomorrow—tomorrow has enough trouble of its own, let the day’s
troubles take care of today.
Let me try out Jesus’ words in a modern translation called “The Message”
that maybe can have the same effect on us that Jesus’ words had when
they first heard him. Here goes: 7-13 “The world is full of so-called
prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and
programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want
from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are
dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God
like this loving you, you can pray very simply.
“Don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes
in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food
you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes
you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied
down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far
more to him than birds.
27-29 “Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by
so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you
think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions,
walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or
shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten bestdressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.
30-33 “If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—
most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you,
take pride in you, do his best for you? People who don’t know God and
the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how
he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions.
Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human
concerns will be met.
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----------------------------“Don’t fuss.” Do you like that better? I do (but don’t fuss at me if you
don’t). Fussing over things is sort of like heaping up words to show that
we care. So, Jesus’ invitation for us not to worry is about keeping it
simple. It’s rooted in a basic wisdom about life. “You can’t worry about
tomorrow because tomorrow has enough trouble of its own,” he says,
quoting a common aphorism of his day. There is that which isn’t given
for us to solve, to fix. Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller declared, “I have
accepted the universe,” to which someone responded, “She’d better.”
But, I like to think Jesus takes us a step farther than just accepting what
we cannot change. I like to think Jesus is wanting to picture for us the
character, the piety, the type of person it is who is his follower. And at its
very basic point, he is saying that the person who follows him doesn’t
have to worry—doesn’t have to fuss over things.
No doubt we do, you do, I do. We are anxious over tomorrow. We’re
convinced that unless we do this today, unless this decision is made now,
unless we teach our children this now, unless we get this matter tended
now, that the end results will be disastrous. I knew a very good teacher
in a religious college who would tell his students, “Just do your job, study
and prepare. The results are not yours to control (even if they were his).”
We keep thinking that if we don’t do everything perfectly now, make
perfect decisions now, plan out everything now, come up with perfect
schemes now, that disaster awaits us in the future. Truthfully, it may, or
it may not, but I’m guessing it may not have a lot to do with what we
decide now. Our calling is to do our best, in service to God and our
neighbor. Beyond that we cannot control the results.
------------------------As I tell personal stories this morning, I will say I’m blessed to have more
than one engineer in my immediate and extended family. Sometimes I
think they exhibit more faith than any preacher could, maybe because
they understand how things work, but also humbly understand what
doesn’t work.
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I was talking with one of my engineer relatives about various worries,
church worries, financial worries, family worries. He doesn’t profess to
be especially religious, instead I think he embraces the kind of honest
faith that Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount. He said, “You
know what the problem is, we don’t believe in God.” It was not a
condemnation. It was a reminder that all we can do is our best, and then
we must trust God with the results, which are beyond our control.
And I think that is where Jesus points us. He’s not saying, “Stop
worrying,” or at least I hope he isn’t. Rather, he is saying, if you are
someone who follows me, maybe you don’t have to worry so much, you
can trust in the God who feeds the birds, and cares for the lilies of the
field. Strive to realize his kingdom here on earth, strive to attain his
perfect righteousness, his perfectly righteous and merciful love. Then
trust that what you need is given you, and that God knows what that is.
---------------Ultimately the faith to which Jesus calls us, however demanding it may
be, is completely simple. It is one that exhibits a quiet confidence that
God is good, that God’s intentions for us all are good, that God’s creation
in which we are called to live is good.
So maybe we can practice our piety without being pious: to pray with a
belief that God hears; to manage the affairs of life in hopes that God
wishes our well-being; to obey and seek God’s perfect and peaceful
kingdom, even to the point of not worrying over our own well being as we
seek that kingdom and God’s righteousness. If we just keep our piety
simple, that may be just enough for today—and then maybe we don’t
have to worry about the rest.
Will Berger
Historic Franklin Presbyterian Church
February 16, 2014
*John Leith, Introduction to the Reformed Tradition, 83f.
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