The word “simple” can be used in two very different ways. On the one hand, if something is simple it can be sparse yet efficient. On the other hand, if something is simple, it can be lacking in something.
If a woman gets a new cell phone, and finds it easy to use, she says, “That’s simple.” In this case the word “simple” implies something that is well designed and implemented. That is a good thing.
However, if a teacher looks over the work of a student and calls him “simple,” that is not very good at all. He is unable to handle abstract concepts and advanced learning. It implies that the student is lacking in a crucial area of his development.
It is this second definition of “simple” that Wisdom has in mind when she calls out to those with ears to hear saying:
5 “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. 6 Leave simpleness, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” Proverbs 9:1-6
In the context of this passage the author of Proverbs is urging a program of wisdom and insight, and I am quite sure that the program he prefers is that which he himself lays out.
The book of Proverbs is a wonderful depository of wisdom that is both practical and spiritual. Billy Graham once said that he read a chapter of Proverbs everyday. That is not a bad idea. I myself have picked up some very practical advice from the book of Proverbs. Let me whet your appetite with a few examples.
In Proverbs 18:16 we read, “A man’s gift makes room for him, and brings him before great men.” I once went to see a very busy pastor. I carried with me a book that I thought he would enjoy reading. I knocked on his door and presented it to him. He invited me in, and we talked for hours. I gained much valuable insight. Eventually, he invited me to stay for an evening as a guest in his home.
In Proverbs 27:10 we read, “Better is a neighbor, who is nearby than a brother who is far away.” Elayne and I bought the house we bought because we met the neighbors, and decided we wanted to live in their neighborhood. We have never regretted our choice.
On of my favorite admonishments is found in Proverbs 6:10 and 11. There we read:
A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, 11 and poverty will come upon you like a vagabond, and want like an armed (robber). (6:10-11)
I recently lunched with a friend. He told me that his son, a 3rd year college student had not worked all summer. He said his son slept late, watched TV all day, and rose up only at night to go out with his friends, coming home at zero-dark-thirty. My friend had been paying for his son’s tuition; but this year, when it came time for him to pay for his fall semester, his father refused to give him any money. He told him that life would not reward idleness and neither would he. The boy said, “But I want to go to school.” My friend then helped his son arrange for a student loan. Now it is quite possible that neither my friend nor his son has ever read this Proverb; but had the son done so, he would have graduated college with a lot less debt.
Wisdom calls to us and invites us to gain insight. Immediately we do, we begin to appreciate the virtue of simplicity.
Take our language, for example. When I was in college, I read somewhere that Hemingway tried to keep the average length of his sentences to 8 words. When asked how to write, Ernest Hemingway said, “Use nouns and verbs, nouns and verbs.” That advice helped me make it through many a term paper.
So did a little book written by William Strunk, Jr. and edited by E.B. White entitled, The Elements of Style. It is only 85 pages long, but it has been the best selling English grammar in the world for decades.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines, and a machine no necessary parts.
I believe that our Moravian Unity is elegant for its simplicity.
Take this matter of doctrine. The Ground of the Unity declares:
The Unitas Fratrum recognizes the Word of the Cross as the center of Holy Scripture and of all preaching of the Gospel and it sees its primary mission, and its reason for being, to consist in bearing witness to this joyful message.
Why is the cross the center? It is the center because it is the cross of God’s Christ. The cross is not the bad end of a good man. It is a road traveled once for all by our now victorious Lord and Savior. When Moravians make the cross the center of Holy Scripture, we are not forgetting or denying the resurrection. We are speaking as Paul spoke when he wrote that he determined “to know nothing among (the Corinthians) except Christ and him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:2) In making this statement Paul was looking back through the lens of the resurrection, by which Jesus was “designated Son of God in power,” (Romans 1:4) to the obedience and sacrifice of the cross that lay behind the resurrection.
Philippians 2 says it all:
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:5-11
We Moravians have always lifted up the cross of Christ. Today the cross of Christ is more important that ever before. P. T. Forsyth, the great Scottish scholar, says that the cross is not just for the justification of humanity before God, but the justification of God before humanity.
Perhaps you remember the play, “Green Pastures.” Two angels are in heaven. One looks down upon the earth and sees all the sin and corruption, and humankind’s inhumanity to humankind, and says, “How can God ever forgive them?” The other looks down and sees all the disappointment, and pain, and grief, and suffering of humankind and responds, “How can God ever forgive himself?”
The cross is the answer to both questions. As the old song says, “It is the trysting place where heavenly love and heavenly justice meet.” How can God prove himself righteous by punishing sin and yet merciful by forgiving us? Short answer: The Cross. It is God’s plan to secure our forgiveness. And how do we know that God is good? Because we know that in the heart of God, there is a cross. God does not just sit in the heavens and laugh at our human predicament. In the person of the Eternal Son God robes God’s Divinity in human flesh and becomes one of us. Only the Christian can look to his or her God and say, “He loved me, and gave himself for me.”
We Moravians know that there are many points of question with regard to the Christian faith, but only one point of decision. We know that when we decide whether God created the world in 6 days or in 13.7 billion years, or whether Moses wrote all of the Pentateuch, or whether Luke wrote Acts and Paul wrote Ephesians, we don’t decide anything. God decided those things long ago. We know that the only real decision a person makes is whether he or she will accept God’s offer of grace, and the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The question that Jesus Christ puts to each of us is the question he put to Peter? “Who do you say that I am?”
I have recently returned from Unity Synod. Moravians were present from 19 Unity Provinces and a number of Mission Provinces. I sat at table with people from Guyana, Surinam, the East West Indies, Tanzania, the Congo, England, Holland, and Germany, among others. We agreed on some things, and we disagreed on others. Over and over again I heard people from the Provinces quote our motto:
In Essentials, Unity;
In Non-Essentials, Liberty;
In All Things, Love.
I also heard them discuss the Essentials. They varied from delegate to delegate. However, when we turned to the Unity Book of Order we discovered a simplicity on the far side of all complexity. There the one essential is described as, “a heart relationship with the triune God who reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” FN1
While at Unity Synod, I discovered. Examples of the heart religion:
First I would tell of a beautiful black woman from South Africa, a land that suffered under Apartheid until quite recently. I would tell how she wrote a play praising the work of George Schmidt, the Moravian missionary who went to South Africa to tell the blacks about God’s love. It is a story that still moves the Moravians in South Africa. And I am amazed that, despite the pain of Apartheid, they love Moravians and people around the world regardless of race, simply for the sake of the Savior Schmidt proclaimed.
Next, I would tell you of a brother from the Czech Republic. He looked like a pro-football player, muscles on muscles. He told he us that, at one time he was a ballet dance. The Russians imprisoned this man’s father in Siberia. For eleven years his father suffered tortures that you and I cannot imagine. After becoming a Christian, this brother from the Czech Republic started a mission in Siberia, preaching the good news about God’s forgiveness, to the very nation that once tortured his father.
Next, I would tell you of a delegate from Tanzania who lived in a village that was at odds with a neighboring village. One night, a man from the other village broke into his hut and stole his infant child, and then drowned his child in the river. It was an unbelievable pain in his heart; but, after he heard the preaching of the gospel, that man accepted Christ, and became a Moravian Pastor, and now he preaches in the same village, perhaps to the same people that drowned his daughter.
The story of the Moravian Church is a simple one. We have never produced famous preachers, or world class theologians. We have produced some notable missionaries, and a host of disciples of every color from around the world who have discovered the power of the Gospel. When I heard their stories, I wanted to say with Paul, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, it is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe.” That, I think, is the wisdom of the ages. It is the simplicity on the far-side of all complexity. It is the simple truth that makes life worth living, and gives us hope for the future that is coming to us in Jesus Christ, whom God has made unto us, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.
I pray God that is some way, small or great, each of us might have the opportunity to demonstrate our heart relationship before a world that is hungry for a faith that satisfies.
Finis
FN1: I recently preached a series of Sermons entitled “The Eight Essentials.” The series was a reference to those things Moravian Synods had once declared essential. I believe that each of them can be demonstrated to grow out of the one essential mentioned above. WNG