Sermon: "Simplicity and Margin"

5th in the "Soul Training" series.
Delivered March 21, 2010 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Sermon Text: Daniel 1:6:10

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Well, one of the responsibilities I have that comes with my job is doing funerals. And that is really, depending on the life of the person, may not be that bad a thing. I mean, it's actually a blessing if you're doing the funeral of someone who knew God, and lived a long life of expressing that relationship with God, holding on to God and living in the kind of relationships and the kind of lifestyle that bears so much fruit. It's actually an amazing experience, and one that has blessed me a number of times.

And one of the things that comes up often in times like that is they lived a long and full life. It's a great thing to have said about you, to live a long life, and it was full. Whenever we say that, whether it's me saying it as the pastor, or whether it's somebody who is giving a eulogy, it's always a good thing, and something that we rejoice in even as we grieve the loss of this person.

But many of us aren't living full lives. We're living over-filled lives. It's not the same thing as a full life. It's certainly not better than a full life. Over-filled can be the enemy of full. Now you might disagree because you can think of an immediate image, maybe, from Scripture, about overflowing life. It's the picture of a cup; Psalm 23. "My cup overflows." It's a beautiful image. God puts so many things into our lives: people who care about us, people whom we love, good health, good food, good memories, and beautiful spring days like we've been having this week. And our life just fills up with them, and then it cascades out and blesses others.

It's a picture of abundance, but you know one of the things about a cup is you can never over-fill it. It gets full, and then all the rest spills out. And the picture of our lives is as filled to the brim, and then it cascades over and blesses others. And it's a beautiful image that we have in Scripture, but it's not the only picture we can have of abundance.

We can look at it other ways, and (Ryan I would like your help on this). We can view abundance differently. Where if we start putting things into our lives: it's activities, it's possessions, it's all the commitments we have, it's our involvement even in church. The skin of our life gets taut, the color fades, and it pops. Over-filled is not better than full. Over-filled can be the enemy of full.

There are at least two areas in American life where we over-fill, where it's not cascading over, it's filling up and it's stretching out, it's ready to pop. Two areas at least. One is the area of possessions. American life is over-filled with possessions. We had enough; we were full a long time ago. We've been over-filling ever since. Down in my basement there are twenty years of computer history. Now, it's not all the computers I've owned, just the special ones that I don't want to let go of. Totally useless! I have the first model Mac portable, you know, a laptop. It has 20 megabytes of disk memory. I can't get rid of that stuff. It's right next to the 1998 Tupperware and the 1972 Tiger band cup. And there is something next to it that I don't know what it is.

But your basement is just the same. American homes are bigger than they've ever been before, and yet we're all buying, renting self-storage space for all the stuff we can't fit in our basements and our attics. Over-filled. And even if we're not at that moment of hyper-abundance in our own life, we're still pumping it out because we're worried. And so it's the worry that is pumping up and stretching life out, because we're afraid that somehow we're supposed to be in that other place. Over-filled can be the enemy of a full life.

Another area where we're over-full is activities. Wake up at 5:30 to answer emails, then we have time-consuming commutes, all kinds of extracurricular activities for the kids, only three out of five are home for dinner, at 9:00 there is still one who isn't at home, at 11:00 we're still awake, we go back to the email for the third, fourth, fifth, sixth time of the day, and this time we also check out Facebook, we get to bed maybe midnight, knowing that tomorrow it all starts again. The weekends aren't better. Saturday and Sunday, dawn to dusk, all kinds of commitments. Then Monday, emails at 5:30, and it all starts again.

We have so many choices, and we have the money to join these opportunities, the transportation to get there, so we try to do it all until life pops. Stressed out, burned out, sleep-deprived, grumpy. Things that we used to love to do are now a chore. Over-filled.

We're going to take a look at Daniel today to see some choices he made that might actually help us. Daniel is a very famous Old Testament character. He had amazing prophetic visions; he was considered one of the most righteous people in all of the Old Testament. He lived a generation earlier than Nehemiah, who we studied last week, and Daniel lived in exile as well. But the reason we're looking at Daniel today is not all of those things, but it's because he worked in secular life.

He had a normal job. He wasn't a missionary, he wasn't a minister, and he wasn't an apostle. Because we can make excuses for all those people, they don't do normal things. They are focusing one-hundred percent on this idea of serving God and the kingdom. But here is Daniel, a guy who is in the government bureaucracy. And so the choices he made are choices that can be meaningful to us. And he was also rich. Here is a righteous man who had a certain amount of wealth for his days. He was born to a wealthy family; he lived in the king's court his entire life. He did pretty well for himself. And yet Daniel made some choices that kept his life from being overwhelmed by the world around him, and I'd like us to look at how that all started.

We're going to go to Daniel 1; we're going to read the whole chapter. Daniel, chapter 1, you'll find that on page 805 of the Bible that is under the seat in front of you. We're going to read the whole chapter, so you can sit back a little bit and just listen to the story.

Lord, help us to hear, help us to believe, and help us to respond. For we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.

"In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god.

Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility- young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king's palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king's service.

Among these were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego.

But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel, but the official told Daniel, 'I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.'

Daniel then said to the guard, whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, 'Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.' So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.

At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead. To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.

At the end of the time set by the king to bring them in, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king's service. In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom. And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus."

Daniel is born into a noble family, he is rich, but at a bad time in history. The country is conquered in war, and all the people are brought to Babylonia, and he goes into exile. But among them, he is one of the lucky ones because the kind of service he is put into allows him to life in the king's court, and he gets all the advantages of living in the opulence of the king's palace.

The king wanted to train certain people who were from noble birth and seemed to be particularly intelligent so they could be scribes, diplomats, governors, and advisors in his kingdom. And in order to train for that, there were certain things they had to do. Their names were changed, they went through three years of teaching, and they were fed the finest food from the king's table.

What is interesting is Daniel doesn't object to the foreign name, even though the foreign name included in almost every case some reference to a Babylonian god. He doesn't object to being taught from all the wisdom of the Babylonians, even though almost certainly that included a lot of Babylonian religion, and probably also included things like astrology.

What he opposes, where he draws the line, is on the food. And people have often thought, "Well maybe this is because he is trying to keep kosher." But what is a little odd about that is because Daniel knew that wine was allowed in kosher food. We could understand avoiding the meat, but even vegetables could be stored improperly and no longer be kosher. So the whole thing of going for the vegetables without the wine is not purely a matter of trying to obey the law. Something more is going on.

Maybe he wants to avoid things that are devoted to other gods. But everything is devoted to other gods; all the foods, even the vegetables. Maybe it's because he is an early vegetarian, just wants to avoid meat, you know, and be healthier. But we see Daniel later in his life more than willing to eat meat and drink wine.

So what is going on his life right now is that he is drawing a line in his life. The best way we can understand what Daniel is doing is that he is turning down something he is entitled to, something that is good and abundant, in order to resist total assimilation. Somewhere in his life, he is trying to say, "I am more than just a servant to this king. My debt is to something bigger than this society I've been called into." He chose less in order to be more.

He was more than just the king's new employee; he was a Jew, a servant of the Most High God, and somewhere in his life he had to show that that reality was still at work in his heart. It was an inner thing. He chose simplicity, choosing not to live to the limit of what he could get. He could have had more; he chose not to. And that reminded him of his identity. It was a fight; the powers around him didn't like the choice, but God blessed it anyway.

So where do we draw the line to show that we are more than what our culture defines us as being? In other words, our culture says we're consumers. "The American consumer." That is us. "Welcome, American consumer." Where do you draw the line to show that you're really more than that? Do we look any different than everybody else who has accepted that they are a consumer? How do we resist total assimilation? Jesus said that life consists of more than the abundance of our possessions. Where do we make it clear that we choose to believe that and live it? How do we live a full life instead of an over-filled life?

Later in Daniel's life, he shows us again that he is willing to make a choice. In this first case, he chose simplicity. He was entitled to more, but he chose less. The other spot we're going to look at in Daniel's life is very famous: even people who aren't Jews and Christians know this story. It's in Daniel 6; Daniel and the lions' den. Many of us know what happens.

You know, Daniel has come to a point of prominence that other people are envying him. So these people conspire, talk to the king, convince the king to make an edict that anyone who worships anybody but the king for 30 days is going to be thrown into the lions' den. And they were hoping that Daniel would, you know, stick up for just worshiping God and get himself into trouble. And indeed that is what happened. Daniel did what he always did, he worshiped God only, he is caught, he is thrown into the lions' den, he is miraculously preserved much to the king's pleasure, the king who got him in the trouble in the first place. And then the people who accuse him are thrown into the lions' den instead, and they are all devoured.

It's not a G-rated Bible story, it's sort of PG-13, for its violence. Now, I don't want to look at the whole story, I want to look at one verse right in the middle of that story that shows us something about the choices Daniel made. It comes in chapter 6, verse 10.

"Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before."

Note what is really important here: three times a day he went back to his home and prayed "just as he did before." When this life-threatening crisis arrives, Daniel doesn't decide, "Uh-oh, now I have to do something in my life to be ready for this." And he doesn't decide to oppose it through making a poster and demonstrating on the street. What he does is what he did every day already, which was go to his apartment and pray three times a day. Wealthy, powerful, important, busy Daniel. Daniel who is capable in the king's eye of running the entire kingdom. This guy had carved out time every day to leave his place of work, go to his apartment on the royal grounds, and pray three times every day.

Daniel has made open space in his life. It's like the empty spaces on the edge of page that help us to read the page better. It's margin. Not living to the very limit of what he could do. Margins are really important in life. If you're by the edge of the Grand Canyon, and you're 10 feet back and somebody bumps into you, it's no problem at all, because you have all this room, you can stumble. But if you're on the edge and you're leaning over, and somebody bumps you, it can be life and death. It's a matter of margin.

Lack of margin is when we're 30 minutes late for an important doctor's appointment because we were 20 minutes late dropping our kids off because we added three things that we just had to do before we left the house in the first place. When we have margin financially, when we've socked some savings away and a crisis happens, it's not as big a crisis as if we're living to the very edges of what we can afford.

Margin is important, and so he made the decision not to live to the very limit of what he could do. He actually stepped back from some of it in order to make room for something better. He models two things for us: simplicity and margin. These are our spiritual disciplines for this week as we end our series on Soul Training. Simplicity, not living to the limit of what you can get. Margin, not living to the limit of what you can do. Both are part of a full, and not over-filled, life.

Now, I want to share a few suggestions on how to get started on making more progress in simplicity and margin. These are just mine, you're going to actually have to decide your own, because we're all different. But one of my favorites in creating that emotional space to not be oppressed by the values of our culture is talking back to commercials. I mean this is one of my favorite evening activities. It's a noisy place.

Okay, when a beer commercial comes on, and a guy picks out the right beer, and he is surrounded by beautiful women, you know, it's like, "Yeah, that is the way it works. I buy the right beer, and all of a sudden all the beautiful women are going to come to be around!" Come on! I talk back to cars, insurance policies, various medications, some of which I could probably use, but hey, I'm talking back. Maybe we need to look at what we watch on TV and recognize that some things are more important that others to us.

It's not all equal; not all TV is equal. For me, NCIS is something I have to see or I have to tape it if I'm not there to see it. Okay? I see that hand! Okay. But I found myself at one stage in my life here in Baltimore where I was going home early, I was kind of worn out. And if I got home before dinner, I was watching this period of time around 4:00 to 5:30, 6:00 on TV. It is the absolute worst time imaginable. There is nothing about, you can have 75 channels, there is nothing on. And I realized if I were going to make some space to read something of value or to pray, I'd rather take that time than NCIS.

So maybe you have a pattern in watching TV, or maybe it is in what you spend time doing on the Internet. Some things are more important than others, cut the ones that are less important out as a first step of defining who you are and making room in your life for something bigger.

Here is another suggestion: give people you love more time and less things. You know, giving your kids a great MP3 player will never make up for not being there. But sometimes putting margin in your life means spending less time with people. You know, if you're dating someone fairly seriously and they live in the southern part of Baltimore, and you're trying to get together every day for as many hours as possible, maybe actually creating margin, drawing the line might actually be saying, "Let's just get together three times a week. And maybe we'll have more to offer each other by not being pushed to the very limits." Anyway, you have your own things, your own places where you can draw the line. The principle, though, is, the point is over-filled is the enemy of full.

When I die, I don't want people to be standing up there and talking to everybody else about how much I owned. It's not going to matter; it will mean I have lost. I certainly don't want them talking about how much junk was in my basement. I also don't want them to talk about how important I was. "Yeah, he was a man, and you could tell he was changing the world, man. Always going somewhere, always getting something done."

When they're talking about me, I want them to say that, "He was a man who knew God," that, "Somehow he lived enough with the truth that we could believe that what he said wasn't hypocrisy." I want people to be able to say that as near as they could tell, I tried to serve God, my family, my church, and the world around me the best that I could.

When we get to that point in life, I hope they say, "He lived a long and full life," in the very best sense of the word I hope they're saying that. And an over-filled life can be an enemy of that full life, and spiritual disciplines are one of the ways we learn to fight those enemies.

Let's pray. Lord, you know what we struggle with in our lives. You know how much we need the work of your Spirit, how much we need new strength, wisdom. In all of this, Lord, we give ourselves to you in a new way, and pray that you might make us aware of the things, give us the strength about the things to be able to move forward in having a full life and not an over-filled one. For we ask these things in Jesus' name, Amen.

© 2010, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org