The Faith Of Simple Folk
Luke 2:22-38
I have an embarrassing confession to make. I realized only a few days ago
what Luke is trying to do in this text. For years I had read it and made the
unwarranted assumption that old Simeon was a priest. Simeon was a priest and
Anna was a prophetess — good balance and symmetry. But something about
the text kept nagging me. Then I realized what it was. Simeon was not a priest
at all. He was a simple old man — a layman — an ordinary person.
And Anna was not an official prophetess. She was merely a devout old woman who
came to the temple a lot. Luke was only underlining a point he had begun to make
by telling about the shepherds who were called from their fields and flocks to
worship Christ: The coming of Christ was to simple folk! Luke, did you notice,
doesn't even tell the story of the wise men; that's Matthew. Luke's whole concern,
in the stories surrounding the birth of Jesus, is to emphasize one thing: Christianity
is based on the faith of simple folk.
Come to think of it, that's what Luke's whole Gospel is about. It's what
the book of Acts is about. It wasn't the priests and Pharisees who received the
kingdom of God, it was the lay people, the untutored, the untrained, the unsophisticated.
It was simple fishermen like James and John and Peter. It was unimportant public
officials like Matthew. It was women like Mary and Martha and Mary Magdalene.
Christianity, my friends, has never been a religion of priests and theologians,
ministers and teachers; from the very beginning it has been a religion of devout
men and women with no claim whatsoever to professional expertise about their
faith. This is important to remember.
I once heard a group of ministers talking at a minister's conference. They
were complaining about how they were treated by their various congregations.
One of them said, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could have churches without
people—just ministers?!" But that would be impossible, wouldn't it?
God never intended for the church to be an organization of ministers. What he
did intend for it to be is an organization of lay persons, all "righteous
and devout," like old Simeon, all devoted to fasting and prayer, like old
Anna, and all ready, in simple faith, to receive his kingdom and rejoice in it.
Ministers, in Christianity, are expendable; good, simple folk are not!
When I think back across my years as a Christian and recall the persons
who have blessed me most by their witness to Christ, there are very few ministers
and theologians on the list. There are far more wonderful lay persons. I remember
Lillian Vaughn, a secretary, who clasped her hands and squealed with delight
at the presence of God, and Wallace Ping, a shop worker, whose faith had converted
him so completely that his face shone with an inner beauty. I remember Willie
Creech, a beautiful, unlettered man who looked up from a hospital bed after his
back was broken in a car wreck and had tears in his eyes for the goodness of
God that had spared his life, and old Mrs. Mullins, who lived for years as a
cheerful widow, always praying for the day when she would be reunited with her
husband. There was iron in those people, and gentleness and tenderness,
because faith had put it there. I never met a minister or theologian who was
their equal!
People expect ministers to have a lot of faith, and I suppose most of us
do, at one time or another, or we wouldn't be in the ministry at all. But our
faith is often beaten down or wrung out from having to deal with so many problems,
from always being exposed to the seamy side of life. And at such times it is
the faith of lay folks that does more than anything to restore us, to reinfuse
in us a sense of hope and joy and expectation.
This is not to say that there is not a lot of wrong headedness among lay
folks—a lot of spite and willfulness and confused theology. Any minister
could write a book about the shortcomings of his or her congregation, and some
ministers have. We have all felt at times like the Rev. Will B. Dunn, in the
comic strip Kudzu. "I like to think of myself as a shepherd," says
Will, "and you, the congregation, as my flock." "And of course," he
continues, "it grieves the shepherd when his sheep go astray." "Baaa!" somebody
says. All over the congregation the sound arises: "Baa! Baa! Baa!" "Let's
face it," says Will.
"The sheep are startin' to get on the shepherd's nerves!"
It is the faith of simple folk, nevertheless—folk uncontaminated
by theological education and constant contact with the inner workings of the
church—on which the church of Jesus Christ stands.
I can go into a prayer breakfast at seven o'clock on Monday morning, when
the world is going to hell in a hand basket and the village clock strikes thirteen,
and hear one good layperson after another baring his or her heart for this person
who is ill or that one who is having a hard time in life or an other who has
received some bad news and I walk away at eight o'clock ready to take on fifteen
devils, the nuclear arms problem, and the IRS. Luke knew what he was writing
about, that common folks, lay people, are the backbone of the church.
Look at them. Look at yourselves. You take God at his word. God
says to Abraham, "Abraham, leave your home, go out into the wilderness,
I want you to found a new dynasty, a new people that will be special"; and
Abraham goes, just like that. God says, "Moses, go down to the pharaoh of
Egypt and demand the release of my people." Moses says, "God, I'm not
very good at that sort of thing. God says, "I know you're not, but I'll
be with you." And Moses goes. God says, "Peter, go over to Greece and
help those people over there to become Christians." Peter says,
"Lord, they're not good Jews." God says, "You think I don't know
that? I want you to go and help them to become Christians." And Peter goes.
It's that way all through history. God says, "Go there, do this," and
his simple folk say, "Yes, Lord, I will." You take God at his word,
you do what he asks. No equivocation, no beating around the bush, you just do
it.
I remember Sam Flynn, who was a member of the first church I ever pastored.
Sam was a simple, uneducated man who eked out a small living for himself, his
wife, and three little children out of a few hardscrabble acres of farmland.
When pledging time came at the church, Sam came in with a pledge far higher than
he could afford. I said, "Sam, this is too much. God doesn't want you to
short your family for the sake of the church." Sam said,
"That's what God told me to give, and I have to do it. He'll take care of
us. I know he will." He took God at his word.
Look again: You build your lives around faith. People build their
lives around all sorts of things. Some build them around houses and some around
race Tracks and some around big bank accounts and some around social standing
and some around education. God's good folk build them around faith.
In England's Winchester Cathedral, near the Lady Chapel, there is a pedestal
bearing the brass figure of William Walker, a diver, who is credited with saving
the cathedral with his own hands. In the early part of this century there was
fear that the cathedral would collapse because of rotten underpinnings, and there
was no money to replace them. From 1906 to 1912, working at night and on weekends,
William Walker single handedly replaced all the underpinnings, working for no
compensation and paying for the materials out of his own earnings. He did it
because his whole life was built around the Christian faith. There were others
who could have afforded to do the work much easier than he, whose lives were
built around other things. But he did it because his life was built around faith.
Dame Edith Sitwell, one of the most famous intellectuals of our time, became
a Christian because of the serenity she had seen on the faces of peasant women
praying in the churches of Italy. What she saw—and envied—were lives
built around faith.
And look once more: You move toward death with unswerving acceptance.
I wish all of you could have known Norman Walker during the last months of his
life. Norm suffered as painfully and ignominiously as any person could: A vital,
good looking man in his fifties, hard worker, world traveler, attacked by cancer
of the throat and jaw, operated on, treated with chemicals, got to the point
where he couldn't eat anything, his body wasting away, his hair fallen out, his
face distorted by the disease. But through it all, through all the horrible months
of waiting and wasting away, his eyes glowed with softness and kindness and faith. "I've
prayed about it," he said, "and made my peace." He knew he was
going toward God, that the Father's arms would be there to receive him.
I've always liked G. K. Chesterton's description of the early Christian
martyrs: "They went forward toward death as if they smelled a field of flowers
afar off." Norm went that way. A lot of folks can't. They go like Dylan
Thomas, cursing the darkness. But the simple folk of God know better. They may
not want to leave their loved ones behind, but when the time comes they're not
afraid. They know they go to something better, to a life of beauty and glory
and riches this world only dreams of.
"Now let your servant depart in peace," said old Simeon. He had
seen God's salvation in Christ. That was all he needed to see. He was ready to
go. It's all any of us need, isn't it?
Christianity is based on the faith of simple folk. That's why this memorial
Sunday is so important, when we remember all those beautiful souls in the Lord
who have gone before us and made such an impression on us that gifts have been
made to the church and through the church in their names. Go home and read the
list of them again. Dwell on the names and your memories of them. Ask God to
help you to be like them, and to be a witness to faith in your time as they were
in theirs. It will do you good. It is faith like theirs that keeps this church
alive.
Queen Victoria, against the advice of the Archbishop of Canterbury, once
took communion at the Church of Scotland in the little village of Crathle, near
Balmoral, where the English monarchs have a home. The church register for the
day quaintly records the attendance by profession. It reads: "Shepherds,
12; Servants, 11; Queens, 1." I thought I might start a Christmas sermon
with that someday. Instead, I'd like to end this one with it. What it says is
that the common folks are always in the majority in church, and it is their faith
that perpetuates everything. The queens may come and go; it is the shepherds
and servants, year in and year out, who maintain the church.
"God bless us, every one."
John Killinger