And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
Luke 2:7, KJV
When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
Matthew 8:18–22
Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”
John 4:6–7
The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the king of Israel!”
Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written: “Do not be afraid, Daughter of Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.”
John 12:12–15
When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’;
but you have made it ‘a den of robbers’.”
Luke 19:45–46
And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.
Mark 15:20
The life of Jesus starts with being born in a stable, continues with becoming a refugee, passes with barely a nod through his years earning his living as a carpenter, and moves on to his ministry as an itinerant preacher and healer wandering in the hills and by the lakeside before climaxing in his death outside the city gates, stripped naked and pinned on a cross, his body laid in the borrowed tomb of a friend. Somehow you can spot radical simplicity as an emergent theme!
Possibly the most challenging thing Jesus ever said is: “Those of you who do
not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples” (Luke 14:33).
We quietly put our cream cake back untasted on the plate and turn the central heating down a degree or two. What are we to make of this? In Jesus we have seen hope. We have experienced his healing and his joy. We have been taught that believing in him is the way to heaven. But this? Give up everything? Really? There is no way round this. Jesus did actually say it. Perhaps we have to bear in mind what the ancient Chinese sage Lao Tsu said: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”
Giving up everything surely begins with giving up something. We can start
by decluttering our homes and schedules and by living more simply and frugally, reviewing our lives to see where we can begin introducing habits of simplicity. If we make this a pattern in our lives, maybe we can inch our way towards obedience, until we live with creative necessity.
Beloved Jesus, some of your teachings are hard to understand, and harder still to follow. Help us to get this one right, and to remain true to you, embracing the kind of simplicity that can walk with you all the way home. Amen.
