With Simple Joy

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     The Mississippi River, as it flows past Saint Louis, is a muddy silt-laden body of water. Its "coffee color" which turns to amber or bronze in the dying rays of the setting sun is far removed from the pure clear depths near its origin in the distant north. On its meandering route through hundreds of miles it accumulates sediment and filth. Into its increasing volume other streams flow and deposit their own burden of muck and mud. At its source one may kneel and drink freely without qualm but farther along its route cities must spend millions to purify its waters from the corruption of other cities and the general terrain.

     The stream of Christianity is like this. All religion, like a river, becomes tinged with the culture through which it wends its way. Religion changes men but men also change religion. Each tends to give to the other and draw from the other. If one wants to see Christianity at its best he cannot view it in the contemporary scene affected by almost twenty centuries of subjection to the debates and strife of human reasoning. He must return to the source and when he does he will find that like a mighty river it had a humble beginning. It was the very humility of this start which made it possible to be so pure and unaffected.

     Who does not feel a sense of awe when he reads the statement, "All the believers shared everything in common....Day after day they met by common consent in the Temple; they broke bread together in their homes, sharing meals with simple joy." How the heart palpitates when we read such expressions as "shared everything," "common consent," "broke bread together," etc.

     Sometimes we are asked if this was "communism" among the primitive saints. That depends, I suppose, upon the meaning attached to "communism," but some things are immediately evident. The spirit which prompted the saints was not a political ideology. They were not united to create a new economic structure in society.

     The sharing with their fellows was simply an outpouring expression of that bounty which God shared with them. Jesus had come to partake of the flesh and make the supreme sacrifice for those who were powerless and helpless. "Though he was rich, yet for our sakes, he became poor." Hearts that were hungry for salvation were filled to overflowing, personalities that were starved for recognition were satisfied. All of the pent-up longings and yearnings of the ages were fulfilled at the cross. Those who became one in him were in the very source of all goodness, righteousness and justification. Since they were all indebted to Him for spiritual life the sharing of their material blessings was but a natural outgrowth of such rich grace.

     One of our problems today lies in the fact that it is easy to become a "Christian." It is also popular to do so. It carries a certain amount of social prestige. It is a mark of status. The temptation is to belong and live in mediocrity, sharing only in the superficial, scraping the surface and skimming the shallows. We need restoration but we mistake our real need when we think only in terms of ritual and "acts of worship." Our pattern is a person and we need to recapture the true sense of being in Him. Until we do we will be trying to get men to give money to a cause to which they have not given their hearts and to donate time to a work divorced from their thought.

     Only simple people can share in "simple joy." And we need to be a simple people, fashioned not according to the world, but refashioning the world. Our Master lived a simple life among simple folk. Our world has a confused sense of values. We are spending our money for "that which is not bread" and our substance for that which perishes. It is time that we think seriously about such terms as "believers" and "disciples." These are the words used most often to designate the saints in their early days--and their purest

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and best ones. Perhaps there is something about the relationships expressed in these words that we have lost in the intervening centuries.

     It is altogether possible that we are more concerned about "raising our standard of living" than we are about raising "the standard of life." It is not the "high cost of living" which is our difficulty but "the cost of high living." The church was never so united as when its members met with each other and ate together with simple joy! If we recapture the simplicity we may help restore the unity!