In 1853, when my great great great grandparents walked across a good bit of this county in order to move to Oregon, they were told they could not bring along a lot of stuff with them. Loads needed to be light, so they were told to bring only the bare necessities that were needed to survive the trip and to start a new life in Oregon. The bare necessities is not everything needed. A lot of stuff they were going to need would have to be found along the way, like most of the food. Soon after setting off, they discovered they had brought too much stuff. What was necessary was even less than what they thought. So like a lot of wagon trains, the people in the party started dumping things along the road. It is hard sometimes to figure out what is necessary. With hindsight, we might question some of their decisions. One of the things that my great great great grandparents dumped was a bunch of shoes. I'm not sure that was the right decision, since by the time they got to Eugene they were barefoot.
On the flip side, my great great great grandmother kept something that proved necessary, but everyone else thought she was wrong to keep it. It was a kettle that she found along the side of the road. It was not something she brought with her--it was something she found that some other group had dumped. She loved it and wanted to keep it, but the other members of the party told her no, you need to dump that. They refused to let her put it in the wagon because that would be too much weight. But she was persistent, some might say stubborn, and she decided to carry it across the country.
It turns out it was necessary. When they got to Central Oregon they were following a new road that it turns out had never been completed, and they got lost as they were trying to cross the Cascades. They were lost for quite a while, and the only nutrition they had was bone broth that she could make in that kettle. Her fellow travelers were grateful that she had found it and kept it.
Knowing what is and what is not necessary is hard. It's downright impossible, but I discover time and again that the necessities are really much more bare than I tend to realize. When traveling, I am much more likely to find that I have too much stuff than to find that I don't have something that I really need. The truth is, the thing that I discover I need is usually something that I want.
In our Gospel today, Jesus sends his Disciples out two by two to go and do what he has been doing. He sends them on a trip to walk from town to town to heal people, and to share the Good News. He tells them that they can only take the bare necessities: a tunic, a staff, and a pair of sandals, no food, no bag, no change of clothes, and certainly no money. They would have to trust God to provide everything else that they needed along the way. Maybe we could quibble a little bit about the list of things that Jesus says are the bare necessities. Do they really need that staff? I don't know. Perhaps they could have gotten by with less, or maybe they could have done better with a little bit more. Maybe an extra pair of shoes in case the journey ended up being longer than expected. Maybe a coin or two would help, just in case, for emergencies. But the specifics aren't really the point. The point is that Jesus is requiring them to trust in God. Or more accurately, Jesus is teaching them how to trust in God, to learn the hard way, perhaps, that the Lord will provide what they need.
It is the same lesson that Abraham and Sarah learned when they left their home and their families to go on a wild adventure for an audacious promise that God gave them. It is the same lesson that God's people learned in the wilderness after they escaped slavery. It is the same lesson that Ruth found when she followed Naomi. It is the same lesson that Samuel tried to tell the people before they called Saul to be their king. It is the same lesson that the prophets continually reminded the people of. And it is the same lesson when Jesus went out into the desert to face the temptations, and when he went to the cross. Trust in God.
This story today was one of the great inspirations for Saint Francis. He took the call to take only the bare necessities very personally. This is how he modeled his religious order. They travelled and they preached, and only took with them the bare necessities. They didn't take food, they didn't take money. They asked for what they needed to survive along the way, knowing that God would provide. Perhaps knowing is too strong--they were learning that God would provide. It is a radical act of trust to do this.
Trusting God is a lesson that we are still learning today. We live in a society that has more stuff than ever. It is a society that tells us that everything we have is a necessity. And yet the reality is that we are no more content than we used to be. What are the bare necessities for life, for your physical well being? What do you need?
What about for your spiritual well being? What do you need for spiritual nourishment? Thomas Cranmer, the great architect of Anglican liturgy who made the first Prayer Book, said the bare necessities for spiritual life were a Prayer Book and a Bible. I often think about that when I look at all the books I have--nearly a thousand--on faith in my office and in my home. Do I really need them all, or do I just need a Prayer Book and a Bible? They do prove time and again to be the most important.
What are the bare necessities for you, in your life, in your faith? The point is not to prove that you are spiritually greater because you have less. The point is to try to move to a place of ever greater trust in God. When we have greater trust in God, then we can more easily weather the storms that life throws our way. We know life is going to throw a lot of storms our way. This pandemic has been one storm, and others will follow. Maybe not a pandemic anytime soon, I hope, but storms will happen. Likely many more literal storms will be happening soon with the changing climate as things get hotter and drier. We are going to have to learn to adapt, to ask ourselves, what are the bare necessities?
There are other storms in life, too. There are personal ones, like medical issues or relationship problems. But when we trust in God we are better able to weather the storms because we know that God is with us, as God has always been with us in whatever storms we face. We know that God will provide. We should, of course, do whatever we can to stop these storms, do whatever we can to mitigate these storms, do whatever we can to prepare for these storms. But one of the most important things we can do is to start practicing trust in God.
In a few minutes we are going to recite the words of the Nicene Creed. In the Creed we say that we believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. That word, believe, doesn't just mean that we believe that this God exists. This word, believe, is more like when you tell a kid, I believe in you, before they hit the soccer field, or the theater stage. The kid doesn't think, thank goodness Aunt Suzie thinks I exist. No, they know that you are expressing your confidence in them and their abilities. When we say, I believe, in the Creed, it is that kind of trust. We trust in God the Father, we trust in Jesus Christ, we trust in the Holy Spirit.
The Greek word that is translated as "believe" at its root literally means "to give your heart to." Whenever I recite the Creed in my head, I always translate each of those "believes" into a word about trust. We believe, we trust in God who made the world. We believe, we have confidence in God who came down to earth to be one of us as Jesus Christ and who died for us and who rose for us and who ascended for us. We believe, we give our heart over to the Holy Spirit who continues to act in this world. In the Creed we are confessing our trust in God, and perhaps it is as much a prayer as it is a confession; a plea for more trust in God, the God who made the world, the God who came down to be here as one of us, the God who continues to act in this world as the Holy Spirit. Please God, give me more trust in you, this God who is gracious and merciful, this God who loves us more than we ask for or imagine. We pray to trust this God.
My friends in Christ, trust your God always.
AMEN
