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In a world obsessed with more, God calls us to less. Not emptiness, but contentment. Join Reverend Daniel as we continue growing from superficial to spiritual, discovering in simplicity the freedom and peace found within a heart satisfied with Christ alone.

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Church, what a joy today for us to uh gather on the Easter Resurrection Sunday and in the church calendar and all throughout the world. Easter is the major uh festival, the major celebration, because we celebrate that Christ no longer stayed in the tomb, but he was raised from the dead. The focus of our sermon today is on how we can live a life of simplicity in the light of the resurrection of Jesus. Let us pray. Father, we pray this day as we gather on such a joyous occasion, Lord, together with the baptism candidates who are now baptized and have been welcomed to your family. Lord, we know we are also standing on the threshold on the day of the greatest victory in all of history, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Help us together as a church as we uh meditate, contemplate and ponder on this supreme mystery that has taken place, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that your word may be taken root in our hearts this morning, that your word will bear fruit in our lives as we appropriate your truths into our daily living and waking moments. So, Lord, we pray and ask all this in the name of Jesus. Amen. So, how can we live a life of simplicity in light of the resurrection of Jesus? This is a question I like to explore with us this morning. In 1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 6 to 11, Paul responds to the greed of the false teachers at Ephesus, pronouncing their sentence of ruin and further instructions to Timothy on what true contentment is about. He says in 1 Timothy 6, verse 6 to 11, but godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with this we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. It's through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. Hebrews 13, 5 to 6, in a similar note, also exhorts us, keep your life free from love of money and be content with what you have. For he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we can confidently say, The Lord is my helper, I will not fear. What can man do to me? So in these both texts before us, contentment is key. Both texts exhort us to be contented with what we have and to keep ourselves free from the love of money. Contentment actually follows when we are able to adopt a life of simplicity. In fact, both contentment and simplicity are related. Contentment refers to our inner state of being, satisfied with who we are and what we have. So there are two aspects of this: who we are and what we have. We are contented, we are satisfied with who we are and what we have. Simplicity, which is the focus today, it focuses on our outward lifestyle of reducing clutter in our lives and excesses, to focus on what truly matters, to simplify our lives, reduce clutter so that our focus, our outward focus, can be singular. And today, in the light of the resurrection of Jesus, I exhort us to focus, let it be the starting point, let the resurrection of Jesus be the starting point of a life of simplicity. According to a New Testament scholar by the name of Luke Timothy Johnson, in his book Sharing Possessions, What Faith Demands, mentions that because we are both soul and body, soul meaning the inner part of us, and we do have a physical body. So the soul represents our inner life, and the body represents our outer life. So oftentimes our bodies, our physical embodiment, our bodies, the outer part of our lives, reveal or make manifest what is actually our inner emotional states and attitudes. So he goes on to say, we are a body, you know, and we have a body. So the body is who I am, right? All of us are here today because we are embodied beings. We all uh uh we have a soul, but we are embodied in a physical body. So I say, Who are you? And I see your body, I know this is who you are. The body is who you are, the body is who I am. But at the same time, one can assert also that I am also a possessor of a body. I have a body. I am a body, but I possess, I have a body. So it may sound a bit abstract and philosophical, but I try to make it simple. Luke Timothy Johnson contends that our possessions, what we have, what we possess, must be seen as lying with this, within this continuum of being and having, which is an essential aspect of human existence. So all our possessions can be seen in lying between who we are and what we have, our being and our having. So we perceive that our possessions, the things we have and use, actually extend our bodies and ourselves into the world, into the lives of other persons. What we wear, eat, dwell in, drive, and use all express who we are and what we are. So every claim of ownership therefore involves an ambiguity in the sense that we say this is mine, this belongs to me, but we also imply that this is me. The way we use our possessions, the way we use, own, acquire, and disperse of material things expresses actually our attitudes and responses to our true self, the world around us, other people, and most of all, God. The real difficulty, especially in Singapore, because we are so rich in terms of um being an affluent society, is how we do not make possessions that having part of who we are as the main thing. So the real difficulty regarding possessions lies in what they mean to us, how they relate to our sense of identity and worth as human beings. Don't you think that very often we size up someone or we kind of look at people based on what they have and we size up, okay, so the person is such and such because this is what they have. Right? So we we put people in economic categories based on uh what they have, what they can afford. So subtly then we think that you know what we have and what we are are equal in a sense. However, the fundamental human response is not first as Christians, it's not first to what is seen, what we can see, feel, and touch, but to the one who is unseen. The way we respond to God who is the unseen one determines all our other responses to the world and to other persons in the world. For to us, even though God is not uh so-called a material being, uh, in the sense that uh Jesus has already ascended and now is uh dwelling in heaven. So his God is most real, even though uh it is not something we can feel or touch and see in a material sense. God is not that which is left over when all else have been accounted for or a thing among all things. The sin of idolatry is the choice of treating as ultimate and absolute, or most real, that which is neither absolute nor ultimate or most real. And oftentimes we know we treat something as most real by the attention we give to it. In fact, we can tell very clearly what is most real in our lives by seeing what our lives center on each day. Where the center of our lives is, where we center our lives, what we center our lives around, becomes our God. So the idolater of possessions is opposed to a life of simplicity. It says that that which I can see and feel and handle and use, which is within my disposition, is the ultimate source of my worth, my identity, my security, and my being. In fact, the more I have, the more I am. Then my worth is often measured by what I possess. But in a world of limited resources, what I can have means someone else will have less. So if the emptiness of my being is filled only by what I can have and achieve, there is really no way for me to measure my existence, my being, except by comparison with the achievement of others. I must stack up what I have, what I possess, which is what I am, against the stack of others to see not only how much I have, but how much I am. So the idea of being and having is very much correlated in the context of our daily living today. So, in contrast to this, a life of simplicity flows from the singularity of the Easter vision. We say Christ is risen, he's risen indeed. Hallelujah. The great news of Easter this morning is that Jesus has conquered the material, the physical realm. He has break through death and conquered death. He has broken through the old order of life and he's ushering a new order, what we call a new creation. So the early Christians, you read the Gospels and all the resurrection accounts, they struggle to make sense of the resurrection of Jesus as there was no precedence to what they were experiencing and seeing before their eyes as reality. Really? Jesus conquered and overcome matter, the material, such as now he is an embodied spirit being that can appear and go through walls and so on. So they were struggling to make sense of what is most real. Can it be true that this Jesus has risen from the dead? Something new has happened that left the people dumbstruck. They are left out of their debt, out of their reference points. We see this very clearly in the abrupt ending of the shorter ending of the Gospel of Mark. Mark 16, 5 to 8 kind of leave us in a sort of a cliffhanger. The shorter ending of Mark reads, and entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, he who was crucified. He has risen, he's not here. See the place where they laid him. But go tell his disciples and Peter that he's going before you to Galilee. There you will see him just as he told you. And they went out and fled the tomb for trembling, and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. What an ending! They were trembling and in great astonishment. So year after year we celebrate the most important day of the Christian calendar, Easter, the resurrection of Jesus. I wonder whether we still stand in amaze, like the early first disciples of Jesus. They were astonished. They were seized with fear at this point because Jesus had not appeared to them and they were perhaps confused. So as we attempt to make sense of the resurrection and how we can live a life of simplicity, I would like to share with us an icon of the resurrection. This is taken from St. Andrew Hallborn. So it's the icon of the resurrection. So if you look with me in this uh picture, what we call an icon, it actually depicts Jesus descending to the dead. He's going down right uh to the dead on Holy Saturday, actually. Taking Adam and Eve by the hand. So you look at the picture, you know, there are two uh persons clinging on to Jesus, or rather, Jesus is pulling them up. So the one with the goatee, the obviously is Adam, right? And the the lady on the other side is Eve. Right? So they are surrounded sometimes in the picture by prophets and kings of the old covenant. And it seems rather a long way from the resurrection narratives in the gospels. What is Jesus doing, pulling people up, descending to the dead? What is he doing? What this icon says to us is that the bedrock of what is going on in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, according to uh Rowan Williams, is the remaking of creation itself. The remaking. God is doing a new thing, a fresh start, even for the first man and woman. This is where the whole story of the Bible begins in Genesis 1 and 2. Adam and Eve in the garden. And this is where it begins again. Jesus is going down to pick up the hand of Adam and Eve, along with the prophets and the kings of old, witnessing the reality. Roman Williams commenting on the icon of the resurrection goes on to say that as we look more closely at Adam and Eve in the icon, how do they look? They look old, right? We see that Adam and Eve have grown old. They are no longer the radiant, uh pardon me, but naked figures of the f of the first beginning of the story that is depicted in some pictures or icons. Their faces are lined by suffering and experience, by guilt, by the knowledge of good and evil, scarred by life, by their betrayal, disobedience, and by and scarred by life, and by their disobedience. This is Adam and Eve having lost their innocence. So when we speak of the resurrection as a new beginning and a new creation, what we are saying is that the reason Jesus reaches down and touches precisely those faces, Adam and Eve grown old. He doesn't wave a warrant and make them young again, strip off their clothes, leave them standing in their first innocence. Again, pardon the language is the understanding of how Adam and Eve were depicted before the fall in the garden. So the what the resurrection deals with is human humanity as it has become. That means all of us together here, our humanity suffering and struggling, filled and failing. The resurrection is not about Jesus waving a magic wand and all will be right. It's about this. It's about how our pain and failure themselves, humanity marked by history, may yet be transfigured and made beautiful. God is the one that can transform our human brokenness into something beautiful. The beginning of resurrection is more wonderful for us today because it is the planting of a new freshness, a newness, a beauty, vision, and glory in yours, in your life, in my life, in the life of Adam and Eve. And that is why the resurrection is good news for those in the midst of what seems to be incurable, intractable pain or failure. In the middle of a world or an experience where practically speaking there seemed to be so little hope. Like how we look at the world situation today, uh, the war in Iran, everything seems to be bleak. Everything seems to be hopeless according to human eyes. But Jesus is saying, the reason Christ is saying, in the depth of our present reality, I will speak. I will be present and I will transform. And this is the good news today, church. I hope we can catch a glimpse of a one of the wonder of the most important day in history and in the Christian calendar. God is able to transform us even in our weakness and our brokenness, even in our struggle right now, because Jesus rose from the dead. Therefore, he's at work by the Spirit transforming our lives, making us new, strengthening our hearts, giving us strength to fight perhaps cancer or difficult situation at work. There's power that is released, that God can transform our pain, our brokenness. He doesn't erase them, they may still be there. But because of the resurrection, we are always, as a church, standing victorious regardless of our life situation, our predicament, how we feel, and how we see ourselves. So, in light of the reality of the resurrection, we need to remind ourselves, as the first Christians did, and experience that God is the most real. The resurrection of Jesus is the most real account to them. Idolatry is a choice of treating as ultimate and absolute. Or what is most real? Something which is neither absolute nor ultimate. So our possessions, what we have, what we can see, touch, feel in a material sense. Today it is not the most real because Jesus has transcended the material space to show us that life goes beyond the material. So for those of us who do like to keep, I wouldn't like to use the word hordes, but those of us who preciously like to keep memories and keep it in a storehouse and you know that it's growing and piling up, you know, and your whole lifetime of travels stacked up in boxes and cluttering the place and and so on, right? May today be a reminder that the life of simplicity is lived when we embrace the power of the resurrection, to choose the spiritual, God, the spiritual reality of God's transcending the material space to set us free from our slavery in Singapore to possessions to what we have. And we are always wanting to have more and more all the time, right? Whether it's the latest uh iPhone or the latest technology or whatever we pursue, right? And that can trap us. That's why the readings today remind us that that we should be content, we should simplify our lives. So, how can we live a life of simplicity, reducing clutter and excesses to focus and center our lives on what truly matters? The answer is the resurrection of Jesus. We can live a life of simplicity by transposing our gaze from the material to the reality of the resurrection, to what is most real, to God's transformative work in our lives, inaugurated by the resurrection of Jesus. So God is at work in our lives, He's strengthening us, He's empowering us, He's helping us through difficult times, He's lifting us up when we are fallen, He's helping those who are struggling, and there is power at work because Jesus rose from the dead. And what is material? Death itself is finally swallowed up.

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Victory. If you'd like to know more about Eastern Christian Church, please visit our website at ycanglican.com. Have a blessed day.