Beloved Community Through the Eyes of Simplicity
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
September 21, 2025
Good morning. Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections. This morning, we continue our series on Beloved Community Through the Eyes of the S.P.I.C.E.S+ and focus on our first spice – Simplicity. The scripture I have chosen to support my message is from Matthew 6:31-34 from the New Revised Standard Version.
Therefore, do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
A few years ago, I came across the following words from Quaker Author, Richard Foster,
Simplicity is an inward reality that results in an outward lifestyle. Both are necessary.
The inward reality of simplicity is beautifully encapsulated in Matthew chapter 6, especially Jesus’s concluding words that we are to “seek first the kingdom of God” and the righteousness of this kingdom, and all that is needed for life will be added to us. This laser-beam focus on a “with-God life” in God’s kingdom is the inward reality of simplicity. As Jesus reminds us, when our eye is single, our whole body will be full of light.
Many have come to understand the term “Kingdom of God” as synonymous with the Beloved Community. Even Dr. King and his contemporaries would make this connection. I like to reword our scripture for today - the Bob Henry translation reads,
“But look first for the Beloved Community around you and the right living that God has modeled for us through Jesus’ life, and then you and your neighbors will truly be blessed.”
But what are we looking for when we “look first for the Beloved Community”?
The core of the Beloved Community and the Kingdom of God is considered agape love, a redemptive goodwill toward ALL people (like I spoke about last week), this even includes our enemies, and it seeks to build and preserve community.
Agape love is considered the highest form of love because it embodies selflessness, sacrifice, and unconditional care for others.
But agape love must begin by embracing a simplicity within our own human spirit. As Richard Forster emphasized in that quote I began with,
“Simplicity is an inward reality that results in an outward lifestyle.”
I would go as far as saying we each must go through some type of “inner transformation” to simplify our lives and move from our self-interests to a greater capacity for compassion and goodwill to our neighbors and community.
When we begin to embrace a simpler approach to life our “human spirit” shifts away from ourselves, our needs, our worries, our obsessions, and frees us to see, to love, and to have compassion for those around us, as well as, for ourselves.
Often you and I get so wrapped up in our work or our passions, that we neglect those around us and miss our opportunities to share agape love with our neighbors.
I remember one time; I was in a hurry and needing to pick up a couple items at the grocery store on my way to an event. As I was heading into the store, I saw a person in my community that was often very needy, and I knew I did not have the time to talk with them.
Immediately, I went into ninja mode and slipped into the store, grabbed everything I needed making sure not to go down any aisle that would have me engaging this person. I ran through the self-check-out and headed out the door in relief that I did not run into the person.
When I arrived at my car, I put my bags in the back seat and started the car. But right as I was getting ready to leave, my phone rang. I answered it and got caught up in the conversation while sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store with my car running.
That is when a knock at my window startled me. It was the person I tried to avoid in the store. They asked me to roll down my window. I motioned that I was on a call, hoping they would realize and move on, but instead the person gestured that they would wait and continued to stand right outside my car window.
Finally, I ended the call and put my window down. I now was late for my event, and my conversation with the person would take another 45 minutes. As we were talking, I realized that the conversation with this person was way more important than my event or even my desire to hurry. They shared with me that they had just lost a loved one in their family and that they were grieving. We shared tears in the parking lot, gave hugs, and as we parted, the person said,
“I am so glad I ran into you, today, it was just what I needed.”
As I drove off, I felt absolutely horrible – my needs and schedule almost got in the way of me being there for this person. It could have been much simpler, but I tried hard to get in the way of what the Divine had planned.
When we take a moment to reflect on our own needs, busyness, worries, and obsessions, we allow ourselves to inwardly transform and simplify our lives, and this offers us a greater capacity for compassion for those around us.
But it is not only our personal lives that get in the way. Simplicity involves also acknowledging that sometimes our material possessions and our selfish greed can fuel division within community. By reducing our focus on acquiring possessions or “keeping up with the Jones (or maybe the Kardashians, today)” we can prioritize spending time building meaningful relationships, engaging in shared experiences, and strengthening the fabric of our Beloved Community.
Computer scientist, Avinash Saravanan spoke to this in an article titled, “Keeping Up with the Joneses: The Loss of American Individuality,” saying,
After one’s death, you will not be remembered for your personal possessions, but rather the impact you have left behind to allow for your legacy to last well after your death. For example, I do not know what Mahatma Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln owned. Nor do I or the rest of the modern world particularly care since it was their actions and the result of those actions that defined how they would be remembered. The materialistic nature of Keeping Up with the Joneses represents a deep misunderstanding of what our priorities should be, and when expanded to the national scale, this is of huge concern.
He goes on to make another point about social media that I want to include in these thoughts on simplicity. He says,
Social media seems to be acting as an extension of the issues. Instead of just comparing yourself to your inner circle, you are now comparing yourself with strangers on the internet who may or may not be similar to you. One thing people seem to ignore is that a profile or what one shows online is completely up to them and, as a result, you are comparing yourself to a fake version of that stranger. If you spend more of your time on social media, the chain of comparisons only increases.
Our possessions and our engagement with social media both can isolate us from participating fully in the Beloved Community. They can complicate our lives, remove us from reality, immobilize us from taking action, or simply keep us from having compassion for those around us.
Simplifying one’s life today may mean taking a moment to stop scrolling the Amazon deals and refusing to order that latest gadget, or maybe it means turning off the 24 hours news channel that is constantly on in your home or the feed on your phone, or incessantly scrolling through your social media feeds when something bad happens in the world and looking for an opportunity to tell that person your disagree with, just how you feel.
I guarantee, none of these things will help us seek the Kingdom of God in the present or build the Beloved Community in our midst.
As well, most of the time more possessions clutter and complicate our lives. Recently, due to having people come into town for my 30 years in ministry celebration, Sue and I did a deep clean of our home. We took a day or two for each room in our home and decluttered, deep cleaned, and opened up space.
I would by no means consider us hoarders, but I realized that we may be “stuffers” – meaning “out of sight out of mind.” But I have realized all that really does is delay the cleaning and decluttering.
Personally, I have found a clean workspace, a decluttered space, a more open space, allows me to relax and become more comfortable, and even be more willing to invite others into those spaces.
The same is true for my life, when I take time to clean out my mind of the clutter, the mean and judgmental thoughts, the constant news stream, the noise of the word, my “monkey mind” (as I call it,) quiets down and I am able to engage deeper conversations with my neighbors, I begin to have creative thoughts and ideas again, I find nature engaging again, and I can once again see the good in the world around me.
This may only take an afternoon or 10 minutes at the start of your day. It may be improved through meditation or prayer or simply sitting in silence. I know when my world is spinning out of control and I am losing my connection with the Beloved Community around me, I get in the car and drive, sometime listening to my favorite music and other times, to help reset me, I turn off the radio and focus on what I see outside the windows.
It is then that I notice my neighborhood again.
I notice the people in my neighborhood again.
I see the improvements and the places that are being neglected, and I want to make a difference.
This helps me recognize and be more aware of the Beloved Community around me with all its beauty and its places that need work.
This awareness then leads me to want to address the systems of injustice in my community. Simplicity can help us deconstruct exploitative economic systems that create disparities and thus support the vision of a beloved community with more humane policies.
Several years ago, I had lunch with a Black man who lived close to the Meetinghouse and he shared with me how in his neighborhood off of 54th street he was seeing his people slowly removed from the community so houses could be flipped, and neighborhoods could be transformed. He encouraged me to drive through his neighborhood every so often to see the changes for myself.
As I listened to his story, he shared how a dominant group outside the community unfairly extracted wealth, labor, and resources from his community for its own benefit, creating unequal power dynamics and economic imbalances. Families, communities, churches were torn apart to make way for what was considered beautification and a better city – one person described it as “Making Indianapolis Great Again.”
Maybe if our eyes were open and we were listening to the pain that our community was enduring and experiencing, we would realize why gun violence and crime has increased in Indianapolis. When we strip people of their livelihood and community connections and close their places of worship for our own benefit – we destroy economic, cultural, and familial systems that supported health and safety – leaving people as victims to survive however they are able. That is not building the Beloved Community or the Kingdom of God. It is selfish and greatly lacks compassion.
And for those of us who live in the suburbs the same is true for Home Owners Associations and gated communities who isolate and create “us versus them” or “we are better than you” mentalities. This will only continue to keep us from engaging each other on a more equal level.
So, to wrap up these thoughts up, let me give us a couple ways to see Beloved Community through the eyes of Simplicity.
The first is through shared values:
This means focusing on people and relationships over material wealth, possessions, or power. The goal of simplicity is to create a life focused on what is important, and the Beloved Community is defined by an "all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood." When we shift our focus from what we have, to who we have – the doors begin to open and the table become set for beloved community to flourish.
Second, simplicity is a tool for community building:
Adopting simplicity into our daily lives can create the space for building a Beloved Community by reducing competition for material goods, fostering appreciation for shared resources, and creating more time and energy for meaningful relationships and social justice work. When we aren’t trying to “keep up with the Jones”, we open up space in our lives and free ourselves to see, care for, and have compassion for the world around us.
And thirdly, we can work to build a more equitable world:
Obviously, this overlaps with a couple of our upcoming Quaker S.P.I.C.E.S. – Equality and Stewardship, but simplicity advocates for using resources wisely and avoiding waste. This mindset directly aligns with the Beloved Community's vision where poverty, hunger, and homelessness are not tolerated, and resources are distributed more equitably.
In the book of Acts, chapter 2, we get a glimpse of what this Beloved Community or the Kingdom of God looked like, it says,
All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.
As you and I look first for the Beloved Community around us and the right living that God has modeled for us through Jesus’ life and ministry, may we sense our participation in this Beloved Community as a blessing to both our neighbors and us, because All are being seen, heard, and cared for.
Now, as we enter a time of waiting worship, take a moment to ponder the following queries:
1. In what ways do I struggle with simplicity?
2. What in my life, might I need to change to be more impactful in the Beloved Community?
3. Where are “us versus them” or “we are better than you” mentalities prevalent in my life and community? And how might I begin to change them?