Oct. 2, 2016

Luke 17:5-10

Week after week, it seems, Luke is throwing difficult passages our direction. Today’s passage could be read in a couple of different ways.  Likely, we’ve heard the disciples ask for more faith, and we’ve heard Jesus reply in disgust, “You know, if you only had this much faith you could change the landscape.  You could accomplish anything you wanted to.  But, you don’t.  You don’t even have faith the size of a tiny little mustard seed.”  And, we think to ourselves, “Yes, I know.  If I had more faith, if I really believed, then God would actually be able to act in my life a bit more and maybe even through my life.”

In response to this interpretation author, Kimberly Long, writes, “There’s a pastoral issue here…  Somewhere along the way we have grown to expect a steady dose of condemnation from Scripture; more often than not, we hear Jesus’ words to the disciples – and therefore to us – as shaming and angry words.”  Our relationship with God is colored by guilt and a whole bunch of “shoulds.”  God is the one whose expectations we always fail to meet.  I should be a better person. I should be more patient and generous.  I should pray more.  I should care more.  I should do more.  God, I know your probably disappointed in me, but I’ll try and do better and here I am and I hope you’ll forgive me. 

That’s not a very encouraging way to relate to God.  Hopefully, along the journey we’ve learned others ways as well.  Hopefully, we remember John’s words from 3:17: “God did not send the son into the world in order to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved.”  Hopefully, we remember that he not only died because of human sinfulness, but he also rose and came back to us because of divine love, and divine like, and divine joy, and the constant divine desire to fill our lives.

So, with that in mind we might hear Luke’s passage another way.  Because we’ve skipped some verses it helps if we backtrack just a bit.  Jesus is fresh off a lesson about forgiveness.  “If you want to me a disciple you don’t have to be perfect according to the law, but you do have to forgive.  If someone has repented you must forgive.  And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.”

That’s where our passage comes in.  To that the disciples say, “You better increase our faith.”  “We’re not so sure we can do that.”  And, Jesus replies, “All you need is the tiniest little bit of faith.  Look at this seed.  It’s the smallest seed around!  You have more faith than this.  You have way more faith than what is needed.  Yet, even with just this much you can do amazing things.”

What a liberating thought.  You have enough faith.  Stop trying to squeeze it out of you.  There’s more important stuff to do.

(Just a quick aside comes to mind.  In a former church setting I became really interested in healing prayer.  We ended up offering quite a bit of it.  And, in my studies what I cam across again and again was that it’s not faith that makes the prayer effective; it’s love.  Love the person you are praying for.  Remember it, feel it, cultivate it.  That’s when your prayer becomes powerful.  Faith plays a much lesser role.)

In the same way, Jesus seems to be saying, “It’s not faith that makes the disciple.  It is forgiveness.  It’s not your capacity to believe; it is your courage to try, to act, to live in God’s direction.”

We’ll come back to that notion in a bit.  Next in the narrative comes a piece of scripture that seems apparently unrelated.  You wonder: did Jesus say it this way or did Luke just put it together this way?  Either way, it is confusing!  After this part about only needing a tiny bit of faith Jesus tells this story about a slave who goes out and does his work.  The master doesn’t congratulate him for finishing it; it is what he was supposed to do.  The same thing goes for disciples, Jesus says.  “When you’ve done what is required of you, you should say, ‘We servants deserve no special praise.  We have only done our duty.’”

The slave talk is never comfortable.  I wish it weren’t there.  All I can say is that the notion of being a slave to God is quite different than being a slave to a human slaveholder.  The best way I can think to say it is that it is like being a slave to love, but not just love; rather, love that is eternal and eternally giving, love that is full of life and life-giving, love that would endure all things for the sake of love.  It is divine love.  In the context of the gospel’s Good News, being a “slave” to God strikes me as becoming aware of the great miracle of one’s life; it is the great realization that in the presence of this beautiful, unimaginable force called God your life is not your own, and you wouldn’t want it to be any other way.

The passage reminds me of a story I once heard about Dean Smith, the legendary coach of the University of North Carolina Tarheals.  Wfan was honoring his life and his career shortly after his death.  I had known of him only as the very successful coach of the arch rival of the Duke Bluedevils.  To me he was a famed basketball genius.  What I didn’t know is that he was first hired back in 1958, when just about everything in Chapel Hill, from schools, to restaurants, to swimming pools, to water fountains, were still segregated.  But Dean Smith didn’t see race that way; he refused to run a basketball program that way, and he refused to live his life that way.  There were stories of him bringing black students to church with him.  Stories of him helping black graduates buy homes in white neighborhoods.  Stories of him sitting in restaurants with black students while patrons and owners seethed.  All that was pretty amazing to learn because I had no idea.  But, what stood out even more was his response to all the praise that he received for his actions later in life.  He wouldn’t accept it.  He told the media and he told his players, “You should never accept praise for doing what you ought to have done in the first place.”

UNC’s first black star was a player named Charles Scott.  After a victory in South Carolina one of the fans for the opposing team ran up to Scott and called him a “big black baboon.”  Players said they had never seen Coach Smith as angry as he was at that moment.   Later, in his book Smith wrote about the incident.  And, later after that the angry fan read Smith’s book, wrote him a letter, apologized for his behavior, and promised to raise his children to be more tolerant than he had been.[1]

I share that last part because I think it relates to the message of our scriptures.  Smith did the right thing; he stood for justice; he rejected that man’s racism, but he didn’t change that man’s heart.  That man’s heart changed over time.  God, through people like Smith changed that man’s heart.  Through all the witnesses over the years of that man’s life, great and small, of people brave enough to live out their best sense of what the love of God looks like, that man’s heart was changed.  Whatever faith they had was enough for God to use, even if it was only the size of a mustard seed. What they needed was the courage to act.  That’s what made Smith a disciple.

John Wesley, the founder of that Church of England revival movement called Methodism confessed to a colleague once that he just didn’t have the faith that he wanted or felt he should.  The friend said back, “Live faith, and faith will come.”

I think that’s good advice for us all.  Live faith, no matter how small it is, and God will act.  Live faith, and as we see what God is doing, faith will come.

[1] http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaab-the-dagger/dean-smith-was-as-progressive-away-from-the-court-as-on-it-032902410.html