How good is your imagination? Can you picture where we are in the gospel account? We’re still on the move with Jesus, still heading for Jerusalem and everything that will happen there. Luke was a gentile, and his geography of Israel is a little sketchy, but we seem to be in some place inhabited by both Jews and Samaritans. Jews and Samaritans hated each other, so most probably they lived in separate villages. Jesus is approaching one of those villages, most probably a Jewish village.
So imagine yourself back in ancient times and put yourself on the outskirts of some dusty village. What do we see? I see a band of shunned people, united perhaps only by their shared disability. Are there only ten of them? They seem to be both men and women. Are they Jews or Samaritans? We’ll find out that at least one of them is a despised Samaritan. Actually, you can smell them before you can see them. Their clothes are so ragged it’s a wonder they can cover themselves. They are gaunt and scrawny, since all they have to eat are the scraps that kindhearted people give them.
What have they done to bring this misfortune on themselves? Absolutely nothing! They must have some kind of skin disease. If they have true leprosy, what we today call Hansen’s disease, they’ve probably lost fingers or toes, maybe even noses. Hansen’s is a disabling and disfiguring disease for which, in the ancient world, there was no cure. Unfortunately, the Law of Moses lumped many different skin diseases under the word “leprosy,” and declared those afflicted by these diseases to be unclean and unfit for normal society. So what do we see? We see a band of broken, starving, diseased people doomed to a life of exile and expected to stay as far away from the “clean” people as possible.
What did these doomed people see? They saw a holy man. Who knows how they knew who he was? They were desperate for help, and so they cried out to him.
What did Jesus see? Jesus saw them. He saw living, breathing, real people – not people defined by their disease – but real people needing help. He saw wives without husbands, he saw homes without fathers or mothers, he saw fields lying fallow with no one to work them, and he saw hopelessness and despair. And when Jesus saw them, he stopped. He allowed himself to be interrupted. And then he did something startling. He told them to go to the priests and begin the elaborate process of rituals and sacrifices through which they would again be declared clean.
What did the now former lepers do? All but one of them presumably did exactly what Jesus told them to do. They went and found the nearest priest and asked to be declared free of disease. One of them took a good look at himself. He saw what had happened. Samaritans didn’t follow Mosaic Law, so he knew he had little to gain from going off to see a Jewish priest. So he turned back to find that holy man through whom he had been cured. He shouted out his praises to God and then threw himself at Jesus’ feet in thanksgiving.
My friends, this is a story about seeing, and our response to what we see. It is not a healing story like others in Scripture, in which healing occurs when Jesus touches someone or someone touches him. Here, the healing occurs offstage so to speak. Remember that we’re in the part of this gospel account where Jesus is teaching his disciples about how a faithful community lives out its commitment to him. So here, we have a story that asks us consider what we see, and what we do when we see. And, not surprisingly, the story also challenges us in several different ways.
What do you see? The first challenge is to see the need of others. Can we see when someone is in need? Can we see when a friend or coworker is facing a health problem or difficult situation at home? Can we see when an international student is far from family and alone on university holidays? Can we see when someone who comes to Loaves and Fishes needs help? Can we see a homeless person as a child of God, and not just some dirty tramp? Perhaps further away, can we see the people in Haiti who again need help in recovering from a natural disaster? Can we see the need in the non-human world? Can we see the elephants whose numbers are plummeting because of our insatiable desire for ivory? Can we see our wonderful national and state parks as places that need our protection, so that our children and grandchildren will also be able to enjoy them?
And if we see, what do we do? Jesus saw the need of the people who called out to him. He stopped. He took action. He did something very concrete for them. What do we do when we finally see need? Do we ignore it, pass by, or hope that the people, the need, the cause, will all go away? Or, like Jesus, are we moved to take some kind of concrete action? Do we find the time to visit those who are lonely or grieving? Do we find ways to provide food for those who are hungry? Do we work for justice for those who are falsely accused? Do we reach out to those who have lost their homes in disasters? Do we support those who are working to make sure that wild animals and wild landscapes don’t disappear from the earth? I invite you to look around you, see a need that breaks your heart, and then follow the master in addressing it.
And finally, do we see God at work in the world? Do we see God as active in our own lives? The leper saw that he had been transformed by his encounter with Jesus, that something awe-inspiring and holy had happened to him. He didn’t break out a bottle of champagne and pat himself on the back for his cleverness. He didn’t return home to his village. He didn’t stick with the other lepers. He returned to Jesus to praise God and fall on his face, filled with gratitude for what had happened to him.
And here’s the challenge to us: to see what God has done for us and, more important, to be truly thankful for all the many ways in which God has blessed us. The truth is that gratitude may be the real measure of our spiritual health. Do we think we are self-made people? Do we think we deserve everything we have – and more? Or do we take the time to examine our lives, to really look at our lives? Do we take the time to look at our day or week and see where we have met Jesus in that day or week?
Anne Lamott has a wonderful little primer on prayer entitled Help, Thanks, Wow. It’s a book about basic forms of prayer. We know about “help.” All our intercessory prayers, for ourselves, for others, for the world, our prayers of the people in the Eucharist, are all forms of “help.” For most of us, if we pray at all, our prayer is usually a form of “help.” “Wow” is our praise of God. It’s a way of expressing our awe for who God is, for the great mysterious yet loving creator, for the God we see in the face of Jesus, for the spark of God that lodges within us. “Wow” is mostly what we do in liturgy and worship.
“Thanks” is something else. Yes, the Eucharist – the very word means thanksgiving – is a way of offering sacramental thanks for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. But “thanks” should also be part of our daily walk with God. I invite you to take the time – lots of people do it at the end of the day – to look over your day and see if you have met Jesus anywhere in that day. If you come to the quiet day on October 22nd, you’ll even learn a simple form for looking over your day in order to discern God’s presence in it. And when you discern God’s presence in your day, when you can see how God has blessed you – and continues to bless you – then fall down on your knees, or raise your hands, or open your mouth in thanksgiving.
What do you see, and what do you do when you do see? Does it matter that you have committed yourself to following Jesus? Do you see as he sees? Do you see the need of others and respond to it? Do you see God at work in your own life, and do you say to God, “Thanks?” In a short while, we will leave this place after singing, “Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices, who wondrous things hath done, in whom this world rejoices.” It’s a hymn that sends you out into the world. So get up, go your way. Spend your life helping others, praising God, and thanking God for all of God’s gifts.
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Monday, October 3, 2016
The Size of a Mustard Seed
Uprooting mulberry trees and planting them in the sea? If you’ve ever taken down a tree, you know it’s very hard work. First, of course, there’s the chopping or sawing. Then if the tree was on a lawn or public space, you’d probably either rent a stump grinder or pay someone else to take out the stump.
What is Jesus talking about here? We are still on the road with Jesus, heading toward Jerusalem and all that will take place there. In this middle section of the gospel, the evangelist has collected a variety of Jesus’ teachings and sayings. No doubt the evangelist has also tried to arrange them in some coherent order. We’ve heard parables and stories about lost sheep and lost coins, and we heard about a dishonest manager and the rich man and Lazarus. In most of these stories and sayings, the evangelist has shown Jesus using overstatement and exaggeration, one of the favorite rhetorical tools of the rabbis.
As we come to this place in the gospel narrative, the disciples are clearly feeling overwhelmed and downright puzzled by all that Jesus has called them to be and do. So they make what seems like a simple request: “increase our faith.” But what exactly are they asking for? Is a faith a quantity that can decrease or increase? What would more faith look like in real life? If they had “more faith” would the disciples fast, give, heal, and teach more? Would they stop complaining as they trailed behind Jesus? Would they willingly let themselves be executed with Jesus?
Do you find Jesus’ response to his disciples perplexing? At this point, you might not even like the Jesus you see here. He doesn’t reassure the disciples. He doesn’t make a joke or pat them on the back. He barks at them, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed….” Then he uses the image of a master and slaves – overworked slaves – to suggest something about what faith really means. Although the image of hardworking slaves would have been perfectly acceptable to Jesus’ disciples and to the evangelist’s audience, it of course grates on our ears. And more than that, both the sayings about the mustard seed and the image of slaves are surely further examples of overstatement and exaggeration.
So what is the real message here? What is the evangelist suggesting to his own community – and by extension to us – about what faith is? Let’s unpack that word “faith” and look for a minute at what we might think it means. Is faith supernatural power, especially power that, if I believe hard enough, I can make God do what I want? Is faith acceptance of all the traditional statements of the church, believing seven impossible things before breakfast, as one wag put it? Do I have deep faith if I understand and accept every statement in the Nicene Creed? Do I have faith if I take the Bible literally, especially if I believe that creation happened according to the account in Genesis, or that every miracle occurred just as it is depicted? Do I have faith if I adhere to a set of specific devotional practices? Am I person of deep faith if I fast, tithe, and read Forward Day by Day every morning?
The truth is that faith – or perhaps, better, faithfulness – the faithfulness we are called to have as followers of Jesus, is none of these things. To begin with, faith is a gift of God. But it is not something that we earn as a reward for hard work. It is something we already have just by virtue of being a creature made in God’s image. We may have models of people who have faith, like the women Lois and Eunice mentioned by the writer of the second letter to Timothy, but we must still acknowledge God’s gift for ourselves.
Perhaps faith is more what we moderns might call a mindset. When we acknowledge God’s gift, then we can begin seeing the world as God sees it. We can acknowledge ourselves as part of God’s creation, and as such deeply and truly loved by God. We can also understand ourselves as only a small part of God’s creation, as one of God’s many children. And we can begin seeing ourselves as connected to everyone we meet, looking out at those both near and far, not with our egocentric desire to possess and control, but rather with compassion and a desire to help others grow and flourish.
What’s more important, faith is not something static, it is not something that comes in a quantity that Jesus or God can increase at our request. It is not something that we can throw away. We can ignore God, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have no faith. And more important, our faith, whether it’s in God or in anything else, is dynamic. It grows, flourishes, and unfolds throughout our life’s journey. It’s apt really that Jesus used the image of a seed for faith. Remember Jesus’ image of the mustard seed that grows to be a great tree, in which even the birds can nest? If we water and tend our faith, it too can become a green living quality within us that will reflect God’s presence within us and in the world.
The most important thing about faith is that it is ultimately a verb. Jesus was right in suggesting that if we have faith we do something. Jesus might have been exaggerating in using the image of the uprooted mulberry tree, but the truth is that ultimately if we acknowledge the divine gift within us, then we show forth our faith “not only with our lips but with our lives.”
And how do we do that? Not surprisingly, faith is a verb that calls us to look in two different directions at once. If faith enables us to see ourselves as one of God’s beloved children, then to remain faithful we must also hear God’s call to us. We must leave ourselves open to God in regular prayer and times of silence, however briefly, and go beyond our rote prayers or our spontaneous calls for help, to reach the God within us, to connect more deeply to the God within us, to hear more clearly the words of that God. And we do this not to prove anything, not to buy God’s favor, not to placate an angry God, but so that we might follow more closely behind Jesus, so that our God-given faith may indeed become that great green tree.
And then we must do our faith out in the world. Writer Debie Thomas reminds us that that to do faith is “To do the loving, forgiving thing we consider so banal we ignore it. Why? Because the life of faith is as straightforward as a slave serving his master dinner. As ordinary as a hired worker fulfilling the terms of his contract. Faith isn’t fireworks; it’s not meant to dazzle. Faith is simply recognizing our tiny place in relation to God’s enormous creative love, and then filling that place with our whole lives.”1 We do our faith by doing what God calls us to do, in our ordinary given lives, and, to the extent that we fallible humans can, with the mindset of Jesus. Doing our faith will look different for each one of us. For many of us, living out our faith will mean truly accepting ourselves as God’s beloved children. And it also will mean looking hard at our lives, forgiving those who have hurt us, forgiving ourselves for the hurt we have visited on others, and asking for forgiveness where we can. Doing faith will mean seeing Christ in the faces of strangers, especially of those who ask for our help. For some of us, doing faith might mean embarking on a new educational or career path, or taking in an unwanted child. For all of us doing faith will mean using our God-given financial resources intentionally, especially to support people and organizations that are helping us to care more intentionally for the earth, and that are working to bring God’s reign nearer. Doing faith will mean working for justice, especially among those falsely accused. For some of us, doing faith will also mean working to abolish the death penalty. And for all of us, and especially in this contentious political season, doing faith will mean using our right to vote thoughtfully and intentionally.
We have a myriad ways to fulfil our call to do faith in the world. And the truth is that we have all the faith that we need. As we do our faith, God may deepen and strengthen our faith. But even now, every one of you has all the faith that you need to do God’s will. Because, “the tiniest fragment of real faith, real fidelity to responding to God’s prior fidelity to us, can work wonders. Not only a sycamore tree, but even much more deeply-rooted problems, can be dug up and planted in to the sea, if we have that basic, deep-down trust in God.”2 May it be so.
1. http://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay .
2. Patrick J.Ryan, America (September 26, 1992), quoted in Synthesis, October 2, 2016.
What is Jesus talking about here? We are still on the road with Jesus, heading toward Jerusalem and all that will take place there. In this middle section of the gospel, the evangelist has collected a variety of Jesus’ teachings and sayings. No doubt the evangelist has also tried to arrange them in some coherent order. We’ve heard parables and stories about lost sheep and lost coins, and we heard about a dishonest manager and the rich man and Lazarus. In most of these stories and sayings, the evangelist has shown Jesus using overstatement and exaggeration, one of the favorite rhetorical tools of the rabbis.
As we come to this place in the gospel narrative, the disciples are clearly feeling overwhelmed and downright puzzled by all that Jesus has called them to be and do. So they make what seems like a simple request: “increase our faith.” But what exactly are they asking for? Is a faith a quantity that can decrease or increase? What would more faith look like in real life? If they had “more faith” would the disciples fast, give, heal, and teach more? Would they stop complaining as they trailed behind Jesus? Would they willingly let themselves be executed with Jesus?
Do you find Jesus’ response to his disciples perplexing? At this point, you might not even like the Jesus you see here. He doesn’t reassure the disciples. He doesn’t make a joke or pat them on the back. He barks at them, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed….” Then he uses the image of a master and slaves – overworked slaves – to suggest something about what faith really means. Although the image of hardworking slaves would have been perfectly acceptable to Jesus’ disciples and to the evangelist’s audience, it of course grates on our ears. And more than that, both the sayings about the mustard seed and the image of slaves are surely further examples of overstatement and exaggeration.
So what is the real message here? What is the evangelist suggesting to his own community – and by extension to us – about what faith is? Let’s unpack that word “faith” and look for a minute at what we might think it means. Is faith supernatural power, especially power that, if I believe hard enough, I can make God do what I want? Is faith acceptance of all the traditional statements of the church, believing seven impossible things before breakfast, as one wag put it? Do I have deep faith if I understand and accept every statement in the Nicene Creed? Do I have faith if I take the Bible literally, especially if I believe that creation happened according to the account in Genesis, or that every miracle occurred just as it is depicted? Do I have faith if I adhere to a set of specific devotional practices? Am I person of deep faith if I fast, tithe, and read Forward Day by Day every morning?
The truth is that faith – or perhaps, better, faithfulness – the faithfulness we are called to have as followers of Jesus, is none of these things. To begin with, faith is a gift of God. But it is not something that we earn as a reward for hard work. It is something we already have just by virtue of being a creature made in God’s image. We may have models of people who have faith, like the women Lois and Eunice mentioned by the writer of the second letter to Timothy, but we must still acknowledge God’s gift for ourselves.
Perhaps faith is more what we moderns might call a mindset. When we acknowledge God’s gift, then we can begin seeing the world as God sees it. We can acknowledge ourselves as part of God’s creation, and as such deeply and truly loved by God. We can also understand ourselves as only a small part of God’s creation, as one of God’s many children. And we can begin seeing ourselves as connected to everyone we meet, looking out at those both near and far, not with our egocentric desire to possess and control, but rather with compassion and a desire to help others grow and flourish.
What’s more important, faith is not something static, it is not something that comes in a quantity that Jesus or God can increase at our request. It is not something that we can throw away. We can ignore God, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have no faith. And more important, our faith, whether it’s in God or in anything else, is dynamic. It grows, flourishes, and unfolds throughout our life’s journey. It’s apt really that Jesus used the image of a seed for faith. Remember Jesus’ image of the mustard seed that grows to be a great tree, in which even the birds can nest? If we water and tend our faith, it too can become a green living quality within us that will reflect God’s presence within us and in the world.
The most important thing about faith is that it is ultimately a verb. Jesus was right in suggesting that if we have faith we do something. Jesus might have been exaggerating in using the image of the uprooted mulberry tree, but the truth is that ultimately if we acknowledge the divine gift within us, then we show forth our faith “not only with our lips but with our lives.”
And how do we do that? Not surprisingly, faith is a verb that calls us to look in two different directions at once. If faith enables us to see ourselves as one of God’s beloved children, then to remain faithful we must also hear God’s call to us. We must leave ourselves open to God in regular prayer and times of silence, however briefly, and go beyond our rote prayers or our spontaneous calls for help, to reach the God within us, to connect more deeply to the God within us, to hear more clearly the words of that God. And we do this not to prove anything, not to buy God’s favor, not to placate an angry God, but so that we might follow more closely behind Jesus, so that our God-given faith may indeed become that great green tree.
And then we must do our faith out in the world. Writer Debie Thomas reminds us that that to do faith is “To do the loving, forgiving thing we consider so banal we ignore it. Why? Because the life of faith is as straightforward as a slave serving his master dinner. As ordinary as a hired worker fulfilling the terms of his contract. Faith isn’t fireworks; it’s not meant to dazzle. Faith is simply recognizing our tiny place in relation to God’s enormous creative love, and then filling that place with our whole lives.”1 We do our faith by doing what God calls us to do, in our ordinary given lives, and, to the extent that we fallible humans can, with the mindset of Jesus. Doing our faith will look different for each one of us. For many of us, living out our faith will mean truly accepting ourselves as God’s beloved children. And it also will mean looking hard at our lives, forgiving those who have hurt us, forgiving ourselves for the hurt we have visited on others, and asking for forgiveness where we can. Doing faith will mean seeing Christ in the faces of strangers, especially of those who ask for our help. For some of us, doing faith might mean embarking on a new educational or career path, or taking in an unwanted child. For all of us doing faith will mean using our God-given financial resources intentionally, especially to support people and organizations that are helping us to care more intentionally for the earth, and that are working to bring God’s reign nearer. Doing faith will mean working for justice, especially among those falsely accused. For some of us, doing faith will also mean working to abolish the death penalty. And for all of us, and especially in this contentious political season, doing faith will mean using our right to vote thoughtfully and intentionally.
We have a myriad ways to fulfil our call to do faith in the world. And the truth is that we have all the faith that we need. As we do our faith, God may deepen and strengthen our faith. But even now, every one of you has all the faith that you need to do God’s will. Because, “the tiniest fragment of real faith, real fidelity to responding to God’s prior fidelity to us, can work wonders. Not only a sycamore tree, but even much more deeply-rooted problems, can be dug up and planted in to the sea, if we have that basic, deep-down trust in God.”2 May it be so.
1. http://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay .
2. Patrick J.Ryan, America (September 26, 1992), quoted in Synthesis, October 2, 2016.
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