17th Sunday after Pentecost (Year C) - October 6, 2019

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Year C
October 6, 2019
Luke 17:5-10

Evangelist miniature of Luke; part of an eighth-century Irish pocket Gospelbook. [Public Domain]

“The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our Faith!’” The apostles’ request is reasonable and understandable. For the last few weeks, we’ve been reading through the section of Gospel of Luke’s that recounts Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem - from Galilee to the cross. This section of Luke’s gospel is filled with tough words from Jesus, from “hating” our parents and our own lives to warnings about the role reversals of the Kingdom of God. We’ve heard texts that challenge us on our use and relationship with wealth. Jesus has time and time again told us that following him is not easy. It requires forsaking those who are closest to us, vulnerability, identification with the lost and those who society makes invisible. It points to glory, not in power and riches, but in servanthood. It requires subverting the typical boundaries that separate us: money, race/ ethnicity, religion. It leads to the cross, which in the narrative is creeping closer and closer. After hearing these teachings and these parables, it is easy to understand why the apostles would request more faith because, quite frankly, it seems like an impossible task, particularly if we feel that our faith isn’t quite up to par. It is easy to see why the apostles would wonder if the faith that they have is sufficient for the road ahead.

We may not quite use the same words, but the sentiment is familiar to us. As we read this passage, I would guess that we can identify with the apostles. There are times in our lives when we desperately want Jesus to increase our faith, whether we are daunted by the callings of our faith or whether we are going through our own periods of doubt. We might say, “If only I had a little more faith, I could do what you ask of me,”  “If only I had a little more faith I could be a better Christian, a better disciple,” “my faith isn’t strong enough for that,” “if my faith was stronger I wouldn’t be in the valley of the shadow of doubt” or  “if my faith was stronger and I prayed more, I would not be suffering right now.” We go through times in our lives when we feel like our doubts are the size of a boulder. We may believe that with a greater amount of faith, we could somehow crush these doubts and avoid the troubles of the world and live a happy, fulfilled life, or we may believe that a greater faith leads to greater wisdom, or we may believe that a greater faith would better equip us to live out our Christian calling, or we may believe that our standing with God depends on how much faith we have, as if faith is something quantifiable that we can measure. Like the commodities of this world, more of it is good, less of it is bad.

Jesus’ response, at first, seems odd and a bit condescending. “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea’, and it would obey you.” It sounds like we’re being scolded for not having enough faith. It sounds like Jesus is saying something like “If only you had the faith the size of a mustard seed,” implying that we don’t have even that much faith and therefore we have failed. We hear Jesus’ response as condemnation, as punitive. This is the assumed tone of the passage. We place our own guilt or insecurities about the amount or strength of our faith onto Jesus and onto this message. We see other people who seem to have “great amounts of faith” (whatever that might look like - a person that we think of as having a “faith that can move mountains”), and we feel that we don’t quite live up to that example. Read this way, the passage is a call to more faith because we are certainly lacking. Is Jesus’ response to our desire to have our faith increased, really a condemning, “Yeah, you don’t have enough, and by now, you should have more”? If that’s his answer, how will we ever have enough? How will we ever be able to live out the Christian faith, in vulnerability, in servitude, in love for the neighbor?

If we read this text this way, I fear that we miss the point. This passage becomes about Law and not Gospel. It condemns us rather than frees us - sometimes texts do condemn rather than free, but is that how this text is intended to function? It makes faith a “work” rather than a gift given freely by God. It pushes us to try to climb a ladder up toward God, rather than trusting that God comes down to us, dwelling with us in our joys and in our sufferings. If we read the text this way, we also run the risk of the prosperity gospel or being Christians of glory, instead of Christians of the cross, servanthood, and vulnerability. In other words, if our faith is strong enough, God will provide happiness, health, and wealth. In this way of looking at the gospel, we earn good things in this life by the measure of our faith.

But that isn’t how it works, is it? That certainly isn’t my experience of God or of the Gospel. In reality, the life of a Christian contains both joy and sorrow, times of both sickness and health, both good and evil, both faith and doubt, one of being both saint and sinner. Our faith doesn’t eliminate those realities.

So I wonder… What if we read the text a different way? How does it change the text if we hear a different Jesus speaking with a different tone? Instead of hearing it as “if only you had the faith the size of a mustard seed,” we might hear, “if even you had the size the faith of a mustard seed.” Or to say it a bit clearer, “even the faith the size of a mustard seed is enough.” A little bit of faith, just the size of a mustard seed, can do extraordinary things. If the faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to force a mulberry tree to be uprooted and thrown into the sea - an extraordinary thing to be sure but not exactly useful - what can the faith that we already have do, even if it seems tiny? A small amount of faith - even smaller than a mustard seed - is enough to do the “ordinary” callings of our faith - the things that really matter - loving God and loving neighbor. Because faith is a gift from God, the faith we have already been given is enough.

If we read these words in this way, Jesus’ response becomes liberating, freeing. We no longer need to be concerned with the amount of or the strength our faith - because like the love of God, faith is immeasurable. And we have already been given enough. Therefore, we are freed to live with doubts and with questions. As Ann Lamott once said, “The opposite of faith isn't doubt. It's certainty."  That may sound odd, but her point is that if we are certain, what is the point of faith? Faith is trusting in the promises of God even amid uncertainty, doubt, questions, and sorrows. We trust that we are loved by God, forgiven by God, reconciled to God and that God, incarnate in Christ, dwells with us even and especially in the darkness and in the suffering of our lives and of our world.

 And we are freed to use, to live out the faith we have. It is not about working our way up a spiritual ladder to God, but rather about living in response to the God, incarnate in Christ, who comes down to us, giving us the gifts of forgiveness, reconciliation, and love freely, without us doing a thing to earn it. Living out that faith or trust is living our lives in response to the promises of God. We live out that faith not in extraordinary actions - like ordering a mulberry tree to throw itself into the ocean - but in the seemingly ordinary actions of forgiveness, reconciliation, and servanthood. And I would argue that those actions are truly the extraordinary actions of faith - it isn’t about miracles. Those actions are the actions that actually participate in the breaking in of the Kingdom of God, breaking down the barriers that divide us, building and restoring relationships, lifting up the poor, the neighbor, and the stranger, and working for peace and justice here and now.

As we look at our lives and at the world around us, we can see that this is a large task, as Jesus hasbeen saying over the last few weeks. However, Jesus gives us gifts to increase our faith, to ground our faith. We’re given the gift of faith in the waters of baptism, which joins us with Christ in his death and resurrection. We are fed and nourished in our faith each week, as we celebrate Communion. In the Body and Blood of Christ, yet again we receive these gifts of forgiveness, love, and reconciliation, and are strengthened for service in the world. And we are assured that we already have been given the faith necessary to live out our faith in response to the Gospel and to what Christ has already done for us.

Amen