Proper 22C
Lamentations 1:1-6
Lamentations 3:19-26
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10
When
I was a young wife and mother, I used to buy lots of women’s magazines. I was
worried about doing everything just right, you see. I was always comparing
myself to my fellow moms: I would wonder why my son wasn’t potty-trained
yet, when my friend’s children were. I would worry about why my husband
worked all the time, when my friend’s husband came home early to help with
dinner. So I would stand in the grocery store checkout line and read the
appealing magazine headlines: “10 Easy Steps to Make Your Husband Pay Attention
to You,” or “How to Potty-Train your Toddler in 2 Weeks,” or “Recipes
Guaranteed to Help Drop 10 Pounds Before Bathing-Suit Season.” My heart would
swell with hope, and I would buy the magazine, relieved to be taking home the
answers that would put an end to all of my failings.
I
would eagerly begin reading the articles. First, I would read a wonderful
description of the problem. “Yes! This person understands me!” I would sigh.
Next, I would gather some reassurance that other people had the same issues. Finally,
at the end of the article, I would come to a paragraph summarizing the same unappealing
advice that I could have thought of myself without buying a magazine:
To
lose weight—don’t eat so much and exercise every day.
To
communicate with your husband—talk to him.
And
so on. It didn’t take me long to learn that, no matter how much the headlines
on the front of the magazine spoke to my insecurities, the advice on the inside
wasn’t going to be very new and exciting.
After
listening to Jesus’ difficult imperatives about discipleship, the disciples in
Luke’s Gospel were apparently just as insecure as we are. They must have felt keenly their own failure
to live up to God’s expectations.
Jesus had been saying things like:
“The
last shall be first and the first shall be last;”
“Give
away all your possessions;”
“You
cannot serve both God and Wealth.”
“Forgive your neighbor every time she asks
forgiveness, no matter how many times she has hurt you.”
“Don’t
cause others to stumble in faith or you might as well throw yourself into the
sea to drown.”
Jesus
seems to be making it perfectly clear that each member of the community is
responsible--responsible before God--for maintaining right relationships:
for
sharing with one another,
for
forgiving one another,
for
supporting one another.
Such a responsible role is
daunting—for the disciples and for us.
“What if we can’t do these things?” they
wonder. “What if we fail? We need more faith than we have now, that’s for sure.
How can I tell if I have enough faith to be a follower of Jesus?” They cry out
in consternation, “Jesus, fill us with more faith!”
The
disciples are looking for affirmation that will wipe away their self-doubts. I
imagine that they are hoping for answers from Jesus that look like the headlines
in those women’s magazines I used to read:
“Ten Easy Steps to Strengthen Your Faith,”
or
“How to Do the Miracles that Will Impress Your Neighbor,”
or
“Recipes to Increase Love and Generosity.”
Just
like we long for quick fixes for our family troubles, we dream of easy
spiritual answers, quick fixes for our relationship with God and with our
brothers and sisters in Christ. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could learn how to
manage our inner resources of faith and love as easily as we keep track of our
bank accounts online? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could read an article about
someone who did so much forgiving and supporting in August and September that
he was able to take a little break from his Christian responsibility until
Thanksgiving? W.H. Auden asks, in much
more poetic terms, for “a womb or a tomb wherein [we] may halt to express some
attainment…”[1] We
long to rest, even for a moment, from shame and anxiety in a concrete sense of
attainment. A sense of attainment in our lives--a sense of attainment with God,
in our faith--a sense of attainment in our relationships with each other, as a
community--that’s what we desire, isn’t it?
Jesus’
answer in today’s Gospel, like the articles in the magazines to which I turned
with so much hope, must disappoint our longing for attainment. The first part
of Jesus’ answer, the metaphor of the mustard seed, is more like a poem than a
magazine article. It is a double-edged metaphor, and it cuts through our
thinking like a sword.
The
“you” in his reply is a plural you. In Greek, Jesus is saying with a sigh: “All
of y’all put together don’t even have faith that is the size of a grain of
mustard seed!”
Once
the apostles are reeling from that cutting remark, Jesus lifts them back up
again with the hugely exaggerated, cartoon-like image of the tiny little
mustard seed faith yanking up a huge tree by its complex root system and
heaving it into the sea. In this metaphor, the concepts of big and little no
longer make sense. It’s impossible for something tiny to heave something huge
and rooted into the sea. This absurd image shows us that there is no such thing
as big faith and little faith. Clearly, faith has no size. It can’t be measured
and compared! God can work through anything--any size, any shape, even through
a bunch of incompetent and doubting disciples—and even through us.
Jesus then follows with a difficult
paradox in the strange little parable of the “worthless slaves.” The slavery
language sets off alarms in our ears these days, as it should. But the message beneath
it still speaks to us today. Yes, we all have tasks to accomplish in our
relationships with each other and with God. Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes
we don’t. But when we are successful in our loving, in our giving, and in our
forgiving, we have no excuse to get puffed up about it. We have no cause to gloat
about our own piety. We don’t need to look for special rewards from God. We
have no right to tell ourselves that God loves us better than God loves
everyone else. God expects us to live mindfully and obediently in all of the
everyday tasks of our lives. The word “ministry,” even comes from the Latin
root for “small things.” Think of the words “mini” and “miniscule.” To do “ministry,” is to take care of small
matters, to practice faith in the small steps of our daily lives. The faith
that Jesus commends to us involves faithfulness in small things. It is not a
smooth or easy life of attainment, but a life of watchful obedience to the everyday
tasks that we have been given: tasks of forgiveness, sharing, and support for
one another.
What
if one of the disciples were to have reported on Jesus’ words and miracles in a
magazine article on the “life of faith?” I’m afraid that the article might seem just as
irritatingly obvious and as frustrating to my drive for attainment as those
articles on parenting that I used to read. The Gospel headlines might scream,
“Jesus Redeems Notorious Sinner,” but the story inside will be about a woman
saving for months to buy expensive ointment and then washing Jesus’ feet with
it. Or it will tell about a no-count leper who totters back down a dirt road to
thank Jesus for healing him. Or it will lift to sainthood a man who traded a
life of easy wealth for a life of caring for animals and beggars. Or it will
feature an Episcopalian who spends his free time tutoring needy children and
building Habitat houses and going to endless Vestry meetings. Or parents trying
to raise children who love God and neighbor. Or a local leader who fights for
justice for those in need during frustrating meeting after frustrating meeting.
It will be about ordinary people and their ordinary lives, stumbling along and
doing their best to stay alert to God’s presence in and around them.
Hearing
these stories, we might be tempted to sigh, "Oh, I already knew all
that," throwing down the “Mustard Seed Gazette.”
What
we always forget, though, is the sustaining presence of the God who loves us,
of the God who is bigger than our duties and our everyday tasks. In Luke 12
Jesus explains, “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he
comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat,
and he will come and serve them.” While human beings wouldn’t think to
invite our slaves to sit down at the table with us, God invites everyone to
feast at God's table. And God gently lifts the cup of salvation to their lips.
Our
sustenance, our hope, is in the presence of our faithful, loving God. So let’s
not get hung up on attainment—Jesus just needs us to stay awake.
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