Sermon: "Increase Our Faith," October 13, 2019
The Rev. Ryan Slifka
18th Sunday After Pentecost
Series: “Jesus Uncensored: The Topsy-Turvy Teachings of Jesus According to Luke”
“The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’ The Lord replied, ‘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.
‘Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table”? Would you not rather say to him, “Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink”? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!” ’”
Today’s scripture passage begins with a cry from Jesus’ disciples, a demand from his followers. “Increase our faith!” they shout. “Increase our faith.”
“Christ With the Apostles” Catedral Sao Francisco Xavier, Joinville Brazil, 1977
Truth be told, though, you can’t really blame them for the request. If you heard Jesus’ teachings just before this passage, you’d be asking for some help in the faith department, too.
“If you cause one of these little ones to stumble,” Jesus says just before our passage. “If you cause someone to stumble, you might as well grab a millstone, one of these giant pieces of rock with a hole in it used to ground flour. Might as well pop your head in that hole and toss yourself to the bottom of the ocean.” Basically, Jesus says, I don’t care how holy you are. If you, by your actions, or your attitude towards them get in between someone else and God, all that holiness: cancelled out. You’re back to zero. So don’t make someone else stumble—or else.
Yeesh.
But wait, there’s more. “Be on your guard,” Jesus continues. “Be on your guard. If another disciple sins, you better rebuke them.” Now, this is connected to the last statement. If someone is getting their life into a real mess and hurting other people, and we don’t do anything about it, then we bear some responsibility for their stumbling. It’s why on most Sundays as part of our prayer of confession we offer up to God those things we have not only done, but the things we’ve left undone. The things we didn’t do that we should have done. We not only bear some responsibility for their stumbling, we bear some responsibility for the hurt they cause others, too. When we do nothing to intervene.
Now of course, this whole rebuking thing might sound pretty exciting to some of us (including myself). Cuz we love a good rebuke. Love a good scoldin’. Sounds like a license to get out the fire hose of judgment under the guise of keeping other people from stumbling, and let ‘er rip. Thank you, Jesus. Finally something I’m good at.
As exciting as that sound, it ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. Because Jesus ties admonishment, to forgiveness. “If there is repentance,” he says, “you must forgive.” The purpose of bringing someone’s wrongdoing to light is always for the purpose of changing minds, and that the person might be restored fully to community. Wagging fingers, pronouncing judgment, relishing in someone else’s misdeeds—that’s a stumbling block to forgiveness. Because who wants to seek forgiveness from a self-righteous jerk? It’s easy to point out people’s problems. But it’s always much harder to do it with the goal of healing, forgiveness, restoration in mind.
And it’s not just forgiving one offense here and there, either.“If the same person sins against you seven times a day,” Jesus says. “If they sin against you say ‘I repent.’ Then you’ve gotta forgive them seven times a day.” One New Testament scholar says that “the responsibility is thereby not placed on the penitent person—the person seeking forgiveness—to demonstrate that his or her repentance is genuine, but on the disciple to demonstrate that he or she is capable of following the demand to forgive one who repents.”[i]
So you can see why, in response, Jesus’ disciples cry out, “increase our faith!” Jesus teaches his disciples to call out wrong-doing yes. But he teaches even that as an occasion his disciples to demonstrate grace. Forgiveness. I mean, I have enough trouble forgiving one wrong by one person, let alone seven a day. Let alone seven-times seven, seven days a week. But here Jesus instructs a super-human amount of forgiveness on the part of his followers. So no wonder they cry out for an increase in faith, for a shot of supernatural strength. Because forgiveness on that scale ain’t something any normal old person like you or me can do.
Their cry for faith is understandable. And doesn’t downplay how hard it all is. Jesus knows the size of the task. But the fascinating thing is that Jesus says they’re already equipped for the task.
“If,” Jesus says. “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree ‘Pull uprooted and planted in the sea’, and it would obey you.” Of course, Jesus doesn’t mean that if you believe hard enough, you’ll be able to perform magic. It’s a figure of speech. Like saying “you’ll turn the world upside-down.” It’s hyperbole. Jesus is saying that in order to forgive like he says—or follow any of his teachings really—we don’t need more faith. In fact, we misunderstand what faith is. The great refomer Martin Luther said that “Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.”[ii] The great minister and novelist Frederick Buechner says this about faith: He says that “faith is better understood as a verb, than as a noun, [more as an action rather than an object], as process more than as a possession. It is on-again, off-again rather than once and for all. Faith is not being sure where you’re going, but journeying anyway. A journey without maps.”[iii]
According to Jesus, we don’t need to feel faith more deeply. We don’t need to believe ideas about God harder than we do. And we don’t need to wait around for God to give us the strength to do this kind of stuff, to increase our faith. Because faith isn’t about quantity or quality. Faith is a disposition of the heart. A willingness to venture out and trust God to carry us through, even when we’re not sure of how it’ll turn out. Jesus says that with the tiniest amount of faith we can pluck a tree from the soil and plunk it in the ocean—metaphorically speaking. Things that seem impossible or incredible. We’ll find ourselves doing all sorts of crazy things, like loving our enemies, turning the other cheek. Serving and befriending the poor, suffering and hurt of this world. Or speaking truth in love to those who hurt us and others. And forgiving those who’ve wronged us seven times a day. Seven-times-seventy. A little trust goes a long way.
And pretty soon when we do them and seeing them done, it’ll start seeming like old hat. It becomes part of us, like second nature. That’s what the parable Jesus follows the mustard seed teaching with. Basically he says—speaking from his own time and place—that slaves don’t get commended for doing what they’re ordered to do. It’s their job. All this stuff, loving, serving part of the definition of being a child of God, the job description of a disciple of Jesus. It’s part and parcel of growing in to being the kind of people God has created us to be.
Any little faith at all is the gateway to incredible things we never thought possible. By simply trusting, by believing Jesus’ promise that we can. And we will. Because we’re already given the grace to do so.
And this kind of stuff happens every day.
Botham Jean, 26.
You may have heard or read the story of the murder of Botham Jean, a 26 year old African-American man. It was in the news earlier this month. One night Amber Guyger, a Dallas city police officer, accidentally entered the apartment on the floor just below hers in her building. Still in uniform following work, she found Botham Jean in the apartment, unarmed. Just sitting on the couch eating ice cream and watching T.V. She thought it was her apartment, and immediately drew her gun and killed Jean right then and there. This innocent, unarmed man. To make it worse, text messages the officer had written prior to the incident joking about the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and African-Americans in general, bringing a racist dimension to the whole event. So earlier this month when Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison with the possibility of parole, rather than life in prison, there were protests and chants against what some consider to be a lenient sentence. Just another example of discrimination. Just another cop getting off easy in a system rigged against African-Americans.
Brandt Jean, 18.
Now, putting those questions aside—questions that are important and crucial. Within the sadness and heartbreak of this story is buried a bright light of hope. Within is this story of racial injustice and police bias is enclosed a story of mustard seed faith. A story of how God takes a little faith a long way.
The victim, Botham Jean’s younger brother, Brandt, was given time to speak at the trial. Brandt, this younger brother who’s only 18, had the opportunity to address this police officer who shot and killed his innocent older brother, with hateful and racist overtones. No doubt anger and rage and despair and hatred flowed through his mind at some point. But when he had the opportunity, here’s what he said instead. Roll the video:
It’s powerful. Choked me up. Rather than pronouncing vengeance upon this woman who murdered his brother in cold blood, he spoke a word of forgiveness, the Word of grace. He said I love you. He said God will forgive you. And he embraced his enemy not only as a friend, but a beloved sister and child of the living God. This kid showed us super-human forgiveness. This kid, This eighteen year old kid, normal person like you and me. In fact, someone who might not be as wise or experienced as you or me, someone who definitely wasn’t born with the advantages of most of us here. This kid was able to pluck up a tree-sized weed of pain, suffering and anger. And toss it into the sea of forgiveness. And not only that, to speak the truth in love in a way that doesn’t provide fodder for punishment but paves the way for redemption. No stumbling block here. This kid showed us Jesus. With nothing more than a mustard seed-sized faith. And it’s incredible.
It’s incredible. And media all over the world were astounded. I was astounded, and no doubt you were blown away, too. But according to Jesus, this is exactly the kind of run-of-the-mill thing we can expect when we’re willing to trust Jesus. Just another day on the job with the gift of faith. Faith that’s not just a feeling, or an emotion, or an idea. But faith that is fidelity, the willingness to trust Jesus and his Way when we have no idea of the outcome, and the world tells us otherwise. When we don’t have a map, when we don’t know what’s gonna happen, but we step out in the power of God’s Spirit. When we walk on the path of Christ, trusting that he is in the business of healing broken hearts, mending creation. And making all things new.
So go, brothers and sisters... Go... speak truth, and do it in love. Go and forgive, whomever you have to, when ever you have you, as many times as you have to. It may sound impossible. But as the angel said to Mary at the beginning of the story, “with God all things are possible.”
And thank God for that.
AMEN.
[i] R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” 321.
[ii] https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/martin-luthers-definition-faith/
[iii] Frederick Buechner, “Faith,” in Wishful Thinking: a Theological ABC (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 25.
[iv] Bill Chappell, “Brandt Jean's Act Of Grace Toward His Brother's Killer Sparks A Debate Over Forgiving,” NPR.org website, October 3, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/10/03/766866875/brandt-jeans-act-of-grace-toward-his-brother-s-killer-sparks-a-debate-over-forgi