Well here it is again, that strange contradiction that is the last week of October. While all around us people are buying candy and putting the finishing touches on their Halloween costumes, we Lutherans are dusting off our red sweaters and singing A Mighty Fortress. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Reformation Day. It tops my list of favorite church holidays. Also, this is my favorite stole, and I think I look especially good in my red sweater. Though, I’m preaching to the choir tonight, you are a fine-looking red clad bunch. But even though we are that special breed of folk who come out on a Wednesday night to celebrate the Reformation, we may still be asking the question, why? What does it matter? We are insiders gathered here tonight, listening to an insider message. And while this is fun, I think it is safe to say that for most of us, we wonder what the future will be for our churches. Most, if not all of us, wish for the church we remember, the time when our numbers were booming, when Sunday Schools were packed and worship was standing room only. But we don’t live in that world anymore. Mainline churches are struggling, our economy is increasingly global, and even though technology has increased to the point where we can connect to each other in an instant over the internet, we seem to be more disconnected than ever before. So what’s the point, other than nostalgia, for celebrating the Reformation? Are the actions of a sixteenth century German monk at all relevant in our twenty-first century global world?
Now, bear with me, because I think the answer to that question is yes, yes the Reformation is still relevant. And not only relevant, I actually believe that our Reformation heritage gives us who call ourselves Lutheran Christians a unique and important perspective that can be a gift to our global and fast-paced world. I believe that the lessons of Luther and the Reformation can help us lead others into this new era. And I’ll get to why I believe this. But first, I want to talk about the real thing that draws us together. I want to talk about Jesus.
Our Gospel reading for Reformation starts with Jesus talking to a group of “Jews who had believed in him.” It’s always important to remember, especially when reading John’s Gospel, that Jesus himself and all his disciples were Jewish. Christianity didn’t become a separate religion until much later. Jesus was not out to create a new religion and break from the Jews, Jesus was a Jew. So these “Jews who had believed in him,” is really better translated as “Judeans” or probably “Jewish religious leaders.” They are the people who have the most to lose if the upheaval of the social order that Jesus was preaching came to fruition. These are people who followed Jesus as long as it was politically expedient for them to do so, and then turned as soon as his message started to threaten their power. The conflict in John’s Gospel is not Jesus over and against the Jews, it is Jesus over and against the people who have worldly power, power that they are using to oppress others.
And if we needed more proof that these “Jews who had believed in him” were not really religious Jews, we need only to keep reading. Because when Jesus said to them, “‘the truth will make you free.’ They answered, ‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.’” Wait a second; you’ve “never been slaves to anyone.” That’s just not true. A case could be made that they were in some ways slaves in that moment to the occupying Roman Empire. But more than that, what is, to this day, one of the central holidays in the Jewish religious tradition? Passover. Two-thousand years later, our Jewish sisters and brothers still gather in the spring to “remember that they were slaves in Egypt” and God led them to freedom. To be a descendant of Abraham is to be an heir to this promise that God sets God’s people free, that God does not allow God’s people to dwell in slavery, be it slavery in Egypt, slavery under the Babylonian exile, slavery under the Roman occupation of Jesus’ time, or even slavery to their own greed and self-absorption. What God does in Jesus Christ is really a new riff on the same old salvation story sung since the dawn of creation, that God brings freedom to God’s people.
The guys in our Gospel reading today had been slaves but now they were free. Only they forgot their history, and so they forgot what a gift that freedom was. The story had become so familiar to them, they were so caught up in the role they thought they were playing in earning their own salvation, that they did not even recognize their freedom anymore. They needed Jesus to tell them the truth anew, to remind them of their need and God’s faithfulness, so they could recognize the new promise God was unfolding in front of them in the person of Jesus Christ.
And I can’t be too hard on these guys, because I think sometimes we do this too. Or at least, I do this, I can’t speak for you. But I forget. I get so caught up in the story in front of me, in the immediate moment, that I forget that God is a God of freedom, that God is a God of resurrection, that God is a God of life and hope and promise. I know those things, I’ve seen them in the stories of scripture, I know them in my soul, but like the guys in our Gospel reading, I forget them sometimes. I get too caught up in the task ahead of me, too obsessed with my own abilities, or lack thereof and it blocks me from recognizing the thing that God is doing. And here, I think, is where our Reformation heritage can help us.
Let’s start with Luther. Now, I love Luther. I love his theology, his writings are central to how I’ve made sense of my faith. I would say that Jesus is why I am a Christian, but Luther is why my particular brand of Christianity is Lutheran. But as a student of Luther, I also have to be critical and admit that, if God had given me the job of choosing reformers, I might have picked someone a little more tactful. His theology was grace-filled and inclusive, but his way of delivering it was often less so. When you get a chance, Google “Luther Insulter,” the guy had some zingers. He was plagued his whole life with both crippling self-doubt and a chronic stomach disorder that often left him short-tempered and even mean. He could be stubborn and harsh, and he wrote things about Jews and peasants that are simply indefensible. And yet, despite all of that, Luther’s theology articulates this promise that God is a loving God, that God wants nothing but to be in relationship with us, and that God’s grace is a gift that God gives to everyone regardless of whether or not we deserve it, but simply because it is God’s nature to love us. Luther was by no means a saint, and I think we can take hope in that, and confidence that no matter what doubts or failures we might have, God still uses us to share the promise of grace. That the worst things we’ve done or said do not define us, what defines us is the love God has for us. And so, following in the example of Luther, we can try our best, and when we fail, when we are grumpy or irritable or lose our temper, we can rest in the promise of God’s forgiveness and try again. Luther was not some paradigm of virtue; he was a flawed human being just like the rest of us. And that makes him a hero in the faith we can relate to. If Luther, grumpy, irritable, Luther, could change the world by proclaiming the love of God, then we can too.
Another thing our Reformation heritage teaches us is the importance of leveraging technology. Now, how am I comparing smartphones to a period when people thought the devil could enter your mouth when you sneezed, but bear with me. Luther lived in a time that was actually not that much different than our own in terms of the pace of change. Luther was not the first person to have these ideas, but he was the first person to have them take off, and the reason for that was a new technology called the printing press. Prior to the fifteen hundreds, news spread slowly because the only way to copy written documents was by hand. But with the invention of the printing press, suddenly multiple copies could be run off in comparatively rapid speed. When Luther nailed the ninety-five theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, he wasn’t thinking they would have a wide readership; he simply wanted to start a conversation about some excesses he saw in the local church. But somebody got a hold of them, translated them, and ran off a ton of copies, spreading Luther’s writing all over the known world. The analogy I make is its like if you think an interesting thing and you post it on your Facebook page, because you want to talk about it with your friends, and then suddenly Reddit picks it up, and it goes viral, and everyone around the world is arguing about your cat’s opinion on the election. Friends, Luther literally stumbled into the concept of having something “go viral.”
And here’s maybe my favorite thing Luther did. He translated the entire Bible, both Greek and Hebrew, into German. And, in the process, he really created the modern German language, because Germany wasn’t a united nation at the time but a series of loosely connected nation-states. But, more important than the coolness factor of creating a language, why Luther’s translation is important is it opened the scripture up so that people could hear the good news of God’s love for them in their own language. For the first time in people’s lives, the scripture they heard in church was in a language they spoke, the hymns they sung told the story of God’s love, the sermon was an exposition on God’s good news for God’s people. All of the reforms Luther did in translating scripture and opening up the worship service was about finding new ways to tell the same old truth; that since the Son has made us free, we are free indeed. Luther didn’t change the story of Jesus; he just found ways to tell it so that everyone could understand.
Friends, the world is changing. We stand at this pivotal moment in history and the way church was in the past will not be the way it is in the future. And that, especially as someone who has staked my livelihood on ordained ministry, is terrifying. But here’s the good news. We too are descendants of Abraham, grafted into the family tree through the waters of baptism. That means that slavery, struggle, and hardship is a part of our story, but so too is the overwhelming creative and redeeming grace of God who throughout history has led God’s people into their next tomorrow. The God who led the Israelites through the wilderness, who delivered them from captivity in Babylon, and who sent Jesus to defeat death and bring all of creation into newness, that God is our God. Yes, the church and the world is changing, but on Reformation we celebrate that the church that buried Luther was not the church he was born into. And so, we who claim the name of Lutheran Christians can be bold to lead the church into the new thing that God has in store for us. We can listen for the winds of the Spirit’s creative presence; we can follow in Luther’s model and translate the scripture into our own context. We can find new ways to tell the same old glorious truth, that the Son has made us free, and we are free indeed. Thanks be to God. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Monday, October 31, 2016
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Conversation Points for John 8:31-36
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• This section of John’s Gospel, 8:31-59, forms the central theological basis of Johannine theology. These are the theological ideas that set Christianity apart.
• What do we do with the harsh language surrounding Jews in John’s Gospel, like here in verse 31, “the Jews who had believed in him.” John’s Gospel functions on two levels, the level of the story of the life of Jesus and the level of the community for which the gospel was written. Within the level of the life of Jesus, the controversy was not between Jesus and Jews, as Jesus was Jewish, but between Jesus and the leaders (political and religious) whose power was threatened by Jesus’ presence. On the level of the Johannine community, some scholars have posited that the Johannine community was dealing with a split in the religious community that had forced them out of the synagogues. So for them, these references to the “Jews” helped the Johannine community connect Jesus’ persecution to their own experience of suffering.
• Meno (here translated “continue in”) is a uniquely Johannine word. It means to abide deeply, and connotes the permanent relationship between Jesus and his followers.
• Logos (translated “Word”) is a phrase often used for Jesus in John’s Gospel. More than word, it means active communication.
• Truth, aletheia, and freedom, eleutheroo, are other loaded words that show up throughout John’s Gospel. What does Jesus mean by truth? Or freedom? Both are not abstract concepts, but, like life and light, are bound to the Word. Truth and freedom cannot be known apart from relationship in Jesus.
• The idea of freedom connects to the exodus tradition, of God leading God’s people from slavery in Egypt to freedom. Jesus is reinterpreting the exodus tradition to freedom not just from physical slavery, but from slavery to sin.
• The rebuttal of Jesus here is a common technique in John, where Jesus says something and the listeners misinterpret what he said. The audience understands, but the characters in the story do not. Those listening to the Gospel would hear have been familiar with Jewish religious history and know the Jewish history of God freeing God’s people. In their eagerness to disagree with Jesus, those listening to him distance themselves from their own history.
• Freedom is a gift, it is not a right of inheritance.
• The son/slave parable would have been familiar to the audience. Both a son and a slave would have been under the control and the protection of the father in the patriarchal society, but only the son could inherit.
Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• This section of John’s Gospel, 8:31-59, forms the central theological basis of Johannine theology. These are the theological ideas that set Christianity apart.
• What do we do with the harsh language surrounding Jews in John’s Gospel, like here in verse 31, “the Jews who had believed in him.” John’s Gospel functions on two levels, the level of the story of the life of Jesus and the level of the community for which the gospel was written. Within the level of the life of Jesus, the controversy was not between Jesus and Jews, as Jesus was Jewish, but between Jesus and the leaders (political and religious) whose power was threatened by Jesus’ presence. On the level of the Johannine community, some scholars have posited that the Johannine community was dealing with a split in the religious community that had forced them out of the synagogues. So for them, these references to the “Jews” helped the Johannine community connect Jesus’ persecution to their own experience of suffering.
• Meno (here translated “continue in”) is a uniquely Johannine word. It means to abide deeply, and connotes the permanent relationship between Jesus and his followers.
• Logos (translated “Word”) is a phrase often used for Jesus in John’s Gospel. More than word, it means active communication.
• Truth, aletheia, and freedom, eleutheroo, are other loaded words that show up throughout John’s Gospel. What does Jesus mean by truth? Or freedom? Both are not abstract concepts, but, like life and light, are bound to the Word. Truth and freedom cannot be known apart from relationship in Jesus.
• The idea of freedom connects to the exodus tradition, of God leading God’s people from slavery in Egypt to freedom. Jesus is reinterpreting the exodus tradition to freedom not just from physical slavery, but from slavery to sin.
• The rebuttal of Jesus here is a common technique in John, where Jesus says something and the listeners misinterpret what he said. The audience understands, but the characters in the story do not. Those listening to the Gospel would hear have been familiar with Jewish religious history and know the Jewish history of God freeing God’s people. In their eagerness to disagree with Jesus, those listening to him distance themselves from their own history.
• Freedom is a gift, it is not a right of inheritance.
• The son/slave parable would have been familiar to the audience. Both a son and a slave would have been under the control and the protection of the father in the patriarchal society, but only the son could inherit.
Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Monday, October 24, 2016
The Pharisee and the Tax Collector: A Sermon on Luke 18:9-14
My first thought on reading the parable for this morning was, man, is the Pharisee ever an annoying character. I know it’s a parable, and the point is to have the characters be a bit hyperbolic, but it seems like you’d want at least a little realism. Seriously, is there a more egotistical prayer then, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people.” Come on, who prays that way!
The Pharisee is so set up as the villain in the parable, the sort of guy you love to hate, that the lesson of this parable seems almost too easy. Jesus says, don’t be a braggadocios jerk. Ok, great, I think I can handle that.
But I went to a conference this week on reading the Bible with scriptural imagination. So I started to wonder, what had the Pharisee been feeling that led him to this prayer. And, like we talked about last week, a funny thing happens when you try to understand where someone is coming from; you start to have compassion on them. In my experience, people who feel the need to express how great they are out loud often don’t feel so great about themselves inside. This sort of excessive pride is often cover for a deeper insecurity. We see it in the youngest children. The schoolyard bully is usually not a heartless sociopath, she or he is usually a kid who feels powerless and out of control, and so seeks to find their value in power over others. As adults, we get more sophisticated in our search for power, but the motivation isn’t all that different then kids on a playground. I wondered if the Pharisee was seeking confirmation of his own value in his ruthless need to rank his rule-following over and above others.
And once I started thinking about it like this, I started to wonder if maybe the Pharisee was lonely. First off, because, seriously, who would want to be friends with this guy? But even more, is there room in this guy’s worldview for friends? There’s a really interesting spacing thing going on in this parable, that as folk not familiar with the layout of the Temple we miss, so here’s a brief architectural lesson for you. The temple was built like one of those Russian nesting dolls, a series of ever-tightening spaces. How far into the Temple one could go was dependent on how ritually clean they were, how good they did at following the law. Around the outer edge was the Court of the Gentiles. This was the place for gentile and non-law abiding Jews. I am guessing this is where the tax collector in our story would be. Tax collectors were despised because they were seen as colluding with the empire, and thus betrayers of their people. Then in from that was the Court of the Women, or the outer court. Remember, women were thought of as basically property, so they were not considered pure enough to be too close to God. Next was the Hall of the Israelites, where all good, law-abiding Israeli men could worship. Then the Hall of the Priests. The Pharisee in our story probably walked confidently through all the other levels to get here. The only thing past the Hall of the Priests was the most inner sanctum, the Holiest of Holies, where only the High Priest could go, and even he only once a year, on the most holy day, to dwell in the presence of the Most High God. So if the Pharisee was as good as he said he was, and there’s no reason to believe he wasn’t, there was quite likely no one between him and God, no one allowed even close to where he was standing. His devoutness had essentially created a barrier around him that forbade anyone else from coming near him.
At first we might wonder, if it’s just him and God, what’s so wrong with that? Don’t we want to be as close as we can be to God, isn’t that what we were created for? Yes, of course, we were created to be close to God, but we were also created to be close to each other. Think about the story of Genesis. God created Adam, and it was just Adam and God, and it was good. But God realized Adam was lonely, so God created Eve to be a companion to Adam. Love God and love your neighbor, Jesus told the rich young ruler, because God created us to be in relationship with each other.
And not just that, but throughout Luke’s Gospel, Jesus again and again went past barriers and beyond boundaries to seek out those whom society had cast as outsiders. In just a few short chapters, when Jesus is crucified, the curtain of the most holy part of the temple, the curtain which even this Pharisee has to stand outside of will be torn in two from top to bottom, as a reminder that Jesus cannot be contained within the box in which we place him. The story of Luke’s Gospel is that whenever we try to draw a line in the sand between who is in and who is out, Jesus is always on the other side of that line. The Pharisee had become so fixated on manufacturing his own salvation that he had actually walled himself off from the gift of God’s grace.
But, even though the tax collector went home justified, I don’t think the answer is to berate ourselves either. I think this parable, like so many of the other parables, calls us see ourselves in both characters, and to aim for somewhere in the middle. I can tell it’s close to Reformation Sunday, because I’m really into Martin Luther these days. One of my favorite stories about Luther comes from when he was just starting out as a monk. Luther his whole life had been plagued with doubts and fears about his own worth. And when he was first starting out as a monk, he was obsessed with confession. He used to go to confession almost every day for up to six hours at a time. He would literally wear out the confessor. In fact, one day his exhausted confessor told him, “Look here, if you expect Christ to forgive you, come in with something to forgive—parricide, blasphemy, adultery—instead of all these peccadilloes.”
Luther was so concerned about God’s judgment that he was too busy beating himself up over not being worthy of it to recognize God’s grace. But once he realized the nature of grace. Once he realized that forgiveness was a gift from God, and there was nothing he could do to earn it, suddenly confession became a joy for him, because it let him hear again the promise of God’s forgiveness. Confession wasn’t some duty God was holding over him so that he could feel sufficiently bad about himself in order for God to forgive him. No, confession was the opportunity to take an honest accounting of the places in his life where he might have fallen short. He wouldn’t have to hole himself off against others like the Pharisee, wouldn’t have to hide behind this wall of self-assuredness. Instead he could relax into the truth of himself, the good and the bad, he could give the bad over to God, and he could hear again the reminder that God loved all of him. When the parable says the tax collector went home justified, that’s really what it means. To be justified is to be declared righteous by God. It means that God saw all of the tax collector, the parts of him that were good and the parts that were not so good, and God said to him, it’s ok, I love all the parts of you. That last line in the parable, those who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted, that honest accounting is what humility really is. Humility isn’t putting oneself down. In fact, when we are critical of things we know to be strengths that in itself is a form of exaltation, because it invites others to build us up. No, true humility is being honest with ourselves, our weaknesses and our strengths, so that we can build on our strengths and turn our weaknesses over to God, trusting in the way through God’s forgiveness and mercy, power is made perfect in weakness.
This is really why we start every service with confession and forgiveness. It’s not because God needs you to tell all the things you did bad every week and clean you up before you can get to close to God. No, we do confession and forgiveness every Sunday so that you can let go of anything that might be holding you back. So that you can drop the walls that might have built up around you this week through the gentle promise that God loves you for who you are, just the way you are. And when you’ve experienced love like that, love that listens to your litany of sins and mistakes, places you hurt and things you’re ashamed of, and just says, I forgive you. When that happens in our lives, we find ourselves transformed by that love. We find the rough places smoothed over, we find ourselves being more than we thought we were capable of.
So, dear friends in Christ, may you hear in the words of confession and forgiveness, the promise that God loves you just the way you are. And may that love allow you to let down any barriers that you might have constructed and live in the relaxing promise of God’s mercy. Amen.
The Pharisee is so set up as the villain in the parable, the sort of guy you love to hate, that the lesson of this parable seems almost too easy. Jesus says, don’t be a braggadocios jerk. Ok, great, I think I can handle that.
But I went to a conference this week on reading the Bible with scriptural imagination. So I started to wonder, what had the Pharisee been feeling that led him to this prayer. And, like we talked about last week, a funny thing happens when you try to understand where someone is coming from; you start to have compassion on them. In my experience, people who feel the need to express how great they are out loud often don’t feel so great about themselves inside. This sort of excessive pride is often cover for a deeper insecurity. We see it in the youngest children. The schoolyard bully is usually not a heartless sociopath, she or he is usually a kid who feels powerless and out of control, and so seeks to find their value in power over others. As adults, we get more sophisticated in our search for power, but the motivation isn’t all that different then kids on a playground. I wondered if the Pharisee was seeking confirmation of his own value in his ruthless need to rank his rule-following over and above others.
And once I started thinking about it like this, I started to wonder if maybe the Pharisee was lonely. First off, because, seriously, who would want to be friends with this guy? But even more, is there room in this guy’s worldview for friends? There’s a really interesting spacing thing going on in this parable, that as folk not familiar with the layout of the Temple we miss, so here’s a brief architectural lesson for you. The temple was built like one of those Russian nesting dolls, a series of ever-tightening spaces. How far into the Temple one could go was dependent on how ritually clean they were, how good they did at following the law. Around the outer edge was the Court of the Gentiles. This was the place for gentile and non-law abiding Jews. I am guessing this is where the tax collector in our story would be. Tax collectors were despised because they were seen as colluding with the empire, and thus betrayers of their people. Then in from that was the Court of the Women, or the outer court. Remember, women were thought of as basically property, so they were not considered pure enough to be too close to God. Next was the Hall of the Israelites, where all good, law-abiding Israeli men could worship. Then the Hall of the Priests. The Pharisee in our story probably walked confidently through all the other levels to get here. The only thing past the Hall of the Priests was the most inner sanctum, the Holiest of Holies, where only the High Priest could go, and even he only once a year, on the most holy day, to dwell in the presence of the Most High God. So if the Pharisee was as good as he said he was, and there’s no reason to believe he wasn’t, there was quite likely no one between him and God, no one allowed even close to where he was standing. His devoutness had essentially created a barrier around him that forbade anyone else from coming near him.
At first we might wonder, if it’s just him and God, what’s so wrong with that? Don’t we want to be as close as we can be to God, isn’t that what we were created for? Yes, of course, we were created to be close to God, but we were also created to be close to each other. Think about the story of Genesis. God created Adam, and it was just Adam and God, and it was good. But God realized Adam was lonely, so God created Eve to be a companion to Adam. Love God and love your neighbor, Jesus told the rich young ruler, because God created us to be in relationship with each other.
And not just that, but throughout Luke’s Gospel, Jesus again and again went past barriers and beyond boundaries to seek out those whom society had cast as outsiders. In just a few short chapters, when Jesus is crucified, the curtain of the most holy part of the temple, the curtain which even this Pharisee has to stand outside of will be torn in two from top to bottom, as a reminder that Jesus cannot be contained within the box in which we place him. The story of Luke’s Gospel is that whenever we try to draw a line in the sand between who is in and who is out, Jesus is always on the other side of that line. The Pharisee had become so fixated on manufacturing his own salvation that he had actually walled himself off from the gift of God’s grace.
But, even though the tax collector went home justified, I don’t think the answer is to berate ourselves either. I think this parable, like so many of the other parables, calls us see ourselves in both characters, and to aim for somewhere in the middle. I can tell it’s close to Reformation Sunday, because I’m really into Martin Luther these days. One of my favorite stories about Luther comes from when he was just starting out as a monk. Luther his whole life had been plagued with doubts and fears about his own worth. And when he was first starting out as a monk, he was obsessed with confession. He used to go to confession almost every day for up to six hours at a time. He would literally wear out the confessor. In fact, one day his exhausted confessor told him, “Look here, if you expect Christ to forgive you, come in with something to forgive—parricide, blasphemy, adultery—instead of all these peccadilloes.”
Luther was so concerned about God’s judgment that he was too busy beating himself up over not being worthy of it to recognize God’s grace. But once he realized the nature of grace. Once he realized that forgiveness was a gift from God, and there was nothing he could do to earn it, suddenly confession became a joy for him, because it let him hear again the promise of God’s forgiveness. Confession wasn’t some duty God was holding over him so that he could feel sufficiently bad about himself in order for God to forgive him. No, confession was the opportunity to take an honest accounting of the places in his life where he might have fallen short. He wouldn’t have to hole himself off against others like the Pharisee, wouldn’t have to hide behind this wall of self-assuredness. Instead he could relax into the truth of himself, the good and the bad, he could give the bad over to God, and he could hear again the reminder that God loved all of him. When the parable says the tax collector went home justified, that’s really what it means. To be justified is to be declared righteous by God. It means that God saw all of the tax collector, the parts of him that were good and the parts that were not so good, and God said to him, it’s ok, I love all the parts of you. That last line in the parable, those who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted, that honest accounting is what humility really is. Humility isn’t putting oneself down. In fact, when we are critical of things we know to be strengths that in itself is a form of exaltation, because it invites others to build us up. No, true humility is being honest with ourselves, our weaknesses and our strengths, so that we can build on our strengths and turn our weaknesses over to God, trusting in the way through God’s forgiveness and mercy, power is made perfect in weakness.
This is really why we start every service with confession and forgiveness. It’s not because God needs you to tell all the things you did bad every week and clean you up before you can get to close to God. No, we do confession and forgiveness every Sunday so that you can let go of anything that might be holding you back. So that you can drop the walls that might have built up around you this week through the gentle promise that God loves you for who you are, just the way you are. And when you’ve experienced love like that, love that listens to your litany of sins and mistakes, places you hurt and things you’re ashamed of, and just says, I forgive you. When that happens in our lives, we find ourselves transformed by that love. We find the rough places smoothed over, we find ourselves being more than we thought we were capable of.
So, dear friends in Christ, may you hear in the words of confession and forgiveness, the promise that God loves you just the way you are. And may that love allow you to let down any barriers that you might have constructed and live in the relaxing promise of God’s mercy. Amen.
Saturday, October 22, 2016
Conversation Points for Luke 18:9-14
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The audience for this parable is “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” Verse 14 opens how widely that audience should be interpreted, anyone who exalts themselves.
• No matter the direction, traveling to the Temple in Jerusalem is always described as “going up.” The Temple was at the highest point of the city.
• The Pharisee’s prayer is self-serving; he gives thanks for himself, not for others. The last line of the prayer shows the Pharisee is aware of the presence of the tax collector, though the tax collector shows no acknowledgement of the Pharisee.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The audience for this parable is “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” Verse 14 opens how widely that audience should be interpreted, anyone who exalts themselves.
• No matter the direction, traveling to the Temple in Jerusalem is always described as “going up.” The Temple was at the highest point of the city.
• The Pharisee’s prayer is self-serving; he gives thanks for himself, not for others. The last line of the prayer shows the Pharisee is aware of the presence of the tax collector, though the tax collector shows no acknowledgement of the Pharisee.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
The Need to Pray Always and Not to Lose Heart: A Sermon on Luke 18:1-8
I was the last person in my seminary class to get ordained. In every class, there is one person who seems to just take forever to get a call, who everyone says, “how is so-and-so not ordained yet?” In my class, that person was me. This was especially frustrating for me as a rule-follower; because I did all the things I was supposed to do. How come I was doing all the things I was supposed to and waiting, while my less rule-abiding classmates were getting calls. It was a very discouraging time in my life, and I really questioned whether I had truly been called into ministry. It wasn’t until the bishop of this synod went around the system and invited me for an interview here, that I finally was able to move out the uncomfortable in-between space of being an unordained seminary graduate and into the role of called pastor to a congregation.
The night before my ordination, I met up with my pastor. Pastor Wendy was with me through every step of the process of becoming a pastor. She read my initial entrance essay, she talked me through internship, she actually printed my final paperwork, because I didn’t own a printer at the time. And in the two years of waiting, she would check in with me, see how things were going, and encourage me in my sense of call. So as we sat outside a DC restaurant on a beautiful summer night, after rehashing the journey it had taken to get here, she listened as I went on about how excited I was about the church I had been called to. How its mission fit with my experience, how nice the people were, and how supported I felt by the synod. “It almost makes the wait worth it,” I remarked. “If things had come together in California, I never would have ended up in Michigan.”
At which point, she stopped me. “I hope you don’t think,” she said, “that this last two years was some sort of cosmic test that God made you go through, because it was not. The last two years are nothing more than an example of how the assignment process is broken. God has been with you every step of the way as you searched for a call, and God certainly helped you to get this one. But the last two years were not some divine test. The system is broken, it was not “God’s plan” that you should suffer.”
Her words stuck with me and have been a big part of my healing process, not just in that, but in many other times when I’ve felt stuck in a situation beyond my control. The idea that this thing, this struggle, this frustration is not from God, but God is with me in getting through it, has given me the strength and the courage to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
I thought about her words again this week, as I was reflecting on the parable we heard this morning. Luke introduced it as “a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” The parable spoke of a widow who badgered an unjust judge, until he finally granted her justice. “And will not God,” Jesus went on, “grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?” There is, I think, a temptation to hear this “parable about [the] need to pray always and not to lose heart” as a manual for how to get one’s prayers answered. Now certainly prayer is an important thing, the most important thing. And Luke is right, we are to “pray always and not lose heart.” But I think to assume that the point of the parable is that we are to be like the widow and constantly badger God until God finally relents and gives us our way is to really sell God short. It turns our relationship with God into a transactional relationship. If prayer becomes a method for getting what we want, then we turn God into a vending machine. Put prayer in, get what we want out. The problem with that is prayer really doesn’t work that way. We don’t always get what we prayed for. And if our faith is based on this vending machine model for God, and we don’t get what we prayed for, then the problem can only be one of two things. One: We didn’t pray hard enough. We didn’t put enough in to the vending machine, so God did not deliver what we wanted out. It’s our fault, we failed. Or two: The vending machine is broken. We put in all the prayers we had, but we didn’t get the result we expected, so God must not be keeping up God’s end of the bargain. It’s God’s fault, God failed. But prayer, faith, God is not a transactional relationship, it is a transformational one. The reason we are to pray always and not lose heart is not because that is the way to get God to do what we want. The reason we are pray is because prayer changes us. Prayer is the way God changes our hearts, prayer is the way God strengthens us. Example of that. Growing up there was a girl in my youth group that I really didn’t like. She’d always been mean to me, more like as long as I could remember. I saw her as kind of a bully, and I just really didn’t like her. One week, our youth director had us draw names from a hat, and we were to pray daily for the person whose name we drew. I, of course, drew hers. Now, I did not want to pray for her. But, as we’ve discussed before, I am a rule-follower, so I dutifully prayed for her every day. You know what happened? I changed. I developed compassion for her. We didn’t become best friends. In fact, to this day, I’m sure she has no idea the effect she had on my faith life. But over the course of that time of praying for her, I came to see her differently. I saw the struggles in her life. I saw all the things the world had thrown at her, the things she’d had to overcome. And it changed me. That is the power of prayer. It changes us, it drives us into action. Pope Francis said, “you pray for something and then you do it, that’s how prayer works.” When we pray for help in a broken relationship, we find our own hearts softening toward the other. When we pray for health, we find ourselves making healthier choices. When we pray for intervention in a situation of injustice, we find the courage to combat the systems that created injustice. Not all at once, but over time. Just like the mulberry tree is probably not going to go rushing through the air into the sea, prayer does not always get an immediate response. But like a muscle grows stronger with use, prayer shapes our hearts and our minds and our souls to bring about the Kingdom of God.
The widow can certainly be a model of persistence for us, but if she is going to be an effective model, we have to also wonder how she became so persistent. What gave the widow the strength and the courage to go again and again to the unjust judge and demand what she deserved? Desperation certainly, but even desperation requires the choice to keep trying. She could have quit, she could have resigned herself to hopelessness, but she didn’t. I think the widow’s persistence came from her being the opposite of the judge. The parable sets her as the contrast to the judge, so I think it is safe to assume that where he did not fear God, she did. And I’m using fear in the Psalmist sense of the word. Not fear as in terror, but fear as in awe or wonder. I think the widow’s fear, awe, wonder in the persistence of God gave her the courage to outlast the judge, to continue when he could not, because her faith was in a God who would be with her through everything. I love the confidence of our psalm this morning, “The Lord will not let your foot be moved; the Lord who keeps you will not slumber. The Lord who keeps Israel with never slumber or sleep…The Lord will keep you from all evil; the Lord will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.” Forevermore, what consistency, what persistence is that! Not just this psalm, but the entire Bible is a love song of God’s persistence to God’s people. From the Garden of Eden through the New Jerusalem, the Bible is a collection of stories of God’s people turning away, and God patiently bringing them back again, over and over and over again. And who is Jesus but the incarnation of God’s desire to be with God’s people. Jesus is what happened when God’s need to be in relationship with humanity overwhelmed the human-divine separation and the divine itself took on human flesh and frailty, took on the lowliest of human form, a baby born to backwoods, out of the way, peasant couple. And what is the resurrection but the persistence of the God of life over the power of death itself, for even death could not hold Jesus captive.
So yes, the writer of Luke’s Gospel is right. We need to pray always and not lose heart. But we do that, we can do that, because of God’s persistent love for us. When we cannot pray, when we do lose heart, we can go to scriptures, we can go to the font, we can go to the table, and we can be reminded that no matter what struggles we face, no matter what injustices we meet, what pain we endure, God is with us in those places. God is persistent. Thanks be to God. Amen.
The night before my ordination, I met up with my pastor. Pastor Wendy was with me through every step of the process of becoming a pastor. She read my initial entrance essay, she talked me through internship, she actually printed my final paperwork, because I didn’t own a printer at the time. And in the two years of waiting, she would check in with me, see how things were going, and encourage me in my sense of call. So as we sat outside a DC restaurant on a beautiful summer night, after rehashing the journey it had taken to get here, she listened as I went on about how excited I was about the church I had been called to. How its mission fit with my experience, how nice the people were, and how supported I felt by the synod. “It almost makes the wait worth it,” I remarked. “If things had come together in California, I never would have ended up in Michigan.”
At which point, she stopped me. “I hope you don’t think,” she said, “that this last two years was some sort of cosmic test that God made you go through, because it was not. The last two years are nothing more than an example of how the assignment process is broken. God has been with you every step of the way as you searched for a call, and God certainly helped you to get this one. But the last two years were not some divine test. The system is broken, it was not “God’s plan” that you should suffer.”
Her words stuck with me and have been a big part of my healing process, not just in that, but in many other times when I’ve felt stuck in a situation beyond my control. The idea that this thing, this struggle, this frustration is not from God, but God is with me in getting through it, has given me the strength and the courage to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
I thought about her words again this week, as I was reflecting on the parable we heard this morning. Luke introduced it as “a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” The parable spoke of a widow who badgered an unjust judge, until he finally granted her justice. “And will not God,” Jesus went on, “grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?” There is, I think, a temptation to hear this “parable about [the] need to pray always and not to lose heart” as a manual for how to get one’s prayers answered. Now certainly prayer is an important thing, the most important thing. And Luke is right, we are to “pray always and not lose heart.” But I think to assume that the point of the parable is that we are to be like the widow and constantly badger God until God finally relents and gives us our way is to really sell God short. It turns our relationship with God into a transactional relationship. If prayer becomes a method for getting what we want, then we turn God into a vending machine. Put prayer in, get what we want out. The problem with that is prayer really doesn’t work that way. We don’t always get what we prayed for. And if our faith is based on this vending machine model for God, and we don’t get what we prayed for, then the problem can only be one of two things. One: We didn’t pray hard enough. We didn’t put enough in to the vending machine, so God did not deliver what we wanted out. It’s our fault, we failed. Or two: The vending machine is broken. We put in all the prayers we had, but we didn’t get the result we expected, so God must not be keeping up God’s end of the bargain. It’s God’s fault, God failed. But prayer, faith, God is not a transactional relationship, it is a transformational one. The reason we are to pray always and not lose heart is not because that is the way to get God to do what we want. The reason we are pray is because prayer changes us. Prayer is the way God changes our hearts, prayer is the way God strengthens us. Example of that. Growing up there was a girl in my youth group that I really didn’t like. She’d always been mean to me, more like as long as I could remember. I saw her as kind of a bully, and I just really didn’t like her. One week, our youth director had us draw names from a hat, and we were to pray daily for the person whose name we drew. I, of course, drew hers. Now, I did not want to pray for her. But, as we’ve discussed before, I am a rule-follower, so I dutifully prayed for her every day. You know what happened? I changed. I developed compassion for her. We didn’t become best friends. In fact, to this day, I’m sure she has no idea the effect she had on my faith life. But over the course of that time of praying for her, I came to see her differently. I saw the struggles in her life. I saw all the things the world had thrown at her, the things she’d had to overcome. And it changed me. That is the power of prayer. It changes us, it drives us into action. Pope Francis said, “you pray for something and then you do it, that’s how prayer works.” When we pray for help in a broken relationship, we find our own hearts softening toward the other. When we pray for health, we find ourselves making healthier choices. When we pray for intervention in a situation of injustice, we find the courage to combat the systems that created injustice. Not all at once, but over time. Just like the mulberry tree is probably not going to go rushing through the air into the sea, prayer does not always get an immediate response. But like a muscle grows stronger with use, prayer shapes our hearts and our minds and our souls to bring about the Kingdom of God.
The widow can certainly be a model of persistence for us, but if she is going to be an effective model, we have to also wonder how she became so persistent. What gave the widow the strength and the courage to go again and again to the unjust judge and demand what she deserved? Desperation certainly, but even desperation requires the choice to keep trying. She could have quit, she could have resigned herself to hopelessness, but she didn’t. I think the widow’s persistence came from her being the opposite of the judge. The parable sets her as the contrast to the judge, so I think it is safe to assume that where he did not fear God, she did. And I’m using fear in the Psalmist sense of the word. Not fear as in terror, but fear as in awe or wonder. I think the widow’s fear, awe, wonder in the persistence of God gave her the courage to outlast the judge, to continue when he could not, because her faith was in a God who would be with her through everything. I love the confidence of our psalm this morning, “The Lord will not let your foot be moved; the Lord who keeps you will not slumber. The Lord who keeps Israel with never slumber or sleep…The Lord will keep you from all evil; the Lord will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.” Forevermore, what consistency, what persistence is that! Not just this psalm, but the entire Bible is a love song of God’s persistence to God’s people. From the Garden of Eden through the New Jerusalem, the Bible is a collection of stories of God’s people turning away, and God patiently bringing them back again, over and over and over again. And who is Jesus but the incarnation of God’s desire to be with God’s people. Jesus is what happened when God’s need to be in relationship with humanity overwhelmed the human-divine separation and the divine itself took on human flesh and frailty, took on the lowliest of human form, a baby born to backwoods, out of the way, peasant couple. And what is the resurrection but the persistence of the God of life over the power of death itself, for even death could not hold Jesus captive.
So yes, the writer of Luke’s Gospel is right. We need to pray always and not lose heart. But we do that, we can do that, because of God’s persistent love for us. When we cannot pray, when we do lose heart, we can go to scriptures, we can go to the font, we can go to the table, and we can be reminded that no matter what struggles we face, no matter what injustices we meet, what pain we endure, God is with us in those places. God is persistent. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Thursday, October 13, 2016
Conversation Points for Luke 18:1-8
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• It was the duty of a judge to maintain peace between the Israelites by moderating disputes. Because judges worked without a jury, it was important that judges were fair and impartial. Moses’ charge to judges: “Give the members of your community a fair hearing, and judge rightly between one person and another, whether citizen or resident alien. You must not be partial in judging: hear out the small and the great alike; you shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s” (Deuteronomy 1:16-17). Jehoshaphat’s charge to judges: “let the fear of the Lord be upon you” (2 Chronicles 19:7).
• The law outlines clear expectations for caring for widows. A woman could not inherit her husband’s estate, and had no support after her husband died, so it was the responsibility of others to care for her. Care for those in need, widows, orphans, and foreigners, were also outlined in Deuteronomy (24:17-18).
• The story of the widow and the judge is a parallel of the story of the persistent neighbor in Luke 11:5-8.
• Verse 1 introduces the story as a parable about prayer. Prayer is a reoccurring theme in Luke’s Gospel. Jesus frequently taught about it, and often withdrew to pray.
• As is typical in parables, the description starts out vague: “In a certain city there was a judge.” However, from the duties of a judge, there are expectations the listener would bring when told the story involved a judge. The next section upends those expectations: “who neither feared God nor had respect for people.”
• To “fear God” could mean either reverence God (fear better translated as “awe” or “wonder”) or it could mean to fear punishment for violating his office as a judge.
• We don’t know why the widow is approaching the judge, nor do we know why the judge refused the widow’s request for assistance. Possibly the judge was waiting for a bribe or had received a bribe from whomever the widow’s grievance was with. What we do know is the judge would have been the widow’s only hope for justice, and if he said no, persistence was her only option.
• This parable, like so many in Luke, features an internal monologue that functions as the turning point in the narrative.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• It was the duty of a judge to maintain peace between the Israelites by moderating disputes. Because judges worked without a jury, it was important that judges were fair and impartial. Moses’ charge to judges: “Give the members of your community a fair hearing, and judge rightly between one person and another, whether citizen or resident alien. You must not be partial in judging: hear out the small and the great alike; you shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s” (Deuteronomy 1:16-17). Jehoshaphat’s charge to judges: “let the fear of the Lord be upon you” (2 Chronicles 19:7).
• The law outlines clear expectations for caring for widows. A woman could not inherit her husband’s estate, and had no support after her husband died, so it was the responsibility of others to care for her. Care for those in need, widows, orphans, and foreigners, were also outlined in Deuteronomy (24:17-18).
• The story of the widow and the judge is a parallel of the story of the persistent neighbor in Luke 11:5-8.
• Verse 1 introduces the story as a parable about prayer. Prayer is a reoccurring theme in Luke’s Gospel. Jesus frequently taught about it, and often withdrew to pray.
• As is typical in parables, the description starts out vague: “In a certain city there was a judge.” However, from the duties of a judge, there are expectations the listener would bring when told the story involved a judge. The next section upends those expectations: “who neither feared God nor had respect for people.”
• To “fear God” could mean either reverence God (fear better translated as “awe” or “wonder”) or it could mean to fear punishment for violating his office as a judge.
• We don’t know why the widow is approaching the judge, nor do we know why the judge refused the widow’s request for assistance. Possibly the judge was waiting for a bribe or had received a bribe from whomever the widow’s grievance was with. What we do know is the judge would have been the widow’s only hope for justice, and if he said no, persistence was her only option.
• This parable, like so many in Luke, features an internal monologue that functions as the turning point in the narrative.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Monday, October 10, 2016
Wrestling with Thank You: A Sermon on Luke 17:11-19
Last May when I was in Kansas for my grandmother’s funeral, my cousin shared with us a letter my father had written to her mother, his great aunt, when he was ten. The letter was a thank you letter following a summer visit to Kansas. My father wrote: “Dear Aunt Lee. Mom is making me write this letter to you. I told her that you would not be expecting a thank you letter from me, because you know me and you know that thank you letters are not my thing. But mom is making me write you this letter anyway. Thank you for letting me come visit. Love, Glen.
I struggled with the sermon this week, because this Gospel story about Jesus felt to me like my dad felt about being forced to write a thank you note. When I write sermons, I always try to figure out what is the good thing Jesus is doing for us in the passage. This week the thing Jesus is doing felt like, “Jesus says, you better say thank you.” And that just didn’t feel like Jesus. But I think this morning on my drive in, after a week of agonizing, I finally figured something out. So here’s what I have, it’s a little rough, but I’m going to walk you through my journey through the passage this week, and see what I came up with as to what Jesus is saying in this story.
“On the way to Jerusalem.” Such a simple statement, on the way to Jerusalem. This story is no more than a stop along the way. A thing that happened at a rest stop, a road side station, just a quick pause on a part of a larger journey. On the way to Jerusalem, like one might be on the way to Detroit, or on the way to Chicago. Just a pause on the way to a destination.
But Jerusalem is not just a destination. It is not just a place to end a journey. Since chapter nine, Jesus’ mission has been clear. Jesus was going to Jerusalem to die. And in dying the very idea of death itself would be destroyed. Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, yes. But more importantly, Jesus was on the way to bring salvation, life, and healing to the whole world. Jesus was on the way to resurrection.
But to reach Jerusalem, Jesus had to get from Galilee to Judea. And in between was Samaria. Now Samaria, if you remember, was outsider territory. It was a place to be avoided by all good, God-fearing Israelites. Samaritans and Jews were mortal enemies, each totally convinced of the other’s unworthiness. This was not Jesus’ first encounter with Samaritans. Just a few chapters earlier, he told that unlikely parable of the Good Samaritan who cared for his neighbor. And in Acts, we will hear how the Good News of Jesus Christ spread outward. Not content to stay in Judea, the Holy Spirit led the apostles from Jerusalem into Samaria, and throughout the whole world. But we’re not there yet. We’re here. In the region between Samaria and Galilee. An in-between space only Jesus was convinced it was ok to go. Neither Samaritans nor Jews would ever enter such an uneasy space, a space that could too easily be inhabited by the other. But throughout Luke’s Gospel, we have seen Jesus always going into the spaces that others would not go. The space between Pharisees and tax collectors, the space between townspeople and men possessed by demons, the space between the healed and the hurting. On the way to Jerusalem, on the way the space between the living and the dead, Jesus first walked through the region between Galilee and Samaria, because boundaries are of human origin, they have no meaning in the Kingdom of God.
When you walk through border regions, you are bound to come across others who have been relegated to spaces where most will not go. Border regions have been throughout history the gathering places of the outcast, the outsider, the looked down upon. In first century Palestine, there was no group more outsider than lepers. Leprosy was thought to be a highly contagious and terrifying disease. Those suspected of having leprosy were cast out of their communities, forced to live on the outskirts away from so-called healthy people. Jewish law required lepers to keep their distance, and if approached by someone, to shout “leper, leper,” so that all would know to steer clear. The group of lepers in this story did everything by the law. They were on the outskirts of a village, and as they approached Jesus they kept their distance, as the law required, shouting their requests from afar, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
But there is something unique about their request. This is the only time in Luke’s Gospel when Jesus was addressed as “master” by someone other than the disciples. Every other time Jesus was called “master,” it was a disciple who was called him that. So there is something unique about this group of lepers. We see in the way they addressed Jesus, that they knew he was more than just someone wandering through borderlands, he was someone who transcended borders.
When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” This was not an idle command; it was exactly how one would be allowed back into a community. Remember how I said people with leprosy had to live outside of villages, away from other people. But first century medical science was not as advanced as it is today, so sometimes people diagnosed as having leprosy really had some other, completely harmless, skin ailment. Something that would clear up in a while on its own. So if that happened, the way to leave the leper colony and rejoin the world again, per the Jewish law, was to show oneself to a priest. The priest would examine the person and determine if they were in fact healed from their ailment. And if they were, the person would then be allowed to come back into the community. So when Jesus said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” all he’s saying to them is, “go and get yourselves checked again.”
Which, ok, is weird, because these guys, we can presume, really did have leprosy, and no amount of “checks” was going to change that fact. But, having already addressed Jesus as master, they dutifully did as they were told. Unlike Naaman from our first reading, who begged and whined for a more interesting healing story, these ten just went, as requested, to present themselves to the priests.
What follows is maybe the least interesting healing miracle in the Bible. “And as they went, they were made clean.” In most healing stories, the healing is the big plot point, it’s the climax, that moment when the entire narrative turns. But this really isn’t a healing story at all; it’s a story about something else. So when the healing occurs, it is just a point in the narrative. A detail that is necessary to reach the exciting part. “And as they went, they were made clean.”
But one of them, “when he was that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.” When I read this, I thought the same question that Jesus asked him, “Were not ten made clean?” Why did none of the others come back, just “this foreigner”? Why did only the Samaritan return?
Part of what’s going on here is this gradual expansion that we’ve seen throughout all of Luke’s Gospel, of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. The message of Jesus, the salvation Jesus brings, is not just for those who follow Jesus, not just for the Israelites, but for the whole world. The Samaritans, those whom would have been seen on the outside, are not just a part of the Kingdom of God, but are a central part. They are people that we can and should emulate, until they become we. The Samaritan was the exact last leper the crowd would have expected to return, and yet here he was, the one who came to praise and give thanks.
I thought a lot this week about the Samaritan, and why he came back. And I wondered if his outsider status let him be open to this change in his story that the others couldn’t see. Having leprosy certainly blurred the lines of in and out, but in a group with nine Jews and one Samaritan, I wonder if he was an outsider even amongst the lepers. And so, as they were walking along, heading to show themselves to the priests, were the others so fixed on their destination that they didn’t even know that a healing had taken place? Could it be that the others didn’t return, because they didn’t even know that they no longer had leprosy? All ten were made clean, we know that. But maybe the other nine didn’t know. When I picture this scene in my head, I see the ten walking along the road to the priest. When suddenly the Samaritan notices that he has been healed. And so surprised is he, that he takes off running back in the other direction. The other nine are so focused on the journey that they don’t even notice his absence until several minutes later, when one of them pipes up, “Hey, where’d that other guy go off to?” But he was kind of an outsider anyway, and they are focused on the task at hand, so they keep on their way, totally unaware that the miracle that had caused him to run off had happened to them too. What if this whole story would have ended differently, if the Samaritan had told the others, hey look, open your eyes, we have been healed!
I was annoyed with Jesus though. And here’s the part I struggled with. Why was Jesus so hard on the other nine? Jesus felt like my demanding grandmother, you better say thank you. But here was my revelation on Raymond Road this morning. I thought about something I’ve preached several times before, that sometimes parables are descriptive rather than prescriptive. Meaning, sometimes we want the parables to say, “do this, or this will happen,” when really they say, “here’s what’s happening.” What if this healing story is like that as well? Because the thing about gratitude is, it really does change us. It really does heal us. It really does make us different, healthier, more contented people. What if the fact of this parable is the gratitude shown by the Samaritan really was part of his healing process? What if some part of him, not physically, but deep inside, really was healed by this act of gratitude? What if he had to let go of his own sense of injury, and that only happened by turning around and giving thanks to God.
The good news in this story, as far as I see it, is all ten were made clean. Jesus changed their story. They had been outsiders, now they were not. They had been lost, but Jesus found them. They had been sent to the edge of the world, but Jesus walked through that edge place and brought the edge into the middle of the Kingdom. This is how Jesus works. Not for anything they did, but simply because of Jesus’ love for outsiders, Jesus went to the places where they would be, and brought them back. That is the good news for the parts of us who are outsiders. For the parts of us that feel left outside, ostracized, pushed away. Jesus comes into those places and demands us to show ourselves, because we have been healed.
The challenge though, is do we notice? Do we know that we have been healed? Can we see the thing that God has done in our midst, in our very lives? The Samaritan had a clarity about himself that the other nine could not have, because they were too focused on their own journey.
Dear people of God, let this Samaritan be the clarion call for you. Let him do for you what he maybe didn’t do to his companions. Let him announce the good news of your healing to you. Look up, pay attention. You have been healed. So get up, go on your way, but don’t be silent. Be the Samaritan for others. Your faith, the faith God has in you, has made you well. Amen.
I struggled with the sermon this week, because this Gospel story about Jesus felt to me like my dad felt about being forced to write a thank you note. When I write sermons, I always try to figure out what is the good thing Jesus is doing for us in the passage. This week the thing Jesus is doing felt like, “Jesus says, you better say thank you.” And that just didn’t feel like Jesus. But I think this morning on my drive in, after a week of agonizing, I finally figured something out. So here’s what I have, it’s a little rough, but I’m going to walk you through my journey through the passage this week, and see what I came up with as to what Jesus is saying in this story.
“On the way to Jerusalem.” Such a simple statement, on the way to Jerusalem. This story is no more than a stop along the way. A thing that happened at a rest stop, a road side station, just a quick pause on a part of a larger journey. On the way to Jerusalem, like one might be on the way to Detroit, or on the way to Chicago. Just a pause on the way to a destination.
But Jerusalem is not just a destination. It is not just a place to end a journey. Since chapter nine, Jesus’ mission has been clear. Jesus was going to Jerusalem to die. And in dying the very idea of death itself would be destroyed. Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, yes. But more importantly, Jesus was on the way to bring salvation, life, and healing to the whole world. Jesus was on the way to resurrection.
But to reach Jerusalem, Jesus had to get from Galilee to Judea. And in between was Samaria. Now Samaria, if you remember, was outsider territory. It was a place to be avoided by all good, God-fearing Israelites. Samaritans and Jews were mortal enemies, each totally convinced of the other’s unworthiness. This was not Jesus’ first encounter with Samaritans. Just a few chapters earlier, he told that unlikely parable of the Good Samaritan who cared for his neighbor. And in Acts, we will hear how the Good News of Jesus Christ spread outward. Not content to stay in Judea, the Holy Spirit led the apostles from Jerusalem into Samaria, and throughout the whole world. But we’re not there yet. We’re here. In the region between Samaria and Galilee. An in-between space only Jesus was convinced it was ok to go. Neither Samaritans nor Jews would ever enter such an uneasy space, a space that could too easily be inhabited by the other. But throughout Luke’s Gospel, we have seen Jesus always going into the spaces that others would not go. The space between Pharisees and tax collectors, the space between townspeople and men possessed by demons, the space between the healed and the hurting. On the way to Jerusalem, on the way the space between the living and the dead, Jesus first walked through the region between Galilee and Samaria, because boundaries are of human origin, they have no meaning in the Kingdom of God.
When you walk through border regions, you are bound to come across others who have been relegated to spaces where most will not go. Border regions have been throughout history the gathering places of the outcast, the outsider, the looked down upon. In first century Palestine, there was no group more outsider than lepers. Leprosy was thought to be a highly contagious and terrifying disease. Those suspected of having leprosy were cast out of their communities, forced to live on the outskirts away from so-called healthy people. Jewish law required lepers to keep their distance, and if approached by someone, to shout “leper, leper,” so that all would know to steer clear. The group of lepers in this story did everything by the law. They were on the outskirts of a village, and as they approached Jesus they kept their distance, as the law required, shouting their requests from afar, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
But there is something unique about their request. This is the only time in Luke’s Gospel when Jesus was addressed as “master” by someone other than the disciples. Every other time Jesus was called “master,” it was a disciple who was called him that. So there is something unique about this group of lepers. We see in the way they addressed Jesus, that they knew he was more than just someone wandering through borderlands, he was someone who transcended borders.
When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” This was not an idle command; it was exactly how one would be allowed back into a community. Remember how I said people with leprosy had to live outside of villages, away from other people. But first century medical science was not as advanced as it is today, so sometimes people diagnosed as having leprosy really had some other, completely harmless, skin ailment. Something that would clear up in a while on its own. So if that happened, the way to leave the leper colony and rejoin the world again, per the Jewish law, was to show oneself to a priest. The priest would examine the person and determine if they were in fact healed from their ailment. And if they were, the person would then be allowed to come back into the community. So when Jesus said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” all he’s saying to them is, “go and get yourselves checked again.”
Which, ok, is weird, because these guys, we can presume, really did have leprosy, and no amount of “checks” was going to change that fact. But, having already addressed Jesus as master, they dutifully did as they were told. Unlike Naaman from our first reading, who begged and whined for a more interesting healing story, these ten just went, as requested, to present themselves to the priests.
What follows is maybe the least interesting healing miracle in the Bible. “And as they went, they were made clean.” In most healing stories, the healing is the big plot point, it’s the climax, that moment when the entire narrative turns. But this really isn’t a healing story at all; it’s a story about something else. So when the healing occurs, it is just a point in the narrative. A detail that is necessary to reach the exciting part. “And as they went, they were made clean.”
But one of them, “when he was that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.” When I read this, I thought the same question that Jesus asked him, “Were not ten made clean?” Why did none of the others come back, just “this foreigner”? Why did only the Samaritan return?
Part of what’s going on here is this gradual expansion that we’ve seen throughout all of Luke’s Gospel, of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. The message of Jesus, the salvation Jesus brings, is not just for those who follow Jesus, not just for the Israelites, but for the whole world. The Samaritans, those whom would have been seen on the outside, are not just a part of the Kingdom of God, but are a central part. They are people that we can and should emulate, until they become we. The Samaritan was the exact last leper the crowd would have expected to return, and yet here he was, the one who came to praise and give thanks.
I thought a lot this week about the Samaritan, and why he came back. And I wondered if his outsider status let him be open to this change in his story that the others couldn’t see. Having leprosy certainly blurred the lines of in and out, but in a group with nine Jews and one Samaritan, I wonder if he was an outsider even amongst the lepers. And so, as they were walking along, heading to show themselves to the priests, were the others so fixed on their destination that they didn’t even know that a healing had taken place? Could it be that the others didn’t return, because they didn’t even know that they no longer had leprosy? All ten were made clean, we know that. But maybe the other nine didn’t know. When I picture this scene in my head, I see the ten walking along the road to the priest. When suddenly the Samaritan notices that he has been healed. And so surprised is he, that he takes off running back in the other direction. The other nine are so focused on the journey that they don’t even notice his absence until several minutes later, when one of them pipes up, “Hey, where’d that other guy go off to?” But he was kind of an outsider anyway, and they are focused on the task at hand, so they keep on their way, totally unaware that the miracle that had caused him to run off had happened to them too. What if this whole story would have ended differently, if the Samaritan had told the others, hey look, open your eyes, we have been healed!
I was annoyed with Jesus though. And here’s the part I struggled with. Why was Jesus so hard on the other nine? Jesus felt like my demanding grandmother, you better say thank you. But here was my revelation on Raymond Road this morning. I thought about something I’ve preached several times before, that sometimes parables are descriptive rather than prescriptive. Meaning, sometimes we want the parables to say, “do this, or this will happen,” when really they say, “here’s what’s happening.” What if this healing story is like that as well? Because the thing about gratitude is, it really does change us. It really does heal us. It really does make us different, healthier, more contented people. What if the fact of this parable is the gratitude shown by the Samaritan really was part of his healing process? What if some part of him, not physically, but deep inside, really was healed by this act of gratitude? What if he had to let go of his own sense of injury, and that only happened by turning around and giving thanks to God.
The good news in this story, as far as I see it, is all ten were made clean. Jesus changed their story. They had been outsiders, now they were not. They had been lost, but Jesus found them. They had been sent to the edge of the world, but Jesus walked through that edge place and brought the edge into the middle of the Kingdom. This is how Jesus works. Not for anything they did, but simply because of Jesus’ love for outsiders, Jesus went to the places where they would be, and brought them back. That is the good news for the parts of us who are outsiders. For the parts of us that feel left outside, ostracized, pushed away. Jesus comes into those places and demands us to show ourselves, because we have been healed.
The challenge though, is do we notice? Do we know that we have been healed? Can we see the thing that God has done in our midst, in our very lives? The Samaritan had a clarity about himself that the other nine could not have, because they were too focused on their own journey.
Dear people of God, let this Samaritan be the clarion call for you. Let him do for you what he maybe didn’t do to his companions. Let him announce the good news of your healing to you. Look up, pay attention. You have been healed. So get up, go on your way, but don’t be silent. Be the Samaritan for others. Your faith, the faith God has in you, has made you well. Amen.
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Conversation Points for Luke 17:11-19
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Verse 11 reminds us yet again that Luke does not have the greatest grasp on Palestinian geography. Galilee is north of Samaria and there is, strictly speaking, no region between the two. They are next to each other.
• The traveling distinction is important because lepers by law were required to live outside the city and cry out “unclean” whenever anyone approached them. If a leper recovered, they had to go to a priest to have their healing verified before they could be allowed back into the community.
• The NRSV says “ten lepers” but the Greek is actually “ten men who had leprosy.” Similarly, the paralytic in Luke 5 was “the man who was paralyzed” and the Gerasene demoniac in Luke 8 was “a man who had demons.” The distinction may seem subtle, but it is a profound difference. The people are not their condition. They are people with a condition, it is a humanizing factor.
• Every other time in Luke the title “master” is used, it is used by the disciples.
• In verse 14 Jesus “saw” the men. In scripture, “seeing” often indicates not simply sight, but knowing.
• Like in the story of Naaman the Syrian (2 Kings 5:1-14), the lepers are given instructions before they are healed, and the Samaritan returns to thank God.
• The connection to the healing of Naaman the Syrian and the Good Samaritan continues Jesus’ message of expanding the kingdom of God beyond the people of Israel.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Verse 11 reminds us yet again that Luke does not have the greatest grasp on Palestinian geography. Galilee is north of Samaria and there is, strictly speaking, no region between the two. They are next to each other.
• The traveling distinction is important because lepers by law were required to live outside the city and cry out “unclean” whenever anyone approached them. If a leper recovered, they had to go to a priest to have their healing verified before they could be allowed back into the community.
• The NRSV says “ten lepers” but the Greek is actually “ten men who had leprosy.” Similarly, the paralytic in Luke 5 was “the man who was paralyzed” and the Gerasene demoniac in Luke 8 was “a man who had demons.” The distinction may seem subtle, but it is a profound difference. The people are not their condition. They are people with a condition, it is a humanizing factor.
• Every other time in Luke the title “master” is used, it is used by the disciples.
• In verse 14 Jesus “saw” the men. In scripture, “seeing” often indicates not simply sight, but knowing.
• Like in the story of Naaman the Syrian (2 Kings 5:1-14), the lepers are given instructions before they are healed, and the Samaritan returns to thank God.
• The connection to the healing of Naaman the Syrian and the Good Samaritan continues Jesus’ message of expanding the kingdom of God beyond the people of Israel.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Sunday, October 2, 2016
On the Relocation of Mulberry Trees: A Sermon on Luke 17:5-10
There’s a line from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, where Alice was talking to the Queen. Alice told the queen, I can’t believe that. Try, urged the queen. “There's not use trying,” Alice said: “one can't believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven't had much practice,” said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Do you believe impossible things? More specifically, do you believe you can do impossible things? That seemed to be what Jesus was asking of the disciples in our Gospel reading for today. We came into the reading in sort of the middle of a section. Jesus had just finished teaching the disciples about forgiveness. He’d told them, “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive.” Even, Jesus said, even “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.” Whoa. Seven times. In the same day. Now, I mean, I get one or two times in a day, or even seven times over the course of a lifetime. But seven times in one day. I don’t know about that. Fool me once, right?
The disciples weren’t too sure about this either. Not too sure it was a good idea, maybe, but certainly not too sure that they were going to be able to pull it off. That is a lot of turning the other cheek and forgiving. So the disciples appealed to Jesus, “increase our faith.” Which, you would expect Jesus to praise them for, right. Increase our faith. Help us be more faithful, help us be better followers of you. Seems like the exact sort of thing Jesus should want from his followers. Solomon asked God for more wisdom, and God was all over it. Gave Solomon not just wisdom, but riches and honor also. So you’d think the disciples asked exactly the right question here, requesting more faith. Except Jesus didn’t praise them. Instead, he said something kind of strange. So the Greek is a little strange here. In the translation I read it said, “if you had faith,” but it is a first-class conditional phrase, so a better translation would be “since.” But then the second part is a second-class conditional, which means the statement is not true. So a better translation might be, “Since you have 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 [but you can’t, so it won’t].”
So, wait, what is Jesus saying here? At first it sounded like Jesus was telling the disciples, if you only had the faith of a mustard seed, you could do something as impossible as cause mulberry trees to uproot themselves and replant themselves in the sea, which why you would want that it in the first place is beyond me, it seems like it would be bad for the mulberry tree, but anyway. You don’t even have the faith of a mustard seed, so no moving trees for you.
But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered. If the better translation for the verse is not if, but since, what if the problem isn’t the disciples’ amount of faith, but that they’re asking for faith instead of simply talking to the mulberry tree. What if what Jesus was saying to them, in albeit a sort of confusing way, was, look you already have all the faith you need. Yes, it is just a little tiny amount of faith, faith the size of a mustard seed. But remember what I’d said to you back just a little way into the journey. Back in Luke chapter thirteen, verses eighteen and nineteen, for those of us with chapter and verse numbers, about how the kingdom of God was “like a mustard seed… it grew and became a tree and the birds of the air made nests in the branches.” So even though you only have this tiny little amount of faith, it is the right amount of faith. You don’t need any more. Since you have faith the size of a mustard seed, tell that tree to move and see what happens.
To make a modern analogy, I think what Jesus was telling his disciples was that faith is like gravity. It’s all around us, we always have it, and always in the right amount. You never think to yourself, man, I really wish I had just a little bit more gravity here, so I could get this thing on the ground. No, right, that would be ridiculous. And yet gravity, and in fact the exact amount of gravity we have, no more, no less, is necessary for life as we know it to function. Too much gravity and we would be crushed, not enough and we would just float away. Or, worse, we would explode. I think what Jesus was saying was that faith is like that. You can change how you relate to it. Like we can make something heavier or lighter by changing the weight of it, or we can work our muscles to be able to work against gravity and lift a bigger object, but we cannot, nor do we need to, change gravity itself. Similarly, we have enough faith, all the faith we need. We can be bolder in responding to our faith. We can find friends and companions who challenge us to take risks. We can study scripture to understand how faith works. We can learn, and pray, and come to believe more deeply, but we do not need to, and in fact we cannot, increase our faith.
We cannot increase our faith, because faith itself is not something we control. It is a gift from God. Ephesians chapter two, verse eight is that popular Lutheran line, “For by grace you have been saved through faith,” and we tend to stop there, but the verse goes on, “and this is NOT YOUR OWN DOING.” Hear that, “for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” By grace you have been saved through faith, and it is the gift of God. Faith is a gift. And we all have it. God gave it to us in our baptism; it is God’s birthright to us. We can choose to trust it or not, we can choose to believe it or not, we can choose how we act, how we respond to it. But we cannot change that we have it, because faith itself is God’s gift to us. God gives faith to us; God has faith in us. We can do impossible, bold, and faith-filled things, not because of our faith, but because of the faith God has in us.
What I think happened in this story here was that the disciples heard the hard work Jesus had for them, and it freaked them out. And they thought, I will never be good enough to live up to Jesus’ expectations for me. So they begged Jesus to make them better, to make them stronger. And what Jesus essentially said to them, when he refused their request for more faith was, “You are already enough, I have already made you enough. Your problem is not that you are not good enough; your problem is you do not know your own power. So stop standing here worrying about how you will get to be enough, and start talking to that tree.”
The other problem I think we find in this is that we expect the mulberry tree will uproot itself all at once. But Jesus didn’t say anything about how long it would take for the mulberry tree to move. Maybe he didn’t mean that if the disciples just demanded it, they would all have to duck, because suddenly mulberry trees would be flinging themselves into the Mediterranean. Sometimes it might happen like that, but often change is a slow process. The mulberry tree might start with just one moved shovel of dirt, one root exposed, one branch outstretched. Until, inch by inch, the mulberry tree will slide down the embankment and into the sea.
Dear people of God, you have enough faith to move the mulberry trees in your life. Whatever tree is in your way, you can move it to the sea. You have enough faith. It might take some work, as you struggle to develop the muscles needed, be they actual muscles, or muscles of endurance, confidence, hope, or determination. It might take some time. The mulberry tree may not fly through the air in the way you might be hoping. It might be a slow, gradual slog. But you have enough faith, God has given it to you. So start telling those mulberry trees in your path to get a move on. Since you have faith the size of a mustard seed, there is nothing that can stand in your way. Amen.
“I daresay you haven't had much practice,” said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Do you believe impossible things? More specifically, do you believe you can do impossible things? That seemed to be what Jesus was asking of the disciples in our Gospel reading for today. We came into the reading in sort of the middle of a section. Jesus had just finished teaching the disciples about forgiveness. He’d told them, “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive.” Even, Jesus said, even “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.” Whoa. Seven times. In the same day. Now, I mean, I get one or two times in a day, or even seven times over the course of a lifetime. But seven times in one day. I don’t know about that. Fool me once, right?
The disciples weren’t too sure about this either. Not too sure it was a good idea, maybe, but certainly not too sure that they were going to be able to pull it off. That is a lot of turning the other cheek and forgiving. So the disciples appealed to Jesus, “increase our faith.” Which, you would expect Jesus to praise them for, right. Increase our faith. Help us be more faithful, help us be better followers of you. Seems like the exact sort of thing Jesus should want from his followers. Solomon asked God for more wisdom, and God was all over it. Gave Solomon not just wisdom, but riches and honor also. So you’d think the disciples asked exactly the right question here, requesting more faith. Except Jesus didn’t praise them. Instead, he said something kind of strange. So the Greek is a little strange here. In the translation I read it said, “if you had faith,” but it is a first-class conditional phrase, so a better translation would be “since.” But then the second part is a second-class conditional, which means the statement is not true. So a better translation might be, “Since you have 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 [but you can’t, so it won’t].”
So, wait, what is Jesus saying here? At first it sounded like Jesus was telling the disciples, if you only had the faith of a mustard seed, you could do something as impossible as cause mulberry trees to uproot themselves and replant themselves in the sea, which why you would want that it in the first place is beyond me, it seems like it would be bad for the mulberry tree, but anyway. You don’t even have the faith of a mustard seed, so no moving trees for you.
But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered. If the better translation for the verse is not if, but since, what if the problem isn’t the disciples’ amount of faith, but that they’re asking for faith instead of simply talking to the mulberry tree. What if what Jesus was saying to them, in albeit a sort of confusing way, was, look you already have all the faith you need. Yes, it is just a little tiny amount of faith, faith the size of a mustard seed. But remember what I’d said to you back just a little way into the journey. Back in Luke chapter thirteen, verses eighteen and nineteen, for those of us with chapter and verse numbers, about how the kingdom of God was “like a mustard seed… it grew and became a tree and the birds of the air made nests in the branches.” So even though you only have this tiny little amount of faith, it is the right amount of faith. You don’t need any more. Since you have faith the size of a mustard seed, tell that tree to move and see what happens.
To make a modern analogy, I think what Jesus was telling his disciples was that faith is like gravity. It’s all around us, we always have it, and always in the right amount. You never think to yourself, man, I really wish I had just a little bit more gravity here, so I could get this thing on the ground. No, right, that would be ridiculous. And yet gravity, and in fact the exact amount of gravity we have, no more, no less, is necessary for life as we know it to function. Too much gravity and we would be crushed, not enough and we would just float away. Or, worse, we would explode. I think what Jesus was saying was that faith is like that. You can change how you relate to it. Like we can make something heavier or lighter by changing the weight of it, or we can work our muscles to be able to work against gravity and lift a bigger object, but we cannot, nor do we need to, change gravity itself. Similarly, we have enough faith, all the faith we need. We can be bolder in responding to our faith. We can find friends and companions who challenge us to take risks. We can study scripture to understand how faith works. We can learn, and pray, and come to believe more deeply, but we do not need to, and in fact we cannot, increase our faith.
We cannot increase our faith, because faith itself is not something we control. It is a gift from God. Ephesians chapter two, verse eight is that popular Lutheran line, “For by grace you have been saved through faith,” and we tend to stop there, but the verse goes on, “and this is NOT YOUR OWN DOING.” Hear that, “for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” By grace you have been saved through faith, and it is the gift of God. Faith is a gift. And we all have it. God gave it to us in our baptism; it is God’s birthright to us. We can choose to trust it or not, we can choose to believe it or not, we can choose how we act, how we respond to it. But we cannot change that we have it, because faith itself is God’s gift to us. God gives faith to us; God has faith in us. We can do impossible, bold, and faith-filled things, not because of our faith, but because of the faith God has in us.
What I think happened in this story here was that the disciples heard the hard work Jesus had for them, and it freaked them out. And they thought, I will never be good enough to live up to Jesus’ expectations for me. So they begged Jesus to make them better, to make them stronger. And what Jesus essentially said to them, when he refused their request for more faith was, “You are already enough, I have already made you enough. Your problem is not that you are not good enough; your problem is you do not know your own power. So stop standing here worrying about how you will get to be enough, and start talking to that tree.”
The other problem I think we find in this is that we expect the mulberry tree will uproot itself all at once. But Jesus didn’t say anything about how long it would take for the mulberry tree to move. Maybe he didn’t mean that if the disciples just demanded it, they would all have to duck, because suddenly mulberry trees would be flinging themselves into the Mediterranean. Sometimes it might happen like that, but often change is a slow process. The mulberry tree might start with just one moved shovel of dirt, one root exposed, one branch outstretched. Until, inch by inch, the mulberry tree will slide down the embankment and into the sea.
Dear people of God, you have enough faith to move the mulberry trees in your life. Whatever tree is in your way, you can move it to the sea. You have enough faith. It might take some work, as you struggle to develop the muscles needed, be they actual muscles, or muscles of endurance, confidence, hope, or determination. It might take some time. The mulberry tree may not fly through the air in the way you might be hoping. It might be a slow, gradual slog. But you have enough faith, God has given it to you. So start telling those mulberry trees in your path to get a move on. Since you have faith the size of a mustard seed, there is nothing that can stand in your way. Amen.
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