All Saints'
Luke 19
1Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. 4So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today." 6So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7All the people saw this and began to mutter, "He has gone to be the guest of a 'sinner.' "
8But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."
9Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? I have kept the commandments since I was a boy.”
Jesus said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked at him and said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
Those who heard this asked, "Who then can be saved?"
Zacchaeus.
The rich young ruler, not so much. But Zacchaeus can. He can be saved by being the antithesis of the rich young ruler, the answer to the very astute question “who then, can be saved.”
You see, Zacchaeus was rich. He may have been richer than the rich young ruler, because the rich young ruler likely had lands and servants and portion set aside for him alone, but Zacchaeus, he had Amway. You remember Amway, the greatest pyramid since the pharaohs made their mark. It worked like this: the harder you worked, the less you needed to. Sign up and sell some soap. Sign up soap sellers, and collect a portion of their sales. Insist that they sign up sellers and collect a portion of the sellers sellers, and so on, and so on. With a little luck, and lots of arm twisting, you could become the head of your own soap empire.
Now imagine Amway is Rome and Zacchaeus is the head of the Jericho leg. Jericho, some claim is the oldest city in the world, the centre of all those trade routes, the place where you tried out your sales pitch before you made it to some far off market. So Zacchaeus was a wealthy man in a wealthy city, made wealthier by collecting taxes from tax collectors in his own private pyramid scheme.
And they didn’t just collect taxes either. They collected whatever they could squeeze from the people, remitting the required amount to Rome. The rest, as our Mayor-elect might say, was gravy. Tax collectors were the Sopranos of the ancient near-east, using whatever threats and intimidation required to get what Rome needed and whatever else was needed for them to live well. In Luke 3, a group of tax collectors are moved by the preaching of John the Baptist and they ask “what should we do to be saved?” His reply: “Don’t collect anymore than you are required to.” In other words, starve, because what was required was required by Rome and what wasn’t required was required to eat.
Oddly, the words “tax collector” appear only once in the Old Testament, very late, in the Book of Daniel. It requires a tax collector, the author says, to “maintain the royal splendor.” But in Matthew, Mark and Luke, “tax collectors” are mentioned twenty-five times, beginning with the call of St. Matthew, a tax collector. As so it begins:
Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him.
When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners."Jesus had a thing for outcasts, even the outcasts people loved to hate. And Zacchaeus was chief among them. But there was a tree, and there was a path nearby, and there was Jesus passing through. To the delight of Sunday School teachers everywhere, Jesus stopped at the base of that tree and said “Zacchaeus, come down at once. I’m coming to your house for tea.”
If the question is “who then can be saved” and the answer is Zacchaeus, the reason is this: "Look, Lord!” he said, “here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount." In other words, he became a slave. After half, and after four times all the cheating and all the excess, Zacchaeus has less than nothing and could do little more than sell himself to another to cover the debt he created. If there was a needle nearby, Zacchaeus would be riding a camel straight through it.
But he was already a small man. Maybe not needle small, but small enough that it merited mention the Luke’s account. So why a physical description of the man in a book that seems determined to offer no descriptions. What did Jesus look like? Doesn’t say. I guess it wasn’t important to the story. Or maybe he needs to look exactly like he looks in your mind’s eye, because this will help us love him more. But Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and between being short, and climbing trees, and needing coaxing out of said tree, we hear the lighter side of Luke, the lighter side of collecting taxes.
Notice that there has never been a situation comedy set in a tax office? It just wouldn’t be that funny. It would cause the audience tense up, and however clever the jokes and the repartee, the setting would prove unfunny. A surgical unit in the middle of the Korean War, now that’s funny. But never a tax office. But Jesus might, or at least Luke might, because the little man and the big tree has been making us chuckle for some time.
Are we being softened up? Did St. Matthew successfully lobby for a sympathetic portrayal of tax collectors in exchange for joining the group? No, Jesus is busy, once again, coaxing us from our own tree.
For Zacchaeus the tree was obvious. Remember last week: “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'” This is Zacchaeus, or at least some one speaking the words that Zacchaeus might have said if he wasn’t busy trying to keep from falling out of that tree. Zacchaeus knew who he was, and knew what he did, and knew that Jesus was his only hope. Do we know this?
Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation, was concerned with defining the true faith, the faith that had faded from the world of the early 1500’s, but he also worried that everything he believed be shared with the masses, the people who did the living and dying in churches and communities everywhere. To this end, he created The Small Catechism, a booklet that described what “the head of the family should teach in a simple way to those in the household.” It takes the form of a dialogue. Here is a section that might resonate for our wee friend, if he was time traveling and could read some German:
1. What is Confession?
There are two parts to confession. One is that we confess our sins. The other is that we receive absolution, or forgiveness.
2. What sins should we confess?
Before one another we should confess only those sins which we know and feel in our hearts.3. Which sins are these?
Examine your place in life according to the Ten Commandments. Have you been faithful as a father, mother, son, daughter, employer or employee? Have you been disobedient, unfaithful, or lazy? Have you injured anyone by what you have said or done? Have you stolen anything, neglected your duty, been careless, or damaged anything?
4. What will a fellow Christian say to someone who has confessed his or her sins?
He will say, “According to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you your sins.”It is as if Luke took the temple tax collector, forgiven but not very compelling, and gave him the name Zacchaeus. It is as if he took the least sympathetic person in town and granted him more than forgiveness, and give him friendship with Jesus. Took us from the thing we struggle to understand (tax collectors can be saved too) and said they belong at the heavenly banquet, sitting near the front, at Jesus side, because his love for them was unconditional.
Imagine a world where the person you respect the most enjoys the person you like the least. I’m not sure how happy I would be in that world. I want the friend of my friend to be my friend too. Friendship is a form of loyalty, and how can I be loyal to a friend who will be friend with just anyone, or someone I can’t help but hate? This religion thing is hard.
And so we confess. We confess that the road is long and the demands are great, and our Lord made curious choices that wouldn’t be my choices and force me to confess some more. We confess that every time Jesus seems to go too far on this friend thing we push back only to have him go one step further and befriend someone else.
In the end, however, even Jesus knew where to stop. “Father,” he said from the cross, “forgive them, for they know not what they do.” What goes unrecorded, what stayed even the hand of the evangelist and scribe, is what Jesus said next: “And I still call them friends.” Amen.
Proper 24
Luke 18
Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” 6And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
There’s a familiar tune we all know, and I’m told it’s three simple notes: G, E, C (downward) You might know it as the TTC chime, alerting you that the doors are closing.
In London, a pleasant voice says "Mind the gap!"
In Paris there is an annoying buzzer, and the uncomfortable experience of needing to know how to work an awkward handle to get off the train. If the station was built on a curve (odd) and announcement comes "Attention à la marche en descendant du train"
In New York, the driver says, "Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”
Where I come from, please is the magic word, and also means whatever is being asked must be important. "Stand clear of the closing doors, please.” Manhattan is also the only place I know where people don’t take ‘no’ for an answer. The door is closing, and an arm appears. Now you have a stand-off. The train can’t move, because there’s a guy with his arm stuck in the door of the train. But the driver doesn’t want to reward such unruly behaviour, so he gives the door button a nudge, enough to say “remove” your arm. It has the opposite effect. Now the guy has his shoulder in too. These things can continue for some time, because after all, this is New York.
My favourite New York experience was the woman running down the platform, both arms weighed down with very large and very bulky packages, doors closing, and what does she do? She sticks her head in the closing doors. Same routine, the doors are nudging open and closed, slamming her head, until the driver relents, I expect, rewarding her for her persistence. Call it the parable of the persistent rider, or the parable of using your head, and I wouldn’t believe if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Don’t try this at home.
Now, there were no subways in the Galilee, so Jesus told this parable instead: “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’”
So what is this parable about? Well, I started with a story about persistence because it’s most commonly called “The Parable of the Persistent Widow.” And that’s fair enough, because she sure is persistent. Tom Long, famous professor of preaching, frames it this way:
So she annoyed this judge constantly. She shouted aloud for justice in his courtroom: “Give me justice! Give me justice! Give me justice!” She knocked on his chamber doors, left messages on his answering machine. She probably even found him teeing off at the Golf Club shouting, “Give me justice! Give me justice! Give me justice!”
She is, if nothing else, the persistent widow. But some have turned this on its head, and called it “The Parable of the Unjust Judge.” He is, after all, the character in the story that has a change of heart, the character that bends under the pressure of the persistent widow, and the one who repents of his inactivity, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons. And maybe that’s enough meaning for those of us who choose to label ourselves sinners, that eventually we hope we can repent, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons.
Okay, so now we have two rival titles, so what about Luke? He recorded the parable, no doubt one of Jesus’ favourites, because like “the parable of using your head,” it’s just fun to tell. So you’ll notice that Luke also gives the parable a title, hidden in his introduction to the story. He writes “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” Call it “The Parable of the Need to Pray Always and Not Lose Heart.” No much of a title guy, that Luke, maybe he should stick to recording the story.
Notice how the title determines how we read the story. And how we preach the story, and how the story is made manifest in the lives of believers. I can guarantee you that in churches across the land, ministers who use the lectionary will say something akin to “if you pray hard enough…” Be persistent in prayer, they will say, and God will hear you and give you want you want.
Now we have two problems. The first problem is God already knows what you need, even before you ask it. And don’t take my word for it, listen to Jesus: (Matthew 6)
5"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask.And right after this he gives them the Lord’s Prayer, a prayer he introduces by saying, “this, then, is how you should pray.” You might be so bold as to suggest that this is the only prayer we need, that we pray to remind ourselves of the values of heaven such as “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us” and leave it at that. Sure we can add word or two after and before, but God knows what we need before we ask, so maybe that one prayer is enough.
Second problem: We don’t get everything we ask for, even if we do follow the example of the persistent widow. How many former believers list this as the primary reason they lost their faith? Many? Most? I can’t say for sure, but I can tell you that the promise that a prayer will be answered just because you ask earnestly and often enough will sometimes result in great disappointment and even loss of faith.
***
I’m sure you all know what to do if some one grants you three wishes. What do you do? (You ask for more wishes!)
Prayer is not asking for more wishes. We humans, frail creatures that we are, have an innate capacity to understand the secret of the three wishes. We hear about potential, and we want more. We know that God hears our prayers, but our mind goes to more. Persistent or not, we always tend to ask for more than can reasonably be given because it is the human way. We want more.
Now the third problem with prayer, since we’re making a list, is ‘what can we reasonably ask for?” God is infinite, God is all-powerful, God created the heavens and the earth, and logic would say we can ask for a lot. Maybe everything, or anything. Since we know that nothing is impossible for God, suddenly our mind goes to all those additional wishes.
So the believer says, “all things are possible with God,” therefore ask away. The non-believer says “unless God can answer every prayer, prayer is false and unfair. Why would God pick and choose.” And we feel stuck in the middle. I don’t think God can raise the dead (Jesus could, but Jesus is God). I don’t think God can change the direction of the tornado to spare my town if it means that some other town will suffer. But I do think God can heal, I just don’t know how, and I don’t know why. And it’s the mystery of some are healed and some are not that brings us back to problem number two, we don’t get everything we ask for. I wish we did, but we don’t.
For the preacher to now talk about the mystery of God and the need to stay faithful would seem lame. So maybe we should give the persistent widow a second look.
She’s at the door, she sends a fax, she sends a text, she has her people call his people, she sends a telegram: I need justice. Stop. He will not listen. But she carries on, maybe she sticks her head in his door, or maybe takes the ultimate step and follows him into the men’s room. Whatever she does, he has a change of heart. Now, granted it is not much of a change of heart, he only wants peace, but it is a change of heart nonetheless.
So let’s say that we can persistently pray that hearts be changed. Let’s say we pray too for the mysterious things that only sometimes seem to happen, because, after all, we live in hope and we do appreciate that God is a mystery to us. God’s ways are not our ways. But you never know.
So what if, the primary purpose of prayer is to change hearts. Like the persistent widow, we ask and ask that change comes to the hearts of those who have power; those who make decisions that impact the lives of others; those who have the power to go one way or another on an issue; those that know what is right but must constantly choose. Have I captured everyone?
Someone decided to rescue 33 miners when conventional wisdom held out little hope.
Someone decided to give Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Prize, knowing that hearts could be changed even among the most hardened.
Someone decided to release Nelson Mandela even though it meant the end of one order and the beginning of another.
Someone decided to lay down weapons in Londonderry and Belfast, even though it meant compromise with those they were taught to hate.And wasn’t each the answer to a prayer? Abelard taught his students that even just hearing the story of Jesus willingness to go to the cross could turns hearts of stone to hearts of love. And isn’t that an answer to prayer? That Jesus, while innocent, would carry the burden of our heart-heartedness, and our neglect, and all our failures, and face punishment on our behalf? Jesus was persistent in his journey up to Jerusalem just as he was persistent in prayer, like the widow, seeking the justice of God, the justice that sins be forgiven and human hearts be transformed and people made whole. This is the Good News, thanks be to God, Amen.
Thanksgiving
Deuteronomy 26
When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, 2you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, “Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.” 4When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, 5you shall make this response before the Lord your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, 7we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.” You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. 11Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.
Hands up if you feel eighteen. Put your hands down if you are still under eighteen and trying to be older.
Eighteen seems to be the age named most often by those who make the argument that they don’t feel their age. And I suppose it makes sense. Eighteen is the age of arrival: becoming an adult, getting to enjoy a handful of adult things, gaining a sense of greater responsibility in the world while still having few responsibilities. Sounds perfect, in fact—who wouldn’t want to feel eighteen all the time.
Then life sends reminders. A job, kids, debt, what doesn’t fall out turns gray anyway and then you’re old. And then somewhere in the middle, middle-middle, or maybe late-middle, your eyes crap out. Now, you’ve heard me complain about presbyopia, literally “old persons’ eyes,” and the trial of not being able to hold something far enough away and still see it. But I’m talking about the next in a series of humiliations beginning with something called the bifocal.
Yes, the bifocal. An evil invention whereby some very practical person figured out a way to aid the vision of people who have failing sight in at least two directions. An invention that says “give up now” because everyone can see that sinister line across your glasses, simply by looking you in the eye.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the emotional response. Not the sad approach of late-middle age and early old age, but the fact that while I wear these things it appears (from this side) that I am perpetually tearing up. And maybe that’s intention, the glasses themselves saying “go ahead, cry for your lost youth, after all, you’re not eighteen anymore.”
***
The story of the Israelites follows a pattern of growth and development that seems somehow to mirror our own:
You begin in a place of comfort and blissful ignorance, certain the world revolves around you. You become as a willful toddler, cast out of the garden, and forced to make your way in a harsh world. You’re four years old. You have a series of misadventures (for the Israelites, this most often seems to involve pretending you wife is your sister), but slowly you reach a sense of maturity. Later, by no fault of yours, you find yourself suffering in bondage, say down in Egypt, or maybe to a big mortgage. Eventually relief comes, but you’re still wandering, looking for the promised land that some tell me is called retirement. When you finally get there, and you will get there, you develop elaborate ways to express your thankfulness. For while you remain eighteen in your mind’s eye, you have the maturity and experience to know that before all else, you need to thank God for the passage from there to here.
And today, of course, is all about thankfulness. It is about acknowledging the passage from there to here and all the good gifts God has blessed us with on the way. It is about looking back and looking forward, knowing that this God of promise will continue to provide.
For the Israelites, thankfulness took the form of a command. It fits in the retirement stage of my previous imagining, where the Israelites have reached the promised land and must adhere to a ritual that is set long before. Our passage from Deuteronomy is set in the future tense, saying “when you arrive you must immediately do the following.” The people must gather up the first fruits of the harvest, take them to an appointed place, and recite the following:
“Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.”
The priest will take the basket with the offering, set it on the alter, and then the recitation continues:
“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, 7we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.”
A couple of things to note first. Amy Jill Levine, noted Old Testament scholar, would want us to note the essentially legal tone of this passage. While we are quick to hear this as liturgical language, meaning language set in the context of public worship, she would have us remember that this is also the language of covenant fulfillment.
And the covenant, the one that is fulfilled as baskets are filled and words are recited, begins way back in Genesis 12:
1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. 2 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
The covenant is further refined, of course, with more detailed promises of offspring, and a land, and that small but unforgettable matter of circumcision. So this is a contract, as Levine says with ‘the party of the first part’ being God and the ‘party of the second part’ being Abram (later Abraham) and later still the entire nation of Israel.
So the people have been faithful, they have suffered the vicissitudes of a long journey from there to here, and now they must fulfill one last condition, reciting the sacred history of liberation and reminding themselves of the great deeds that God has done. But there is another thing to note here, and that is the small issue of time.
The words to recite, indeed all of Deuteronomy, was most likely written in the early seventh century, BCE, in the time of King Josiah, when religious reform was the order of the day. Some of the book may have been written as late as the early sixth century, maybe during the Babylonian exile or immediately after. So we have words written in the future tense for events that happened 600 years earlier. The introduction to the passage says “When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess,’ words written centuries after the possession has happened and maybe even after the land has been lost in exile.
But the time confusion continues. Listen to part of the oath again:
We cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders.
Yes, but the ‘we’ is entirely symbolic, because we know, in fact the Bible makes it clear, that the generation that were liberated by God and crossed the Reed Sea, and wandered in the desert perished there and would never make it to the promised land. The first group to recite this were already speaking outside of time, and every subsequent generation would do so as well.
But the oath is clear, because after all, this is the fulfillment of a contract. Even down to today, the faithful recite this oath in the immediate language of presence, ignoring the trivial question of human time and thinking instead of God’s time. The same happens in the Passover ritual of the Seder meal, when the youngest child asks the question “Why is this night so special?” And the answer is the same:
This night is like no other in our year, for this night is special to the people of Israel. This was the night when we passed from death to life, from slavery to freedom.
It wasn’t our ancestors, it wasn’t Moses and Miriam and the other heroes of the faith: this night WE passed from death to life, from slavery into freedom.
***
We are all immigrants (except our First Nations brothers and sisters) and we all arrived on these shores with the promise of freedom, of greater prosperity, and a greater potential for our children. Ask my father if he is Dutch and he will be offended (in a playful way) and insist that he is Canadian. It is not that he lacks pride in the nation of his birth, only that Canada is his chosen home, the promised land that has given so much to him and his tribe.
So as a nation we give thanks, and many will mark this occasion with a giant flightless bird, and vegetables we seldom eat, and in gatherings we ought to gather more often. And while the bird may come in many flavours, sage and savory here, curry over there, maybe jerk with some coocoo on the side, the thankfulness is universal, for the good land we enjoy, and the blessing of God we enjoy each day.
And these celebrations happen outside of time. They are for our distant relations, entering the land of Canaan, the brave ones who crossed the sea to Canada, for us and for the generations to come: We trust in the promises of God and we never stop thanking God for what we have. Now and always, Amen.
Proper 22
Luke 17
5The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. 7“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”
“If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
How often, I wonder, did the disciples say “Lord, we don’t know what on earth your talking about.” How often did they push Peter to the front to say “We’ve been chewing on the last thing you said since Bethsaida and we’ve got nothing.” Or maybe, “Lord, can you say everything again after ‘now listen carefully.’”
There are some who have suggested that the lost years of Jesus were spent travelling, experiencing the world. Maybe he went to England like the anthem suggests. Maybe he went to India to learn about the Buddha and the Noble Path of Suffering. Or maybe he met a culture in some faraway place that taught profound things that never seem clear. Today’s passage is a report from just such a place.
There are plenty of sermons that take the first verse of our reading for today (The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”) and end there. The simple phrase “Increase my faith!” suggests all sorts of directions, various approaches and ideas, all unrelated to mulberry trees in the sea and the proper place of slaves in the ancient near-east.
And why wouldn’t we travel down that path? Who wouldn’t lobby for more faith, in a world beset by trouble, where everyday brings new uncertainty and a greater sense of danger. You need something to manage in a world of increased threat levels and pandemic preparedness, financial meltdown and voter anger. We need a rock to cling to, something to sustain us, and the simple plea “Increase our faith” maybe enough topic for any day.
Or, maybe this is one of those moments, not unlike the day James and John wanted all the glory, that Jesus might say, “do you understand what you are asking?” Luke doesn’t record such a question, but it seems implied: The twelve have asked for something that may be absurd, and they get an absurd response. Maybe the demand for an increase in faith is an absurd as a tree planted in the sea. Or maybe the smallest faith possible (the mustard seed) is more than enough to uproot trees and grow them in the sea? In that case, asking for more is just foolish.
So the intuitive response is “sure, I could use more faith, who couldn’t.” And the Lord’s respond is “since when did faith come in sizes?” Could this be the answer to the puzzle of the mulberry tree? Even mustard seed faith is sufficient, and asking for more is as foolish as wanting to sit at the right and left hands of Jesus in glory. That might be the right answer, but going back to living in the day to day, it sure feels that having more faith would be handy almost any day of the week.
"Take heart, daughter," he said, "your faith has healed you."
"Your faith has saved you; go in peace."
"Go," said Jesus, "your faith has healed you."
"Rise and go; your faith has made you well."
"Receive your sight; your faith has healed you."Time and time again, Jesus reminds people that there is faith enough to heal and to save, to overcome even death. A parade of broken and damaged people seek him out, some with disease, some advocating for others, each receiving healing and wholeness because they had faith enough to make it so.
And apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” and maybe, just maybe, the answer could have been, “I will.” The answer could have been “yes, you’ll certainly need it when I’m gone,” or “just a little more, because you can never have enough.” Instead, it wasn’t quite ‘no,’ but it wasn’t ‘yes’ either.
Then a parable, an uncommon one, one you don’t hear much, because it falls poorly on modern ears. “Who among you,” he begins, “would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’?” Wouldn’t you be more likely to say “have you forgot my supper?” And should a slave receive thanks? Then Jesus speaks directly to the twelve: “So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”
If Jesus was in a bad mood that day, maybe Luke should have turned the recorder off. Maybe we don’t need to hear the result of a long day on the road, the impertinence of the twelve, the constant demands. Once again, like the mulberry tree, there is meaning here, and we are called to set aside the mood and the uncomfortable framing and find meaning.
Jesus used slave metaphors because they were commonly understood and apropos to the topic of faith. Slave or servant, there was (and is) an assumption that faith has something to do with obedience, and we are required to figure out what it is. And here we venture into completely counter-cultural terrain: If conversation about faith is rare, conversation about faith as obedience is practically dodo in scope.
Hard work is it’s own reward.
Virtue is it’s own reward.
Generosity is it’s own reward. There seems to more than a few variations on this idea, and with a little help from Google, “virtue is it’s own reward” may be the original, likely by Spenser in the Faerie Queene. Crazy Elizabethans. It’s one of those phrases that makes no sense to lots of people, and maybe that’s the point. Cake mix or scratch? Hire or do it yourself? Walk or drive? Just as there seems to be a reward for doing things the hard way, there is a reward for just doing your job.
So if the job description of a disciple is “have faith,” then they should feel content and say “we have done only what we ought to have done!” We have faith, why ask for more. We did our job, and it was hard work, and surely there is virtue in that. And there is. It would be absurd to demand more, because a little is all you need. ‘Do your job,’ Jesus says, meaning ‘have faith,’ and that is all I require.
"Your faith has saved you; go in peace."
"Go," said Jesus, "your faith has healed you."
"Rise and go; your faith has made you well."A woman with a hemorrhage, a despondent father, a man born blind: these people seem like spiritual giants in the land, brave enough to approach Jesus, shout at Jesus, follow in behind, even demand healing, and we should be content with our faith? We should accept what little faith we have when these faithful ones received so much?
Yes and no. We should never accept what little faith we have, because faith requires nurture, and prayer, some study, and the support of others. We can challenge ourselves to have more, and some may even get it, but at the end of the day God is the source of faith. We need it, God provides.
The difference between the disciples anxious for more faith and the broken few who had faith is surrender. The twelve thought faith was something you acquire, something you bank, rather the absence of something, which the others understood. Faith is a giving away of the need to have more, and faith is the openness to accept that God has all the faith we could ever need. It is surrender to that idea, obedience to that idea, that is at the heart of faith.
Jesus said having more faith is absurd, maybe you need less. Jesus said, be content as worthless servants, because your worthlessness, your absence abundant faith is all the faith you need if you place your trust in God alone.
