Increase Our Faith -10/2/22

Sermon 2022.10.02 Lk 17.5-10 “Increase Our Faith,” M. Newheart, FBCEG

There of course are four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and our focus in this liturgical year is Luke. The liturgical year is set up on a three-year cycle, and one of the first three Gospels is featured. We are currently in Year C. During Advent, we will change to Year A, and the focus will be on Matthew. So this year we are focusing on Luke, Lucky Luke, as I sometimes say. One thing that is distinctive about Luke is that in this third Gospel, Jesus takes a long journey to get to Jerusalem. Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem in chapter 9, but he doesn’t get there until chapter 19. Luke is 24 chapters long, but for nearly half of that, for 10 chapters, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, where he will die, rise again, and ascend. In comparison, in Mark, Jesus only takes one chapter to get from Galilee to Jerusalem. But in Luke, it’s ten. In much of the Gospel, then, Jesus is on a journey toward Jerusalem, and on this journey, he teaches the disciples, preparing them for his “exodus,” through death, resurrection, and ascension.

In our scripture lesson for today, in chapter 17 of Luke, Jesus is coming to the end of his journey to Jerusalem. To the Pharisees, Jesus has told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, which we talked about last Sunday. Now Jesus speaks to his disciples, and he tells them about forgiveness. He says, “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And 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” (17:3-4). Sinning seven times a day. Wow! That’s a lot of sinning. If you consider that you’re awake for 16 hours a day, that’s just a little more than a sin every two hours. And if you’ve got 12 disciples, that’s just a lot of sinning, particularly if they’re spending most of their time following Jesus around while he’s preaching and teaching. I imagine, though, that as they followed him, the disciples got into it with one another. Peter and his brother Andrew probably gossiped about James and John, the sons of Zebedee, and they thundered back. But Jesus taught them about repentance and forgiveness. It was not the first time. Just a couple of chapters ago, Jesus told the “lost and found” parables—the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. Both ended with the same refrain: Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (15:7, 10). And at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, four friends take tiles from the roof and lower a paralyzed man to where Jesus is teaching. Jesus sees their faith and says to the man, “Your sins are forgiven” (5:20).

So, Jesus wants the disciples to forgive. And maybe Peter and Andrew looked at James and John, and they think, “He wants us to forgive them?! He’s gotta be kidding! Jesus wants us to be apostles of forgiveness!?” Luke then suddenly calls the disciples “apostles” (17:5). The word “disciple” simply means “learner,” but the word “apostle” means “one sent out.” Luke has used the word before. Early in Jesus’ ministry, Jesus appoints the twelve, and Luke says that Jesus also called them “apostles” (6:13). After being with him on the road and after witnessing the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, the disciples would be sent out to be witnesses, from Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, Jesus says (Acts 1:8). But right now, they still need a lot more training.

Luke calls the disciples “apostles” and he calls Jesus “the Lord” (Luke 17:5). Again, this is not the first time that Luke has done that. At Jesus’ birth, the angels proclaimed to the shepherds, “To you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (2:11). This name “the Lord” was the name for God, but it also was the name for a teacher or a slaveowner. For the early Christians, Jesus was Lord, that is, Master.

So, the apostles, when they hear this word about forgiveness, say to their master, “Increase our faith.” Increase our faith so that we can forgive. And the Lord says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed—”(17:6). Now that’s pretty small faith. Size of a mustard seed. A mustard seed is itsy-bitsy, miniscule. The apostles want BIG FAITH, but the Lord is only looking for small faith, because if you have it, then you can say to a mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea.” Now, I don’t know why you would want to do that. I don’t know why you would want to do landscaping that way. The big word for that is telekinesis, when you are able to move things with only your mind. What good is it for a mulberry tree to get planted in the sea. Maybe that would be good in times of drought. It would get lots of water, but otherwise it wouldn’t do much good. What was Jesus thinking?

I’m going to say something controversial here: I think that sometimes Jesus was silly. I think that sometimes Jesus just messed with people’s minds. The reign of God is something completely different than the way that the world thinks. God says in Isaiah: “My ways are not your ways,” says the Lord (Isa 55:8). So, sometimes Jesus the Lord said silly things, things that don’t make a whole lot of sense to show how different God’s ways of speaking are different from our ways. I think that that’s what’s going on here. Our faith is not to do our landscaping, our faith is to forgive. It’s to love. It’s to pursue to peace and hope and joy and all that good stuff. And you may pray for parking spaces when you go to the grocery store, and that’s OK. Whenever I do that, God directs me to the spaces farthest from the entrance. And when I complain, God says, “You need exercise.” Rather than praying for parking spaces, maybe it’s better to pray for our attitude, our frame of mind when we go into the store that we might be the most conscientious shopper that we can be, buying things that are healthy and cost-effective. Remember that Jesus says that we are to love God with all our minds.

I think that we need to have this same approach to what Jesus says about slaves in our scripture lesson. First, he tells the apostles about “your slaves” (Luke 17:7). The apostles don’t have any slaves. They’ve given up everything and followed Jesus. And then the Lord says that the apostles are to call themselves “worthless slaves” (17:10). It’s probably better to translate that as “unhelpful.” But they’re not unhelpful slaves. And neither are we.

Howard Thurman, the 20th century African American spiritual writer who taught at Howard University School of Divinity, tells of his grandmother, who was born into slavery. She said that the slave preacher would sneak onto the plantation and hold secret meetings with the slaves. We would say, “You—You are not slaves! You—you are not [the N-word]. You are children of God” (Jesus and the Disinherited, p. 39). We are not worthless slaves, but worthy children of God.

As children of God, we have faith—small faith like that of a mustard seed. And we forgive. Forgiveness is often difficult. But I am going to suggest that you begin not with others, but with yourself. Often times the person that we have the most difficulty forgiving is ourselves, the person that we see everyday in the mirror. Though many of us have grown up in church. We really have not taken seriously the message of God’s forgiveness. Yes, we have been baptized, but the waters of forgiveness have not totally cleansed us. Salvation is an ongoing experience. Theologians call that sanctification. Consider forgiveness, and specifically self-forgiveness. Every Sunday we say, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” We disagree about the wording, some saying transgressions, others saying debts, but we do not disagree that the Lord offers forgiveness.

So, I ask you this week that you consider self-forgiveness. Yesterday I followed a guided meditation on my phone from the app Insight Timer Meditation App. It was a short meditation of 10 minutes that had me write a letter to myself in which I forgave myself. It was a powerful experience. I realized that I was holding on to a lot of things. Perhaps this is a practice that you would like to do this week. Take 10 minutes and write a letter to yourself in which you forgive yourself of what you have been holding onto.

In a few minutes we will celebrate communion, the Lord’s Supper. Luke’s Gospel ends with the two on the road to Emmaus recognizing the risen Jesus in the breaking of the bread. We too recognize him in our breaking of the bread. We recognize him as the one who can increase our faith, as the one who forgives us and encourages us and enables us to forgive ourselves. It is the meal of faith and the meal of forgiveness. To it we come with joy.