TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST October 6, 2013 Napa Valley Lutheran Church, Napa, CA “TENDING SHEEP” David Hamilton, Pastor Luke 17:5-10 OK, let’s just get into it right away. I am bothered by two things in this gospel reading today – the way it begins and the way it ends. I’m bothered by the things that Jesus said. I am bothered that the disciples seem to ask a perfectly reasonable request - that their faith would be increased - and Jesus seems to turn that request aside. And I am bothered that he tells a parable where the moral of the story seems to be that we are “worthless slaves.” “Worthless” is not a word that I think of as coming from the mouth of Jesus, especially directed toward those who are trying their best to figure him out and to follow him. Now, before I’m through with this sermon, I am going to do my best to try to finesse (or maybe I should say “wrestle”) both those things into a more gospel-ly sounding message. But I feel the need, right here at the start, to acknowledge, or maybe to confess, my own discomfort with the way this story begins and ends. And to recognize that maybe part of the reason for that discomfort is that both these things might hit just a little too close to home for me. Because there are certainly times that I know my own faith could use a boost; and I know there are times that I wonder about my own “worth” – what, in my weakness and frailty, am I worth to God, to the Church, to the world. “We are worthless slaves” does not do a lot to heighten my sense of self-esteem, or even simply to reinforce my sense of being loved and valued by God just for who I am. So which end of the story do you want to begin at? Well, I want to begin at the beginning. And sometimes it helps with these Sunday pericopes, these little snippets of Scripture, to go back even further into the story to catch the full context. What has happened here in the story that led the disciples to make this request – “Increase our faith!” We know from the way that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each tell the story, that the disciples were not particularly famous for the strength of their faith as they followed Jesus around Galilee. If we go back in Luke’s gospel to the place in which the twelve disciples were first called to follow Jesus, back in Chapter Six, we can see that they have been watching Jesus at work for a little while now. And they have seen Jesus heal the sick, cast out demons, feed more than five thousand people, and even raise the dead. Maybe the disciples are asking for more faith so that they might be able to do the same works that Jesus has been doing. Maybe they know their own reputation as students whose faith does not measure up to that of their teacher. Maybe they want to take their discipleship to “the next level.” But I think there might be an even more basic reason that they make the request they do. Because not only have they been watching Jesus do amazing acts, they have also been listening to Jesus speak amazing words. Words like these: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” “Love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” “Judge not.” “Do not be anxious about your life.” Jesus has been speaking words of warning about loving money, and taking up a cross, and not causing others to stumble, and being willing to forgive, over and over, and again and again. You’d almost have to be crazy to hear all that and think that you are ready to live that kind of life that Jesus demands. So, of course, if it were you, if it were me, faced with the necessity of loving like that and forgiving like that, and letting go of wealth and even life itself, we’re going to see quickly that we’re going to need some help. “Increase our faith!” we might also say. And it wouldn’t be because we wanted to become the super-stars of discipledom; it would be just because we would know we are going to need more than what is within us, to even have a shot at living and loving like that. But here’s where Jesus’ answer to them, and perhaps to us in our moments of what we would describe as inadequate faith, turns from something that sounds legalistic - or even worse, dismissive of their request – to something much more gracious and graceful. Because the commentators are almost all in agreement, that the tone and meaning of Jesus’ response to them ought not to be read like this: “If you only had faith as big as a mustard seed – but you don’t” – but rather Jesus’ response should be heard as just the opposite: “If you only had faith as big as a mustard seed – and you do.” With the faith you already have, he tells them, you could do more than you can imagine. And maybe, then, even the second half of the story sounds different to our ears. The servants go out to plow the fields, to tend the sheep – which is characterized by Jesus as… what? As just doing what they ought to have done. Which is… what? Nothing heroic. Nothing extraordinary. Not a single mulberry tree is being uprooted and planted in the sea. There’s just land being worked, and animals being cared for, and a meal being served. And that’s enough. So it seems to me the story becomes something a little bit different than disciples who don’t have what they need in order to do the work they think they ought to do, being criticized by Jesus who won’t give them what they want and then calls them worthless. Instead, it seems to be a story about disciples who have what they need without even realizing it, and who are then encouraged to just go ahead and do what they can to serve the needs that are right there in front of them. Not, mind you, in order to earn some great reward; not to pay off a debt or create a line of credit with the one in charge. But just to do what needs to be done, because it needs to be done. Or, as Luther Seminary Professor David Lose puts it: “Sometimes faith can be pretty ordinary. That’s what Jesus means by saying that if they had the faith even of a mustard seed, they could uproot and move a mulberry tree -- that it really doesn’t take all that much faith to be, well, faithful. Even the simplest things done in faith can have a huge impact.” And it’s not that the little things that need to be done, like loving and forgiving, are worthless things; or that we are worthless people if that’s all we get done. Here’s where my quibble is really more with the translators than with Jesus himself. Not worthless, but undeserving. Doing our duty doesn’t make us deserving of God’s love and grace. No matter what we do, even if we were to do miracles, we would remain undeserving of such divine favor. But that doesn’t matter, because that’s not the point. We’re not trying to come to the point where we deserve God’s love. We’re coming to the place where we understand just what an incredible gift God’s love is for us – a gift we could never earn or deserve, but only receive, with humility and with gratitude. And when we receive that gift, and then act in light of that gift – when we use what God has given us to “tend the sheep,” both literally and metaphorically - our faith is increased, strengthened. And now I want to invoke Saint Francis. On the one hand, we might be inclined to think of St. Francis as one of the powerhouses of faith. He renounced worldly wealth! He rebuilt churches! He started an entire order of monks that still serves the church and the world to this very day! He has a Pope named after him! But on the other hand, we might describe him like this: he lived a simple life, close to the earth; he provided what he had to those who had needs; he preached to the birds. And at the end of his life, I am pretty sure he would have said, “I have only done what was my duty.” And I think today, on this day we remember him in our worship, and bless dogs and other animals in his honor, we can connect him with this morning’s reading, and recognize that even in the simplest acts of our ordinary lives, our faith is expressed and our God is served. David Lose again: “Jesus tells his disciples -- both then and now -- that we’ve got all that we need to be faithful, and that being faithful, finally, is about recognizing all the God-given opportunities just to show up and do what needs to be done: doing our work; caring for those in need; protecting the vulnerable; reaching out to the lonely; befriending the friendless; keeping the world going; contributing to the common good. It’s all the ordinary stuff we do all the time and, taken together and blessed by God, it’s pretty darn extraordinary.” This month we are honored to be displaying photographs of fifteen women who are also examples of this. It happens that they are all Latinas – Hispanic women, being recognized and honored as part of Latino Heritage Month here in the Napa Valley. I hope you’ll take the time to view the pictures, read the captions; I’m told that if you have a smart-phone with a scanner app (or hang around with someone who does) that you can access short biographies of each one. You can also find them on-line with a computer, which is what I had to do. But each, in her own way, has done and is doing just what David Lose describes – taking hold of God-given opportunities just to show up and do what needs to be done, in education, in legal services, in health care. “Caring for those in need; protecting the vulnerable; reaching out to the lonely; befriending the friendless; keeping the world going; contributing to the common good.” One of them, Indira López, who works as a Program Director at Calistoga Family Center, offered on her biography page this quote from the Indian Poet Rabindranath Tagore, which I thought was just right for this morning’s gospel story, and for all of us who want our faith to be strong. Tagore wrote: “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” Amen.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Oct 2013 00:47:51 +0000
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