October 3, 2010
Luke 17:5-10
“Lord, increase our faith,” the apostles say to Jesus. These were the ones who had been following him closely for a good while now, long enough to know him pretty well, long enough to know about some of the dangers of following, too. They were, at this juncture, journeying toward Jerusalem—maybe that’s why they were asking for an increase in their faith. Maybe they felt the pressure building. Who knows what could happen once they reached Jerusalem? Would they be able to be faithful? Any of us would be apt to say: “Lord, increase our faith.”
You can never predict how Jesus will respond, can you? We might expect him to praise them for wanting more faith instead of some of the other things they’ve wanted before: more power, more control, more of a social and political revolution than they’ve seen so far. But no, he says a surprising thing: basically, he says you don’t need more faith; you already have enough. Even a speck of faith, as tiny as a mustard seed, the smallest seed created, would be enough to uproot a mulberry tree and send it flying into the sea. (Matthew remembers Jesus telling the same story, and saying that this tiny seed of faith would be enough to toss a whole mountain into the sea!) And then Jesus seems to go off topic to talk about a master and his servant, and how the servant is one who doesn’t expect to be treated in any way other than as a servant.
Vintage Jesus, inviting listeners to come to their own understanding rather than simply telling them what to think.Not all preachers or teachers are able to do it: not only challenge us to increase our faith, but challenge us to show our faith by finding what is ours to do and doing it faithfully. All the while walking toward Jerusalem, whatever disguises those “powers” might be wearing for us presently.
Like bookends at the start and the finish of this passage of scripture are, at the beginning, “Increase our faith,” and at the end, “We have done only what we ought to have done.” This is the prayer at the start of any deeper journey: “Increase our faith.” And it is way to measure faith along the way, whether or not we are able to say, “We have done only what we ought to have done.”
On this 3rd day of October, 2010, a few of us will be hosting our last Sunday morning worship service down at that humble yet precious space called 2025. The simple cross and altar that were formed by Jimilu’s gifted hands, and the memories of Mary Cosby’s singing and Gordon’s preaching and so many other stirring moments in the early years of this church community will catch and hold us for awhile—and so you might expect me to spend the sermon time reminiscing about it all. I did think about gathering up a batch of stories, just to illustrate the wonders and miracles that have occurred because of what the Spirit of the living God entrusted to a few ordinary saints who gathered there, and faithfully broke open the Word of God together and heard the call to deeper, deeper, ever deeper, commitment. When I’ve heard stories about the wide variety of special, and sometimes, yes, quirky, people who found their way here into that motley family, I realized this church took more seriously than any church I’ve known the scripture, “Whosoever will may come.” And there are so many stories of “just regular folks” who stepped up to serve some larger need because Gordon’s preaching—and the surrounding ambiance of love and encouragement that people experienced here—made it seem possible.
As the missions began to spring up rapidly—first the Potter’s House, giving the church a way to be with people who would never find their way to Embassy Row, and where people’s most basic needs of housing and health care and jobs and education and the children could begin to be addressed—I’ve wondered if that movement for the common good was largely due to having regular teaching from scripture that showed the Word of God as something alive and for us, here and now.
And so, yes, we are grateful for all that has been given. And grateful, too, for the foundation that serves Anacostia teenagers called the Urban Alliance that will start to live its life here. It is a precious container for good work, but we know that God is not one who can be contained. God is ever on the way…and longs for us to be on the way, too. And so today, the question before us seems to be: Will we Church of the Saviour folks, members and friends and listeners-in, rest in the accomplishments of the past, or will we, with the apostles, ask Jesus to increase our faith, and then get busy doing whatever we are asked us to do?
Good servants, Jesus says (if we are interested in being God’s servants) don’t spend time wondering if we have what it takes to accomplish the work at hand or if what we do will be appreciated—we just step up and do what is ours to do. We do whatever our “master” asks of us. So it’s a good idea to get clear about who or what is our master. Is our job master? Is our family our master? The laws of government? How about our need to please others or to be right? Or maybe our good causes become our master. Whatever persons or institutions or ideas get our devotion—that’s our master. Especially on the way to Jerusalem, it’s important to get as clear as we can about these things. What or whom do you serve, ultimately? When you listen for your instructions, whose voice are you straining to hear?
The second question is, depending on whether or not we have a master worth following, will we step up and do what is ours to do? In other words, will we use the faith we already have to find our part in God’s next thing? Bennett Sims, in his book Servanthood, tells of tribes in South Africa who greet each other with the expression sawu bona, which means, literally, “I see you.” They reply by saying sikhona, which means, “I am here.” I hope all of us have experienced what it is to have someone say, “I see you,” and because we have let ourselves be seen, we are “more here” than we would have been otherwise. To serve each other is to see each other, and to see those who previously have been anonymous and unknown. Last week we worked with the story of the rich man and Lazarus and how, after death, the rich man begins to see Lazarus, who previously was invisible to him. So much healing can happen when we begin to see what we haven’t seen before. In this time in our world’s life, and in our life together as a community of scattered communities, what are you starting to see that you haven’t seen before? Together, as we share our insights and clearer vision, we could find our next servant assignments.
So to be a servant is to see each other…but not only the surface. We truly serve when we make space that allows us to go beyond the surface encounter. Hospitality has been a central calling of this church community, not only offering a friendly greeting but actually allowing strangers and guests to come close enough to change us, to help us see how we are and who we are. This is a liberating hospitality that calls forth the totality of another person’s gifts, gifts that are not for our circles alone but for the whole world’s becoming. It’s what we long for the Potter’s House to continue to be and be even more, a place where we learn to serve by seeing each other and listening to each other, not for our own sake but for the sake of the whole.
Which part of our world’s pain do you feel most deeply these days? Where is humanity’s struggle for life and meaning touching your own soul? Are we in the stream of that which matters ultimately? Or are we busy splashing around in a little puddle that’s pretty much a puddle of self-concern not flowing toward others? No one can answer this ultimate question for us: Will we do what is ours to do? Will we be what is ours to be? Our growth inwardly—just being, loosening our grip on trying to accomplish some great things—will indicate whether or not we are up to the outward journey at all. Because the redemptive work of Christ encompasses all of who we are…all of who society is. It inspires a political, social, economic, relational revolution, which means the realignment of all our ways with God’s way. So we are unafraid to see “what is”: the poverty, the wars, the asthmatic condition of the environment, the breakdown of civil discourse and loving relationships, and we recommit to love our neighbor anyway, to love ourselves anyway, to pursue justice, to set free the captive, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, to proclaim Jubilee!, to walk humbly with our God.
I feel an “altar call” coming on this morning! I grew up in a church that had an altar call at the end of every Sunday morning’s sermon. “If there is one among us who has heard the call of God today and would accept Jesus Christ as personal lord and savior, or recommit to following him, come to the altar as we sing,” the preacher would say. I felt my heart stir every Sunday, partly because I felt bad for the preacher to be left standing there all alone, and also because I wanted more faith…but my mom said that going to the altar every Sunday was probably a bit more than Jesus had in mind for a 10-year-old. In the 18th & 19th centuries, the altar call wasn’t so much about personal conversion but was a place to “sign on” to the calling that God had laid upon a person’s heart—whether it was the abolition of slavery, the changing of child labor laws, or the promotion of women’s rights or some other pursuit of justice. Over the years, as Christianity became more and more privatized and less concerned with the common good, people “came forward” for their own salvation and recommitment, not to say they were ready to sign their name on the line and be held accountable for what their beliefs and commitments actually meant.
So what I’m grateful for in all that got started at 2025 Massachusetts Ave. is that we were shown another way. Don’t you hear the world crying out for us not to make our faith a private encounter that has nothing to do with anything outside my own heart and soul? So today we are not celebrating an ending but a continuing. We are trying to pray not for what we imagine we’d like to have happen, but as Kathleen Norris has said, we are praying to be changed in ways we can’t imagine.
Thanks be to God who is the giver of faith—each of us with our little speck—and invites us to keep living into what is yet to be. Amen.