Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
“A Little Faith” — Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (2 Timothy 1:1-14/NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Luke 17:1-10/NRSVUE)
The finance business in which I worked for twenty-five years before becoming a pastor wasn’t big on niceties — in fact, folks could be direct to the point of sounding downright rude but, on the plus side, at least you generally knew where you stood with them. For example, I had been at one company for well over a year and went to see my boss about getting my annual performance review, which was long overdue by that point. I knocked on his door and asked about it, but he was so fixated on his computer screen that he didn’t even bother to look up at me; he simply said, “You want your performance review? Well, you’re still here aren’t you?” As I turned and slinked away, it dawned on me that I wasn’t going to be getting any medals in this racket just for doing my job.
Fast-forward a few years to the fall of 2008, during the early days of the global financial crisis. I was at a different company working for a boss named Dan, who was a pretty nice guy — but his boss, our CEO, not so much. So when Dan showed up in my office one afternoon to tell me that his boss wanted to see us both in the conference room upstairs immediately, a shiver ran down my spine because this guy was absolutely terrifying.
Before coming to work with us, he’d been vice chairman of a global investment bank and a professor at Harvard Business School, among other things, so let’s just say he didn’t want for self-confidence. He could stare a hole through a brick wall and generally spoke in measured tones until something really got under his skin, at which point he no longer spoke in measured tones — in fact, he had a reputation for exploding at people who had, for whatever reason, irritated him.
He’d summoned us that day to discuss a deal I’d been working on — one that had become markedly more difficult to complete in that tenuous environment. I decided that my strategy going into this meeting was one of “expectations management,” which is corporate jargon for telling someone, “I’m not going to be able to do what you want me to do, but I’m going to explain why that is and why that’s okay.” But I soon came to realize that this was a serious miscalculation on my part.
I finished making my case for why what I was doing was probably doomed to fail and anxiously awaited a response. He just looked at me icily for a few seconds (that seemed like an eternity) before launching into an expletive-laced tirade the likes of which I’d not seen before or since (to this day I don’t know the meaning of some of the words he hurled my way): “If you can’t blankity-blank get this done, then what the blankity-blank are you even doing here?” and other stuff of that ilk.
When it seemed like he’d finally run out of steam (though that did take a while), he got up and began to make his way toward the door; he walked around the back of my chair, grabbed me on both shoulders, slapped me on the back and said, “I believe in you. You can do this,” before turning and leaving. I felt like I’d just been picked up by an EF5 tornado in Kansas, twirled around for a while, and dropped unceremoniously on the ground somewhere in Nebraska.
In the aftermath, Dan sat there silently, staring down at the conference room table — as he’d done for the duration of the tongue-lashing I’d just endured. In retrospect, I realized that this was not Dan’s first rodeo; he had clearly took to heart that advice they give you about what to do when you’re attacked by a grizzly bear (you know, play dead until it tires out and leaves) because he’d been attacked by this particular grizzly before.
As I began to regain my capacity to think and speak I blurted out something along the lines of, “Hey Dan, thanks for all the help there!” He could no longer restrain the laughter he’d been holding in the whole time as he replied, “Better you than me. Besides, you handled it just fine; and he really does respect you.”
“That’s what respect looks like?” I said.
“In his world, yeah. If he didn’t respect you he wouldn’t have even taken the time to chew you out; he’d just smile and nod as he passed you in the hallway”
“Honestly, that sounds like it would have been preferable.”
“In the short term maybe, but not in the long term. I know all that was kind of tough to hear but he’s pushing you to do better because he believes that you can and will do better. That’s his weird way of encouraging people.”
It was, in fairness, the most bizarre and counterintuitive pep talk I’ve ever experienced firsthand, but Dan was right — once you cut through all the bluster and the colorful language, the underlying message was pretty simple and kind of encouraging: This will be tough, but not impossible; and the expectation is that you will do this because you can. And when all was said and done, it was tough and I did it. So, at the end of the day, I guess the pep talk worked.
And even though Jesus doesn’t either raise his voice or swear in today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, I can’t help but think that something similar is going on there.
Jesus has just finished delivering the litany of parables we’ve looked at over the past few weeks: stories about a banquet, a lost sheep, a lost coin, a prodigal son and an honest manager. Before he and disciples pick up and continue on their way to Jerusalem, Jesus shares with them this strange and harsh-sounding group of sayings that don’t seem to be connected either to one another or to what proceeds them in any obvious way; but once you make your way through all the talk about millstones and mustard seeds, the message isn’t terribly complicated. In a nutshell, here’s what Jesus tells them:
“You’re a disciple, so even though you’ll be tempted to sin, don’t. And God help you if you cause another disciple to sin. If another disciple does sin, call them out on it. If they repent, forgive them. If they sin again and repent again, forgive them again — and again and again and again. I know it’s going to be difficult (no one ever said discipleship was easy). But if you have even the tiniest bit of faith, you can accomplish wonders. Now get out there and do what God has called you to do. Oh, by the way, don’t expect any prizes for doing it because you’re simply doing what you’re expected to do. I believe in you; you can do this.”
When the disciples cry out to Jesus asking him to give them more faith, what they’re saying is that they don’t believe they actually have what it takes to do the work of the discipleship that Jesus — that God — has called them to do; but Jesus doesn’t want to hear excuses.
To counter their doubt he replies, ‘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.” Now I’m not sure why anyone would want to uproot a mulberry tree and plant it in the sea — I mean, what purpose would that serve? On the surface, it sounds a little absurd. But Jesus isn’t being literal here; he’s exaggerating to make a point. He’s saying that even a little bit of faith empowers us to do amazing things — things we might not otherwise believe that we could do.
It’s not about transplanting trees in the ocean; it is about transcending the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that keep us from doing the things that God calls us to do — you know, like supporting each other, working together, holding people accountable for their words and actions, forgiving each other, accepting responsibility for our own words and actions — all the stuff that makes a community work.
What Jesus has asked of his disciples seems so daunting to the disciples that they ask him to provide them with something they believe they lack so that they can do it. But Jesus’s disciples — then and now — don’t require more of anything to live the lives God calls them (calls us) to live – well, except maybe a little self-confidence. That’s what Jesus is telling them here.
It’s not about mustard seeds and mulberry trees; it’s about faith; Jesus is telling his disciples, “If you had even the smallest amount of faith, you could live faithful lives.”
Now, this might sound like a statement about their lack of faith — which kind of makes sense because they believe they lack faith. But that’s not what Jesus is saying.
As my preaching hero and New Testament scholar Fred Craddock explains, the Greek language in which Luke writes has two kinds of “if” statements: those that express something contrary to fact (“if I were you” — which I’m not) and those that express something consistent with fact (“if the earth were round” — which it is).
The statement Jesus makes here is the second kind; and so what he’s telling his disciples is that, “If you had even the smallest amount of faith — which you do — then you could do the difficult things God calls you to do — which you can.” He’s not reprimanding them for their lack of faith; he’s affirming the faith they have and calling them to live into all that faith requires. He’s telling them that they already have all that they need to do what they need to do. And so do we.
There’s been a lot of worry in the church — here and everywhere — about our present reality and what the future holds for us. The influence of organized religion in our society has diminished over the past few decades, and the pandemic only intensified and accelerated that dynamic.
People in the church constantly complain that our pews and our Sunday School classrooms and our coffers aren’t nearly as full as they used to be; and we look back nostalgically to the good old days (which, if we’re being honest, were probably not quite as good as we remember them to be now).
It sounds like a modern-day version of what the writer of Lamentations mourned: “How lonely sits the city that was once full of people!”
It also sounds like a variation on the disciples’ plea to Jesus in today’s reading: “Increase our faith!” Even though we often substitute words like “attendance” and “donations” and “relevance” for “faith.”
So maybe instead of fixating upon what we believe we lack, we should focus our energy on utilizing what we have, trusting that God has given us all that we need to live faithfully,
to rise above our insecurities and fears,
to love and forgive as Jesus did,
to seek justice and care for people who are poor,
to work together for a common good,
to be the body of Christ in our place and time.
Make no mistake about it: this will be tough, but not impossible.
God believes in us; we can do this.
So what do you say we stop managing expectations and just do what God has called us to do?