20th
Sunday after Pentecost; Yr. C, October 6, 2013
Habakkuk 1:1-4,2:1-4; Psalm 37:1-10; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10
Sermon
preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
The
disciples cry out to Jesus, “Increase our
faith!” Jesus responds saying, “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.” The
disciples are pleading. What is Jesus
doing? Is he berating them? Is he admonishing them? That’s the tone I often hear in this passage,
the frustrated tone of parent or teacher.
But what if Jesus is really encouraging them? What if Jesus is using a voice of love and
compassion that I too often forget to use with myself?
What if he’s
talking more like St. Paul, in Paul’s letter to Timothy. I am
reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother
Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. Paul reassures Timothy. Paul recognizes the signs of faith in him,
signs that, for whatever reason, Timothy may not be seeing in himself. Maybe Timothy had even been pleading with
Paul! Increase my faith.
I know what
that’s like … to feel like your faith doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.
I sometimes think that my doubts far outweigh
my faith. As a child I watched my
mother. I saw her faith, the way she
trusted in God through thick and thin, in ways that I don’t often see in
myself. I remember my father kneeling at
his bedside saying his prayers before lying down at night. I can still hear my mother’s voice, as I
walked out the door to leave for a weekend softball trip. Have fun and don’t forget to go to church on
Sunday morning. That weekly commitment
to her faith was evidenced in her life … in the way she cared for our family,
in the way she tackled obstacles and faced struggle, in the way she respected
all people at a time when it wasn’t the politically correct thing to do. She lived her faith. Do I have faith like that?
A friend of
mine is an evangelical, conservative Christian.
His theology is not mine, but we both love Jesus. His faith is grounded in that close personal relationship
with Jesus, in the one who gave his life for him. He feels personally indebted to Jesus for
that gift, and the love he feels as a result of that act, is very comforting to
him in the face of all the suffering and pain he experiences in his life and
work. Jesus is his constant companion,
his Lord and Savior, the one with the power to make all things right. And yet … he’s afraid to talk too much about
that because conservative, evangelical Christians in the media have all been
portrayed as intolerant, homophobic, unforgiving, merciless theocrats. He’s gun shy about talking about Jesus, even
though Jesus is at the very heart of his faith.
He’s an evangelical that’s afraid to talk about Jesus. That’s just crazy. It sounds almost like an oxymoron.
If an
evangelical doesn’t even feel like he can talk about Jesus, how can we? The vestry has been meeting to review our
mission and vision statements over the last few months. Our vision statement says that St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church is an
inclusive, progressive community where peace, social justice, and faith
converge in our worship and urban ministries. It’s a great statement about us, but nowhere
in it do we mention that we are Christian.
Nowhere do we say that we are followers of Jesus. Some of us may think that that’s not
important because we say that we’re Episcopal.
Episcopalians are Christians. WE
know that. But I have to tell you,
folks, no one ELSE knows that. When I
was a chaplain at Strong, patients would sometimes ask what religion I
was. I would tell them, “I’m an
Episcopalian”. They would respond, “Oh
that’s nice. I’m a Christian.” They had no idea what an Episcopalian
was! I might as well have been Muslim or
Buddhist or atheist for all they knew. The
same is true in our neighborhood. People
don’t know who we are, or who we follow.
They don’t know that Episcopalians are Christians.
So I
suggested that we put something in our mission that identifies us as followers
of Jesus. That made some on the vestry
uncomfortable, for many of the same reasons my friend expressed. Jesus has been re-appropriated by the media
and a small group of socially and theologically conservative Christians, and most
of us have distanced ourselves from them by deciding it’s best not to talk
about Jesus at all! Now what kind of
sense does that make? We’re not talking
about Jesus, and Jesus is the crux of Christianity. The vestry found a way to fit it in, because
it mattered. We are followers of Christ.
Jesus tells
the disciples, “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.”
I think he’s telling them just what Paul was telling Timothy. You have what you need. It’s right there within you. Faith, even faith as tiny as a mustard seed,
is enough to do amazing things. Haven’t
most of us seen it in our mothers, and our fathers, in grandmothers and
grandfathers, in friends and spiritual leaders throughout our history. Almost every spiritual leader I’ve read has
expressed doubt in their own faith. Yet others
have seen their faith and watched as they courageously stepped out IN faith and
discovered that what little faith they had … was faith enough. That tiniest little bit of faith produced
amazing opportunity for change. What
mattered was courage, the willingness to commit to something they believed in,
when all they had to lean on was a wee speck of faith, faith as small as a
mustard seed. Martin Luther King, Jr.
did it. Rosa Parks did it. Mother Theresa did it. Nelson Mandella did it. People are still doing it.
Sister
Simone Campbell,
a Roman Catholic nun took to the road in 2012 with “Nuns on the
Bus”, a “tour that decried Rep. Paul Ryan’s
‘immoral’ budget cuts and visited faith-based charities relying on government
support to help the poor and vulnerable.” [1] In Rochester, the Sisters of St. Joseph rode
their own bus to highlight agencies and services that serve the poor in our
city.
Richard
Cizik, president
of the New Evangelical Partnerships for
Common Good, made headway in the realm of family
planning by declaring that contraceptives were “a ‘responsible and morally
acceptable’ means to ensure the health of a woman and her children” [2] His faith led him to that conclusion.
The
Very Rev. Gary R. Hall, an
Episcopal priest and dean of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., openly
joined the gun-violence debate, and supported marriage equality and transgender
rights. He affirmed the use of the new
rite for Blessing Same Sex Unions in the cathedral after the last General
Convention.[3] His faith led him to take those actions.
Ben
Lowe is a national
organizer and spokesperson for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action. He’s taken on the issue of creation care and stepped
up the conversation to include advocating for policies to address climate
change. His faith led him to advocacy.
Each
of these saints proclaims Jesus, not only with words, but also with
actions. You cannot be Christian and do
one without the other. That’s what Jesus
was saying in our gospel today. If we have
faith the size of a mustard seed, then we are compelled to act on it. It is our duty. Hiding behind our own lack of faith, is a
feeble excuse.
Marianne
Williamson, a spiritual teacher and author said it this way. “Our deepest fear is not that we are
inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our
light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to
be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world. [There is nothing enlightened
about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you.] We are
all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as
we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the
same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically
liberates others.” (Marianne
Williamson, a spiritual teacher, author and lecturer)
When someone
steps out in faith others follow. That’s
how societal change happens. Faithful
people accept that small germ of faith as enough, at least … as enough to
begin. God did not give us a spirit of
cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of
self-discipline. Do not be ashamed, then,
of the testimony about our Lord. Proclaim Jesus. Rely on the power of God, who saved us and
called us with a holy calling according to his own purpose and grace. God calls us out of our fear to shape the
world we live in, to build our neighborhoods and to stand with those who are
not being heard. We go as Christians, in
fellowship with Jesus, proudly serving a loving and merciful God. That faith lives in us as it lived in our
ancestors. The world needs that
message. The world needs that hope. But the world needs more than that
proclamation, it also needs acts of faith, acts of love, and acts of
mercy. As followers of Jesus, that is
our calling.
Amen.
[1]
13 Progressive Faith Leaders to Watch in 2013. By Jack Jenkins,
Eleni Towns,
and Catherine
Woodiwiss | February 27, 2013. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/news/2013/02/27/54730/13-progressive-faith-leaders-to-watch-in-2013/
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