Texts: 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10
Date: October 3, 2004
Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church


Is being a Christian hard or easy?  What do you think?  It kind of depends on the day, doesn't it? 
The disciples were having a hard time with what Jesus was teaching one day.  It was a hard day to be a Christian. In the verses just before the ones we heard today, Jesus had been talking about being really careful not to do anything that might damage or weaken the faith of a person who was new to faith, and he was kind of fierce the way he said it, fiercely protective of the freshly minted Christians and the children like a Mama Bear.  I think the disciples were realizing what a big responsibility it is to be good role models.  Then Jesus got to talking about forgiveness, and said you had to forgive people over and over.  The disciples got to thinking about all the people they were mad at and didn't especially want to forgive, and realized how hard this forgiveness thing was going to be. 

That's when they turn to Jesus with a three-word desperation request: "INCREASE OUR FAITH!"  They were feeling a little weak-kneed at the moment, didn't think they were up to what was being demanded.

Did Jesus give them what they asked for?  Did he lay magic hands on them and give them enough faith to lead weaker Christians and forgive irritating people?

Not exactly.  What he did was say that they didn't need more faith.  All you need is a little speck of faith, he said, as big as a mustard seed, which is tiny.  The thing is that you've got to use that little seed of faith that you've already been given.  You don't need to wait around for more, because you've got plenty already.

Is that good news or bad news?  On one hand, it's really good news.  It means we don't have to wait until we become old enough or good enough or wise enough to catch up with Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mother Theresa.  We've got enough faith already to do everything that God requires.  One writer points out that having that little bit of faith in our imperfect selves is enough because that little speck of faith connects us with God, and with God all things are possible.  It's not our faith that can accomplish anything but the incredible power and creativity of God.   This writer says it's like the thousand dollar bill printed on a penny's worth of paper-worthless unless it's backed by the full faith and credit of the government.  Our faith is backed by the mysterious work of God in the world.

So that's good.  But on the other hand, that speck of faith isn't going to do a darn thing unless we reach for it, trust in God, and use it.  It's like this.  There was a woman who wanted peace in the world and peace in her heart and all kinds of good things, but she was very frustrated.  The world seemed to be falling apart.  She would read the papers and get depressed.  One day she decided to go shopping, and she went into a mall and picked a store at random.  She walked in and was surprised to see Jesus behind the counter.  She knew it was Jesus because he looked just like the pictures she'd seen on holy cards and devotional pictures.  She looked again and again at him, and finally she got up her nerve and asked, "Excuse me, are you Jesus?"  "I am."  "Do you work here?"  "No," Jesus said, "I own the store."  "Oh, what do you sell in here?"  "Oh, just about anything!"  "Anything?"  "Yeah, anything you want. What do you want?"  She said, "I don't know."  "Well," Jesus said, " feel free, walk up and down the aisles, make a list, see what it is you want, and then come back and we'll see what we can do for you."

She did just that, walked up and down the aisles.  There was peace on earth, no more war, no hunger or poverty, peace in families, no more drug abuse, harmony, clean air, careful use of resources.  She wrote furiously.  By the time she got back to the counter, she had a long list.  Jesus took the list, skimmed through it, looked up at her and smiled.  "No problem."  And then he bent down behind the counter and picked out all sorts of things, stood up, and laid out the packets.  She asked, "What are these?"  Jesus replied, "Seed packets.  This is a catalogue store."  She said, "You mean I don't get the finished product?"  "No, this is a place of dreams.  You come and see what it looks like, and I give you the seeds.  You plant the seeds.  You go home and nurture them and help them grow and someone else reaps the benefits."  "Oh," she said.  And she left the store without buying anything.

In this little story about seeds and in Jesus' mustard-seed answer to the disciples' plea to increase their faith we run into one of the vexing blessings of Christianity:  God has faith in us.  Faith isn't a one-way street.  We have faith in God, and God has faith in us.  We've been offered the seed of faith, the seeds of God's dreams for the world, but they're just going to lie there on the shelf if we don't plant them in our lives, in our words and in our budgets and in our deeds.  We don't need more faith; we need to nurture the seed of faith we've already been given. 

The next thing Jesus says to the disciples sounds, to my ears, a little cranky.  He reminds the disciples that if they do any of the things their faith might inspire them to do--like forgive someone, or love someone, or feed someone, or dig a well for them, what have you-that they shouldn't expect any big awards or prizes for being so great.  He uses a story about a slave, because there were still lots of slaves around then, just to point out that just as the master doesn't owe anything to the slave for doing what they were told, God doesn't owe humans any great reward for doing what they were supposed to do either. 

We hate being compared to slaves, don't we?  That doesn't sound very attractive, to think of yourself as God's slave.  But there's some good news lurking in this cranky-sounding lesson.  The thing is, we wouldn't want to be in a relationship with God where we earned awards or punishments based on what we do or don't do.  Right?  We're in a relationship with God that's based on grace---that God loves us no matter what.  The epistle lesson has a reminder of the same thing, speaking of "relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to God's own purpose and grace."  I don't know about you, but most days I am mightily relieved that God's grace is a free gift and not something I have to try to earn or worry about losing through demerits. 

The flip side of grace is that when we do something good, we're just doing what we're supposed to do, designed to do, not something so great that the whole world and all the angels in heaven ought to praise us.  There are no awards given out in the afterlife for "Service Above and Beyond the Call of Duty."  None.  Everything we do is within the range of the call to duty when we follow Jesus, who didn't even withhold his own life. 

But that doesn't mean we get nothing out of grabbing hold of our speck of faith and reporting for duty.  A good deal of the time what we do for others circles back around to us in one way or another; it's just the way of the world.  One of the ancient Jewish sages wrote,

Effort is its own reward.

We are here to do,
And through doing to learn;
And through learning to know;
And through knowing to experience wonder;
And through wonder to attain wisdom;
And through wisdom to find simplicity;
And through simplicity to give attention;
And through attention
To see what needs to be done…

Oh, God's a wise one.  We're not always so all fired up about service, but it turns out that when we get off our duffs and serve someone we wind up not only closer to other human beings but also to God, and we find ourselves living the full abundant life God wants for us. 

Another story:  A man named Sundar became a convert to Christianity and decided to stay in India to be a missionary and bear witness to Jesus.  One late afternoon Sundar was traveling on foot high in the Himalaya mountains with a monk of another order.  It was bitter cold, and the night was coming on.  The monk warned that they were in danger of freezing to death if they did not reach the monastery before the darkness fell.

It happened that as they crossed over a narrow path above a steep cliff, they heard a cry for help.  Deep down in the ravine a man had fallen, and he lay wounded.  His leg was broken and he couldn't walk.  So the monk warned Sundar, "Do not stop.  God has brought this man to his fate.  He must work it out by himself.  That is the tradition. Let us hurry before we perish."  But Sundar replied, "It is my tradition now that God has brought me here to help my brother.  I cannot abandon him."  So the monk set off through the snow, which had started to fall heavily. 

Sundar climbed down to where the wounded man was.  Since the man had a broken leg, Sundar took a blanket from his knapsack and made a sling out of it.  He got the man into it and hoisted him onto his back, then began the painful and arduous climb back up the path.  After a long time, drenched with perspiration, he finally got back to the path, struggling to make his way through the increasingly heavy falling snow.  It was dark now, and he had all he could do to find the path.  But he persevered, and although faint from fatigue and overheated from exertion, he finally saw the lights of the monastery. 

Then he nearly stumbled and fell.  Not from weakness; he stumbled over an object lying in the path.  He bent down on one knee and bushed the snow from the body of the monk who had frozen to death within sight of the monastery.  And there, kneeling on one knee in the snow, he said aloud to himself this scripture passage from Luke 9:24: "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."  And he understood what Jesus meant and was glad that he had decided to "lose his life" for another.

Years later, when Sundar had his own disciples, they asked him this question: "Master, what is life's most difficult task?"  And Sundar replied, "To have no burden to carry."