You Think You Need More Faith? (Reflections on Pentecost 17, Year C 2022)

 

The Lord said, “If you have the 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.” (Luke 17:6) 

One summer when I was an undergraduate, I took a job selling ladies’ shoes at a boutique in our local mall. The manager was a cranky Indonesian guy name Joe. He wasn’t a bad dude to work for, but, like a lot of bosses, he was efficient and had no time for whiney employees. On one particularly hot day when the store’s A/C wasn’t working at capacity, our lazy assistant manager started whining about the heat and asked Joe if he could take his break early. “Son,” Joe growled, “I gave you a break when I hired you!” 

Isn’t that the way it always is? You don’t get any special treatment for doing what you’re supposed to be doing in the first place. In the Gospel appointed in the RCL for Pentecost 17, Year C (Luke 17:5-10), Jesus responds to the disciples request for more faith. Just why are these boys asking for a double dip? You think they’ve formed a Disciples Union and are complaining that the work of discipleship is just too much for the faith they have? Actually, that’s probably the case. They are being asked to do a pretty tough job—deny a boat load of what they’ve always thought to be true about their religion, defy their families, walk off their day jobs, and probably get themselves killed proclaiming a new way of being in relationship to God. You’d think they’d need a LOT of faith for that, right? 

But societal marginalization, poverty, uncertainty, and martyrdom aren’t what Jesus was talking about in the first four verses which precede this reading in chapter 17. Jesus is laying out some of the very basic job requirements for Christians—requirements which are still in effect for the rest of us. 

The first is to live in such a way that the love of God is visible in your life. We’re called to be the people who make belief in Christ look like something others would want to embrace. The best way of doing this is NOT to do things which are going to make others—the “little ones” Jesus talks about—stumble. Who are the “little ones?” Our kids. People who are new to the faith or who don’t understand it. People who feel they have been left out. People who are hurting. 

The problem, of course, is that over the centuries so many Christians have been littering life’s highways with stumbling blocks. My young friend Emma, who is in high school, recently told me a classmate of hers assumed all Christians hated the LGBTQ community. Emma was quick to disabuse her friend of this notion. A Christian life can’t embrace exclusion, arrogance, anger, or intolerance. It can’t be judgmental or self-destructive. It must always embrace patience, acceptance, inclusion, justice, mercy, and understanding. And, yes, that IS a tall order and will require some faith. 

The other thing Jesus reminds his guys is the need of Christians to correct each other. I can see where we’d need faith for that. I mean, aren’t we supposed to be nice? Who wants to go around criticizing or correcting someone else? But there are some things which need to be corrected. We can’t let other people hurt themselves. We can’t let them hurt others or become “stumbling blocks.” We can’t let people believe things which aren’t true or behave in ways which alienate the folks around them. We need to correct in love—even if it means having an uncomfortable situation or causing a rift in a relationship. It will take some faith to do this. 

Jesus also tells us that we are expected to be constantly forgiving. “If there is repentance,” Jesus says in verse 4, “you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.” This is what Jesus tells his disciples just before they make the request for more faith. I guess these boys had gotten used to holding on to grudges—just like the rest of us. 

So: are we going to need more faith for all of this? Will it take an extra dose to avoid being a stumbling block, to learn how to correct others in love, and to forgive those who may have wounded us gravely? Jesus says no. Faith isn’t something you can quantify. You can’t say, “I have 25% more faith this year than I had last year.” Nor can you say, “I guess I don’t have enough faith.” There is no “little” or “big” faith. Faith is faith. 

I think of that scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Yoda gives Luke a difficult task to perform. The young Jedi-in-training replies, “I'll try.” Yoda responds, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Faith is like that. We believe in the words of Jesus, or we don’t. We act on the words of Jesus, or we don’t. 

We don‘t need to ask Jesus to increase our faith or to give us an extra break. We got all the breaks we’ll ever need at our baptism. Faith won’t increase over time—we’ll just grow more comfortable having it. 

Thanks for looking in, faithful reader!

Just Do the Right Thing (Reflections on Pentecost 16, Year C 2022)

 

“Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things…” (Luke 16:25) 

If I were a Socialist revolutionary (which some people actually think I am), the parable Jesus teaches in the Gospel appointed for Pentecost 16 in the RCL (Luke 16:19-310) wouldn’t bother me so much. I could just say that the day is coming when the rich will be overthrown and the poor of the world will rise up and that’s the way God wants it. Amen. But, like all of Jesus’ parables, it’s a little trickier than that. On the surface, it looks like Jesus is saying “Rich people are going to burn in Hell.” But then we have to ask just how much cash constitutes “rich.” I mean, compared to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, I’m as poor as a gnat. But if you compare me to someone who just lost their home in the flood in Pakistan, I could pass as comfortably well off. 

So what’s going on here? I think it would’ve helped if the guys who compose the RCL had added verses 14 and 15 as a preamble for this parable: 

The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him. “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.” 

Once again, Jesus is attacking the Powers that Be. He’s taking a swing at their presuppositions and self-righteousness and trying to get them to see things in a different light. In the world of the text—and in our own time, too—prosperity was seen as a sign of God’s favor. You’d think that Jesus’ challenge to this notion would but the idea to rest, but you’d be wrong. Even today a slick bunch of televangelists are still spewing the slop that God wants all God’s children to be happy, healthy, and successful; therefore, living a good, God-fearing life will ultimately net you riches and joy beyond your imagination. There’s a gang of boneheads on TBN like Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland who are peddling this mush and making millions doing it. 

As good Lutherans, raised on the doctrine of grace, we know wealth doesn’t equate to virtue. The problem is, it’s still tough to get out of our heads the idea that poverty equates to vice. Just this past week I got a knock on the church door from a guy who has been pestering me for years asking for cash or gift cards or some kind of assistance. This time his story was he’d lost his job and was homeless again. Even though I’ve threatened to call the cops on his sorry butt in the past, I gave him the buck I had in my pocket and sent him on his way.

 Then I realized that I look down on this dude. I judge him. Yes, I have him figured as a meth head or some other kind of junkie, and I figure he has no one to blame for his misfortune but himself. I can make myself feel better by saying this persistent mendicant deserves what he’s getting. I can also salve my conscience by figuring if he really does suffer from the disease of addiction—which I’m pretty sure he does—there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not a doctor or an addiction’s counselor or a social worker. I don’t have shelter for him. And, even if I could give him a more generous handout, wouldn’t I just be enabling his dysfunctional behavior? 

I guess it’s pretty easy to avoid being troubled by someone else’s humanity if you can convince yourself they don’t deserve to be helped. 

But the parable still eats at me. Maybe Jesus is telling us that, even if we can’t do everything, what we can do we should do.

A few things always stick out to me about this parable. First, even as the rich dude is roasting in the flames, he actually knows the poor man by name. So it’s not like he can claim he’d been ignorant of the man’s need. Second, Jesus says Lazarus “longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table.”  The word “satisfy” in the Greek is the aorist form of the verb chrotaxo (crotaxw) which quite literally means “eat one’s fill.[i]” That means the rich guy had so much food at his disposal that Lazarus could’ve dined to his content on the leftovers. There wasn’t any scarcity here, just a lack of generosity. Thirdly, the rich dude knows he’s supposed to be generous. He doesn’t end up in Hades and say, “Dang! Did I miss the memo about sharing my wealth? I didn’t know I was supposed to care about other human beings!” To the contrary, this guy had the words of Moses and the prophets to guide him. 

Finally, the great Lutheran New Testament scholar Barbara Rossing suggests that we might want to cast ourselves in the role of the five brothers.[ii] Doc Barb always likens apocalyptic stories to A Christmas Carol. You know: the part where Scrooge asks the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come if the shadows he sees are the shadows of what must happen or only of what may happen if he doesn’t get his act together. Abraham tells the rich guy his siblings have Moses and the prophets to warn them about their behavior. We, too, have Moses and the prophets—and someone who was raised from the dead! When we look at the world, the needy, and our own lives, we have to conclude there’s only a limited amount of time to do the right thing. 

Our loving God has put the ball in our court. Let’s use our time, talents, and treasures to God’s glory while we can. 

So glad you stopped by this week. Please come again.

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[i] Don’t you just love the Greek? I always feel really smart when I look these words up!

[ii] Or five “siblings.” Barbara knows her Greek too, and she notes the word translated as “brothers” in verse 28, adelphos (or adelfos in the original) can be gender neutral.

Give Them a Break (Reflections on Pentecost 15, Year C 2022)

 

“And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” (Luke 16:8) 

Well, ain’t that the truth?! It always seems it’s easier to be a dirtball than it is to be a righteous person. But, I guess if being righteous were easy more folks would be doing it. 

I always get a little stuck on this parable (Luke 16:1-13) whenever it shows up in the RCL. The hero of Jesus’ story looks for all the world to be a white collar crook. All the stuff about not serving God and wealth is pretty self-explanatory, but the parable itself always leaves me scratching my head. 

Of course, I could just deal with the Hebrew Scripture lesson (Amos 8:4-7) or the Epistle (1Timothy 2:1-7). Unfortunately, there’s not that much to unpack about old Amos. He’s railing about income inequality. I think I’ve done that well enough in years past (check out the “Featured Post” at the right)[i], and Bernie Sanders does it better than I. The Epistle is rather timely in that it tells us to pray for kings (v.2). I guess Charles III could use a little prayer. His approval rate with the British public is a lot lower than his mom’s was, and there’s a growing opinion among millennial Brits that having a king in the twenty-first century is stupid. I can’t get too much of a sermon or essay out of that. 

Looks like I’m stuck with that dishonest manager parable after all. Fortunately, the good folks at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN post this cool website for preachers, and I get to steal some of their ideas each week.[ii] This go-round I’ve started to look at the dishonest manager in a different light. What if he wasn't dishonest—at least not at the offset..? I’ve preached on this text at least seven times during my tenure at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia, and yet never did I pick up on the fact Jesus says the manager was only accused of squandering the boss’s money. Jesus doesn’t say he actually did it. So now I feel sorry for the poor slob. I’m thinking the real villain of the piece is the boss who is being a hardass and not letting the manager face his accuser. He’s already decided he’s going to can this guy without even taking it to the union or the HR department. 

New Testament Professor Mitzi Smith of the Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia suggests the manager might be an enslaved person. As such, the boss wouldn’t trust him as far as he could spit. Slaves couldn’t testify in court. There was a presupposition based on their status that they were born liars. Even if this guy wasn’t a slave but only a peasant, he didn’t enjoy the benefit of the doubt a rich guy would get. Jesus doesn’t say the manager was in any danger of prison or death for cooking the books. It looks like the worst the boss could do to him was show him the door. 

Unemployment in Jesus’ time as well as our own is never a pleasant thing to contemplate. Nobody likes poverty and starvation. On the other hand, there’s something liberating about not having to go to work. Like all those folks furloughed during the COVID-19 pandemic, I’m betting this guy has a chance to re-evaluate his life and ask himself why he’s been slaving away just to keep the books for some rich jerk. Maybe he starts to think, “Hey! If I’m going to get canned anyway, I might as well do a little creative accounting. This slimeball I work for charges his debtors interest which would embarrass the Mafia. I’m going to cut the juice on their debts down to a place where they can actually pay the whole thing off. Then maybe one of them will offer me a job.” So he does. 

Jesus says the rich boss praised the manager for his cleverness. This could be one self-centered, greedy jerk admiring the self-serving trickery of another. You know: one thief complimenting another on an impressive act of thievery. Or, as Professor Mitzi suggested, the reduction of the debt allowed the creditors to pay the rich man something—which is better than not getting paid anything if the debt is unsustainable and the creditors go belly up before they can repay what they owe. 

I’ll bet those debtors really appreciated what the manager had done. Everybody needs to be cut a break at some time. I know I’ve been pulled out of the ditch (metaphorically speaking) any number of times in my life, and I’ll bet you have too. We should all have grateful hearts. Let’s not forget Jesus cut us all a break when he went to the cross.

 What I’m going to take away from this parable is the manager’s decision, at this unanticipated and certainly unwelcome transition time in his life, to do a decent thing for some folks who really needed a hand. I like to think that, facing the prospect of either ditch-digging or mendicancy, this old boy asked himself, “Okay. What am I here for? Is it to serve this greedy s.o.b. or is it to serve God?” 

I asked that existential question to my Confirmation students this past week: What is the meaning and purpose of your life? One of the students answered, “The meaning of my life is to spread kindness and joy.” 

I’ll just let it go at that.

 Thanks for reading. God bless.

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[i] You can also check out these two other previous reflections on that parable: https://oldreligiousguy.blogspot.com/2013/09/thieves-and-robbers-reflections-on.html

https://oldreligiousguy.blogspot.com/2016/09/good-at-being-bad-reflections-on.html

[ii] The website is called Working Preacher. Is it really stealing if I give it credit?

Lost Stuff (Reflections on Pentecost 14, Year c 2022)

 

“Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost!” (Luke 15:6b) 

I always say the Pharisees get a bad rap in our Gospels. I mean, these guys are really trying to do the right thing. They parse every rule in the Law of Moses to make sure everything they do is righteous and upright. I’ll grant that doing this can make them a bit annoying—especially since they often come off smug and judgmental like they are in the Gospel lesson for Pentecost 14, Year C in the RCL (Luke 15:1-10). But Jesus is also pretty good at arguing and dissecting law. In fact, I think he often out-Pharisees the Pharisees. Just when these guys think they’ve arrived at the right answer for all human conduct (in this case, it’s “Don’t eat with sinners”), Jesus gets them—or tries to get them—to rethink their position. He does that to us, too. And that’s part of being a Christian—to constantly have our assumptions jerked around in a non-stop tug-o-war between what we think and what God might ask of us. 

The Pharisees in this story are ready to write off some folks as lost causes. We don’t know specifically why Jesus’ dinner companions missed out on getting the Pharisee Seal of Approval, but we have to assume there’s a reason why the ultra-religious find them undeserving of the rabbi’s company. So, Jesus spins this little story to get these holy rollers to see things in a different light. Imagine you’re a shepherd with 100 sheep and one of them gets lost. What do you do? You leave the 99 happily munching grass and waiting to be sheared or eaten, and you go off and find the missing sheep. 

Now you might think: Isn’t that a bit risky? What if something happens to the 99 when you’re looking for the lost one? Do you really want to take that chance? I’m not an expert on first century ovine husbandry, but I’d be willing to bet that, if this shepherd were a hired man, he’d have a pretty darn deep personal investment in every single sheep. He knows if 100 go out, 100 jolly well better come back or the owner will take the cost of the lost sheep out of his paycheck. 

I think the same analogy holds for the woman with the ten silver coins. Maybe she needs those coins for her rent or her taxes. The price she has to fork over is ten coins, not nine. If she’s one coin short the landlord or the tax collector might chuck her into the street. There’s a deep sense of the preciousness of every single coin or sheep. Nothing is expendable. Nothing gets written off. 

(Just a thought, but isn’t it curious how we can value money or animals more than we can value human lives? I’m just asking.) 

Consider also, in Jesus’ story the shepherd didn’t go out and buy a new sheep to introduce to his flock, nor was the coin lady paid an extra coin. The missing sheep and the lost coin already belonged at the time they were lost. So: don’t we all belong to God? There’s no one who doesn’t have the right to be treated as a member of God’s family, no one who has forfeited their right to our concern. Nevertheless, concern for “lost ones” always seems to bring about a little resentment.

Case in point: Black Lives Matter. This movement sparked something of a backlash after the protests around the deaths of George Floyd, Brionna Taylor, and others. Some folks reacted by asking, “Don’t all lives matter?” Of course, all lives do matter. But: in America, white lives don’t seem to get ended by police shooting at quite the same rate as Black lives. White lives aren’t getting “lost.” We’re being asked to be content with munching our grass in the green pasture of safety while attention is paid to the ones who feel lost, excluded, and in danger. All lives matter, but not all lives are in immediate need of attention. 

Jesus again makes a big ask. He’s smacking around our ideas of entitlement, fairness, and justice. He’s reminding us that no matter how fed up we might be with some people, God is never fed up. God has as much investment in the lost ones as God has in the faithful—and perhaps even more because they are lost. And this is good news because some day, in some unpredictable way, we may be lost ourselves. 

This lesson comes right before Jesus’ parable of the lost or “prodigal” son. I’ve always said this last example is the hardest for us to swallow, and I’ve known folks who hate that parable because they can’t stand the idea of the dumbass, wasteful brother getting welcomed back after he blew his dad’s money. I guess it’s easier for us to feel sympathy for a confused sheep than for a member of our own family. What seems to be the toughest thing about these parables—especially the one about the lost son—is the expectation that bringing the lost back into the fold will bring joy. 

Just imagine: A society in which everyone has enough to eat, has shelter, and has all their needs met and no one asks if their neighbor deserves the blessings they have. Imagine a society where there is no need for anger or envy. Imagine a society in which everyone has confessed and been contrite and has been told they are forgiven. A society where everyone is given a new chance. 

Wouldn’t that be cause for joy?

Thank you for looking in this week.