Luke 17:5-10
Enough Faith?
James Sledge -- October 3, 2010
How many of you believe in Jesus? I know that seems a rather odd thing to ask at Sunday worship, but play along with me. How many of you believe in Jesus? Raise your hands. Okay now, how many of you came to worship today because you were worried that you were about to stop believing in Jesus, that it had become so difficult that you might not be able to keep it up? Raise your hands again.
Seems that this is not a big issue for most of you. Not many are worried that your belief in Jesus is so fragile it could collapse at any moment. I realize that a show of hands might not be the best proof of this. Many might not want to admit such a thing publicly in the sanctuary. But still most of your are probably not struggling just to maintain belief in Jesus.
So let me try a different question. How many of you would say you have faith? Raise your hands. Still a lot of hands, but different looks on people’s faces. This question is a little different because people can mean a number of different things by faith. What does it mean to you? How do you define faith?
This is not the first time I’ve ever asked such questions. And in my experience some people think of faith as pretty much the same thing as belief, but others think of faith as more complicated, including belief but also things such as trust. But of course trust itself is a bit complicated. Some folks mean trusting that if you believe in Jesus you will get into heaven, and others mean trusting Jesus enough to actually do as he says.
But even though faith is complicated, I’m going to artificially simplify it for the moment. I’m going to divide faith into two camps. In Camp 1, faith is mostly about belief and things associated with belief, about believing in Jesus and any hoped for benefits from that. Its concerns tend to be about believing the right things. For those in this camp what is distinctive about their faith is the particular things that they believe.
The other camp is mostly about following Jesus and doing as he says. For this camp, faith is about trusting Jesus’ instructions enough to actually follow them. For those in this camp, what is distinctive about their faith focuses on the actions they take. Can they truly pray for and do good to their enemy? Will they let go of their own money and possessions and give to the poor? That sort of thing.
Again, this division is huge over-simplification. What one does is impacted greatly by what one believes. Still, I think there is merit to this division, and I think that many of us can identify more with one camp or the other. With that in mind, I want to look at the request the disciples make to Jesus about faith. When they cry out, “Increase our faith!” what exactly are they asking?
It’s a little hard to imagine that these disciples need help believing in Jesus. Some of the doubts that can arise with us were probably not problems for them. They had seen God’s power at work in him in the most dramatic ways imaginable. And so they probably don’t need much help believing the right things, but doing the right things is something else.
Jesus has just spoken to the disciples about their work shepherding the faithful, how they must not cause others to stumble and how they must correct sinful behavior but be ever ready to forgive. The disciples seem to be worried about their ability to do this, and they cry out to Jesus, “Increase our faith!”
Jesus’ response seems far from pastoral. “If you had even a hint of faith, you could do remarkable things. And even then, they should regard yourselves as ‘worthless slaves’.”
Some of you will remember that in my first couple of years we brought in an Alban Institute consultant named Al Bamsey to help us work through lingering problems associated with the traumatic departure of my predecessor. Al did a number of interviews with groups of members and staff and leaders. Out of this he wrote a report that included our recent history as well as some conclusions about where we were as a congregation. He also held a Saturday event to explain the report and to work on any issues that might keep us from moving forward.
Al was concerned that there might be some latent conflict that needed to be addressed. And so for a long time he queried the 75 or so of us gathered that day about those conflicts. This produced several flip-chart pages worth of comments, but Al got more and more frustrated as this went on because none of these comments described conflicts. Instead, they were programs or activities that people wanted to see. Al kept pleading, “These are wants. I’m interested in conflict.” But only more wants were forthcoming.
Finally, Al’s frustration reached the point where he lost all pastoral restraint, and he blurted out, “You bunch of babies! There are 75 of you here, and you could do every single item on this list if you just decided to do them.” Naturally, many people took offense, and he had pretty much lost control of the meeting. But that “You bunch of babies!” line was a memorable one, and I’ve heard it repeated in conversation many times over the years.
It strikes me that, from a pastoral standpoint, what Al Bamsey said had a similar feel to what Jesus said about worthless slaves. And on the surface, the content of what Al said may seem similar. The tasks before you seem daunting, but you could do them if you just try. But in actuality, what Al and Jesus say are not similar at all. Al Bamsey was talking about a long to-do list of programs and activities that people thought we should do, or ought to do, or that they wanted offered. Jesus is talking about something quite different, what he commands us to do.
Jesus employs the metaphor of a worthless slave, something that sounds terrible offensive and off-putting. But as I mulled over this metaphor, I began to see something liberating in it. A slave, especially a worthless slave, would not be asked to do too much. He would simply been given something simple to do, a task. Jesus seems to think he has done something similar with us. He has given us simple tasks. They sometimes require hard work, but we are more than capable of doing them.
However, we in the Church often make things complicated. We think we need the latest whiz-bang programs, innovative educational opportunities, and inspiring mission events. We need the latest and greatest thing that the church down the street has or that the big mega-church is doing if we are going to keep up.
But we don’t. We don’t need more and more. We simply need to listen and hear the work Jesus gives us. We need to set aside those things that come from our own egos or assumptions or expectations about what a church is supposed to be. We need to take a look at our lives, both here, at home, and at work, and ask ourselves, “How have we gotten ourselves overwhelmed and frazzled and burned out by chasing after things that do not truly matter?” We need to stop, to step back from our busyness, and listen for Jesus’ voice. Each of us needs to hear Jesus telling us what our work is, what our task is. Individually, and as a congregation, we need to separate religious busyness for the work Jesus gives us to do.
When we do that, the work may be hard, but it will not be overwhelming. It will not cause burnout, and our faith will be more than enough for the task. When we listen, Jesus speaks to us as he once did to those first disciples. “You already have faith aplenty. Just do as I have commanded you, and watch what happens.”
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