Sermon: Job Description

Luke 17:1-10

Job Description

James Sledge                                                                                       October 2, 2016

Way back in my high school days, I had a wrestling coach who was something of a yeller and screamer. He had a well-deserved reputation for being tough, and for building tough, winning teams. Back in my day, high school coaches who yelled and screamed were not all that unusual, but even then, this coach had a reputation for being especially intense.

I loved this coach. He was the best coach I ever had in any sport. Most of my teammates felt the same. At practices near Christmas time, a steady stream of former wrestlers on college break would come back to work out with us. It was a special fraternity.

Coach really cared about his wrestlers despite all the yelling. Yelling was his way of pushing us to do our best, and he often said, “You don’t need to worry if I’m yelling at you. That means I love you and care about you. It’s when I don’t yell at you that you should worry.”  But I don’t recall that ever happening.

Most of us had a unique devotion to Coach, but there were those who didn’t feel that way. I recall a handful of teammates who didn’t respond well to Coach’s methods. I think that Coach’s intense manner, his yelling and screaming, only worked when you really knew that he loved you and cared about you. I had no doubt about this, but had I not felt that way, I suspect I would have experienced his yelling differently.

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When I hear Jesus speak about faith the size of a mustard seed and being like worthless slaves, I cringe a bit. But I suspect those first disciples heard Jesus differently. They’d come to know Jesus intimately in their journeys with him. They’d experienced first-hand his tender care and love for them.

But hearing Jesus more like I used to hear my wrestling coach is not the only reason that my initial cringe may not be warranted. The way we read scripture in worship, a few verses ripped out of their larger context, can be misleading. Too often we hear Jesus without much connection to the larger narrative, to the ongoing story of the gospel.

I think it’s important for us to try and put ourselves in the same place as those disciples if we are to hear Jesus correctly, and that includes more than simply appreciating their close, intimate relationship with him. These disciples have also begun to understand that Jesus will soon leave them. And as they draw near to Jerusalem, and Jesus speaks of the difficult work ahead, they freak out a little. They worry that they are not ready.

When Jesus speaks to them about causing little ones to stumble he’s talking about how the Church must safeguard those just coming to the faith. Anything that causes a fledgling Christian to turn away is a nearly unforgivable act, says Jesus. Plus they must correct any who go astray. Yet they must also forgive endlessly. The disciples are to build a community of love that is both magnetic and welcoming but that also shapes and forms people to be different from the world around them. When you consider how seldom the modern church manages to do this, it’s clear why the disciples plead, “Increase our faith!”

Jesus’ response is not a generic teaching on the power of faith. There is no promise that having faith will permit you to do anything you put your mind to. Jesus’ words also get a little muddled in translation. The phrase “If you had faith…” is a grammatical form indicating a statement presumed to be true. So Jesus is saying, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed (and you do)…” then you can do all I ask of you.

Surely those disciples heard this as encouragement. They heard Jesus saying, “Faith is not a quantity thing. The faith you have is more than enough. You are ready. You can do it.”

The words about being worthless slaves must have hit harder. Still, I doubt they caused the sort of visceral reaction they may for us. Slavery in Jesus’ day wasn’t benign, but it was nothing like slavery in America. It wasn’t racially based, wasn’t the permanent subjugation of an entire racial group who were labeled as sub-human. In fact the line between servant and slave was a bit blurry in Jesus’ time, with a single word for both.

 On top of this, Middle Eastern speech is filled with hyperbole that is strange and jarring to us. So we may miss what was obvious to those first disciples. Building that unique and remarkable community, loving and forgiving endlessly, was simply their basic job description, the core duty and work of the church. It’s not extra effort, over the top, saintly stuff.  It’s the basic reason Church exists.

Even more, this idea of the apostles thinking of themselves as slaves/servants gets to the heart of being Christ-like. Consider these words Jesus says to the disciples on the night of his arrest, words that echo our reading about being slaves. "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must  become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.” Jesus’ difficult words about worthless slaves are actually an invitation to stand with him and serve with him.

Such easily easily get lost in our overly individualistic culture that too often thinks of faith as something primarily for my own benefit. This time of year that sometimes lead to well-intended stewardship messages that sound more like PBS fundraisers. “Give to support those programs you and your family enjoy, the stirring music, the activities for your children and youth…” Pay for those things that you like, that feed you, that fulfill you.

But Jesus invites us to something completely different, to something much greater. It is a call to follow him, to join him in the work of building that counter-cultural, counter-intuitive, community of love that shapes and forms people for a radically new way of living.

Surely our divided and so often hate-filled society could use the example of such a community more than ever right now. And Jesus says that when we have even this much faith (pinching together fingers), we have more than we need to create just such a community.