Luke 17:5-10
I have seen what faith the size of a mustard seed can do. I have seen mountains move, and the impossible come to pass. I’d be willing to bet most of the people in this room have too, whether you know it or not.
One of the greatest privileges and most difficult challenges of my life was my internship at a pediatric trauma one hospital. After working within the walls of that behemoth of a downtown hospital, I can tell you with everything in me that I have no doubt that God is still at work in this world, and that miracles happen. I witnessed the miracle of a mother letting go of a child who had lived longer than should have been medically possible, and giving thanks for the time they had together. I witnessed the grief of a family when a beloved patriarch went to his reward, sung all the way home by his children gathered around his hospital bed. I witnessed forgiveness for unforgivable things pass between siblings in hospital hallways, and I prayed with someone who was haunted by the demons of mental illness, prayed with her until she fell asleep for the first time in days. A man left me a note at the chaplain station to thank me for whatever I had done, because while I had kept vigil in the chapel for him as he faced a procedure he feared, the scans had come back clear and the procedure had been cancelled. I don’t know if my prayers for him had anything to do with that. But I have faith that God did. These are all stories that were not unique in that hospital. All of them happened more than once, and there are some stories that I will never share with anyone besides my therapist and my confessor. They are not my stories to tell, although they are all a part of my story. The miracles I witnessed shaped and changed me, and I know that there are some among us who have witnessed miracles of your own. I know there are some here who have also prayed for miracles that never came to pass, and your presence here in the wake of that grief is a miracle in and of itself. These are the kinds of miracles that Jesus claims a tiny drop of faith can accomplish, and he does so in response to the disciples’ desperate plea for more. “Increase our faith!” they beg. I don’t think there’s a person of faith on this planet or in this room that hasn’t asked God for that, in one way or another.
The Gospel lesson this week is another tough one, one that has been used to justify the kind of slavery that helped build and sustain the institution that granted me my Master’s degree, The University of the South, and so many of our churches and institutions. Jesus assumes in this passage that the indentured ownership of other people is a given, a normal part of households of any status or landownership. He assumes that his audience, his own followers, have slaves or have been around them, and that being served by them is a good and reasonable expectation. Jesus even assumes that it is unnecessary to thank a slave for their work, because it is their job and is to be expected of them. It makes me wince even to read it, knowing that these words of our Lord have been weaponized against his children in the not so distant past. But still, our Scripture reads thus. Y’all might know by now that I’m not often willing to skip past a passage that makes us uncomfortable- I think that’s where the real work is. But I’m also interested in the context that seems missing here.
The lectionary leaves out the verses that precede the apostles’ request for greater faith, and I think we risk losing some perspective without recalling them. The beginning of Luke 17 reads “Jesussaid to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble.Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, 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.” Arguably these skipped verses are no less uncomfortable to hear than the story of the slave that we hear this week, but with them in our view we can better see the teaching moment.
Forgiveness is one of the hallmarks of Christian life and faith, both the forgiveness of our sins by God and the forgiveness of our trespasses against one another. Accepting the forgiveness of God is one thing, but OFFERING forgiveness to those who have wronged us is often extremely difficult, sometimes even dangerous. It usually takes time, and apologies, and growth and change, for us to truly forgive those who have wounded and betrayed us. And I’m not talking about forgiveness the way our culture often does, which is sweeping it under the rug, letting it go, moving on without true repentance and reconciliation. You can forgive someone, and leave a relationship behind that’s no longer safe. You can forgive someone and still ask for reparation. You can forgive someone, and walk away, and still be faithful. And still Jesus calls his disciples with urgency to repent and forgive one another as many times as they sin. No wonder the disciples ask for Jesus’ help to do this! The apostles ask for what so many of us wish for- More faith! More faith in Jesus, in God, in the power of prayer, in healing and forgiveness. Jesus has given the apostles a great charge to be incomprehensibly generous with their forgiveness and inexhaustibly repentant. They hear this and think “if we only had a little more faith, if only we were a little stronger in our trust, if only if only if only”
Jesus replies to them with a reminder of the kinds of wonders they have already seen. They have witnessed firsthand the healing of the sick, the restoration of sight to the blind and the returning to wholeness of those who had been cast out of community. They are coming to believe in Jesus’ holiness, his power and his status as the one who will make all things new. They have witnessed miracles, and in time they will begin to perform them. The things they have already seen and the things they will soon do are accomplished not through great measures of faith, but through the power of God. Jesus tells us that all that is required to perform great acts and wondrous miracles is the smallest of spaces in our hearts being opened to God. The entrance may be only the size of a mustard seed, but even this is enough for God to work wonders. The question is not quantity, but sufficiency. We are not meant to focus on the size of the mustard seed, but on the miracle it produces. To cast an object, rooted deep in the ground, into the sea with only a word of command is a spectacle that is so unimaginable that it might even seem a little ridiculous.
Jesus is not telling us, his disciples, to use our faith as a means to perform great feats of strength or to continue to bend the natural world to our will and convenience. These are not the kind of miracle-workers he expects us to be. Remember what came right before. 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. Choosing to accept the repentance of a fellow disciple, choosing to forgive without grudges or retaliation, choosing to pray for the forgiveness not only of our own sins but of our neighbors’ too. That is the greatest feat our faith can accomplish, the miracle our mustard seed hearts are capable of because of the Love of God that swells in them. We are not baptized into being slaves, or masters, but disciples. We are baptized for the forgiveness of sins, for our own sins and for the sins of the world. To repent and forgive is to be a disciple, and to be a disciple is to become a vessel for the wonders of God. Repentance and Forgiveness are miracles. Go and perform them.
Mother A Writes 