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Shifting Perspective
Jesus invites his disciples to look beyond the power, the expectations, and the culture to see what God is doing. Photo by Sebastian Pociecha on Unsplash How Jesus invites us into a new way of seeingProper 22C | Luke 17:5-10 Aren’t you at least a little bit curious about what happened right before this gospel passage? Last week, we read the end of chapter 16 and now we’re starting in 17…
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Some Sayings of Jesus (Proper 22C)
Some Sayings of Jesus (Proper 22C)
In this collection of sayings, the most obvious teaching is the mustard seed. But there are different ways to approach this. Photo by Joakim Honkasalo on Unsplash This section, which is labeled in the NRSV as “Some Sayings of Jesus” has three sayings (four if you slice it differently). And it may seem like we’re reading a grab bag. But this too easily dismisses the through line. And what we’ve…
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The Faith We Struggle to Embody
The Faith We Struggle to Embody
Jesus offers several teachings that don’t seem related. But one thing that connects them is we don’t want to embody them. Photo by Gus Moretta on Unsplash For SundayProper 22C Collect Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which…
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Lead with Love
We want Jesus to teach us how to love like it takes a methodology or more faith than we have. Instead, Jesus shows how that misses the point.
Jesus and the teaching of uncommon forgiveness Proper 22C Luke 17:1-10
Photo by Leo Cardelli from Pexels
We jump into the story with the apostles shouting “Increase our faith!” It makes it all sound random. They’re clearly responding to something.
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Between: A Millstone Around Your Neck Would Be Better
Between: A Millstone Around Your Neck Would Be Better
seeing the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Proper 21C and Proper 22C.
The text: Luke 17:1-4.
Context
First things first. We are now many chapters passed when Jesus turned his face toward Jerusalem. This means we are getting far closer to arriving in Jerusalem than we are to those easy days when we were all just listening to this Jesus guy because he has some…
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Students of Small Things
We like things big in the U.S.
When I was going to school in Canada, I’d show up with a 44 oz drink from Speedway and my friends and professors would shake their heads. One called it “Texas-sized” which is pretty true.
We’re obsessed with big. Which is why we have trouble with Jesus always going small.
[bctt tweet=”We’re obsessed with big. It’s why we have trouble with Jesus always going small.”…
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You gotta have faith
Proper 22C Sermon
October 6, 2013
The Rev. Anne Lane Witt
Immanuel Episcopal Church
Lamentations 1:1-6
Lamentations 3:19-26
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10
Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
When I was a child, my dad had a garden every year. There were tomatoes—lots of tomatoes—and wax beans and sometimes sugar snaps. I loved grabbing the sugar snaps right off of the vine and snacking away on my way to and from playing in the backyard. Our family enjoyed the wax beans until they were gone, and there were more than enough tomatoes for tomato sandwiches and salads.
I remember seeing the tiny seeds, marveling at how they grew into something much bigger. Within each of them, they contained all the necessary raw materials to become a plant, provided they were planted in fertile soil and watered. Such a simple process to yield so much. It involves some up front work, combined with some patience and faith.
Faith is an essential part of being a disciple, but sometimes it feels like we don’t have enough, don’t have faith that we’re doing enough, don’t have faith that we are making a difference. So much of living as a follower of Jesus Christ is being faithful in small stuff, the actions, thoughts, and words that don’t seem to add up to much, and yet, they’re the things that add up so much.
One of my favorite sayings tells that “[t]he true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not plan to sit.” I’ve heard this applied as a measure of societies, with people of varying ages not worrying whether or not they will be able to enjoy the lovely shade of the trees they are planting. The trees they plant are a continuation of the trees that have been planted previously as a legacy, trusting in a cycle of planting and growing. The seeds are always present, but so often, the planting can feel as though we’re not doing enough. When we include our own lives among the seeds, we can feel like the teeny tiny mustard seed, wondering how something larger will grow out of us.
In our gospel reading for today, the apostles are a lot like us. “Increase our faith!” say the apostles. They feel inadequate for the mission Jesus is sending them forth to do. They know they need faith to keep moving forward on their mission, but they know they have limitations. A lot of limitations. They’re feeling inadequate for the tasks ahead. “Increase our faith!” they plead.
Jesus knows them very well by now, so he can give them an image they can grasp. One that will stick with them in times of frustration. As long as they have some faith—even as small as a mustard seed—they have the faith they need. Faith the size of a mustard seed is sufficient to uproot a mulberry tree and plant it in the sea by their command.
Not everything they do will be colossal. Most of their discipleship will come in the everyday work of living out the Great Commandment, loving God and loving their neighbors as themselves. There will be many things they do whose results they will never know or from which they will never personally benefit.
This is true for us as well in the here and now. It is challenging to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ, and we ourselves will have plenty of times in which we feel we do not have sufficient faith to follow. We can feel stripped down to the size of that mustard seed, wondering if we will ever grow into something more.
Faith is a relational thing. It involves quite a lot of trust. God has a lot of faith in us, and that is inspiring in and of itself. God knows that we have the capacity to do and be more. And a lot of that doing and being more lies in the small stuff. Some of it will be on a larger scale—like our Garden of Grace—but a lot will consist of being kind to one another, doing to each other as we would have done unto us. The results of these small acts of faithfulness will not always be readily apparent, just as unkind acts erode a relationship, working slowly but surely.
God has faith in us. What was the point of Jesus’ coming if he didn’t? When we come together for the Eucharist, we support one another: as a favorite invitation to communion says, “Come, you who have much faith, and you who have little. Come, because it is the Lord who invites you.” Our faith can feel so small, and yet, it can be the most powerful of seeds for planting the kingdom of God.
The words of what is known as the Romero Prayer speak to this.
It helps, now and then, to step back
and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No programme accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen.
