Sermon for SMHP, Year C, Proper 22, Oct. 6, 2019
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
The oracle
that the prophet Habakkuk saw. 2O Lord, how long shall I cry for
help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?
3Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction
and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. 4So the law
becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous—
therefore judgment comes forth perverted.
I will stand
at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see
what God will say to me, and what God will answer concerning my complaint. 2Then
the Lord answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so
that a runner may read it. 3For there is still a vision for the
appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry,
wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. 4Look at the
proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their
faith.
Luke 17:5-10
5The
apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6The Lord replied,
“If you
had 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.
7“Who
among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending
sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8Would
you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve
me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9Do you
thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10So you also, when
you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves;
we have done only what we ought to have done!’”
Simple
little lesson. Or two lessons,
really. This is really two sayings of
Jesus stuck together. Or you could think
of either of them as a lesson and part of its context.
As
usual, the context helps to shed light on the lesson. For example…you notice, when you consider
these lessons together, that there are some assumptions being made by the
people in the story.
Who are the people?
--Jesus
--Apostles. Important to note that the audience here is
the “apostles.” The “sent out ones.” Not the “crowds,” as has been the case in the
lessons over the past few weeks.
Jesus
is speaking to the apostles—the people he called to take his message to the
whole world, and this whole lesson starts with them saying “Increase our faith,
Jesus!,” which is a demand (!) resting upon a huge assumption.
àWhat is it?
Jesus
can “increase faith.” Whatever that
means, and I’m not sure we can be certain what they mean, without making
some assumptions ourselves.
We
know they want more of something, and they seem to think they can get it from
Jesus.
And
we know that Jesus seems to think they could get it on their own. Or, and this requires reading between the
lines, so don’t try it at home…OR…
…they
should already have it. And if they did
have it, they would be in possession of great power, such as could
uproot a mulberry tree.
Side
note. When I bought my house, there was
a half dead mulberry tree outside that was leaning toward the house. And so the first bit of Homeowner Joy was
paying a guy $500 (which was a steal) to take that tree down so it didn’t take
out Annie and I some night. (Annie is a
dog, in case your mind went somewhere else.)
The
stump of that tree was about the size of this pulpit. Mulberry trees are substantial.
So
the disciples want Jesus to “increase their faith” and Jesus…mulberry tree…and
then this statement about who the apostles should be. They should think of themselves as “worthless
slaves” of the gospel, just “doing what they ought to have done.
That
language is not unusual for the time, and we know Paul uses it. In Romans 1:1, he introduces himself as
“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ,” but the word translated “servant” in Romans
is the same word translated “slave” here.
Doulos.
Slave.
“Who
among you, Apostles called to love and serve your neighbor…who among you would
say to your slave…”
Hear
the assumption?
Slavery
is a neutral institution, which makes a good example here, because I want to
talk about how we should just release all of our power to the will of God and
isn’t that like being a slave?
I
don’t want to argue with Jesus…I really don’t.
But I will, because it’s important to recognize when he says something
that is so culturally conditioned that he really doesn’t hear the assumption,
but we do.
We
do and please tell me that the assumption that I am making is correct: we hear it and we don’t like it.
We
hear it and we don’t like it and we really want to redact the lesson to say
this: “Then Jesus said to them, ‘All among you should say to your slave,
who has just come in from plowing or tending the sheep, ‘You are released,
because slavery is an evil institution in which we will not longer participate. It is wrong to exploit human beings for their
labor!’”
It
doesn’t say that. And we don’t get to
redact scripture. And Jesus doesn’t even
seem to feel that way, because the point of the story is that it is the place
of the slave to take care of the slaveowner.
And we can’t just gloss over that and pretend it isn’t there. People in the day of Jesus looked the
other way when it came to slavery and the *biblical* call to create
economic systems which did not exploit the marginalized.
That
should not sit well with us.
Just
as it will not sit well with future generations that the society in which we
lived allowed children to be separated from their parents at the border, and
there wasn’t a mass uprising demanding that the practice stop immediately. That will not sit well with future us.
I
imagine Future Us will be asking, “where was their faith?”
Because
they’ll have faith all figured out, unlike the Apostles, and unlike us or maybe
I should just speak for myself: unlike me.
I know that my faith has called me to love the marginalized and I know
that what is happening at our Southern Border is evil. But I am standing in this pulpit and not at
the Border, so there has been some sort of disconnect between what I profess
and how I act.
“Increase
my faith, Jesus!”
It’s
easy to make fun of these hapless Apostles, demanding that Jesus “increase
their faith.” But the impulse that leads
to their outburst is actually not so bad.
They’re
looking around at a world in which people are exploited—by the empire and by
their own neighbors. And they want to
address that pain, but it takes a lot of faith to step into the messy world
that they live in. The messy world that
we live in. The messy world that
Habakkuk lived in.
This
stuff’s not new, right? Treating people
as if they have no value—that’s not a 21st Century phenomenon! Look at your Habakkuk reading, and you will
see a prophet who is looking around his world—early 7th century
BCE—and basically saying to God, “When are you going to fix this?!”
“I
keep asking you for help, and I get nothin’!
What’s up with you…Lord? Why
aren’t you taking care of things?”
Kind
of makes “Increase our faith!” look good, doesn’t it?
Habakkuk’s
world is falling apart—Babylon is threatening, and he wants God to take
care of it. Anybody ever pray that
prayer? “Um, Lord, my situation is Messy
AF, and if you could just, you know, fix it…yeah, that would be
cool.”
At
least the disciples are asking for faith.
Demanding it, really, and maybe we should all be demanding the increase
of our faith.
Not
from Jesus, because that seems rude.
But
maybe from ourselves. And each
other.
Increase
my faith. Hold me accountable to
following Jesus to the difficult places in this world. The borders.
The places of pain.
It’s
not a very Lutheran prayer. A bit too
Evangelical for us, but it turns out, I don’t know if you know this…but
“evangelical” is in our name! We don’t
like to talk about it, especially right now, but we are supposed to be talking
about it. Faith, I mean. We are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America.
So,
“increase my faith” is a prayer we can pray.
Try it now.
Try
it loud.
Let’s
make it our prayer. Let’s make it our
vision. Let’s write it plain, like God
instructs Habakkuk. Increase our faith,
Lord. Teach us to know the power of
faith—the power to uproot trees and the power to stand up to injustice.
And
the power to be powerless. Not
slaves. Just humble Christians, willing
to go to the difficult places.
Willing
to do what needs to be done to increase our own faith. Be our light, Lord, and let us shine for you.
Amen
HOD #715: “Christ, Be
Our Light”
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