Faithful Obedience

Sermons for the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost, Season of Creation, Year C

The Church of the Epiphany | Washington, DC

Luke 17:5-10

Turning to Jesus, the apostles exclaim, “Increase our faith!”

Just before this passage in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is preparing the apostles to navigate “occasions for stumbling [that] are bound to come…” There will be difficult days ahead, Jesus tells his followers. And, understandably, they are overwhelmed.

These words from the apostles have a certain kind of familiarity to them. Because, truthfully, who among us has not at some point uttered a version of this same prayer? “Please, God, just a little more.” 

Amid all that is taking place around us these days, at least for myself in the fullness of our times, this prayer is just about always on my lips: “More, God, please.”

In so many ways, this is a neat summary of the life of Christian discipleship: recognizing one’s lack of strength, and turning one’s attention to the Divine. Somehow or another though, it would seem the apostles have missed something critical about the faith God desires.

Presented with uncertainty, they feel unprepared. Ill-equipped. And, as is so common, they react from a place of scarcity. If only they just had a little more, then they would be ready for whatever unknowns might come their way. Perhaps, a little more knowledge or wisdom. More power. More control. More certainty.

But this is not what Jesus invites them into… We might hear the way he replies in two different ways. First, we could hear it as a sharp rebuke: as a corrective delivered with a kind of exasperated impatience. And perhaps that would be accurate; we can’t know for sure.

Let me suggest instead that we hear these words in the second manner: with a tone of tenderness. As a loving instruction. Faith, Jesus tells the apostles, will not be measured by the impressive largeness of whatever you accumulate, but on a scale of smallness—like that of a tiny mustard seed. You need only trust. 

His second instruction though is much less straightforward—at least for our modern ears. Anytime the Bible makes mention of slavery, especially from the mouth of Jesus, we should not simply receive it at face value. Again, the way in which we hear and read these words matters. 

Jesus makes clear throughout his life that he does not condone hierarchies of human beings. He comes to set people free—and he does so both spiritually and physically. The good news of his ministry is not to shackle or to leave people in bondage.

So, when Jesus talks of slaves and masters, it is not to condone it as a social arrangement, but to recognise it as a reality and use it as an example his audience will find familiar. Faith is about trust, he instructs, and it is about obedience and service.

Evidently, the apostles' appeal for more faith has something to do with more than just rising to meet the overwhelming demands they face. They desire to be rewarded, and to accumulate favor. Their service ought to entitle them to something more, as though God could somehow be in their debt. But this too, of course, misses what is critical about faith… 

God sets before each of us a vocation that is uniquely ours. But if our works of our life are merely an attempt to win God’s approval and accumulate greater favor, we will be perpetually frustrated. Because the love of God is not earned by merit. Nor is the love of God increased or decreased by dutiful obedience. God loves—and there’s nothing we can do about that.

The kind of faithful obedience Jesus wishes to impart is like the lilies of the valley who "neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns,” and yet they are fed. Or like the birds of the air who “neither toil nor spin,” yet are clothed in glorious splendor.

Each creature exists as it was created. Each creature participates fully in the nature of things. Each and every creature is created in love and need not fret, but rather freely offer its gift as an expression of love to the world. This is the kind of obedience in faith Jesus calls the apostles to.

All of creation reminds us to abide in love like this. Brother Sun and Sister Moon, to use the words of Saint Francis, along with earth, winds, and waters, and every living thing: faithfully obedient to the purpose for which it was made. 

The poet and Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, describes much the same, too. Hopkins describes in a poem the way kingfishers catch fire as they glide across the reflection of a sunrise over a glassy lake, how the tucked strings of violins fling out sound to proclaim itself, and how even stones tumbling around in roundy wells ring out the thing that is true of them. 

With these and other descriptions he writes: 

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:  Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;  Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,  Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

Like all of creation. we too exist as mortal beings created from a loving God. You and I are members of nature. And like all creatures, we too are given a place and a task within the nature of things.

To those who seek to faithfully follow Christ through uncertainty and challenges, Jesus says:

You are enough. What you have to offer is good. All that you need is already here, even now. Do not worry about scarcity or abundance, lack of accumulation. Faith is enough.

As human beings blessed with memory, reason, and skill, you have been created to transform landscapes—to co-create with the God of Creation. The God who has brought this far is with you, and will sustain you. 

Trust and obey: that all of your works might be offered in loving service to the world.

Amen