A sermon for the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, October 2, 2022
Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
Those apostles, Jesus’ most notable followers and representatives, were just like the rest of us. Like the rest of us, they were fearful from time to time and self-conscious about their own shortcomings. So, faced with the challenges of living compassionately in this not very compassionate world, they say to Jesus: Add to our faith! We don’t have enough! We need some more!
That’s how we often feel. That somehow, things would be different if we just had a bigger quantity of that special something. Or, if we only had what others seem to have, then it would be easy. Somehow what’s frightening and difficult won’t be frightening and will just flow by without difficulty. That somehow our job as Christians is to have really big faith, and if we just had that kind of faith, then we would prosper. Jesus doesn’t buy that—though some wrongheaded Christians and even preachers seem to teach that.
Jesus says, “As to quantity of faith, all it takes is the amount the size of a grain of mustard seed.” If I had a grain of mustard seed balanced on the tip of my little finger, you wouldn’t be able to see it down there in the pews. But, at least according to Jesus, that tiny speck can do everything we attribute to faith, even moving trees and forests into the sea. You are asking for more faith, but more faith isn’t what’s needed. You have the faith that is needed.
In our epistle today, the Apostle is writing to a young Christian who, along with his church, was in difficulty and confusion. A lot of this was about the nature of faith. A discouraged Timothy is encouraged to stir up, or fan the flames of his faith—not that his faith is gone, but discouragement has caused Timothy to hardly be able to notice or appreciate it. The Apostle says:
“for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling”
To translate it another way: “God didn’t give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power and of love and of sanity.” Don’t be panicked or fearful or act crazy like all those fools we see around, who are upset because they think they’ll lose some status or something unimportant, so they start behaving hatefully. The Holy Spirit is here so that we can be of sound mind, living the compassionate life that Jesus taught. And this what we see in the next sentence: “Don’t be ashamed of the witness of our Lord or of me his prisoner.”
Why would the Apostle bring up being ashamed at this point? The dominant culture in the Roman Empire admired power and wealth. Being a winner was the most important thing. But the witness of our Lord was that he was executed as a criminal. In fact, the word for witness used here is marturion – the same word as martyr. And Paul was literally in prison when he wrote this letter. It’s easy to see why a young person in that situation might be ashamed and discouraged. But the Apostle tells Timothy to be sane and put aside being fearful and ashamed and rely on the power of God along with him and Jesus. Being joined with them, with the whole body of Christ’s people, joins us with them in the truth of their whole experience, including the suffering from evil—the evil we can so easily see. Having faith is a holy calling, because we don’t knuckle under and become servants of evil, but participants in the power of love and sanity.
In today’s parable, Jesus is saying to his disciples that, as servants, servants of God and of one another, the things we do each day, are the service that is the Kingdom of God. There’s not some special prize for being the best, or better, or different, or reaching some goal. We are God’s servants right now, living with that little mustard seed worth of faith. And it suffices.
The truth is, in Christian communities, people can be lots of things and feel lots of ways: happy, triumphant, sad, anxious, fearful, comforted. And the reason for that is because we are human beings in a human community. What makes us a divine community is that God loves us, exactly as we are in our humanity, because of that humanity, not in spite of us being the way that we are. We live in God’s mercy and God is merciful: All the Time—at every time, no matter how we feel, or what we are thinking—we are the body of Christ because we are living in God’s mercy and for no other reason. It is not our goal to feel some particular way, or to demonstrate some extraordinary level of faithfulness or piety. Our goal is to live in God’s mercy and compassion.
From today’s Psalm:
Put your trust in the Lord and do good;
dwell in the land and feed on its riches.
Take delight in the Lord,
and he shall give you your heart’s desire.
Commit your way to the Lord and put your trust in him,
and he will bring it to pass.
He will make your righteousness as clear as the light
and your just dealing as the noonday.
Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him.
Psalm 37:3-7