Day - 300 I'm Glad To Oblige

A Sermon given at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, TN Oct. 6, 2013

OT reading: Lamentations 3:18-26

NT Reading: Luke 17:5-10

How often have we done some good deed and in reply to a thank you said, “I’m glad to oblige?” It is an interesting statement because the word “oblige” has two almost different meanings. “Obliged” can mean “to be required to take an action by moral or legal force.” For example, “Congress is obliged by law to provide a budget for the government.”

“Obliged” can also mean to put someone into debt (an obligation) for some favor or action. For example, “I am obliged to you for your help.” so when we make the statement “I’m glad to oblige” it can mean I’m glad to put you under obligation for my action,” or “My duty requires me to under take an action.”

Today in Luke, Jesus is talking exactly about the connection of faith and obligation.

Let me add a little review. Recall we are following Luke’s account from Luke chapter 9 of Jesus traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem where he will be crucified. The reality of his impending death is real, Luke says his face is set on Jerusalem.  Jesus has spent his time on the journey chastising the Pharisees, cajoling and chastising his disciples and followers and the curious who are following him on this journey. Through out this whole journey he has talked mainly about faith and humility. He told the Pharisees only to invite the people they detest to their banquets and never to sit at the head of the table unless asked. He told his disciples that he would bring conflict between family members because unless they put their loyalty to him over all other worldly considerations they are not fully committed to follow him. He used the treatment of sick and disabled Lazarus, poor and disabled as the song goes, to condemn the Jewish religious leaders for having the law, knowing they could not fulfill it but denying Jesus anyway. As we near the end of his journey Jesus has turned his attention to his disciples again who have asked Jesus for more faith.

The lectionary passage leaves out the first 4 verses of this exchange (that I include in the like above) with the disciples and I think they may be useful to understand why the disciples ask for more faith in v5.

Jesus said,  (1)“Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come!  (2) 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."

Jesus tells us we are always going to be faced with opportunities to do the wrong thing, to stumble. Someone will say something to us that we don’t like and we will get mad. Then we will either say something mean in return or do something we may regret later.  Jesus says woe to us when that happens because if we cause a weaker person to stumble we would be better off if instead we tied a millstone around our neck and leaped into the sea.

These are hard words. They do not give us a lot of comfort or wiggle room. We know those situations will come our way and Jesus says they are bad for us.

And then Jesus gives the disciples the command, “ (3) Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must talk about it to the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive.  (4) 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.” 

If you are wronged this way, take the person aside and let them know what they have done. If they repent, forgive them, and if they stumble and do it again and repent keep forgiving, even if it is seven times a day.

I don’t know about you but in my book this is a tall order. I have faith in God. I have faith that Jesus is Lord. I have faith that he defeated the death of sin by his resurrection and the road is open to me to enjoy his grace forever. But this teaching about forgiveness and millstones is really a hard pill to swallow.

Is the reaction of the disciples any wonder, “Increase our faith, PLEASE!” I would have been standing right behind them saying the same thing, “Increase my faith, too!”  In Mark’s parallel story of the father of the epileptic son. He tells the father if he has faith his son will be healed. The father replied, “I believe! Help my unbelief!” Jesus healed the son. The disciples had tried to heal the son but failed and appealed to Jesus. Jesus tells them it requires special power. 

This is our dilemma.  This man of clay, Jesus of Nazareth, Emmanuel, God is with Us, is going to demonstrate on the cross that human clay with absolute faith has this power. Jesus knows already our faith can never match his faith, why else is he here walking towards Jerusalem and the cross? This is the root cause for God’s sacrifice, the steadfast love and forgiveness of human clay. This is also Jeremiah's lament.

We have to appreciate what faith in God's steadfast love and forgiveness means. We’ve talked about it in the Easter story in Mark (16:1-8). Faith isn’t the feeling we have that the sun shall rise tomorrow and every morning hence. We know that by scientific observation. Faith isn’t the hope we might win the lottery. We know that is purely a matter of random probability. Hope and faith has nothing to do with it.

Faith is what came to Mary, Maratha and Salome in the tomb on the third day after the death of Jesus when the found the empty tomb open and a young man dressed in white saying, “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here. He is risen. Go tell the others he will meet them in Galilee.” The women struck with terror and amazement fled and told no one.”  I remind you that the Greek words tell us these three women were terrified and amazed because they knew they were in God’s presence receiving this message of resurrection and terrified of being able to fulfill the divine command, “go and tell the others.” They did not discover faith in the resurrection by some objective, scientific analysis. Faith came to them through the presence of the Holy Spirit. We use a messy word to describe the experience, a revelation. They knew they were in God’s presence. Their faith that found them in this empty tomb obliged them to action, and they were petrified.

This is how our faith comes to us human creations of God. We all have the same faith in the resurrection because the Holy Spirit brought it to us.  Faith is an equal thing, we have it or not, there is no degree of faith in the Good News.

So Jesus gives this lesson to the disciples about faith and the mustard seed. Perhaps again he used overstated language colored by his own knowledge of the death that awaits him in Jerusalem, and of his absolute faith in his resurrection.

The mustard plant or shrub is a very hearty plant. Its seeds  sprout readily and are scattered easily by birds. Like Kudzu here, it grows everywhere and is almost impossible to eliminate. There were even Jewish laws that forbid growing mustard plants in gardens for this reason. It is hard to escape the idea that here may be some theological analogy that the disciples will spread the Good News the way the mustard seed spreads the shrub wildly.

Jesus says, “If you had faith, true faith, you would be more powerful that a tiny seed that grows into a plant, you would be able to uproot trees and toss them in the sea, you would be able to move mountains (Matthew17:14-20. This passage in Matthew is his version of the event we discuss here.)

“But my beloved disciples, I know you are men of mortal clay. I have called you by faith to a Christian vocation, to follow me and learn the Good News, to discover how to go out and spread it throughout the countryside. I have called you to be my slaves.  The modern translations use the word “servant” not “slave,” but “servant” papers over the negative connotation of slavery, something Paul and the early church understood and willingly self identified as slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is important about the word “slave” is that it paints the picture of our relationship to the Lord. We do not have any say in our calling.

We are called to be a witness. The Lord isn’t going to let us go easily. We can resist that calling using all manner of excuses, “Let me go and bury my father first,” “let me close up my shop, beach my boat and put up my nets…”.

Jesus says faith is like the obligation of the slave to the master. Our vocation is an obligation to the Lord; thus, we are bound by the imperative of faith to understand our vocation as Christians and to serve the Lord. We cannot indebt ourselves to God by being faithful. This isn’t a “works of faith” game where we strive to be a more righteous to move up a place or two at the big banquet in heaven.

Listen to the last two verses, (17:9) ”Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?” Would you expect your boss to thank you just for doing what you are paid to do? Faithful action does what is expected, does what is the right thing to do, and atones or repents for our errors when we stumble. Yes, we are blessed for our faith but remember who we are, human clay.

Jesus explains his words in verse 10.  "So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves [merely servants]; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”  The translation, “We are worthless slaves” or “merely servants” is another example of the fundamental failure of all translation.  What this Greek says is something like this, “We have no reason to expect further reward than we already have because we did only what faith expected of us.” We are obliged by faith to follow the master’s bidding. Faith is its own reward.

Earlier we thought about the idea of the theological importance of the mustard seed analogy. Jesus says, “If you had faith, (my faith?), you would be more powerful that a tiny seed that grows like a weed and spreads everywhere, you would be able to uproot trees and toss them in the sea, you would be able to move mountains.” You do not need super faith to do what I require; you just need faith. Your faith will empower you to do your job, to spread the good News everywhere. This image dovetails to the mustard seed. The faith of the disciples will spread the Good News the way the mustard shrub spreads wildly.

That does not make our job easy. The bible is full of examples. We can read about Stephen in Acts or Paul in 2 Corinthians to see that. Faith is about doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. The right thing to do is almost always the very, very difficult thing to do. It is easy stumble, or cause someone else to stumble, so be prepared to atone or forgive, even if it requires you to do it seven, or seventy times seven times. It is logging out of Facebook or  the TFP e-version rather than reacting to something you read that you do not like before you say something that will hurt you later. It is really about how we approach people in general.

We real have a pretty good real life example of how this works. My fellow pastor, Stephanie Maddox-Hill reminded me of the comic strip “Peanuts.” The creator of the strip, Charles Schultz, used theological themes, and one exemplary event in the strip every fall football season was the interaction of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown to kick. Every time he runs at the ball swinging his leg to kick it, she pulls the football away and Charlie falls down on his back.

Mr. Schultz to my recollection had Lucy apologize only once on a TV version; but every time Charlie Brown asked her she said she would hold the ball, and good old Charlie Brown forgave her and tried again, and again.

Many of us see Lucy as the stand in for a mean spirited woman. Others see Charlie Brown as a gullible fool. I think Charles Schultz intended show Charlie Brown’s faith was forgiving for someone who said they repented.

We never know if repentance is true, do we? We never know if it is an earnest plea for forgiveness that is too burdened with temptation forcing the other person to pull t he ball away.  I don’t want to carry the analogy too far because we all have to decide when someone is so incorrigible and unable to repent to be a danger to us.

We all have to understand the consequences of error in both cases, forgiveness or condemnation. Jesus and Paul offer advice about separating the fellowship from someone. Scripture says it is the gravest decision because we abandon a person to sin when we separate from them, yet we risk harm to the fellowship if we do not. The millstone always hangs there at the ready.

That is why the Presbyterian Church requires a difficult process for breaking fellowship with a member, a pastor or a congregation to reduce the chance the emotion and anger of a few do not unjustly rule the action of all. That never guarantees the right decision is reached but when we rely on a group of people to agree to who say they are commit to faithful action, it is the best we can get.

The bottom line is faith comes to us from the Holy Spirit. It is an obligation. It is an obligation to our covenant of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord to live as he lives.  To have faith is to be obliged to forgive, to cajole and correct, to help and to use the great power of the slave’s virtue, humility to serve the Lord.