When is enough, enough? Sermon 10/6/2019


Lamentations 1:1-6; Psalm 1372 Timothy 1:1-14;
Luke 17:5-10


          Thank you for being here today to learn together, to pray together, to share together.  Thank you for sharing your faith.  Please turn to page 299 in the Book of Common Prayer and join with me in the call and response found at the bottom of the page:

Celebrant
There is one Body and one Spirit;
People
There is one hope in God's call to us;
Celebrant
One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism;
People
One God and Father of all.  Amen.

                I was watching the Twins and Yankees playoff game last night when a commercial for a cell phone company came on.  In the commercial was a man pouring coffee into a cup that never overflowed.  He said, “Switching to [this cell phone company with unlimited gigs] gave me so much more.  And I gotta say, I like more.”
          Later, in another commercial, a man is driving and talking to his wife about their relationship, about the ability to know what the other is thinking, and she said, “Sometimes I think we don’t have enough insurance.  Then I sometimes think, we have too much.”
          By this time, the New York Yankees had too many runs.  The score was 8 to nothing.  It was only the bottom of the third inning and the Twins had already brought out their third pitcher in hopes of stopping them.
          More – more – more.  Faster – bigger – better.  Win – win – win.
          When do we have enough? 
No.  Wait.  I don’t think that’s the question.  Maybe the real question is, when do we KNOW we have enough?
          The disciples wanted Jesus to give them more faith.  It seemed to them that to do what Jesus did and be like Jesus was they would need to be faithfully endowed.  That what they already had just wouldn’t cut it.  They thought they needed more.
          Perhaps it was lack of confidence.  Maybe it was doubt in their abilities.  Could they have felt that they were not enough? 
          I know that there are times in my life where I have felt like I didn’t have it all together.  Selling Tupperware items that I didn’t really know, becoming a parent and then navigating all the stages of our kids’ lives, figuring out how to be a spouse, learning different jobs, going back to school, becoming a priest, even learning new textile skills like this leaf felting.  The list seems endless.
          Most of the time I think my fears, my longings, my doubts, my lack of self- confidence, my faulty self-awareness and feelings of inadequacy could be overcome with more education, more patience, more attention, more growth, more therapy, more this, more that.
          You know what it’s all about?  Wanting to be enough.
          Wanting to know I am enough.
          These Jesus Followers watched as Jesus seemed to so effortlessly perform miracles: feed thousands, heal people of life-long ailments, teach hard lessons, comfortably spend time with the unloved and least-cared-for individuals he met.  And what happened immediately before today’s text might have had something to do with their desire for more faith.
          Jesus had just told them to forgive, not once or twice, but 70 times 7 times.  Their desire for more faith might have been because they didn’t think it possible without more faith.
          These followers wanted to be like Jesus, and they did not think they had enough, or were enough to live up to His expectations.  They wanted more faith.
          The thing is, Jesus tells them, the size of your faith doesn’t matter when it comes to doing the work of God.  The amount of your faith cannot be measured. 
          I think Jesus knows that how we are in relationship with God is so individual, so special, so unique, that it waxes and wanes over our lifetimes.  But what God wants is for us to do the work of the faithful, with whatever faith we have, while we are here. 
          Because our faith, whether it is the size of a mustard seed or a massive mustard weed isn’t what matters.  What matters is what we do with our faith.
          It’s about what we do with our faith.  It is about who we serve because of our faith.  And, our faith is in God.
          In some ways, Jesus explains, we are slaves, or as our translation today says, servants.  We are slaves, or servants, of our heavenly master.
          Like most servants, we know what we are required to do—to love God and to love neighbor.  We have direction in our Baptismal Covenant.  If you would like to follow along, turn to pages 304 and 305 in the red Book of Common Prayer.  These directions are to:
·        continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, through the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers;
·        we are to persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever any of us fall into sin, we are expected to repent and return to the Lord;
·        we are also supposed to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ;
·        and we must seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, which includes striving for justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being.
Those might seem like big directions that are beyond our abilities, and
we might think we don’t have enough faith, or we aren’t faithful enough to be able to do     or be     or act      in these ways.
          But if we look at our lives, in the light of this list of requirements, I bet each of us is doing more than we realize.  If we look at them, one by one, we are definitely living out our faith.
          First, we are here, in community, to learn about God through worship.  This is where you learn what Jesus did, what he taught, what he gave to the world.  Here is where we break bread and drink wine together as a sign of our faithfulness to God.  We are in community, spending time together as eight of us did yesterday at Mounds State Park and as many of us will do during coffee hour.  Many of us spend time together outside of church, building this community of faith and friendship.  And, of course, we pray.
          Next, because we have received the strength of community through worship and fellowship, we are better prepared to live our lives in faithful ways in the world outside these doors. We strive to do good things, to be good people.  But the ways of the world can sometimes get in the way and we will, yes, will, sometimes, fall into sinful ways.  The thing is, as people of faith, we know we can repent.  We can come to this place and confess our sins in community, or privately, and receive forgiveness.  With that forgiveness is the hope that we can go back into the world and not act in those ways again. 
          But we are human, and we fail, and we forget.  And we have our relationship with God and each other where we can repent, ask forgiveness and try again.  We might even need to forgive ourselves and others 70 times 7 times.
          Here in this place, but even more out in the world, we are expected to tell the story of God, of Jesus, of the movement of the Holy Spirit.  We are to evangelize for Christ, sharing the stories of our lives as they are touched by God and impacted by Jesus.  We are supposed to go out and experience the Holy Spirit as she moves around and within us, giving us strength and courage to share the Good News.
          Finally, we are to treat one another well.  The people we know and the people we do not.  We are expected to recognize that each is created by God.  Because each is a beloved child of God, we seek justice    and peace    and we strive to respect the dignity of all of God’s beloveds.
          The thing about all these things is that, according to this Gospel, we are not supposed to expect a “thank you” or any kind of appreciation.  We are supposed to, as the Nike ad says, “just do it.”
          Just do it.  You have enough faith to do what God expects you to do.  Jesus said so.
           
Let us pray.
Dear God, our faith in you brings us here to express our relationship with you. We hear messages of hope through Jesus’ teaching, messages like the one we heard today, teaching us that the size of our faith is irrelevant to our story with you.  What matters is that we have faith.  Help us to see that whatever size our faith, we are called to be and do and live in ways that reflect our faith in you to one another and to the world.  In your holy name we pray.  Amen.