Sunday: 19th Sunday after Pentecost 22C
Reading: Luke 17:5-10
Preacher: S. James Steen

Recently I was at a meeting of my condo board when a woman said, "I almost used a word that I shouldn't have; then I remembered that Jim is here. I thought, "Oh, please!" Why do people assume that it's okay to say certain words unless clergy are present?" But, no sooner did I have this thought than the woman used the very "s" word she had just said she couldn't use because I was there. And I confess that I was amused. Now to be fair, clergy do exactly the same thing. We will say in front of each other what we would not say in front of parishioners.

There are so many things we think or say or do, or that we don't think or say or do, because of conventional ideas about what is or isn't acceptable. Take faith, for example. I have a sense that most of us think we should have more faith than we have, or that our faith is weak or shallow.

Please consider with me the words that Luke quotes in the Gospel this morning. "The apostles said to [Jesus], "Increase our faith!" [He] 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."" We usually read that passage as a rather stern response to the apostles' request. We read it as, "You don't have much faith at all! But if you had even the tiniest bit, you could do amazing things."

This is probably a serious misreading of the text. The Greek is better translated in this way: "Even if your faith were no bigger than a mustard seed, you could still say to this mulberry tree, ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey." In this passage, Jesus is giving words of encouragement to his closest followers, the leaders of his movement, who are afraid they aren't up to the demands of their job. He's saying, "You have more than enough faith to accomplish whatever you need to do."

I happen to think those words can be as true for us who are worshiping in this church today as they were for Jesus' original followers. But to get there will require a response from us. You've probably heard this statement that preachers utter again and again, "The opposite of faith isn't doubt, it's fear." In at least one sense, I think this is true. If we're so fearful of taking a critical look at the faith we inherited that we can't question or reinterpret the faith of our childhood, then fear is the opposite of faith, because it inhibits us from developing a faith that is compelling, a faith that we can celebrate with integrity, and a faith that we can truly claim as our own.

A few days ago I came across this statement of faith to which I heartily assented: "The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness." This is faith.

Do you know who spoke those words? It was Albert Einstein, and they seem especially appropriate so close to the feast of St. Francis, a Christian who lived with a profound sense of mystery, who was keenly aware of a loving power behind and beyond all creation, and of a creator in whose presence a sense of wonder and awe is inescapable.

We often judge the quality of our faith by how many statements in the Creed we are able to say without crossing our fingers. I'm not about to suggest that we shouldn't grapple with theology and belief. But faith is something deeper. The Creed says that in Jesus God became human. That's a powerful statement, but its power for us comes not only from our intellectual assent, but from our being able to affirm - because we know it to be true from deep within us - that following Jesus transforms us and changes our relationships, and it alters what we value and how we live out our values.

When we talk about not having enough faith, we are commonly viewing faith as something we must find or achieve. I'm more inclined to think of faith as something that finds us, and often when we least expect it. Finding faith has a lot in common with finding forgiveness; and just as Christians seek the formula that will allow them to achieve faith, so also we are inclined to adopt a forumlaic view of repentance and forgiveness. In this view forgiveness can only come after repentance. Although we may resist what I am about to offer, it has been suggested that the most radical thing Jesus did was to turn the order around and place forgiveness before repentance.

So, we might say that in the Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed one is moved to repentance by being forgiven, not the other way around. Similarly, one does not achieve faith by striving - although striving could open us to recognize the gift of faith - but ultimately by welcoming faith as a gift, albeit a gift which we can nurture through fellowship, learning, breaking bread at the altar, and serving the least of God's children.

I've made the point before that the father of the prodigal son rushes out and hugs and kisses the prodigal before he is able to utter a word of repentance. It is then, after being forgiven, that the prodigal repents, saying, "Father, I have sinned and I am no longer worthy to be called your son." As is typically true of parables, this one subverts the established order. Have you ever been forgiven before you repented and have then been moved to repentance? I have, and I can tell you, my friends, that repentance born of forgiveness is sweet.

The experience of Paul may be the seminal example of how the economy of God's Kingdom works. Paul persecutes Jesus' disciples with an obsessive vengeance. He hates Jesus and his followers and wants to see the movement obliterated. Paul shows neither repentance nor the slightest inclination to Christian faith. Yet, a gracious God gives him both, which moves Paul to both repentance and a profound new faith.

It isn't that Paul doesn't already have faith, and I think there is faith somewhere in every one of us. That's what I like about Einstein's statement. It affirms that possibility. And that's what Jesus is telling the apostles who want more faith. "You already have plenty." But like your faith and mine, Paul's faith has to be freed from the fear that keeps it in a straightjacket. It has to become Paul's own faith, just as we have to find ours, freely chosen and freely claimed, a faith that nourishes us to the depth of our being, a faith to live by.

Amen.