20 PENTECOST, PROPER XXII - C - 16 LUKE 17. 5-10
In the verses that immediately precede today’s
gospel Jesus has just given his disciples a teaching on forgiveness. The
disciple’s immediate reaction, according to Luke, is to ask for an increase of
faith? Jesus responds to their request with the familiar example of the mustard
seed.
He tells his followers that what is important in
life is not the quantity but the quality of our faith. What the disciples had
to discern, and what we have to discover is just that, the quality of our
faith, whether it be the size of a mustard seed or that of a sycamore tree.
To look at it another way, faith is like a window
through which we can see something. What matters is not whether the window is
six inches or six feet high; what matters is the God your faith is looking out
on. If it is the God who is active in Jesus and the Spirit, then the tiniest
peep hole will give you access to a spiritual power you never dreamed of.
No where in the teachings of Jesus does he ever give
us a simple definition of faith. But the totality of Jesus’ teachings makes it
clear to us that faith is our unconditional acceptance of Him as Lord and
Savior. It is our total “yes” to follow him and like him to fulfill the will of
the Father.
Faith is a
gift from God, and St. Paul reminds Timothy of that in today’s Epistle. In his
spiritual advice to his young protégé, Paul instructs him to “rekindle” the
gift and to live out the rich deposit of faith that is within him and share it
with others.
The spirit that God gives is not one of timidity. It
is a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline. Paul’ words are given to us,
then, in the same spirit they were given to Timothy, in the same spirit they
have been given to others that we have known in our witness to Christ. We all
need to “rekindle” the gift of faith that is within us, live it out and not be
afraid to share it with others. That’s what makes us true disciples.
We need not be concerned with the quantity of our
faith, or our lives, as today’s world wants us to consider, but with the
quality of how we live our lives as faithful witnesses for Christ. In the final
analysis that is what really matters.
The second pearl, if you will, from today’s gospel
is only found in Luke. It has to do with how we live out “our bounden duty and
service.” Jesus’ parable of the servant who has just come in from working in
the field to serve his master at table makes his teaching clear. Man’s relation
to God makes obedience to God a duty to be fulfilled and not an occasion for
reward.
But how often have we heard it said “I have done all
of this for the Church, I have given so much money over the years for the work
and mission of the Church, I have worked so hard teaching Church School, or
working on the altar guild and serving on the vestry, surely God will be
satisfied with that?” Meaning that somehow one feels he can make a claim on
God.
No matter how much we do for God; no matter how
difficult it may be at times or what it may cost us, God is never in our debt.
God doesn’t owe us anything. It is in His nature to give. Our salvation and our
calling is based on God’s grace and love, not on anything we have done to merit
God’s favor.
On the contrary, all genuine service to God is done
from a Eucharistic standpoint, that is, Thanksgiving, and not to earn any
special merit, because we can’t. If we believe that we can go beyond our
bounden duty and service and somehow have God in our debt we simply deceive
ourselves. To do so is to place ourselves in danger of becoming arrogant and
impious.
Again Christ makes it clear in today’s parable that
when we have done all that is commanded of us, we have only done our duty and
we are without merit of our own. To say that we are ‘unworthy servants” is to
remind ourselves of the great truth: we can never put God in our debt.
All that we
are and all that we have comes from the grace of God. They are all gifts, as is
Faith, Hope, and Love. There is nothing we can offer to God that is not already
His, except our sin, and God does not desire that we keep it.
In His great love for us He sent His only Son,
Jesus, to redeem us, not only from our sin, but from death. It is through the
merits of Christ’ life, death, and resurrection, and His continual mediation
for us at the right hand of the Father, that “we are forgiven those things of
which our conscience is afraid, and given those good things for which we are
not worthy to ask,” as today’s collect says.
In the gospel God invites us to become his own, not
because of our accomplishments, for there is nothing we can do to commend
ourselves to God. He invites us because of His grace and love, for that is God’s
nature. God’s genuine desire, and our Hope, is that at the last day we will be
brought with all His saints into the joy of His eternal kingdom. AMEN+
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