Communion
Luke 17:5-10
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Is it me, or do these passages from Luke’s gospel seem to be getting worse and worse? About a month ago we listened to Jesus say that unless a person hated their mother, father, sisters, brother, spouse, etc. they couldn’t be his disciple. Then he told a story about dishonest wealth, followed by a story about a rich man stuck in the fiery agony of Hades. And now we’re told that we should say we are worthless slaves!? I have to confess that at this point I’m seriously starting to wonder if I really like Jesus, or if it’s one of those situations where I’ve know him for so long that I’ve just sort of gotten used to this kind of stuff and try to ignore it as best I can. If only I had a little more faith.
Isn’t that what we think when we find ourselves up against it. If only I had a little more faith, I’d be able to push through these doubts. If only I had a little more faith, I’d be able to love that coworker- or at least not want to kill them. If I had a little more faith, I’d be able to trust that my kid is going to be okay even when I’m not there to make sure of it. If only I had a little more faith, the loss wouldn’t hurt so much, I’d get over the slight, I wouldn’t feel so in adequate as an employee, or a spouse, or a parent, or a child. If only I had a little more faith.
You begin to understand why the people following Jesus asked him to increase their faith. How do you keep going forward when you’re not sure where it will lead you? How do you take to heart the things that he’s saying, these stories that he’s telling, when you’re not sure you can buy into them 100%? Increase our faith, Jesus, because we are headed to Jerusalem with you, and from everything you’ve been hinting at that isn’t going to go well at all. Increase our faith so we don’t feel like we are on a fool’s errand at best, and a suicide mission at worst. Increase our faith because we aren’t sure that we have enough to get through this thing intact.
We’re not sure we’ve got enough to get through this season, this layoff, this divorce, this relapse, this surgery, this recovery, this retirement with our own faith intact. We ask for more because we’ve been conditioned to look at everything as a diminishing resource, one that has to be replenished or renewed, expanded and grown. Isn’t that the way the world works? If we’re constantly told that there isn’t enough, constantly worrying that we’ll run out of this, or that, it should come as no surprise that we would think of ourselves and our own capacity for love and trust in the same way. We’ve got to increase our faith before the well goes dry. We’ve got to order more in case and before it runs out. Go on Amazon, or pop down to the local Walmart, and stock up like we would with bread and milk before the big storm.
But what if that isn’t how faith works? In fact, what if that is the exact opposite of how faith works? What if it isn’t a matter of degrees, having more or less faith? Because if it were, then it would be perfectly reasonable to ask for it to be increased. But if it’s not, then what is faith exactly, and how does knowing the difference change the way we think about it all. By and large, when we talk about faith in terms of more or less, what we’re talking about is something that serves us, something that is there to get us through the tough times. It’s hard to argue with that. It’s hard to criticize anyone’s desire for something like that. And humans are, as a general rule, a pretty self-interested bunch. So, it’s understandable that when presented with something like faith in God, we would ask the question, “what’s in it for me? What do I get out of it?” When Jesus’ disciples, whether they are on the road with him to Jerusalem, or whether they are at worship in Albuquerque, New Mexico, ask Jesus to increase their faith, what they are effectively saying is something like, “give me something that I can use.” Give me more of the thing that I know I need to make it through this.
But there is no “more.” And there is no “less” either. As Master Yoda puts it in the Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back, “do, or do not. There is no try.” Believe, or do not; trust or do not. There is no more. There really isn’t much of an in between. Faith isn’t something that exists as a commodity for our benefit, a thing that can be re-ordered or supersized for our convenience. It is the simple willingness to move forward into the unknown because we trust the one who has invited us to do so. Of course, we might move forward with our doubts, our hesitations, our uncertainties, but those don’t diminish the fact that we are moving. As such, faith really isn’t so much about how that movement serves us, as it is about how we serve it; how it moves toward us as it is how we move toward it. One of the foundational examples of this is found in Abraham when he still went by the name Abram. Abram had a pretty good life. He had family. He had security. He had everything he needed. And then God said to him, “Go to a land that I will show you.” The command came with a promise, and he stepped toward it. He trusted the one who spoke to make good on it. It Doing so didn’t make the life he had better. It didn’t necessarily make it worse either. What it did was unmake it altogether. And some of what it unmade was any idea that Abram might have had of himself as master of his destiny, captain of his fate. If God had left it up to Abram, my guess is that he would have stayed put where things were known and the future predictable. To move in faith toward what God promises is to embrace the unknown and forsake what we can predict.
To move in faith toward what God promises, what Jesus describes when he talks about the realm of God’s power and presence in the world, is to forego the myth of the exalted individual and find our lives in something far bigger than ourselves. That idea can be a little abstract, a little too esoteric. So, to make it more tangible, to make it a little more understandable Jesus gives us a table. It isn’t our table though. We really don’t get to decide who is welcome there and who isn’t. Not really. That’s the whole point of saying that we’re worthless slaves. I know, I don’t like the worthless part any more than you do. It feels a little over the top, if you ask me. But Jesus has a habit of using this kind of hyperbolic language to make a point about faith, and how it works. We don’t manage it. We don’t own it. It isn’t a commodity that’s subject to surplus and deficit. It doesn’t look like that at all. Instead it looks like a table.
When we first moved to Tennessee the town we lived in was less than an hour’s drive from Lynchburg, home of the Jack Daniel’s distillery. When visiting family first came to town we decided to make the drive and take the tour. We were advised to get lunch first at Miss Mary Bobo’s. Miss Mary Bobo used to run a boarding house for the people who worked at the distillery. It has since been converted into a restaurant that still serves lunch family style around the table. When we called to make our reservation, the woman at the other end of the phone informed us, “we pass to the left, just like at your grandmother’s.” When you eat family style like that, you don’t just serve yourself, you serve everyone at the table. You pass the goodness around. The same is true of this table that Jesus invites us to. We aren’t invited as the hosts. Jesus is the host. It is his table, and at it two things happen. We are fed, nourished by his body as the source of our lives. And we serve each other. Because to be one who follows our servant Lord means to serve others. And this is where we practice, this is where we remember and rehearse what that looks like so that we can carry that same servant heart into the world, moving in the direction that we have been called to go.
Today is a Sunday that’s been set aside as worldwide communion Sunday. Today, as we come to this table, we are reminded that we don’t just share this table with the other people in this room. We share it with Christians of every stripe from every corner of the globe; people who break loaves of every kind that all essentially represent the same thing- the one body of which we are all a part. When I think of that, when I think of all those people coming to this table, it calls to mind the lyric of a song I have come to love. The bridge goes, “the door is always open/ and your picture’s on the wall/everyone’s a little broken/ and everyone belongs.” Then the chorus describes what I think Jesus has in mind. “I want a house with a crowded table/ And a place by the fire for everyone/ Let us take on the world while we're able/ And bring us back together when the day is done.”
May it be so, amen.