“Increase Our Faith!”

Every week at our St. John’s Church staff meeting we start by reading the coming Sunday’s Gospel reading. Before we could even read Luke 17:5-10 I started to chuckle. A thought ran through my head that was too funny not to laugh out loud.

 

The passage for Sunday recounts the Apostles imploring Jesus as they said, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied with famous words of a faith the size of a mustard seed, but I thought of him saying something different. Instead, what if Jesus had just replied to the Apostles request by saying, “Okay.”? When I shared this insight with the rest of the staff we all snickered for a moment, but now I keep thinking why is having even a little faith so tough? Why can’t Our Lord just grant our request? Why do we have to slowly build up our faith like a seed blossoming into a bush? Simply put, I think it is because having faith is tough stuff.

There are a lot of things that come easy to some of us. Each of us has different talents. That is one of the great things about our human race and Christ’s Body, we possess different skills that we may share with one another and with all Creation. Faith though seems a little bit trickier. Of all the spiritual gifts it feels like one that is both hard to come by and hard to sustain. How is this essential part of developing a deeper relationship with God so difficult to develop? Mostly, I believe it is difficult because it goes against some pretty primal instincts that we have developed as a species.

Faith is believing in the unseen. Faith requires having hope even in the face of fear. Faith means trusting even when there is no evidence or even evidence to the contrary. We say that we have an immortal God, but our invisible God who may even be in our midst can feel so hard to find. Often this may be because we are so focused on the trees that we cannot see the forest. Or, as I recently heard Father Carl Arico put it, “We are too busy focusing on a tiny chalk mark to see the entire blackboard,” which is God’s reality or the Ultimate Reality. 

I believe many of us want our faith to increase, just like the Apostles did; however, this process--because of our human nature--requires a lot to develop. This is not unlike a mustard seed taking time, water, light, and good soil to grow. Having faith is not as simple as God saying, “Okay!” instead we must daily relinquish our own control to God. This means that if we really yearn for a faith growth we must give the time, nourishment, energy, and environment for that to actually happen.

Relationships with loved ones and friends (just like our relationships with God) often start with a spark, but they take years of shared experiences, conversations, time, energy, and so much more to blossom into relationships that we give our entire trust. God loves us regardless of the time that we put into our relationship with God; however, what we get when we work on trusting God is a more fruitful existence that can navigate the ups and downs, the twists and turns of life. 

When we take time out of our day to put away other distractions, intentionally focus on God, sit in silence, say the Daily Office, read a devotional, rest in God through Centering Prayer, spend time serving others, or so many other disciplines we practice having faith in God by relinquishing our own control. Even one of these small practices can grow over time into something much larger, such that we trust that our entire lives are lived in the Ultimate Reality of God’s loving embrace. We may want Jesus to simply say, “Okay!” to our request of increasing our faith. And yet, the life-long journey of faithfully letting go of what we desire and consenting to God’s will that encompasses what we yearn for and what God dreams for us bears much more fruit... It is even more fruit than a mustard bush!

Would You Rather?

In college I looked forward to dinner more than most of my peers. After working diligently in the afternoon to get ahead on assignments and finishing cross-country or track practice from four o’clock to six o’clock in the evening I would head to McClurg Dining Hall for a well-deserved, leisurely dinner with my teammates. Most nights we would happily talk about running, class, world politics, economic trends, sports, and of course, college gossip; however, the best meals that I remember centered around the game “Would You Rather?”. 

 

My friend Joe Brew masterfully excelled at this game of proposing two equally difficult choices in the form of a question, such as, “Would you rather be able to fly or be invisible?” Often the debates that raged in the aftermath of these questions would leave teammates more at odds than our current political divide. The Sewanee Cross-Country team did not confine these discussions merely to the meal table, but often spent hours on long bus rides passing the hours engaging either/or choices. It was on one of these fateful rides that my friend Kyle Lester broke the game of “Would You Rather?”.

As we journeyed on towards some city in Kentucky or Tennessee for a meet the next morning, Kyle stood up on the bus and halted all the other proceedings surrounding a very good question about either losing an arm or a leg. Kyle, who is now or soon will be Dr. Lester, asked our group not a “Would You Rather?” question, but instead boldly inquired, “Would you eat poop?” No other option proposed, just plain and simple jaw-dropping brashness. The entire bus erupted in laughter. Not just because of the absurd subject matter, but also because Kyle seemingly did not get the nature of the game. All these years later, I still laugh at such a shocking and silly misuse of that productive game. In some ways I wonder if Jesus attempted to break his own days version of “Would You Rather?” in this coming Sunday’s gospel lesson.

Jesus lays out a softball in the world of “Would You Rather?” as he questioned his disciples, “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, `Come here at once and take your place at the table'? Would you not rather say to him, `Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink'?” The easy answer is “OF COURSE, I would rather say prepare my supper and you may eat and drink later!” However, given that Jesus spoke here to his apostles, a group of rag-tag fishermen, tax-collectors, and the poor working class I wonder if any of them would have had servants or slaves in the first place. So not only was this question a bad either/or choice, seemingly Jesus directed it to the wrong audience, but this was no game Jesus played, instead it was him laying out the challenging truth of trusting God.

Jesus went on to wonder, “Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’” We may believe that being faithful comes with some sort of award or congratulation; however, Jesus encourages his disciples and us, as beings who God has created from nothing, to remember who we serve. Living a life of being faithful, that is continuously trusting God, requires a disciplined approach of choosing to consent to God’s will being done “on earth as it is in heaven”. This sometimes leads to situations where we are put into smelly situations (pun intended). And yet, I wonder if the analogy Jesus chose points us even further.

With disciples who would not have possessed slaves this analogy sounds harsh and misguided, so could Jesus have been doing even more with this challenge of remaining faithful? Right after Jesus taught his disciples to pray (the Lord's Prayer) in Luke’s Gospel account (Luke 11) he wondered about God’s love for us. If we who are evil do not give snakes to our children when they ask for fish or scorpions instead of eggs, then how much more does Our Heavenly Father give us with the Holy Spirit? Perhaps the story from this week's Gospel can be seen as a challenge to give more abundantly, which might just shake up the structure of this world.

Instead of continuing to perpetuate a system of imbalance such that masters control the fate of slaves, which sadly still seems to be the case given the abounding economic inequality, what if we adopted a servant-based economy? Jesus showed us another way, a way in which the teacher served the students. A life of faith means continuously saying we trust God and consent to God’s will being done, but isn’t God’s will that all are willing to give such that all have enough? Isn’t God’s dream for this world one where we all share in the abundance? Isn’t God’s dream one that features the master and the servant dining at the Table together as friends? Would you rather things grow more divisive and disconnected or trust in a God who dreams this world has enough for us all if we would but share our abundance with others? That “Would You Rather?” seems too easy to answer!

The Unperceived

After reading a couple of great posts on Monday from Evan Garner and Steve Pankey about this coming Sunday's Gospel ("The Rich Man and Lazarus"), I found myself taken in a different direction than usual with this parable. As both blogging priests pointed out, to simply fall into the trap that Jesus is saying merely "be nice to poor people" is to mistake "the description for the prescription." Yes, we ought to go out of our way to be kind to those in need, but that is the outgrowth of life in Christ, rather than the ticket to that life in the first place. Instead of replicating their fine work, I find myself drawn to one fascinating word within Luke 16:19-31... HADES!

The word occurs in this particular part of the passage: "The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side" (Luke 16:22-23, italics added for effect). We might simply shake our heads and move on when we read that this rich man was being tormented in Hades, or Hell as it is often translated. "Of course, this rich man who was mean to poor Lazarus got booted down into the netherworld. Yes, this is precisely what this man deserves. In the end justice is served!" we say. This is like going to any action hero movie when finally at the end the good characters vanquish the cosmos of the villains and everything appears right in the universe. And yet, centuries have passed since the Lukan community put pen to paper to write this story, and I am not certain that how we understand Hell is how those in the early Christian community would have understood Hades. In other words, this is not so simple as good winning in the end.

Going back to the Greek this week I was surprised at how Hades gets translated. Strong's Concordance defines the word, "the 'unseen place,' referring to the (invisible) realm in which all the dead reside, i.e. the present dwelling place of all the departed (deceased); Hades." While this gets me part of the way to a different understanding, reading how one scholar translated the passage pushes me further. This Greek Interlinear phrases the passage in this way, "And in the unperceived on lifting up the [eyes] of him belonging in ordeals he is seeing Abraham from the far-place and Lazarus in the bosom of him." The unperceived here is the way Hades gets translated. It is the invisible place, but it also has a different tint to it here. Hades seems to be the place where those people who have not yet awaken go! This is a lot different than the rich man being tortured in the flames hell because he was mean.

One might say I am softening the blow here, but the Greek speaks clearly to me and connects to what Evan and Steve wrote. The ordeals that one goes through when unable to perceive the Kingdom of God and the torturing that one faces when sleepwalking through life makes it impossible to follow after Christ Jesus stand out as particularly strong themes in this section of Luke. Some will say that Hell does not exist. I believe God desires for none of God's children to suffer in distortion, disconnection, and disease for eternity. However, this passage challenges me to see that when we are blind to God's presence in our life we will experience hell in this life and even beyond this existence. Unlike the rich man we have heard the story of the Risen Lord, but our challenge is the same as his. Will we allow for that story to take hold in our lives, such that nothing else comes before following after Christ or will we allow the love of something else (wealth, status, possessions, power, prestige, fame, etc.) to cause us to live in the unperceived existence of ordeals?

The Biggest Loser

To give up my life even for a brief moment scares me to death. I yearn for control in every nanosecond of my life. I desire to have the world revolving precisely as I expect it will. I want nothing bad ever to happen to anyone I love or myself. As I reflect on these longing I realize the dark and dirty sin that is control. To give up my life even for a brief moment scares me to death, but God calls me and all of us to do precisely this.

“Those who want to save their life will lose it,” says Jesus in this Gospel lesson from Mark, continuing, “and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” The paradox of following Jesus comes precisely in this moment of letting go of all that control we work so hard to grasp. It is a paradox because somehow in the letting go we realize that we did not have control in the first place, and more importantly we gain something that we cannot possess if we are too busy holding on to this illusion of control.

Walking back just slightly in this Gospel account from Mark we discover Jesus’ first prediction that the Messiah, the Son of Man must undergo great suffering. Peter upon hearing this takes Jesus aside to rebuke his teacher. Famously Jesus calls Peter Satan, or stumbling block. Peter does not dress in a devil costume, but rather his reluctance to relinquish control of whom he believes the Messiah is causes him to stumble on his way of discipleship. If any want to follow Jesus they need only to pick up their crosses and do it. We say this often in church, but what does cross carrying look like in real life?

Today we remember John Coleridge Patteson who served as a missionary and bishop in Melanesia (think Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Fiji) during the middle of the 19th Century. Patteson had a propensity for picking up languages, which he honed during travels through Europe after graduation from Balliol College, Oxford. While serving as a lowly curate he took a call from Bishop G. A. Selwyn to serve in New Zealand. Here Patteson learned twenty-three languages of the Melanesian people. Horrifically, while visiting an island in the Santa Cruz group some islanders mistook the bishop for a slave-trader stabbing Patteson five times in the chest. The attack killed others in the bishop’s party as well.

Patteson witnesses to us a literal laying down of one’s life for Christ. A gift of learning other tongues and a love of sharing the Good News in people’s native language may cause one to face real harm. While most of us do not hear the same call as Patteson, Jesus says the same words to us that he spoke to the crowds and to Patteson. If we are to follow Jesus, we must lose our life, take up our cross, and gain new life through walking with Christ. Somewhere along the way, perhaps when Christianity became the state religion, we lost the wild danger of following Jesus. What we do when we say that our aim in life focuses upon subjugating ourselves so that Christ might live within us stands out as nothing short of radical. However, we often do not know how we might go about practicing this in our lives.

When we take time to stop what we would normally do and pray; when we pray for the broken world; when we sit in silence so that God might look upon us and love us; when we give our time, talent, and treasure; when we say the daily office; when we read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest Holy Scripture; when we do not respond to someone’s hate with hate, but instead with love; when we sacrifice what we are doing to serve someone else; when we truly hear someone else instead of merely wait for our turn to speak; when we see through the disguise that someone is wearing to see the Divine within the other, then in all of these instances we are practicing laying down our lives. Each day in these ways and millions more practice martyrdom, the laying down of the self, so that we may pick up our crosses and follow Jesus into life, death, and resurrection! Laying down our lives might be the scariest thing we ever do, but nothing will ever be as fulfilling as Christ living in our place.

See the Cross Differently!

Perhaps you have heard the quote made famous by Lenny Bruce, “If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.” This is shocking falling upon our ears; however, I wonder if we have become too sterilized to the sight of a cross. I mean think about it, when was the last time you were shocked to see a cross? Has this ever even happened to you?

In our Christian-saturated culture in the Southeastern United States we have become immune to the cross. Maybe if one happens upon a Catholic or Anglo-Catholic church with an almost nude Jesus crucified on the cross one might flinch, but otherwise it has simply become an important accessory to wear. However, on this Holy Cross Day we are charged to see the Truth of the Cross: what was an instrument of shameful torture and death has been transformed into a sign and symbol of, and gateway into eternal life.

We remember Holy Cross Day on September 14th as a result of the emperor Constantine and his mother the empress Helena constructing a monumental complex on the site of Calvary, which builders finished on this day in the year 335. What is now the Church of the Holy Speulchre had two distinct buildings: a large basilica used for the Liturgy of the Word and a round church for the Liturgy of the Table. This latter facility, which was merely called “the Resurrection,” had its Altar on the actual place where Jesus’ tomb was believed to be. What an image! The place of death transformed into the table of life! And, while this remembering of the constructing of this facility stands out as significant, what this day bids me to do is to see the Cross differently.

A few times in my life seeing a Cross affected me to my core. When I had my Cursillo crossed put over my head by Bishop Santosh Marray. The time I first served as crucifer when I was a child. And, most strikingly the day I stepped onto the campus of the Seminary of the Southwest where I was trained to be a priest.

Inside Christ Chapel no crosses hang on any walls. Very little, in fact resides on any of the funky asymmetrical insides of that space. Instead, the major feature that the space immediately calls one toward is the east window. Right outside that window sits a gigantic cross. This structure expands from bottom-to-top and the arms reach out to almost hug the viewer. Its three-sided nature ensures that wherever one is on campus the cross faces the seer. When I first saw this cross I was stunned. So many days I pondered how that cross reaching out in all directions calls us to remember how Christ Jesus transformed that shameful torture device into a way of resurrection for all of Creation.

In John’s Gospel for today Jesus could foresee that when he was lifted up he would draw all of Creation to him. On this Holy Cross Day we are drawn close to our Lord who forgave from the Cross, invited a thief into paradise from the Cross, and leads us into a life of Resurrection through that Cross. Jesus calls us to die to ourselves and no longer live for ourselves, but for Christ who died and rose again. It may not be every day that you are surprised by the Cross, but today allow the invitation of the Cross reach into your heart, so that you may die to yourself and live as a servant of Christ.

Results Based Spirituality

It happens to the best of us. We spend time and energy paying attention to outcomes whether they are how our favorite team fared over the weekend, how our candidate is polling, or how the markets end on a given day. Maybe it is human nature or our ever shortening attention spans, but something within us pushes us to oversimplifying everything down to only focus upon the results. Is this what God dreams for us?

In Acts 14:1-18 we hear two stories depicting heroes of faith sharing with others the Good News of God. However, the outcomes of the stories could not have been more different. Let us look back at Paul and Barnabas to learn about something beyond results-based living.

In a synagogue in Iconium the two apostles spoke such that many Jewish and Gentile people became believers. There were others who did not believe what the men said. And, as they continued to preach, teach, and show signs of God’s wonder many became angry. Both the Greeks and the Jews turned to violence in an attempt to shut the apostles up, as they attempted to stone the men, which led Paul and Barnabas to leave.

In Lystra the apostles did precisely the same thing, as they preached, taught, and showed signs of God’s wonder, but this time things were drastically different. A man who had been unable to use his feet and had never walked in his entire life heard Paul speaking. The message that the apostle spoke compelled the crippled man so much that when Paul intently looked at him his faith in God showed clearly. Paul said in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.” The man sprang up and began to walk around, which amazed the crowds.

As a result of this healing the crowds were so enthralled that they thought that Paul and Barnabas were Greek gods who had come to earth. They called Barnabas Zeus, king of the gods, and Paul they called Hermes, as he was the chief speaker. The apostles revolted against such comparisons claiming they were mere mortals. They even went on to direct the crowd’s attention away from worthless worship of lesser gods, so that they might turn towards the One, True God. Even in this though they were unsuccessful, as the people wanted to direct sacrifices to the men they thought immortal.

Two stories in this passage from the Acts of the Apostles. One was unsuccessful and the other was seemingly successful in making the masses happy, but even in Lystra they struggled to direct others to taking hold of the message of Christ. These two encounters beg the question what does success look like in God’s eyes?

In the first story the apostles converted many. In the second they cured, but who knows if the crowd went on to believe in the One, True God. If we are purely focused on the results perhaps we might feel better about the second story, but was the first one any less significant? How do we measure good results in our spiritual lives and in our lives in general?

Life in Christ does not have a scoreboard, political tracker, or stock ticker. Faith focuses upon consenting every day to God’s will for us not with how many souls we save. While success may make us feel good for a moment, we would do well to learn to dwell in the Truth that God will take care of the results. God invites us to live life in Christ and to teach, preach, and share his ways with others. When we trust in God the results take care of themselves.