“What's the Least You Can Believe?”

A Sermon Based Upon Luke 17: 1-10

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Pentecost 20c, October 6th, 2013

  "The Lord 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.” (Luke 17:6 NRS)

In my study I have a new book with disturbing title: “What’s the least I can believe and still be a Christian?”  That title disturbed me because it represents the spirit of the times which asks, How can I get something for nothing”?  That is, how can I get what I want without putting in the time, the hard work, the blood, sweat and tears?   It seems that everyone wants what they want, but what they don’t want is to do what it takes to get it.  

Consider these situations where people try to get something from nothing: 

·         “At the lottery stand in Chicago that sells more lottery tickets than any other: Hannah's Finer Food & Liquors sells more lottery tickets than any other place.   A reporter goes there and meets two men who want to get rich quick.  One is trying to win the lottery by spending $3,000 to $4,000 a year on it, so it's hardly something for nothing. But still, he hopes.  The other man is a model of hopefulness: he plays the lottery even though he thinks it's fixed. That's how much people want to believe you can get something for nothing — even though we know we can't.

·         A documentary entitled, Hands On A Hard Body by filmmakers Rob Bindler, Chapin Wilson and Kevin Morse, tells of a contest held every year by a Nissan dealership in Longview, Texas.  Twenty-four people stand around a $15,000 hard body pickup truck.  When the starting whistle blows, each person puts one hand on the truck. They wear gloves, so as not to mess up the paint job.  And they stand there ... and stand there ... until one by one, people get tired and drop away, and one person is left standing.   That person gets to keep the truck. One person was back again after losing the year before.   He says a contest like this is not easy money, because you slowly go crazy from sleep deprivation.

·         Bob Helm helps people make a living by donating their bodies to science for medical experiments.  Bob says he wouldn't encourage people to do spinal tap studies or psychoactive drugs.   He says that the work he promotes is a much better job than most nine-to-fives.  It is risky, but everything is.

·         Finally, Dirk Jamison, once a writer, gave up a 9-to-5 job and succeeded in getting something for nothing: he decided he'd feed the family by diving into dumpsters for free food.  Dirk is now the author of Perishable: A Memoir which tells how his family learned to live on trash.    http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/62/something-for-nothing.

So, what would you do to get something for nothing?  In applying this to faith, many people today want exactly that; they want a church where they can attend and be entertained, they want a church that offers them all kinds of programs for their family, but they don’t want to have to lead a program themselves.  People want a faith that gives them an anchor in the storm, but they don’t what to ever have to take the ship out to sea.  This ‘least’ kind of faith does not sound like good faith, does it?  But interestingly, in our text today, Jesus is speaking highly of a faith that sounds somewhat like that.  You remember Jesus words; “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say, be uprooted and planted in the sea and it would obey you. (Luk 17:6 NRS).  Did you catch what Jesus is saying, “If you had the faith the size of a mustard seed….”?  That’s like saying with the little faith you can have, if you really have it, you could do some pretty amazing things.  “If” you had it….that is.   

A LITTLE FAITH CAN BE BIG

This discussion about faith in this text comes in response to apostle’s request for more faith.  “Increase our faith!” they asked.  But Jesus implies they don’t need more faith, but they simply need to use the “little” faith they have.   Since Jesus surprises them and us by smiling upon such ‘little’ faith, let’s ask again: what is the ‘least’ or the ‘smallest’ amount of faith you can have and still be a Christian?  

In the book that I mentioned, the author is not talking about small faith, but he is talking about getting our faith down to the size of the things that matter most.  The problem is that many people believe too much, not too little.   People get confused about faith and start adding all kinds of things they think you have to do to have ‘true’ faith.   They add things like what kind of Bible you ‘must’ read to be a Christian, what kind of politic you ‘must’ vote, or what kind ‘music’ you like, what kind of ‘doctrines’ you must follow, or what kind of stance you have about some ‘hot button’ issue that is current today.   Churches and Christians might say you have to believe this or not believe in that, but amazingly many of those ‘beliefs’ that are on people's lists have nothing to do with Jesus or what the New Testament actually said.    Nowhere does Jesus say you have to be Baptist, you have to read the King James Bible, you have to be a Republican, or you have to watch Fox or CNN News.   But the Bible does speak about repenting of sins, following Jesus, selling our possessions, and giving to the poor.  We like to change what matters.    

We humans are as good about ‘adding’ things to faith, as we are about ‘subtracting’ things from faith.  

The opening chapter of Martin Theilen’s book is another case and point.  Many people believe that God causes everything to happen, including cancer, car wrecks, and other catastrophes, but Pastor Thielen does not agree.  “Although God can bring good out of evil, God does not cause evil, tragic, things to happen.”  And there many other things Pastor Thielen says people don’t have to believe to be a Christian, but you get the point.   You can go and check out his book yourself.   I want to get back to what Jesus called the most important matters of faith.  

In our text, Jesus is not trying to clear up a misunderstanding, as much as he is trying to give understanding to what true faith means in the first place.   Jesus wants the disciples to know that faith does not start ‘big’, but it starts ‘small’.   Faith does not always get everything right, at least not at first, but it gets the main thing right, even from the beginning and this makes a big difference.   And, according to Jesus, when you have the right kind of ‘small’ faith, you can do some really ‘big’ things with it.   So, let’s consider for a moment; what is ‘small’ faith?  What is the core element of faith that starts small, but can grow bigger and bigger when we start right?

If you look at what just came at the beginning of this chapter, you find Jesus exhorting the disciples to beware of causing ‘little ones’ to stumble (17: 1-4).  Listen you how important Jesus says are the most smallest, must basic elements of faith when he tells the disciples in verse 3: “Be on guard, if another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive”.  Jesus understands that “correction” and “forgiveness” are the most basic elements of Christian faith.   If you do these small things well in a Christian fellowship; that is, if you do them with a Christian attitude, then you can also learn to do the big things well.  But if you don’t do these small things well, then you can’t do the big things either.  And you not only can’t do them, you might hurt the growing faith of young, new Christians.

I recall several years ago a situation in a particular church where there was a matter that divided people.  It doesn’t matter what the issue was, but I assure you the whole issue was not something that was in the Bible.   It almost never is.  But what was in the Bible is what everyone forgot:  Things like speaking the truth to each other; loving each other, not gossiping, serving each other, and making sure you go to a person that offends you; and forgiving and respecting each other.   It was all those things that everyone neglected that ‘offended’ the young believers who never came back to that church; some never went to church ever again.

Do we get the ‘small’ most basic things right?  When we do, church grows.  When we don’t, church stagnates, and worse, churches die.    Jesus will make sure of that because he says, “it would be better if the person who offends a little one would have a millstone hung around their neck and be cast into the sea, that to offend one of these little ones" and have to answer to God.   Churches and Christians who fail to get the small things right, endanger their witness, their future, and their whole existence.   To Jesus, it’s not the ‘big things’ that matter  most, but it’s the small things; the most basic things we expect and need from each other are the things that ensure we will have a witness and a word in the world. 

Again, we need to realize the importance of the smallest things.   Recently a professor at Harvard, E.O. Wilson says that we are in a time of unparalleled discovery in the field of microbiology and similar fields of study.   He says that up to now, Science has only identified 1 to 5% of living things.   This means that that 95 to 99% of living organism are microscopic, like viruses, bacteria, slimes, fungi, and all kinds of sea creatures we haven’t ever seen.  The future of ‘big life’ he says, is in the ‘small life’.  (http://www.drbilllong.com/LectionaryIII/Lk17.html).

Jesus also wants us to ‘think small’ when it comes to faith.  He wants us to know that the key to our life together, is not having the big ministries, becoming the big church, or making a big impact in our community.  The really big thing the church can get right is the ‘small things’;  like holding people’s hands through crisis,  visiting someone whose hurting and alone, taking time to find out what is going on with our neighbor.  If we are not doing these things, then watch out for the millstone!   Our faith and witness is worse than dead.  

And it’s the same in our personal lives.  If we are going after the big things, but forgetting the needs of our families, then watch out for the millstone.   Life does not consist of getting the ‘big things’, but it consists of getting the little things right; like carrying for our parents, taking time for our children, keeping your marriage alive, caring for your neighbors and making sure we are together in faith, worship, mission and purpose in the church.

FAITH IS WHO YOU TRUST

Why does Jesus get so personal about our faith?   To put it simply, faith is everything we are or our lack of faith is everything we aren’t.  This is why Jesus says small faith can do big things, like move mountains.  Faith is the key and foundation to everything we become.  If you want to get a picture of how important faith was to Jesus just scan through Luke’s gospel and consider what Jesus said about ‘faith’.  Here are some examples:    

(1) Luke 5.20:   The people who brought the paralyzed man to Jesus brought him up on the roof of the house to let him down to Jesus' presence because of the press of the crowd.  How did Jesus respond? "When he saw their faith he said, your sins are forgiven…."(5:20).  Faith was the key to forgiveness.

(2) Luke 7: 9: The centurion sent servants to Jesus to urge Jesus to heal another servant "long distance." The centurion's message was to the effect that he, too, was a man under authority, who gave commands (and implicitly obeyed commands too). Jesus' response is, "I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith" (9). Faith enabled the healing power of God to be released.

(3) Luke 7: 50: While at dinner with a Pharisee, Jesus was interrupted by a woman from the city, a sinner, who bathed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.  Jesus used this action as an object lesson on gratitude to Simon, his host.  Jesus' point was that the woman's sins, which were many, were forgiven her because she "showed great love."  As a result Jesus said, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace" (7:50).  Faith enabled her to find the peace of God in her life.

(4) Luke 8:48:  Finally, when Jesus was passing through the crowds, a woman suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years broke through, touched Jesus' garment, and was healed from her flow of blood.  Jesus asked who touched him.  When the woman explained what she had done it led immediately to her healing. "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace" (8:48).  Faith was the key to wellness and wholeness---to both being and staying well.  (Thanks to Bill Long for the examples: http://www.drbilllong.com/LectionaryIII/Lk17II.html).

In all these instances "faith" is something more like ‘who do you trust’ that ‘what do you believe?"  Do you see that?   It is not just that any of these people had the right kind of understandings of faith, but it is because they had simple faith in Jesus.  Faith is much less about getting all the doctrines right, but it is most essentially having simple trust in God---which is, trusting that Jesus gets it right.   Jesus is the one who has the power over the wind and the waves.  Jesus is the one who holds everything together.  When the disciples were asking Jesus to ‘increase their faith’ they were not asking Jesus to explain all his teachings about faith, but they were asking JESUS for more faith and trust in him.   They wanted to have the faith and trust that Jesus had.  

I remember a sermon that was preached at Ridgecrest Conference Center back in 1987.  It was a dark time, when some people were fighting over the right interpretation of the Bible.   Both sides believed that the bible was true, but both had different views about ‘how’ the Bible became true in our lives.   Some said you had to take the Bible very literally.  Other’s said they took the Bible seriously, but not always literally.   What they were discussing confused most people.  What all this arguing was doing was destroying the unity of our great denomination, and it did.   Ever since that day, the denomination has been in decline. 

But what I will never forget about that conference, besides going away heart broken, was a sermon that one preacher gave about the right interpretation of the Bible.   He said that once he was in the bedroom of a dear lady who was dying.   He was reading the Scripture to her.  Every time he finished a story or read a verse, the dear, saintly lady would open her eyes and say to the preacher,  “That was a good one, wasn’t it?”   This is what trust is.   This is what faith means.  It means we look into the heart of what Jesus was saying, being and doing and we say, “HE WAS A GOOD ONE, WASN’T HE?”   He is the kind of person we want to be.  He is the kind of Lord we want to have.  He is the kind of God we believe in.  We TRUST OUR LIVES TO HIM. 

Again, what we must not miss is this: When we hear the disciples ask for an increase in faith, we might be tempted to think they were asking for some more larger quantity, or some measurable quality of faith.  Some people will read what Jesus says about Mulberry Trees being uprooted and planted in the sea as ridiculous.   But my guess is, you’d think differently if you were living in Florida and a sink hold opened up and swallowed your house, or swallowed the ‘tree’ before you into the sea that exists ‘under the house.’  My guess is that you would also see this text differently if you were living in Colorado and a wall of water came suddenly came crashing down the mountain washing everything away.   We just don’t realize how everything we have, even the ground we stand on is not eternal, but is all built something we might call faith.   Faith is what will outlive and outlast all the things we know, be they mountains, trees, or houses and lands.   Could we see this as the meaning of Jesus words about faith?   Faith is bigger and stronger than any tree or any mountain.   For Luke and for the all of the NT authors, this kind of ‘strong’ faith is not so much something we have or can hold on to, but it’s something that has and holds on to us, when the mountain move, when the earth shakes, as the oceans swell and when the rains fall.   Faith is the rock that will not be moved, not the sand that will shift. In other words, faith is everything and it has all our heart, or it has nothing of us at all. Faith is what we put our ‘feet’ down upon and stand upon, or we are not standing on any kind solid ground at all.     

FAITH AS WHAT YOU SHOULD DO

The final picture of faith---the kind of faith that gets the smallest matters right, comes in the ending parable Jesus gives about the slave.   This could be an offensive picture, but Jesus is not teaching that slavery is good, or acceptable.   At the time Jesus taught, the Jews were practically ‘slaves’ to the Romans.   He is not condoning slavery, but Jesus is taking the ‘slavery’ of his own people and giving them a spiritual lesson that they can fully understand because they are living it.   Again, it is the simplest of lessons.   Jesus says that if you are a ‘slave’, don’t expect you master to do you any favors.  You are a slave.   Don’t expect to be ‘thanked’ for being a slave.   While you are in that position, the best you can do is what you are supposed to do, what you are ordered to do, and what you are expected to do.  

What kind of spiritual lesson is this?  It is a spiritual lesson about what God expects from a ‘faithful’ person.  The picture of an obedient slave is all God expects from any of us.  It is not the picture of an Einstein, a great Scientist, a wealthy person, and Entrepreneur or some other shaker or mover.   God does not expect you or me to move mountains, but to have faith that can.   God does not expect that we all will grow the kind of faith that can change the world or even change the mind of people around us, but to have the simple kind of faith changes our own attitude about everything.   The faith that Jesus expects from all of us is the simplest and greatest expression of faith of all: Do what you are supposed to do when you know it is your job to do it.   In other words, “Bloom where you are planted."  Don’t waste your time trying to be something you’re not, or only dreaming of what else you could do or be if you were someone else.   Great faith begins in much more simple or humble place: “Do what you must do!”  “Do what you should do!”  “Do, what you know it is your responsibility to do and let God do the rest.”

The other day on TV News, I saw someone who does something I could never do.  It was Basketball player, LeBron James.  All of us know he is the probably the greatest basketball player alive today.  He has great skill.  He is a great leader on the court.  He is at the top of his game.  He is also a doing some wonderful things with his position in life.   In the news spot I saw, James is spending his off season, working at his home, catholic High School in Akron, Ohio, called St. Vincents and ST. Marys.  He is working not only with the school but with children in some low income areas, promising bicycles if they work hard and stay in school.  He actually does hands on work with the kids and he backs up his work by caring for his own children and loving his wife.  James is not perfect, but he is doing what he can, with the position he has, and he takes his responsibility seriously to ‘do what he must do’ and ‘what should be done’.   This is how he practices great faith by reaching out to help children in need.

But what can you are I do?  We can’t be LeBron James and we certainly don’t have his money or position?   Besides no one could say that LeBron James is not doing everything that needs to be done---but he is doing something.   And more than that, he is he is doing, as Jesus says, what any ‘servant’ should do with their position.  He is doing what ‘should be done’!    But the question is, why does LeBron James believe he is the position to do these kinds of things?   What you need to see and what he wanted the world to see are the words on the locker room at his catholic school, where LeBron James learned some greatest, but simplest, and perhaps most basic values for his own life.  Every time he and his teammates left to play the there was a sign on the wall they were required to respect, touch, and obey as they went out the door to play.   On that sign were some very simple, basic, easy to understand, but hard to implement words---words that everyone was expected to play by and live by.   The words were small, but great: "humility, unity, discipline, thankfulness, servanthood, integrity, and passion."  It was if LeBron James wanted the world to know that he was not doing what he was doing because of LeBron James, but he was doing what he was taught to do, told to do, was even ordered to do with his life while at that catholic school.  That is what made him and his work great. (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/lebron-james-interview-2013-miami-heat-star-brings-19945630).

Jesus’ teaching on faith should teach us all that is smallest things that lead to the greatest things in all our lives.   This plays out all the way through the teachings of Jesus.   Jesus uses the ‘simplest’ and ‘smallest’ things in life to teach us the biggest truths.   Jesus requires not that we move mountains, but that we have ‘faith’ that can move mountains.   Jesus does not ask us to do the impossible, but to trust in the God, with whom all things are possible.   Jesus does not ask us to have ‘big faith’ but to have faith that starts with the smallest expression, just the size of a mustard seed.   

Maybe today, the great faith you need in your life might start with the smallest step in the right direction.   If you take a step in Jesus’ direction today, I can’t promise you that the sky is the limit, but I can promise you that you will ‘increase’ you faith and you will ‘decrease’ your chance to ‘stumble’ or to cause others to stumble, because you didn’t do what you know you are supposed to do.   Amen.