Pentecost 17C, 2022
Luke 17: 5-10
Is the Christian Faith going to disappear or not? Is any form of religion going to survive into the future? All these are big questions that currently seem to be driven by a level of fear uncovered by the examples all around the world. One might suggest that our obsession with self and the importance of individualism and personal place in the human psyche is in need of examination. It is beginning to seem as though the age of reason is over and the age of personalization is becoming stretched by the need for collaboration and collective approaches to life. Control of the masses seems to be too complex to understand and the expending of competitive energy seems to be struggling as; out of synch with the rising anxiety within the populace and there is an increasing resorting to winning at all costs and to the closure through some sort of violence over dominance of expectation. Is protest allowed to include a justifiable violent act? Is Rugby allowed to equal physical assault upon another? Is the game about exterminating the other by any means. The administrators and the referees seem to be the targets in the face of their attempts to protect individuals. Is this a reaction to the futility of violence? Is it an attempt to sanitize the direction society is moving?
When the apostles ask Jesus to adjudicate on the assault on faith, they perceive his answer is to say ‘Increase your faith’ because your questions are born out of a lacking of it. Its not about expecting your faith to remain strong and comforting, you have to go the extra mile, you have to live as though it is beyond question and then you will know.
Three years ago I quoted an Australian social commentator named Hugh Mackay who was writing for various newspapers, around 2004, and in one of his columns he wrote about the Australian experience of this paradox between sport and anxiety. This suggests that it might be a Western problem as opposed to just a NZ one. He quoted from a survey published… by Edith Cowan University that said; See how chirpy, sports mad and easy going we all are? Well, yes, but see how anxious and insecure we are, too”. I suggested back then that there is this paradox at work that is clouding our thinking or making it harder to really know what is going on.
We are in the throws of local body elections and politicians wanting to be re-elected (or elected), tend to play on that sense of anxiety. Reading all their desired contributions and what they intend to do. What they promise. One would have to say that in many cases they are caught up in this game of paradox. How do they win your vote as an ideal person to maintain the ideals of democratic leadership, collective interests as well as frighten us into thinking that they will control all the ills of sector interests, profiteering corporations and runaway institutional greed and corruptible power? They count on us wanting to seek out security and comfort, rather than risking the so-called stresses and challenges of change and they do this by promising to alleviate perceived burdens of high rates, high pollution, traffic congestion, proper ecological policies, accurate measurement and strong audit principles etc. I am not saying this is wrong or not to be expected but rather calling for an awareness of the nature of fear-based change. We read of the like in our Hebrew Scripture from Lamentations, The city the nation, the faith are under pressure for change and they feel it.
Similarly, Luke the storyteller has the disciples of Jesus in the first part of today’s reading, making a ‘comfort’ or ‘security’ request of him: ‘make our faith greater’ they ask. But, the storyteller says, Jesus’ replies: unleash, expend, use… the faith you already have. Faith is a style by which life and work are done. It’s not a fossil fuel, that must be hoarded and marketed. Faith is the eradication of probabilities says Johnathon Sacks, and the championing of possibilities. I would add that it is time to dare to imagine, dare to imagine a new world, anew way and of course this means a way of live as opposed to a way of fear. It is not about escapism in sport or a redirection of concern. It is not about legalizing marijuana and providing another mind-altering drug. It is about increasing faith, increasing trust, increasing a realistic engagement with the truth. It’s a way of seeing and a way of being.
Reflecting on my own religious journey, and re-iterating what I said then, I have to admit that there were times when I understood ‘faith’ as a collection of knowledge, beliefs, affirmations, and memorized Bible verses. That was my biggest fear in fact because I have never been able to rote learn much at all so quoting bible verses draws a blank from me. Looking back, I think I probably understood ‘faith’ as something that could be measured by volume. If I studied hard or worked diligently or impressed my bible class teacher, I could increase my faith. Trouble was I could never study hard enough. I am an experiential learner so book study or any sort of induced study was hard work.
I have to say again that I was relieved somewhat when I heard that faith is not dependent upon a certain belief but rather a way of life. Andrew Greeley, poet, priest and sociologist said: “There is no such thing as a little faith any-more than there is a little pregnancy. Faith is an overwhelming power no matter how weak it may seem”. Nothing was said by Andrew and others, about faith being about a set of beliefs or affirmations… even though honest theological thinking is important. Nothing was said about faith being the provision of answers to a set of questions… even though an intelligent religion is more-healthy than an unbelievable one. Nothing was said about shooting God into the hearts of others with some sort of wonderful life changing set of words called a sermon. Proclamation has become an active political tool that expects something that mirrors someone else’s idea of ecstatic revelation. We are all supposed to know what evangelism feels like and looks like. Rather, the comments of those who invite us to question this need to have faith are inviting us to recognise and acknowledge the present-ness of God already here or there! I thing this faith that Jesus was talking about is like the faith revealed by the devastating emptiness of outrage or utter despair that comes when someone breaks the trust one has in them. There is nothing worse than the loss of trust and as we know trust is a closer word to faith than is belief.
From a study of the ‘historical’ Jesus it seems he recognised the presence of faith in the most unlikely of places. Why? Because faith is an action rather than a commodity. You can’t have it but you can do it. And in most cases, it is an action, a launching out, a moving on against what appears to be overwhelming odds. Is the church in decline? What is the decline in attendance telling us? Is it about the demise of the church or is it about seeing it through faith-filled eyes? Is it already here in another form and calling upon our imagination? Is it rather that our questions are missing the mark? I like New Testament scholar Brandon Scott’s comment when he says: “Theology can never begin by assuming that it already has the answer. Any theology that does not begin with radical doubt is basically dishonest” he says. (Scott 2003). I like that!
For where there is radical doubt, there is also the possibility of new beginnings, of imagination, of hope. Probabilities become possibilities. Of change. Because as philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said: Life refuses to be embalmed alive!
But this is only the first part of today’s story. An important part to be sure because it gives us the challenge to our assumptions about faith and truth and it provides us with another way of seeing. The second part – the bit about slaves or servants is a little different. It jars our 21st century sensibilities in that Luke reflects the social assumption of Christianity around the end of the first century and the beginning of the second. We might call them conservative but it could also be the rise of literalism and the influence of Greek and Roman thinking. For us it is also from this same period that we get the pseudo-Pauline Pastoral Epistles – Timothy and Titus – with their household codes that exhort Christians to reflect proper respect to those above them in the social order: wives to husbands, children to fathers, slaves to masters. I say pseudo because the social, political and religious assumptions are seeking to legitimize Christianity within the culture making it more palatable with Greek and Roman thinking, not unlike what we do when we export the gospel. Think like me because it is better. We take with us the basic myth and we manipulate the contextualization of it in order to win votes or increase attendance.
In these collections as in this Lukan saying the radical vision of Jesus has given way to the collective instinct that traditional values should not be challenged (Jenks. Faith Futures web site, 2010). And once again the link between the story and the saying can be found in the contemporary call of politicians wanting to be elected or re-elected, with their claims for “family values” and faith-based engagement in party politics. Greg Jenks, Australian progressive biblical scholar, asks: Are Gospel values to be found in historical expressions of human society, or in a prophetic critique of any and every human institution
that claims ultimate value? (Jenks. Faith Futures web site, 2010)
He writes: “Conservatives opposed to homosexuality appeal to the Bible as if it provided timeless truths free of the cultural conditioning of its authors and original audiences. I would tend to agree but condition it by saying that the term conservative is no longer able to be so clearly defined. Some conservatives value context above concrete creed. To their chagrin, progressives also appeal to the counter-cultural instinct of the faith tradition that birthed the Bible in the first place…” We wouldn’t have the bible if some didn’t want to preserve the truth as they saw it. But he goes on to make what I reckon is this important comment: “The Bible does not serve either side well in such disputes. It is a flawed text insofar as it assumes and promotes such things as slavery, demon possession, ethnic cleansing, racial superiority, a three-tiered universe, and the subordination of women. In its defense it is poetry and story used in a literal and artificial way, It is experiential in metaphorical in nature and thus always living.
Such realities should be an embarrassment to traditionalists and progressive alike. The Bible does not fit neatly with our cultural assumptions… The immense spiritual value of the Bible may lie more in its capacity to empower our human quest than its ability to solve or resolve our immediate challenges” says Jenks. (Jenks. Faith Futures web site, 2010).
And here’s the link with part one of our text. We find out what life is all about through the living of it. It is always the new that matters, time is a measurement we don’t need right now but rather later because we are always becoming. To be alive is to be becoming. And this is what faith is all about: a way of living, an attitude, a vision, that creates us daily. Like good cheese or good wine, a matured faith is a gradually maturing process. So even if your faith is like a small seed particle you have within your grasp a potent life force. So just do it, get on with it. Love, love and love again/ Unleash your faith now. Its time. Amen.
Notes:
Scott, B. B. 2003. “Father knows best! Where is fundamentalism taking us? In private circulation from the author.
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