Small Faith and Acts of Love that Change the World
Bethel UMC – Greenville, SC
Scripture Lesson: Luke 17:5-10
Recently Anthony mentioned a book to me. I was intrigued in that moment because of whatever it was we were discussing. Intrigued enough to get the book and start reading it even though I needed to be reading four other books for my classes.
The book is The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, by Shane Claiborne. Shane was on the cover of the last issue of the Interpreter, a magazine published by United Methodist Communications for church leaders and clergy. Seeking to live out what he believes is the way of Christ and of the early church, he has chosen to live as a new monastic, in a community called The Simple Way.
Shane lives and thinks differently than most Christians. He isn't interested in making you comfortable, but in challenging you to question how one lives out the Gospel message in all their daily life. He went seeking what it means to live as a Christian by going to Calcutta and working with Mother Theresa and a community of lepers. He returned to work at Willow Creek – a megachurch outside of Chicago. He lives among the poor, stands alongside the noncombatants in a war zone, and questions how we are to be the Church. For Shane, being the church is about living in community, relationship with God and one another – about loving each person.
Shane believes that we cannot live out our faith if we live safely distanced from those who struggle to live day to day – we need to have a face that we identify with the issues – then we won't focus on the issues but on people.
Shane's views are not to be quickly adopted without asking serious questions and prayerful discernment. He lives out faith in a radical way and some of his theology challenges the traditional church as well as the new megachurch. Therefore Shane's view of how to live out the Gospel is challenging and controversial. It is also threatening because it challenges us to find strength in vulnerability – being fully open to God and to others. It is a way of life that is very different than the culture that surrounds us.
Our culture often promotes the belief that bigger and stronger is better. One of the last chapters in this book is titled "Growing Smaller and Smaller …Until We Take Over the World". In it Shane discusses the "Parable of the Mustard Seed". He uses the version from the Gospel of Matthew, but it is also included in Mark and in Luke. In Luke it comes several chapters before today's lesson.
In the Parable of the Mustard Seed, Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed saying, "It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches."
Shane points out that this parable would have been challenging to Jesus audience. We tend to think about great things coming from small beginnings when we hear this parable. But it would have sounded strange to people who considered mustard - a weed to keep out of the garden. It wasn't even really much of a tree. It is classified as a shrub, growing about 10 feet tall but spreading wildly. Mustard was a weed that would take over a garden like kudzu on a bank or crabgrass in a yard.
Shane points out "The Jesus revolution is not a frontal attack on the empires of this world. It is a subtle contagion, spreading one little life, one little hospitality house, at a time. ..the harder people tried to eradicate it, the faster it spread. And in the end, even Paul caught the contagion. The mustard weed grabbed him."
The kingdom of God is something that is based on many small acts spreading like a weed – overtime taking over the garden. Shane's description reminded me of a sermon that I heard years ago about "crabgrass" faith – faith that spreads and hard to get rid of.
Shane goes on to point out that imagery that the audience would have been familiar with is the eagles or nations would make their homes in the branches of the cedars of Lebanon. Jesus implies that the small birds would come and nest in the branches of the Mustard tree. These are the birds normally kept out of the garden.
In other words, the kingdom of God is like a weed that hosts the undesirables.
Thinking about the "The Parable of the Mustard Seed" in this context and in the context of Shane's book influenced the way I heard today's lesson. A lesson that follows Jesus warning that stumbling blocks would come and woe to those by whom they come, and that they must forgive if someone repents even if it is seven times a day. No wonder the disciples asked for more faith. How could they possibly live the way Jesus was telling them? How can we?
Jesus replied, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted n the sea,' and it would obey you."
It is easy to assume that if we just had more faith we could do greater things, bigger and better things. This must have been what the disciples thought. But I wonder if Jesus isn't telling them that if they would apply the faith they have they would change the world. If faith the size of a mustard seed can uproot a tree and plant it in the sea – that little faith changes the way the world is ordered.
Shane's book is full of stories about acting out his faith in ways that many would think require great faith – going to Bagdad to be with noncombatants during the bombings, going to Calcutta and caring for a lepers' wounds, breaking laws to cry out for justice, and living without the security of a huge retirement fund. (The proceeds of his book are donated to organizations who live out faith in small steps that make a big difference to individuals.) However, it is clear that Shane doesn't see the megachurch model as the model to really change the world. Shane believes that breaking bread, blowing bubbles, laughing and playing together – being in relationship is how we change the world. We change the world when living out faith means loving one another.
Loving one another involves thinking about how our actions will impact someone else's life and their faith. Loving one another and being in relationship involves forgiving one another. Living this way isn't easy but it is what Jesus implies is expected in his story about the master and slave. Putting others before us is just what we ought to do.
Truly loving people doesn't require greater faith – it requires living out our faith by seeing Jesus in others, by treating them with respect, by not condemning them but praying for them, and by forgiving them when they hurt us. These are difficult tasks because they require us to put Jesus and in turn others before our self. But these tasks can start in small. They begin by smiling at the person on the street, by speaking to the outcast, by taking time to get to know someone, and by listening to them. These small acts can begin to tear down the walls that separate us from one another.
Living out faith in loving relationships does have the power of the mustard seed – the power to spread, the power to give the outcasts a safe place, and the power to change the world.
The difficulty is that we must learn that power of our faith is not based on numbers, physical strength, or political power. The power of our faith is sacrificial love. The greatest power was released when the world tried to crush Jesus – resurrection hope, the full extent of God's love and the presence of the Holy Spirit were offered to us when the world tried to crush Jesus.
We must follow Jesus not just admire Jesus, if we are to change the order of this world. We must act out of love not fear, seek reconciliation and relationship not judgment and condemnation, and trust God not ourselves. When we live this way we bind ourselves to one another with God's love, as the song said.
Today is World Communion Sunday, a day to remember Jesus sacrifice for all of us and our connection to those around the world, to those dying in Calcutta, to those whose homes are in places where wars rage, to the homeless in Love Park, to those worshiping in the suburban megachurch, to the person kneeling next to us, and to all the saints who have gone before us. This is an act of faith – an act that acknowledges God's love for us and one in which we receive God's grace.
Grace we will need to live out our faith, because there will be times that it doesn't seem like we are being successful. However, as Mother Teresa said, "We are not called to be successful, but we are called to be faithful." We are called to live out our faith – even if it is as small as a mustard seed.
Let us pray,
Gracious and merciful God, we often have faith that seems very small. Help us to live out that faith by getting to know one another and loving one another. As we love one another, may our faith grow like the mustard tree - spreading wider, firmly established, and creating a safe place for those you love and care about even when the world doesn't believe they belong. May we change the world by faithfully living a life of love. Through Jesus we pray, Amen.
