Lectionary Reflection for Proper 22C on Luke 17:(1-4), 5-10

NOTE: The Lectionary Reading for Proper 22C begins at Luke 17:5, but to make sense of the apostles’ question and Jesus’ response, verses 1-4 are essential. For this reason, this reflection is based on Luke 17:1-10.

FAITH IN FAITH

“Increase our faith!” How often have you joined the disciples in that prayer? And how often have you felt deflated at Jesus’ response that mustard seed faith can make trees (or in Mark’s Gospel, mountains—see 11:22-23) throw themselves into the sea? I mean, if mustard seed faith can do that, then how microscopic must my faith be?

These responses to Jesus’ teaching expose our belief that faith can be measured and accumulated, that having more faith is a mark of spiritual achievement and status, and that faith is a divine currency that we can use to buy God’s blessings and answers to prayers. The way many of us have been taught to view faith is like a strange alchemical mix of magic fairy dust and spiritual capitalism. Every time we think to ourselves that we need more faith, every time we are told that our prayers weren’t answered because we didn’t have enough faith, every time someone’s sickness or disability is blamed on their lack of faith, we reveal our allegiance to this view of faith. Every time we feel certain that God is more likely to answer our prayers if we gather enough people to make the weight of faith so heavy that God has to respond, we display our conviction that faith is a spiritual commodity.

A few years ago, a congregant in a church I served asked me to pray for an issue they were dealing with. I responded by assuring them that I would pray with them rather than for them, because God would hear their prayers. They smiled and responded, “Yes, but we both know that he listens to you more than he does to us.” Somehow, despite the decades of preaching to the contrary that I know this person had heard, they were still convinced that clergy prayers carried more weight with God.

But these views of faith have almost nothing to do with the message and mission of Jesus. Authentic faith is not a spiritual commodity or a currency. It can’t be accumulated or earned like money, and ”more” of it doesn’t make it worth more in God’s eyes. As Francis Garcia writes, “Faith can’t be quantified on a line graph, as if saying ‘I have 25% more faith this year than last year!’ Faith does not increase like magic.”^¹ When Jesus speaks of faith and what faith can do, we often misunderstand him, because what he means is so very different from what our Western capitalist Christianity has told us.

We need to listen to Jesus’ words in Luke 17 again, with fresh ears, letting go of our assumptions and expectations. We need to take a moment to remember what has been going on in Luke’s Gospel up to now. We need to fill in the gap between Luke 16:31 and 17:1, left by the Lectionary, so we can understand what faith is for. And we need to consider where, in Jesus’ view, our faith is to be placed. When we do this, we will find that we have been freed of our magical, capitalistic view of faith, and it has been replaced with something far more useful.

WHAT IS FAITH FOR?

In many versions of the Christian religion, faith is essentially about two things: believing in Jesus’ divinity, crucifixion, and resurrection so we can win God’s forgiveness for our sins and go to heaven when we die; and getting God to meet our needs and requests when we pray so that we can be secure, healthy, helped, and financially comfortable. But these things aren’t even on Jesus’ radar. We have read our capitalist cultural values back into the Bible and made faith a spiritual transaction in which we put the currency of our faith into God’s heavenly bank account in return for God delivering blessings into our lives. Jesus, however, is speaking a completely different language.

In the last few weeks in the Revised Common Lectionary (from Luke 15:1-16:31), we have been meditating on Jesus’ teaching to a rather mixed crowd consisting of Pharisees and scribes, the disciples, and a crowd which included “tax collectors and sinners“.² The heart of Jesus’ teaching was the call to embody God’s hospitality in our dealings with one another. We have moved through three parables about lost things (a sheep, a coin, and a son—or two, depending on how you read it), the enigmatic parable about the shrewd manager,³ and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.⁴ In every one of these stories, Jesus highlighted some aspect of God’s hospitality and the consequences, especially for the Pharisees, if they failed to participate in God’s inclusive hospitality project.

Now in Chapter 17, we are told that Jesus turned to address the disciples once again. But as we have seen, throughout this section, the entire mixed crowd had been present and listening, regardless of which group Jesus was specifically addressing.⁵ Throughout this entire discourse, Jesus had been urging his listeners to embrace God’s reign of hospitality, inclusivity, compassion, equality, generosity, and grace. He had been trying, with increasing urgency, to get them to share his vision of a whole new societal order, a whole new way of living together as human beings, which removed the elitist hierarchies, entrenched reciprocity, systemic power games, relational cliques, and oppressive injustices in Jewish society. He had been teaching his followers about discipleship as embodying the values, priorities, attitudes, and actions of God’s reign, in contrast to those of the religious leaders.

Beneath all of this teaching was a simple, but challenging thought: there is power in small actions that can make a big difference. And this is what faith, in Jesus’ view, is for. As John Carroll writes, “We need faith that, despite the evidence of sight and sound, what we do matters; that we can make a difference for good; that God isn’t done with this world just yet”.⁶

The Lectionary picks up the narrative in verse 5 with the apostles’ plea for increased faith, but without the missing verses, we don’t understand why they felt such a deep need for this. Only when we include the very challenging words that Jesus spoke just before this can we make sense of their need for more faith.

Jesus said to his disciples, “Things that cause people to trip and fall into sin must happen, but how terrible it is for the person through whom they happen. It would be better for them to be thrown into a lake with a large stone hung around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to trip and fall into sin. Watch yourselves! If your brother or sister sins, warn them to stop. If they change their hearts and lives, forgive them. Even if someone sins against you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times and says, ‘I am changing my ways,’ you must forgive that person.” (Luke 17:1-4 CEB)

In the light of everything that has led up to this point, it is clear that causing “these little ones” to trip and fall into sin refers to failing to care for, serve, and provide hospitality to the poor, outcast, and marginalised members of society that Jesus had been speaking about, and with whom he regularly enjoyed meals. These were the people that the religious elites felt were unacceptable to God, and that they wanted to keep out of their social circles.⁷ They were the “lost ones” over whom heaven rejoiced when they were found.