Proper 22C / Ordinary 27C / Pentecost +17
October 6, 2019 Sermon
Lamentations 1:1-6; Lamentations 3:19-26; Psalm 37:1-9; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10.
There is a saying that goes, “it’s like riding a bike.” It’s referring to something that, once you’ve learned it, usually as a child, you never forget how to do it. I have a confession to make. Until just a few years ago, I couldn’t corroborate that statement, because I never learned to ride a bike as a child. A few years ago, though, I decided it was time to learn so now I’m a beginner cyclist.
While I am by no means an expert on a bike, while reading the texts from our lectionary and thinking about how these texts may apply to us today, it occurred to me that faith is like riding a bike. Now, like most metaphors, it isn’t perfect. There are many ways that faith is not like riding a bike. But, from someone who’s been on a bike and who’s been an observer of bike riding, I’d like to offer to you three ways in which faith is a bike, not a car.
The first way in which faith is a bike, not a car, is that having faith does not guarantee us a comfortable ride.
In a car, you might have comfortable seats, and lots of controls to make you comfortable. You might be able to control the temperature, and set up cruise control. If it starts raining outside, you’re kept protected and dry. If it’s windy, you can close your windows and your hair won’t even get tangled. If you’re going up the mountain, your car might feel it, but you won’t do any extra work.
Riding a bike is different. It takes some exertion, first of all. If you’re going up a hill, you’re going to feel it. If it rains, you will get wet. Your backside might even feel sore from sitting on a bike for a long period of time.
There is a great temptation to believe that, if we have faith— or some might even say, enough faith— we will have a comfortable ride in life. That we will be protected from the elements, the tragedies or suffering of life. There are some who would even propose that if we have faith, things will be given to us, and it would be easy to follow Christ. And that if we encounter difficulties with life or with being a follower of Jesus, it must mean that we do not have enough faith.
While this belief may seem attractive to us, the witness of the stories of the people of God in the Bible, and the life and teachings of Jesus himself point to a different reality. Scripture shows us that the people of God, called as they were to be the light of the world, were no strangers to difficulties and to suffering. All you need to do is spend some time reading the book of Lamentations and some of the Psalms to see the depth of grief and suffering that the people of faith endured.
The book of Lamentations vividly describes the pain and grief of a people who have been torn by war, captured and taken away from their homeland. Some scholars who have studied the writings of Lamentations have noted that they describe what today we would call symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. These are the records of people who experienced traumatic events which left them wounded.
Not only is faith not a guarantee of immunity from suffering, but being a disciple of Christ in itself can present difficulties. It means following a different order than what is commonly accepted in the world. It means choosing the kingdom of God over the ways of the world. Everyone knows that going against the flow of what is commonly expected or valued in the world is not usually easy.
It’s no wonder then, that the disciples asked for more faith. If you look at the verses right prior to this request from the disciples, you will see that Jesus had just told them that causing a little one to stumble is a very serious thing. Further, if another disciple sins against us and repents, we must forgive time and time again. In other words, our actions affect others, and how we treat each other matters. Forgiveness is freely given to us, and being a follower of Christ means freely extending it to others. These are not easy things. This week, the news coverage of forgiveness extended from a young man to the woman who shot and killed his brother reverberated in every news outlet, because people recognized this as very difficult and unusual. It’s much easier to talk about having faith when it involves reading the Bible and worshiping God while sitting by the lake. It’s another thing when we talk about relating to people. Charles Schulz is rumored to have said, “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand.”
As the disciples understood the difficulty involved in discipleship, and perhaps as they contemplated the danger they faced from the world in their life of faith, their response was to ask Jesus to increase their faith! Perhaps they thought that it wasn’t supposed to be difficult — so something must be wrong. If only they had more faith, then things might be easy. It would be easy to forgive and to refrain from causing others to stumble, if they had the right amount of faith. It would be easy to face the world and all of its dangers and pain, if they had a supernatural kind of faith. Just increase our faith, and we can skip the struggle!
But Jesus doesn’t respond by giving them a special dose of faith. Instead, he gives them a strange saying about a mulberry tree, and then he tells them a parable about a slave and a slave owner. This parable is uncomfortable for us to hear, because of the way the slave is treated. If we try to interpret the parable in terms of human roles, we might draw some problematic conclusions. But Jesus here is talking about faith. And what he says is this:
Faith doesn’t look like the slave owner who has it easy, and never has to work or suffer. His supper is given to him; nothing is required of him. Instead, faith looks like the slave who has hardships, and does what needs to be done.
It’s a great role reversal, you see. The people listening to Jesus, who most likely were not rich or slave owners, might expect that the rich man would be the one representing faith or a faithful life. But Jesus continually identified himself and his followers with the role of the servant.
Time and time again Jesus affirmed faith in people who wouldn’t typically be associated with faith in traditional Judaism: a Canaanite woman, a bleeding woman who was considered impure, an unclean woman who wiped Jesus’ feet with her hair, a Roman centurion, a Samaritan leper who was a foreigner and considered unclean due to his condition. He said to all of these people something to the effect of “your faith has made you well”, or “you have great faith.” The faith exhibited by these people was not about believing the right things, showing great piety or following the Torah closely. It definitely was not demonstrated by having an easy life or a life free from suffering. Instead, they demonstrated their faith by taking a risk and trusting Jesus.
The second way faith is a bike, not a car, is that it doesn’t require fuel to go.
If you’re driving a car, having gasoline or fuel is necessary. If you’re running out of a gas, you are in trouble indeed. In the world of cars, the more fuel you have, the better. It’s not so with a bike: with a bike, you just pedal and go.
The disciples not only wanted to skip the struggle of life, but they also may have thought that faith was like riding a car that could use more fuel. They thought that faith is something that, if small or running low, we need more before we are able to go and do. We can certainly identify with the “bigger is better” mentality. Like the disciples, it may be hard or impossible for us to imagine living in the ways of the kingdom of God, without having some special powers given to us.
What Jesus tells the disciples and us is twofold. One, he tells us it’s not about the size of our faith. “You’re thinking about this all wrong”, Jesus seems to say. A faith as small as a mustard seed can say to a tree, “be uprooted and planted in the sea”, and it will obey. Remember what Jesus has said about a mustard seed in other situations: that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed; it appears small, but it grows and grows into the biggest bush of all. So it is with faith – it may appear small but that doesn’t have anything to do with the effects of faith.
The real key, I think, is in the second point Jesus is making here: that faith is about trust or obedience. At the heart of faith, as demonstrated by the people whom Jesus recognized as having faith, is trust and a decision to follow.
With a faith like a mustard seed, you can say to the tree, be uprooted and thrown into the sea, and it will obey. The tree will obey! This reminds me of when Jesus was told to keep the people quiet and he said, “if they are quiet, the stones will cry out!” He is making a point here. He is saying, even the trees will obey at once, but you are waiting until you have some big amount of faith before you obey, before you do the work of the kingdom of God.
It makes me think of my five year-old son, Alex, learning to swim. He has been in the water many times and has taken a few swimming lessons, but he’s not a confident swimmer yet. This summer, we were in a swimming pool that had a large shallow area where Alex’s feet could touch the ground. That made him confident enough to want to swim without his life jacket. After a little while, I noticed that Alex was not only treading water but also swimming from one side of the pool to the other, without any difficulty and without touching the ground. I said, “Alex! You can swim!” He said, “No, I can’t! I can only swim in the shallow. I can’t swim in the deep.” He couldn’t yet understand that swimming was not a problem for him, whether it was shallow or deep. The problem would be if he stopped swimming in the deep.
I don’t know what it’s like to learn to ride a bike as a child, but to me, learning to ride as an adult was terrifying. It was scarier than when I learned to drive, because I felt much more exposed — and I fell, a lot. At the end of the day I had bruises all over myself. But I knew that if I wanted to ride a bike, I couldn’t wait until I developed some special skill. I needed to start pedaling!
Jesus is saying faith is a bike! You don’t need to wait for some special fuel. You just pedal and go! This is what the slave in the story does after all: he doesn’t wait until he is given nourishment or a reward; he just rolls up his sleeves and does the work. Being faith-ful means being steadfast. It looks like being faithful in everyday things such as serving a meal. It doesn’t mean we will have it all figured out. It doesn’t mean we won’t be frightened; it doesn’t mean we won’t have doubts or fears. It means trusting there is someone to hold us in the deep, as we get out and swim.
Finally, faith is a bike, not a car because it is lived out in community.
With cars, while we share the road, each motorist is in his/her own car with little interaction between each other. Bikers, however, ride together; that’s part of the appeal of riding a bike. This past summer, my family went on a dream vacation where we stopped in Vancouver, a beautiful city on the coast of Canada. We only had a full day in Vancouver, and we decided to spend our afternoon in Stanley Park, which has gorgeous view of the water and the mountains. We couldn’t walk the entire park with our two boys in one day, so we thought the best way to experience the whole park would be to rent bikes. So we rented bikes and a bike trailer for Alex, and rode leisurely around the whole seawall as a family, stopping here and there for the ice cream truck or a playground. That is now one of my favorite memories.
Faith is lived in community. Jesus said the kingdom of God is lived together; it’s about caring for our brothers and sisters, and forgiving one another. The people of God lament together, care for each other, hope together and remind each other of the faithfulness of God. Timothy’s faith was nurtured by his mother and grandmother, and the apostle Paul. Think about who has nurtured your faith. Today we have committed to being a church that will nurture Wyatt as we do the other children in our church, as they develop their trust in God.
Remember that our faith metaphor isn’t perfect, because bikes are not for everyone, and not everyone is able ride a bike — but go with me a little further. If riding a bike is not always comfortable or easy, why do people still ride bikes? Is there any reason why anyone would choose to ride a bike rather than travel by car, if given a choice? We know that for some, the potential discomfort of riding a bike is worth the trouble. Experiences like riding through Stanley Park make it worth it.
When it comes to life, the option of being protected from the elements simply doesn’t exist. There is no comfortable ride through life; no guarantee of protection from the rain or from exertion of any kind. When it comes to discipleship, though, we do have a choice. The voices of scripture tell us that it’s worth it.
Discipleship is not going to be easy, but just imagine the paths we might take on the adventure of faith, together. We are part of a rich tapestry of faith, lived together, taking risks together, and serving the kingdom of God together. Now let’s go enjoy the ride!
Benediction
May you guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you. May you nurture others in the faith; and may you trust in the Lord and cultivate faithfulness. Go in peace.