The Way: Faith, Gratitude, Prayer and Generosity: October 2010 Lectionary
The gospel readings for October are taken from the central section of Luke’s Gospel, the section that represent Jesus’ long and somewhat circuitous journey toward Jerusalem. The section that begins at Luke 9:51 moves quickly to this note on itinerary: “As we were going along the way…” (Luke 9:57) For Luke “the way” is not just the road but the whole way of obedience, trod first by Jesus and then by the apostles and then by all the faithful. When the writes the Book of Acts, Luke makes clear that “the way” is a term for the wholeness of the Christian life. Members of the church are themselves followers of “the way.” (See Acts (:2, 19:19, 23, 24).
The long section of Luke that begins when Jesus heads toward Jerusalem in 9:51 ends when he gets there in Luke 19:28. In this long section Jesus instructs the apostles in what the way of obedience means, and they in turn seek to live out that way in the Book of Acts. In our gospel passages for this month, we see the way of faith, the way of gratitude, the way of prayer, the way of generosity.
The Way of Faith: Luke 17: 5-10
Jesus’ word to the disciples in Luke 17: 6 can be interpreted in two ways. The less likely, but possible, interpretation is that Jesus suggests the disciples don’t have faith enough: “if only you had a mustard’s seed work of faith you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea’ and it would obey you.” A more likely paraphrase of the Greek, however, would sound like this: “Since you already have faith the size of the mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
In the more likely interpretation, Jesus doesn’t say that the disciples have all the faith they want, but he does say that they have all the faith they need. He knows that they have all the faith they need, because they have enough faith to ask for more faith. They have a mustard seed’s work of faith or they wouldn’t be able to ask for more faith.
Of course Luke didn’t know that we would divide the Gospel in to chapters and verses, much less into pericopes for the sake of the lectionary. Luke’s understanding of the way of faith in Luke 17:5-6 can be interpreted (as the lectionary apparently does) by looking at the paragraph that comes after. But these verses can also be interpreted in the light of what has just gone before: the disciples ask for more faith because Jesus has demanded of them an incredible act of faithfulness (Luke 17:1-4). Jesus has required that they forgive the penitent brother and sister seven times. That requires enormous faith; faith that what hasn’t happened the first six times will be effective on the seventh. It is faith that God works toward repentance even for the most recalcitrant of sinners. It is faith that God can use us as ministers of reconciliation. That is part of the way of faith.
The passages that come after also shows what it might mean to have a mustard seed’s worth of faith (Luke 17:7-10). Faith here is not faithful reconciliation but faithful; obedience. It is the faithfulness that responds to God’s commands, not grudgingly by gladly and waits upon God, not in hope of praise but in the humility of service.
Asking for faith is itself the mustard seed from which more faith grows: faith to forgive, faith to obey.
The Way of Gratitude: Luke 17: 11-19
Luke makes his motif explicit again. “On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.” Often the best way to catch the purpose of a passage is to check the punch line. Here is Jesus’ punch line to the one leper, the Samaritan, who returns to than him: “Get up and go your way, your faith has made you well.” The text can just as well be translated: “Get up and go your way, your faith has saved you.”
It’s as if there are two healings in this passage. The first is the healing of all ten lepers who have faith enough to cry, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” (Is this perhaps the mustard seed of faith that needs more faith to be complete?) In this passage all those who cry for mercy are healed. But the one leper who comes back is healed superabundantly, healed salvifically. The reason he is healed altogether is that his faith includes what the faith of the other nine lacks: Gratitude. “He fell at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.” It is that thanksgiving that makes the faith superabundant faith, that makes it healing faith.
In our increasingly pluralistic society we are often asked whether only Christian can be saved. If that means “are only Christians the recipients of God’s mercy?” then I think the answer is no. There is, however, a way in which Christians are saved because Christians are those who know how to be grateful, and we know that the object of gratitude is appropriately Jesus Christ in whom God reconciles the whole world. The church is the community of the grateful, and in that sense it is still and always the community of the saved.
Note also in this passage that the only one to come back and give thanks is the Samaritan, the one furthest out of the socially acceptable. Like the other Samaritan who reaches in from outside the covenant to help the one waylaid by thieves. Like the prodigal who could come back gratefully because he knew how desperately he was in want. The church is the community of sinners and the community of the grateful. The two claims go together.
The Way of Prayer: Luke 18: 1-14
The lectionary gives us the choice of taking verses 9-14 along with verses 1-8 as the text for a second sermon. What the two stories have in common is their attention to the nature of prayer as part of the Christian way. Every commentator points out how essential prayer is to Luke and Acts, how often Jesus prays in this Gospel, how essential it is that the apostles and those who follow after them pray as well.
Here are two stories that help us understand the way of prayer. The first story follows a rhetorical device often used later by Jewish rabbis, arguing from the lesser to the greater. If a stubborn human judge can hear of the prayers of this importunate widow, how much more will the good God hear and answer the prayers of God’s chosen ones.
In part this is a word of assurance: God will answer our prayers. In part it is a word of admonition: Keep on praying. In part is it a word of eschatological comfort: God’s business is to grant justice, beginning now but fully at the end of time. In part it is a word of eschatological warning: “Speaking of the end of time, will Christ find you faithful when he comes?” The balance between comfort and final hope that we see represented in this passage is of course typical of Luke and of the gospel tradition, and present a challenge for preaching that is both honest and hopeful.
The second parable about prayer contrasts a fictional Pharisee and a fictional tax collector. You will remember that the Pharisees represented the inner circle of the establishment and the tax collectors resented the outcasts. Religiously and politically the tax collectors were dislike, if not despised, because they worked for Caesar, often at the expense of God’s people.
The tax collector stands where the Samaritan stood in the story of the ten lepers –furthest out. “But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven….” When Luke says that the tax collector went down to his house justified, he dramatizes the theological fact that the tax collector already stands is a “just” relationship to God because that relationship is based on God’s mercy and not on the tax collector’s own merits.
The final wisdom saying is clearly part of the tradition about Jesus that appears in different place in the different gospels. It may be true that all who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted, but the tax collector dos not claim to be a sinner in the hope that he will be exalted. He claims to be a sinner because, by God, he is a sinner. This is not a prayer of strategy but a prayer of confession.
The way of faith thus includes persistence in prayer and humility in prayer as well. Like the tax collector, we know that we always stand at a distance, that we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But like the widow, we just keep praying.
The Way of Generosity: Luke 19: 1-10
One of my concerns is that our preaching finds ways to include the children who are in our congregation. Here is a text with which every short person identifies, including those short persons who grow taller one of the days. Our New England fore-parents used this story to teach the alphabet to school children, from A (Adam) to Z (Zacchaeus):
Zacchaeus, he
Climbed up a tree
His Lord to see.
In a sense Zacchaeus stands in the tradition of the ten lepers and the tax collector in the temple. Although wealthy, Zacchaeus is an outcast –he is vertically challenged. In another sense, he is like the importunate widow-he does what he needs to do to get to the Lord. Both the cry for mercy and the willingness to persist in that cry are part of what it means to be on Christ’s way.
When Jesus turns to us in love he also turns to us with demands. The demands are never expressed, but Zacchaeus, who is smart enough to climb up a tree when he needs to and to scurry down a tree when he’s asked to, is smart enough to know that when this man comes to dinner his presence makes a difference. Sitting down to his rich feast, Zacchaeus remembers how many have so little. Luke reminds his readers that the Gospel is not just about our spirits but about our bank accounts. Where our treasure is our heart will be also, and when we give our hearts to Jesus, when we follow him on the way, then we use our treasure differently as well.
In these ways our texts lead us on the way of faith, the way of gratitude, the way of prayer, and the way of generosity. These are of course also the Way of Jesus and the way to Jesus.
