What’s
Expected
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22 Year C RCL)
18 September 2016--8:00 a.m. Said, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22 Year C RCL)
18 September 2016--8:00 a.m. Said, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Parish
Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
God,
give us hearts to feel and love,
take
away our hearts of stone
and
give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
Last week, a
member of the altar guild approached me before service and said with emotion,
“I need more faith!” “What?” I
said. “I need more faith!” She
repeated. “How so?” I replied. She answered, “I am totally angry and tired
of dealing with messes, drama, and scary stuff when I come to Church in the
morning. I know I should love the homeless and be gentle and welcoming. But when they cause problems I just can’t
muster it. I need more faith!”
My heart went
out to her. Many of us in the parish
have had to deal with “messes, drama, and scary stuff” due to people without
shelter overnighting in the Church courtyard.
This good woman had been doing so admirably for months, only
occasionally saying something when someone really went outside the
boundaries. But here she was, dealing with
a major case of guilt and self-reproach for not “being nice” enough, for not
“following Jesus” and forgiving. All I
could say was, “you have faith, and you don’t need to beat up on yourself for
other people’s faults. We must keep reminding people of the rules, and if it
doesn’t work, we might have to close the campus reluctantly, like all the other
houses of worship in town.”
“I need more
faith.” We all run into this, from a
variety of quarters: a feeling of being
overwhelmed by demands on our time and emotional energies, and a sense of guilt
and self-reproach when we don’t seem to be able to meet the requirements of
what is expected of us, of what we expect of ourselves, or even muster a
moderate amount of graciousness to help cover our shortfall.
The Gospel
reading for today is about this. Jesus
has just told the disciples that they need to forgive people who harm or hurt
them even “seven times a day.” The disciples
respond with today’s line: “Increase our
faith!” They are saying, “Yikes! Forgive someone who does us wrong over and
over again? I need more faith.”
Jesus
answers, “If you had even just a little
tiny bit of faith, say the size of a little seed, then you could do impossible
things!” Elsewhere, it is “you can move
mountains just by telling them to move.”
Here it is “you could tell that huge Mulberry tree over there to plant
itself in the middle of the ocean and it would thrive there!”
Jesus is
being a little sarcastic here. It sounds
like he himself has had a bad day and might be saying to himself, “You need
some faith here, Jesus!” But what he
means, stripped of the sarcasm, is clearly, “You already have enough
faith. Just put it into practice.”
He gives
a parable saying it’s all about expectations:
“Does
the household staff get to rest and have dinner just because they’ve worked
hard in the field all day? No. They must
first feed the Householder in proper style and only then can they take their meal
and rest. Don’t expect any better. Do what’s expected of you, and then some, and
don’t worry about getting nice thank you’s or attaboy’s or attagirl’s. You’ve only done what was expected.”
As
most of Jesus’ edgier parables, this parable in its original setting may be a
criticism of the economy and society of exploitation around him. But in Luke’s context it means: “Lower your expectations and you might find
that just doing what’s expected of you is enough of a reward.”
What’s expected. It sounds like a bad joke from that torment
that most of us have encountered in our professional lives, the performance
evaluation. Cartoonist Scott Adams in
one “Dilbert” strip pictures Dilbert’s officemate Alice seated across from her boss. He begins, “Alice, your performance this year
‘meets expectations.’ You get a two percent pay increase.” Alice replies, “Meets
expectations? I worked eighty hours every week!” The boss replies, “Yeah
... Well, I expected that.” Alice adds,
“I earned three patents this year! The company will make millions!” The boss: “Really? Wow. … I mean ... I expected that too.” Alice
adds, “I donated bone marrow to our biggest customer! Twice!” To which the boss replies, “I noted that
under ‘attendance problem.’” Later,
Alice is in the cafeteria, clearly sobbing. Dilbert says, “I told you the
bone marrow thing would haunt you.” Another officemate opines, “I'm starting to
think the time I worked through my lunch hour was for nothing.”
Jesus says, “When you have done
all you were ordered, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only
what was expected!’” Sounds like
Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss from hell. “Meets
expectations?” Really?
When reading the Gospels, we must constantly
remind ourselves that the historical Jesus is to us a foreigner who speaks an
unintelligible language. His life and
work was sparer and harder than any of us have seen. They make the hardships of today’s third
world look gentle. His culture and
religion are alien, with values and world-views that often seem narrow,
inhumane, and even bigoted. So we must
carefully interpret his words or risk getting the wrong point.
In the chapters of Luke we have been reading over the last few weeks, Jesus has told shocking stories about people receiving rewards and recompense. The loving father of the prodigal son welcomes the disrespectful and dissipated ingrate home. He runs out to him, embraces him, and throws a big expensive party for him, much to the annoyance of his older brother who has met the expectations of his father and culture. The householder praises the shrewdness of the dishonest manager, who retires to a gentle life being hosted and funded by those who benefited from his departing from expectations. The homeless wretch Lazarus, no doubt ridden with messes, drama, and scary stuff, is welcomed to Abraham’s bosom, while the wealthy man who exceeded the expectations of society must suffer in the afterlife.
In the chapters of Luke we have been reading over the last few weeks, Jesus has told shocking stories about people receiving rewards and recompense. The loving father of the prodigal son welcomes the disrespectful and dissipated ingrate home. He runs out to him, embraces him, and throws a big expensive party for him, much to the annoyance of his older brother who has met the expectations of his father and culture. The householder praises the shrewdness of the dishonest manager, who retires to a gentle life being hosted and funded by those who benefited from his departing from expectations. The homeless wretch Lazarus, no doubt ridden with messes, drama, and scary stuff, is welcomed to Abraham’s bosom, while the wealthy man who exceeded the expectations of society must suffer in the afterlife.
The disciples may well be thinking, “If moral
reprobates, crooks, and those who sponge off of others are going to be blessed
by God, just think of what good people like us are going to get!”
And then Jesus tells them to forgive,
forgive, forgive: seven times a day for
repeat offenders who seem not able to change.
And with the rest of us, they say, “I need more faith.” Jesus, in clear exasperation says,
“You want more faith? Just a tiny bit of
faith would work miracles for you, if you had any. Let me tell you about some slaves who don’t
get any extra praise or reward when they simply do what is expected
of them.”
Jesus is giving them a Zen koan: a saying hard to understand, that draws forth from us a change in perceptions and attitudes. Like most of his parables, the saying turns everything on its head, and reverses expectations. The first will be last; the last first. The leader must be servant of all.
Jesus is giving them a Zen koan: a saying hard to understand, that draws forth from us a change in perceptions and attitudes. Like most of his parables, the saying turns everything on its head, and reverses expectations. The first will be last; the last first. The leader must be servant of all.
He is talking about faith in a loving
God, a God of grace, a God like that loving father of two wayward boys. If you want faith, you have to have
faith. And that means faith in God. And God destroys our petty expectations by exceeding
them.
Jesus grew up reading
and quoting from the Book of Sirach, which says, “My child, if you want to serve
the Lord, prepare yourself for an ordeal” (Ecclesiasticus 2:1). Ordeal—dealing
with the messes, the drama, and the scary stuff—is part of the job description
of serving God. It is part of the job
description of being a disciple of Jesus.
But faith in
God—faith in the living, Jesus’ expectation-overturning Abba—faith even in tiny
tiny amounts makes it better. It’s not
about quantity, it’s about quality. It’s
about whether it’s real trust in that loving God.
When we
trust, when we are deeply thankful and grateful, well, we stop keeping
score. Many things that once were
intolerably hard become easy. We seem to
know the right thing to say at the right time.
And we no longer have a grudge against God or anyone else. True faith—even in tiny amounts—is like
that.
Thomas
Merton wrote, “[Concern about] means and ends... is not the way to build
a life of prayer. In prayer we discover
what we already have. You start where
you are, and you deepen what you already have, and you realize that you are
already there. We already have
everything, but we don't know it and we don't experience it. Everything has been given to us in Christ. All we need is to experience what we already
possess. The trouble is, we aren't
taking the time to do so.”
May we strengthen our life of prayer, and exert trust and
faith—even just a little, because that is all it takes to work miracles—in that
living, loving God.
Amen.
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