Sunday Sermon: Luke 6.20-31 for All Saints Day

Luke 6.20-31

Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

 We celebrate today those who have gone before us, those we call saints, and I have to say, I think there’s a pitfall here: the danger lies in our tendency to consider as saints only those who have made a huge impact on the world, people such as Martin Luther-King or Mother Teresa or those who have an exotic back-story. I give you a couple of examples of those from The Reverend Richard Coles’ wonderful little book Lives of improbable saints: let’s start with Saint Umberto The Blessed, and I quote, He was count of Savoy and is now celebrated as patron saint of monks with complicated sex lives.

Maybe not.

How about St. Fiacre? (No, me neither.) I quote again, He was an Irishman who has become the patron saint of those who suffer from piles following a story that he sat down on a stone in so holy a way that it softened.

Hmmm! How does one sit down in a holy way?

Finally, and my personal favourite, St. Martha of Bethany: she was the sister of Mary Magdalene and after Jesus’ ascension she got into a boat without sails, oars or a rudder and was miraculously conveyed to Marseilles and from there she made her way to Arles which, at the time, was being plagued by a dragon which lived in a river, destroying and eating their ships. After it had feasted and digestion took its course, it did an enormous poo, which covered an ace of ground, was as bright as glass and burned those who touched it. When Martha came across it eating a sailor, she simply sprinkled it with holy water and it stood as meekly as a lamb while Martha tethered it with her underwear. Then everyone killed it with spears.

Who knew?

When we use the word ‘Saint’ we may, perhaps, think of such as Umberto, Fiacre and Martha with their mad back stories (and snigger) or those incredible, almost superhuman Christians of the past, maybe even those who were martyred for their faith like Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who stood against the Nazis.  In the Roman Catholic Church, true sainthood is reserved only for those to whom a certain number of miracles can be attributed. However, the American Methodist Pastor, writer and academic James Howell, in his book, Servants, Misfits, and Martyrs, tells us, 

Saints do not possess an extra layer of muscle. They are not taller, and they do not sport superior IQs. They are not richer, and their parents are not more clever than yours or mine. They have no bat-like perception that enables them to fly in the dark. They are flesh and blood, just like you and me, no stronger, no more intelligent.

So, what exactly do we mean when we talk of saints and sainthood?

In the New Testament, the word ‘saints’ simply means ‘holy ones’, or ‘faithful ones’.  All faithful Christians are counted as saints: that’s you and me. 

And that is the point James Howell tells us and then goes on to say, Saints simply offer themselves to God, knowing they are not the elite, fully cognizant that they are inadequate to the task, that their abilities are limited and fallible.

So, given that definition, let’s look at our Gospel for today. The gospel for this All Saints’ Day comes from the Sermon on the Plain that Jesus preaches in Luke’s Gospel.  The Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel may be more familiar, but what Luke gives us appears more provocative: it is a series of blessings followed by a parallel series of woes.

Blessed are you who are poor, who are hungry, who weep now, who are hated by all.  Something better awaits you when the great day comes.

But woe to you who are rich, who are full, who laugh, who are well spoken about by everybody.  When the great day comes, you will find yourself desolate.

These contrasts are enough in themselves to make us uneasy.  But then come some verses that must rank high on the list of bible passages all of us like to pass over quickly as though they were not there.  Jesus goes on to say; Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

There are texts from the Bible that people like to embroider in needlepoint and put up on the living room wall.  There are texts from the Bible that are written in splendid, colourful calligraphy and appear on greetings cards.  But rarely, if ever, are texts such as these chosen for such display: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

And if these calls to doing good, and blessing, and prayer are not challenging enough, upsetting enough, Jesus then gets more specific.  To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer also the other; and from him who takes away your cloak, don’t withhold your coat also.

The Church is challenging in assigning this passage to the feast of All Saints’.  In the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus presents the template for God’s kingdom – and in terms of its moral and ethical dimension, it’s pretty much summed up in the last verse, Do to others as you would have them do to you. 

In this text from Luke for All Saints Sunday Jesus was turning the world of his disciples upside down.  That’s why the reading in the bulletin is set out in the way it is.  I say that, because the blessings and woes that Jesus spells out are the opposite of the ideals people believed in at the time – and indeed today. This text stands as a summary of Jesus’ teaching on discipleship in Luke.  It began with Mary, the mother of Jesus, when she spoke the Magnificat about the lowly being lifted up and the powerful put down.  It can be seen in Jesus’ first sermon when he quoted the prophet, Isaiah, saying that the poor and marginalized would have good news preached to them and it ended with Jesus telling the crucified thief next to him that he would be with him in paradise that day.

Throughout Luke, Jesus’ presence in the world was turning that world upside down.  Then we move to the part of the text that puts our faith to the test.  It tells us to love and do good to no-gooders  (a loose paraphrase).  Don’t strike back.  Give to those less fortunate without a thought about what’s in it for you.  That’s the stuff of being a saint – and when we’re faced with such challenges we need to ask to what extent we really want to change.  Isn’t selfishness our natural inclination, being sinners as well as saints? Sainthood begins with our understanding of the depth of God’s love.  It is unconditional, meaning that it has no requirements or prior conditions before it is given. It is that same approach which is expected of us and we in turn can turn our worlds, our spheres of influence, upside down.

I think it’s difficult enough for us to show that kind of love to loved ones, let alone enemies. Your significant other gets out of bed on the wrong side; your teenage children or grandchildren are being bolshie; your elderly relatives are being unreasonably demanding; your oldest friend is being insensitive or offhand: its hard work – and these are people we love. Where do we start with the rest? That line-manager who seems to take pleasure in winding you up; that neighbour who regularly parks in a careless way or whose love for his dog blinds him to the fact that it is persistently barking late at night; those kids who throw litter in your garden on the way home from school and then get lippy when you tell them off; that driver who cuts you up; the shop keeper who seems to think he’s doing you a favour when he serves you; the cold-caller from yet another PPI company and so on. What of them?

What of them indeed?

The thing is we aren’t given choices about how we respond to others: the teaching of today’s Gospel is supported throughout scripture and as an example we have St. Paul’s advice to the Christians in Philippi. If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love and sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus. (Phil 2.1-5)

These are the marks of discipleship in this life and the marks of sainthood and they should turn lives upside down.

Last week I was involved in two funerals: here at St. John’s we said our goodbyes to our own beloved Mabel and at St. Luke’s we said our goodbyes to Angela’s Mum, Laura. I know there is a tendency in Eulogies to concentrate on the positive and I’ve never been to a funeral where someone stands up and says, “Now about my Dad: he was a nasty piece of work and we all hated him.” That being said, as I sat and listened to the eulogies for Mabel and Laura I was reminded what awesome women they had been in their unostentatious discipleship with so many acts of quiet and selfless service behind the scenes with no expectation of praise or reward. These women were models of sainthood in the sense we’ve been discussing this morning: disciples of quiet humility and commitment in their love of God and service of others. No bells and whistles, no flashing lights and no miracles – at least, as far as I’m aware -, yet saints nevertheless and as such, saints who in their own ways, turned others’ lives upside down.

In the Apostles Creed we declare the Church’s belief in the Communion of all the Saints. That means that we, members of the church here on earth, are connected with all those faithful Christians who have ever lived. Happy are those who mourn.  Because our mourning is part of our ongoing relationship with those we’ve lost, part of what it means to belong to the communion of the saints. That means that in Christ we still have a relationship with them. We are connected and related to Mabel and Laura and to all those we’ve lost and think about and remember before God today. And, in Christ, and in God’s kingdom, they still have a relationship, a communion, with us. And there’s comfort in knowing that.  All Saints includes them. And it includes us.

Amen 

  

Sunday Sermon: Luke 6.20-31 for All Saints Day

Luke 6.20-31

Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

 We celebrate today those who have gone before us, those we call saints, and I have to say, I think there’s a pitfall here: the danger lies in our tendency to consider as saints only those who have made a huge impact on the world, people such as Martin Luther-King or Mother Teresa or those who have an exotic back-story. I give you a couple of examples of those from The Reverend Richard Coles’ wonderful little book Lives of improbable saints: let’s start with Saint Umberto The Blessed, and I quote, He was count of Savoy and is now celebrated as patron saint of monks with complicated sex lives.

Maybe not.

How about St. Fiacre? (No, me neither.) I quote again, He was an Irishman who has become the patron saint of those who suffer from piles following a story that he sat down on a stone in so holy a way that it softened.

Hmmm! How does one sit down in a holy way?

Finally, and my personal favourite, St. Martha of Bethany: she was the sister of Mary Magdalene and after Jesus’ ascension she got into a boat without sails, oars or a rudder and was miraculously conveyed to Marseilles and from there she made her way to Arles which, at the time, was being plagued by a dragon which lived in a river, destroying and eating their ships. After it had feasted and digestion took its course, it did an enormous poo, which covered an ace of ground, was as bright as glass and burned those who touched it. When Martha came across it eating a sailor, she simply sprinkled it with holy water and it stood as meekly as a lamb while Martha tethered it with her underwear. Then everyone killed it with spears.

Who knew?

When we use the word ‘Saint’ we may, perhaps, think of such as Umberto, Fiacre and Martha with their mad back stories (and snigger) or those incredible, almost superhuman Christians of the past, maybe even those who were martyred for their faith like Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador.  In the Roman Catholic Church, true sainthood is reserved only for those to whom a certain number of miracles can be attributed. However, the American Methodist Pastor, writer and academic James Howell, in his book, Servants, Misfits, and Martyrs, tells us, 

Saints do not possess an extra layer of muscle. They are not taller, and they do not sport superior IQs. They are not richer, and their parents are not more clever than yours or mine. They have no bat-like perception that enables them to fly in the dark. They are flesh and blood, just like you and me, no stronger, no more intelligent.

So, what exactly do we mean when we talk of saints and sainthood?

In the New Testament, the word ‘saints’ simply means ‘holy ones’, or ‘faithful ones’.  All faithful Christians are counted as saints: that’s you and me. 

And that is the point James Howell tells us and then goes on to say, Saints simply offer themselves to God, knowing they are not the elite, fully cognizant that they are inadequate to the task, that their abilities are limited and fallible.

So, given that definition, let’s look at our Gospel for today. The gospel for this All Saints’ Day comes from the Sermon on the Plain that Jesus preaches in Luke’s Gospel.  The Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel may be more familiar, but what Luke gives us appears more provocative: it is a series of blessings followed by a parallel series of woes.

Blessed are you who are poor, who are hungry, who weep now, who are hated by all.  Something better awaits you when the great day comes.

But woe to you who are rich, who are full, who laugh, who are well spoken about by everybody.  When the great day comes, you will find yourself desolate.

These contrasts are enough in themselves to make us uneasy.  But then come some verses that must rank high on the list of bible passages all of us like to pass over quickly as though they were not there.  Jesus goes on to say; Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

There are texts from the Bible that people like to embroider in needlepoint and put up on the living room wall.  There are texts from the Bible that are written in splendid, colourful calligraphy and appear on greetings cards.  But rarely, if ever, are texts such as these chosen for such display: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

And if these calls to doing good, and blessing, and prayer are not challenging enough, upsetting enough, Jesus then gets more specific.  To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer also the other; and from him who takes away your cloak, don’t withhold your coat also.

The Church is challenging in assigning this passage to the feast of All Saints’.  In the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus presents the template for God’s kingdom – and in terms of its moral and ethical dimension, it’s pretty much summed up in the last verse, Do to others as you would have them do to you. 

In this text from Luke for All Saints Sunday Jesus was turning the world of his disciples upside down.  That’s why the reading in the bulletin is set out in the way it is.  I say that, because the blessings and woes that Jesus spells out are the opposite of the ideals people believed in at the time – and indeed today. This text stands as a summary of Jesus’ teaching on discipleship in Luke.  It began with Mary, the mother of Jesus, when she spoke the Magnificat about the lowly being lifted up and the powerful put down.  It can be seen in Jesus’ first sermon when he quoted the prophet, Isaiah, saying that the poor and marginalized would have good news preached to them and it ended with Jesus telling the crucified thief next to him that he would be with him in paradise that day.

Throughout Luke, Jesus’ presence in the world was turning that world upside down.  Then we move to the part of the text that puts our faith to the test.  It tells us to love and do good to no-gooders  (a loose paraphrase).  Don’t strike back.  Give to those less fortunate without a thought about what’s in it for you.  That’s the stuff of being a saint – and when we’re faced with such challenges we need to ask to what extent we really want to change.  Isn’t selfishness our natural inclination, being sinners as well as saints? Sainthood begins with our understanding of the depth of God’s love.  It is unconditional, meaning that it has no requirements or prior conditions before it is given. It is that same approach which is expected of us and we in turn can turn our worlds, our spheres of influence, upside down.

I think it’s difficult enough for us to show that kind of love to loved ones, let alone enemies. Your significant other gets out of bed on the wrong side; your teenage children or grandchildren are being bolshie; your elderly relatives are being unreasonably demanding; your oldest friend is being insensitive or offhand: its hard work – and these are people we love. Where do we start with the rest? That line-manager who seems to take pleasure in winding you up; that neighbour who regularly parks in a careless way or whose love for his dog blinds him to the fact that it is persistently barking late at night; those kids who throw litter in your garden on the way home from school and then get lippy when you tell them off; that driver who cuts you up; the shop keeper who seems to think he’s doing you a favour when he serves you; the cold-caller from yet another PPI company and so on. What of them?

What of them indeed?

The thing is we aren’t given choices about how we respond to others: the teaching of today’s Gospel is supported throughout scripture and as an example we have St. Paul’s advice to the Christians in Philippi. If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love and sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus. (Phil 2.1-5)

These are the marks of discipleship in this life and the marks of sainthood and they should turn lives upside down.

Last week I was involved in two funerals: here at St. John’s we said our goodbyes to our own beloved Mabel and at St. Luke’s we said our goodbyes to Angela’s Mum, Laura. I know there is a tendency in Eulogies to concentrate on the positive and I’ve never been to a funeral where someone stands up and says, “Now about my Dad: he was a nasty piece of work and we all hated him.” That being said, as I sat and listened to the eulogies for Mabel and Laura I was reminded what awesome women they had been in their unostentatious discipleship with so many acts of quiet and selfless service behind the scenes with no expectation of praise or reward. These women were models of sainthood in the sense we’ve been discussing this morning: disciples of quiet humility and commitment in their love of God and service of others. No bells and whistles, no flashing lights and no miracles – at least, as far as I’m aware -, yet saints nevertheless and as such, saints who in their own ways, turned others’ lives upside down.

In the Apostles Creed we declare the Church’s belief in the Communion of all the Saints. That means that we, members of the church here on earth, are connected with all those faithful Christians who have ever lived. Happy are those who mourn.  Because our mourning is part of our ongoing relationship with those we’ve lost, part of what it means to belong to the communion of the saints. That means that in Christ we still have a relationship with them. We are connected and related to Mabel and Laura and to all those we’ve lost and think about and remember before God today. And, in Christ, and in God’s kingdom, they still have a relationship, a communion, with us. And there’s comfort in knowing that.  All Saints includes them. And it includes us.

Amen 

  

Sunday Sermon: Luke 17 5-10 - Jesus, faith and the mustard seed

Luke 17:5-10

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? ¹So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”

Do you ever think about the nature of your faith? Do you ever analyse  

whether, in your view, it is strong or weak? Do you draw any conclusions from your answer?

The reading from Luke begins with the apostles crying, "Increase our faith!" but we don't know why. The lectionary has given us this brief extract of an exchange between Jesus and his followers but unless we can remember what went before we’re pretty much in the dark. Why did they feel they needed more faith? Now possibly you can remember what happened in the preceding verses, but I couldn't. What’s the context here – because we do need the context or we’re likely to go off on entirely the wrong tack?

I read these words and wondered if the disciples were perpetually anxious or pious but that doesn’t sound much like the disciples as Luke generally presents them. Or perhaps they just felt like you could always use more faith so they just asked for it every once in a while. (Well, we could all do with that attitude, couldn’t we?) Or, possibly they felt they were duty bound to ask for more faith. (Again, who doesn’t?)

After I read back in the passage, I discovered the real reason was simpler than these - but the implications much harder. Jesus had just asked the disciples to do something they knew they couldn’t do. He told them, "If a person sins against you seven times a day and turns back to you seven times and says, 'I repent,' you must forgive." If we ponder the daily practicalities of that for a moment we should all be horrified: that is indeed a hard road to travel.

In one of the other Gospel versions of this story, Peter asked Jesus, "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?"  Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times but seventy times seven.” or to put it another way, an infinite number of times.  Challenging or what?

So, there’s our context: no wonder the disciples were begging for an increase in faith and felt inadequate. Perhaps they could forgive seven times in a lifetime, but seven times a day? Surely even Mother Teresa couldn't do that? I’m not at all sure that I could anyway.

The disciples are more like us than we are often willing to acknowledge. They were willing to do what was reasonable and even exceptional to follow Jesus. They had left their homes and their jobs and their families to travel with their Master, but now Jesus was beginning to ask seemingly impossible things of them and they didn't know how to do them. As a matter of fact, they knew they couldn't do them. They weren’t sure that they could take Jesus at his word: was he speaking literally or figuratively?

Do we recognize that in ourselves? Are we not like the disciples? Do we not have the same doubts and the same crisis of confidence?

When they came to this realisation, it’s as if they wanted Jesus to give them some blueprint - some clear manual - that offered simple steps for being a disciple. You may not remember an American initiative called the Four Spiritual Laws that were doing the rounds in Evangelical circles some years ago, but they wanted something like that. Not that there was anything wrong with the Four Spiritual Laws as such but they weren’t, of course, the simple answer Christians then hoped they would be – they were a sort of 1970s pre-figuring of The Alpha Course: lots of discussion but, as it turned out, no easy answers.

In short, the Disciples wanted to be transformed, but they didn't really believe they could be. Does that ring any bells? Like them, have we become so accustomed to seeing our world as it is that we can’t imagine the world as God wants it to be? They couldn’t imagine seeing the people who have wronged them as their brothers and sisters instead of villains. Are we a bit like that too? We largely spend time with PLUs – people like us: people who share our values and our worldview and we are often stumped by other ways of thinking or by other people’s experiences. Christians are often uncomfortable with people of other faiths, straights with Gays, blacks with whites, able-bodied with the disabled and so on because actually we don’t get out that much and cross boundaries, so our worldview is restricted and therefore, so is our ability to relate to others who are also part of what Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu refers to as “the rainbow people of God”.

Here we are a few days after the reelection of the Labour leader and all the angst and division caused by that – which is far from resolved. Here we are just a few months from the BREXIT referendum and all the angst and division that went with that – also far from resolved. How have those events given our faith a knock? We hear stories of family relationships and friendships that have suffered as a consequence of those divisions as people feel bruised, let down and betrayed.

Most of us have known for a long time if we are red or blue or orange – maybe even green or purple (you know, when they show the map on election night and colour the constituencies according to which party won there). So deep are the divisions that much of the time we don’t feel we can engage beyond a superficial level with those who think differently to us, much less hear the piece of the truth the other person has to say. American politics seems even more polarised.

My mother was an ardent Tory and I mean ardent. She was only slightly to the left of Attila the Hun. I once asked her, "How do you get along with your friends who vote Labour or Lib Dem?" and, after a pause, she said, "I don't think I have any friends who vote Labour or Lib Dem." Why would she? In her eyes they were simply wrong.

In political terms, we tend to think that the world is red or blue or orange, and we struggle to imagine that there is an identity deeper than that because it isn’t our experience. Our world so readily gives us labels and we much too readily accept them. Just ask someone one of those red-line questions: immigration, the E.U., gay marriage, abortion, and immediately when they answer you think that you know who that other person is and make judgements about them based on that snapshot – generally negative judgements based on stereotypes. Watch a stranger on a bus read a newspaper and, if you can see the name of the paper, you probably believe you know their voting profile and their stance on any number of political and social issues. Our response to them may well be shaped by the preconceptions we have about them and part of that revolves around a sense that they have got it wrong, and in their own way have contributed to the mess we believe we are in, so we generally don’t engage with them – and that’s not in any way to assume that we are right in our views. Once we have that identity fixed, it's hard to believe anything else.

Yet Jesus says if a person repents seven times in one day, seven times we are to see them afresh as a child of God. Jesus calls us to look again at the person who we perceive is wrong or who as a consequence of their outlook has wronged us and see them as God sees them: not as the other but as a child of God capable of receiving forgiveness – our forgiveness - which means seeing them differently. Forgiveness is not about whitewashing the past; it's about seeing the present in a new light. And it’s not just about seeing others in a new way but recognizing, as part of that, our own inconsistencies and weaknesses: it’s about reconciliation and looking toward a future of change and openness to new perspectives, of redemption - and surely we need a deeper faith to manage that because it’s not likely to come through our own endeavours.

Forgiveness insists that people are not red, blue, orange, green or purple - or male and female; black, white, brown or yellow; straight or gay; working class or middle class or any number of other false categories we use to pigeonhole people. Instead we all belong to the same flock with Jesus as the shepherd.

No wonder the disciples cried, "Increase our faith." Jesus is calling for them to see their reality in a new way, as he’s calling us today to see our reality in a new way.

Since they don't know how to do this, Jesus gave them an answer, but it's not the one they expected. He told them, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you say to this mulberry tree, "Be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it would obey you." The disciples wanted a diagram for getting from point A to point B in the journey of their discipleship, but they didn't get one. Faith isn't a game plan for solving our problems, nor is faith understanding why things are the way they are. At the end of the day, faith is rarely about answers.

Faith is what we believe about the love of God through Jesus Christ and how that impacts on our relationships with others. Faith is about being grasped by Jesus so that we know in our hearts that our lives and his life and the life of the world are mixed together. Once that happens, we see ourselves and our neighbours and our world in a completely fresh way. Once that happens, we know that the only thing that matters is that love, and that the only reality is God’s grace. Once that happens, we can forgive because we are new creations; and, therefore, we see everyone else as a new creation.

The hard truth is that we cannot earn this grace nor can we achieve it. It's a gift. All we have to do is open up a little and God does the rest. All we need faith the size of a mustard seed; that is, we need a small crack in our preconceptions and God will transform us.

When we think about whether we can change the world, we always despair. But let us remember it's not about us, it's about God working through us. We can do little, but is there anything God can’t do? Our task is to pray for faith and to trust in the Holy Spirit to effect change in us and through us.

And the truth is, it doesn't take much: a word, a touch, a gesture can give us a fresh perspective. It only takes faith the size of a mustard seed for God to transform us.

Have any of you ever read "To Kill a Mockingbird"? When I was teaching, I was once on detention duty and some of the kids were doing catch-up reading for their English Literature GCSE. Supervising detention is very boring – one step away from spiritual death - so I picked up a copy and as I browsed I came to the point where the white men came at night and surrounded the jail where Tom, the black man who had been wrongly accused of a crime, was being held. The men were a mob. They didn’t see Tom; they only saw an enemy because of how they had categorised him and they were blinded by rage. Scout, a little girl, (It can only be an American story) watched them. Her father told her to run away and go home. But Scout didn't run, and she didn't fight. Instead she found the right response that became the mustard seed.

Scout looked at one of the men in the mob and said, "Hey Mister Cunningham, don't you remember me? I go to school with Walter. He's your boy, ain't he? We brought him home for dinner one time. Tell your boy 'hey' for me, will you?"

There was a long pause. Then the big man separated himself from the mob, squatted down and took Scout by both her shoulders. "I'll tell him you said 'hey,' little lady." The mood began to change. Mr. Cunningham left, and one by one the mob dispersed. The girl had whispered words of grace. She offered the mustard seed of faith that opened the man's eyes, his heart and his soul.

Instead of a world of divided loyalties, ours has the potential to be a world of grace. God whispers those words every day in every place. In faith we should be ready to be open enough to ask for -  and to receive that grace and then who knows what change we can effect in this world and in the lives of others?

Amen