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My heart beats for love. I want to be different. I want to be who I am called to be. WORTHY and LOVED!

Sunday, October 31, 2010

An Invitation thats Hard to Refuse - Luke 19: 1-10

Who here has ever received an invitation? It could be a verbal invitation. Or a written one. It could be an open invitation. Or one that requires you to reserve a space in advance. What does it feel like to receive an invitation? I guess that would depend on who the invitation is from and what it is for, right? I’m at the point in my life when I seem to be receiving countless wedding invitations – they just seem to pile up. Often my response to the invitation depends on how well I know either the bride or groom. How far away the wedding is. And what it will cost me to either attend or be part of the celebration.

Invitations can be a tricky thing – who do you extend one to? Is there a limit to how many people you can have at the party? Do you invite significant others and children, even if you don’t know them? It really boils down to a lot of power (and the stress that can accompany such power), doesn’t it? We live in a world where we are always trying to get ahead, and consciously or unconsciously the question that is running through our minds when we extend invitations is, ‘what benefit could come to me by inviting this person?’ or ‘what is it going to cost me to invite or not invite this person?’

But against the backdrop of our own questions and anxieties about initiations we find today’s gospel text. I have to admit, as I spent this week preparing for this sermon I kept having the children’s song, “Zacchaeus was a wee little man” play through my mind. But the story is about so much more than a wee little man climbing up into a sycamore tree, isn’t it? It’s a story of politics.

Jesus entered a village, the village of Jericho. Let’s stop for a moment. Jericho is in the tribe of Benjamin – the smallest tribe in all of Israel. This tribe is known for getting itself into trouble time and time again in the history of the Hebrew Testament. And here is Jesus, linked to David and the tribe of Judah, the biggest and strongest tribe of the twelve, wondering into Jericho to pass through. We can feel the tension mounting even in the background of the narrative.

So Jesus is passing through town. Surely the news had spread through out town. This man who had been performing miracles in Judah was passing through their town. What excitement it must have created! And there is Zacchaeus, a man small in stature, but large in power. We are told that he is the chief tax collector and he was rich. Well just how did Zacchaeus become so rich? By exploiting his own people. We are told later that he is the son of Abraham, a Jew, yet he was collecting taxes for the Romans, a hefty sum. Then on top of the daunting sum required by the imperial government, Zacchaeus charged even more to take home as his own booty. He became rich off of the backs of his neighbors, and they knew it.

We may never know why Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus. Was he wanting to see what all of the fuss was about? Had he heard the rumors of what Jesus had done in other towns throughout the region and wanted his own miracle? Whatever his reasoning, Zacchaeus could not have imagined what happened next. Jesus came by the tree he had climbed in order to just catch a glimpse of this rumored Messiah passing by, and Jesus stopped. He looked up into the tree and said, “Zacchaeus, you better get out of that tree because I must stay at your house today.”

Let that sink in. Jesus passed by. Stopped. And called out this person whom he did not personally know by name. And he offered him the irrefutable invitation – “I must stay at your house today.”

If I were Zacchaeus, I would be in shock. Here is this man, from the powerful territory who had been traveling doing amazing things telling him, by name, that he must stay at my house today. How do you even prepare to host Jesus in your home?

So the tax collector shimmies down the tree and hurried away, joyfully, to welcome Jesus.

But his neighbors couldn’t have that. The started to grumble to the point where the narrator feels that we must be told about it, that Jesus was going to eat in the house of this “sinner.” Can’t you just hear the clamor? “Why him?” “He’s not worth it” “I cook better” “Who goes and stays with him?!?”

The story goes on, but I want to dwell here for the purpose of this sermon today. Who can you identify with in this story? Are you Jesus, offering someone an invitation to stay in their home? The home and the table were two of the most important places in Jewish culture. To open up one’s home and share one’s food was sign of respect and hospitality. And here is Jesus, not really being invited to Zacchaeus’ house, but inviting himself. Today we would call this rude. Unless it is someone whom we know, who we love. Jesus is inviting himself into someone’s home in the same way we do today with those most dear to us. Those friends whom we know we can stay with if the whether gets bad or if we are in town. An open invitation for intimacy. Are you Jesus, greeting a stranger like a friend?

Or are you Zaachaeus, the one whom no one would ever invite to parties? The person left by themselves in the corner because of how they had treated people in the past. You may not quite be able to remember what came first, exploiting people, or feeling exploited, all you know is that they are linked hand in hand. And now you’re so deep in a life that hurts other people that you don’t know how to stop. And there is no one there to lift you out of your own depravity. Until today. With this person who came by, treated you as worthy, and gave you a glimpse of hope at restoring your humanity.

Maybe, you don’t identify yourself with Jesus or Zaachaeus, but with the crowds. Quick to label another a sinner, but slow to realize the sin that chokes out the life in your own heart. How we love this today. We replace people’s names with sins. Instead of John he becomes gay. Instead of Lindsey she is only known as a whore. Instead of Alex he is labeled a murder. Instead of Maria she becomes a cheater. And instead of Zaachaeus he is known as a tax collector. A sinner.

I got myself into a bit of trouble this week at school. I disagreed with one my classmates. But I couldn’t really articulate why I had such a strong reaction to a sermon that I heard him preach where he compared some people as being the children of God and others as being children of the Devil. It’s not that simple is it? We are all created by God and bear the divine image. And we all screw up. Polarities don’t necessarily work to explain the reality of the human life. We are moving towards perfection, but someone has to offer us the ability to see ourselves fully as God’s before we can move on. It’s not as easy as being a saint or a sinner. And maybe that’s what today’s celebration is all about. Remember our loved ones in all of the beauty and flaws, because both have shaped us. To remember those heroes of the faith who often had more than one moment of imperfection. Above all it is to remember their name. Their story. Their life. Their impact.

My biggest fear is that as the church we slip far too easily into being the crowds. We like to label others and lift ourselves up. We want Jesus to eat with us, and get furious when he chooses to go to someone else’s, instead of feeling joy for the one Jesus is with in this moment. We want to lock our doors to keep the “sinners” out instead of calling them to us by their name. And if by some miracle they make it through our doors, we block them from ever seeing the light of grace that comes from Christ.

As I was writing this sermon, a memory surfaced from the recesses of my mind. It was a memory that caused the same wave of nausea to sweep over me as when I first experienced it. Do you know where Jericho is today? It is in Palestine. I was in Israel in 2006 with a group of students studying to be pastors and some faculty from a Christian college. We crossed the Israel-Palestine boarder and the difference was unavoidable. We left the land of wealth and had arrived at the land of devastation. As we arrived at what is now claimed to be “the Zaachaeus tree” and piled off the bus to have pictures taken in front of the tree. And one of the women on the trip started to bribe a little child, who looked like he hadn’t ate for days, to be able to take his picture in front of the tree. She gave him a piece of candy. He was starving and wanted more. He tried to get into her purse for more and she started to wail on him. Followed by the tour guide hitting him and a relative coming over screaming at him. He couldn’t be more than seven years old, and instead of feeding him, we were beating him after bribing him. I will never know his name, he just became known to the woman and all of her comrades on the trip as “the little thief”.

The story of Zaacheus asks to lay aside our need to label others and to offer them the radical grace of Christ. Or in the words of one of my favorite authors, Shane Claiborne, the scandal of grace. Jesus looked at Zacchaeus, up in that tree and saw simultaneously the child of God he was who had lost his way, and the person whom he could become if only he would be resurrected from his own ashes of a life story. So Jesus offered him an invitation. He offered to come to his home. The ultimate marker of respect and hospitality. He offered to remind Zaacheus that he was not his job, he was not what others labeled him to be, he was simply Zaacheus, son of Abraham. Grace isn’t given to those who deserve it, because you can never deserve grace. It is given to those who need it, that is what makes this all so scandalous. Jesus picked Zaacheus. Jesus picked you. Jesus picked me. Jesus picks all of us and tells us that we are much more than the political situations we are trapped in. And salvation comes by accepting the invitation, and saying yes, Lord Jesus, welcome into this place. May we now share in your love and grace. And once we have accepted that invitation, we cannot help but invite others. Amen.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Name it Before God - Luke 18: 9-14

We’ve all met this type of person – right? The person who refuses to acknowledge their own sin or blame. The type of person who tells God everything they do right – just in case God didn’t notice the first time. I graduated from a Christian college where it seemed like most students were really good at living on the extremes – either dwelling in their past mistakes and sin, forgetting God’s redeeming love, or bragging about how wonderful they were to everyone else. Both extremes were missing the beauty and joy in living in the center of God’s will for us.

Take a moment to think of someone in your mind who is caught up in differentiating themselves from the other in order to prove their own worth. Do you have an image in mind? Keep it there as we turn to today’s Biblical text.

In the first line we are told who Jesus is addressing this parable to – those who have high regard for themselves, but view others with contempt. In other words they aren’t looking with the eyes of God. God looks at each of the same way – as the Beloved. It does not matter what we do or if we are worse for the wear and tear of life, we are viewed with love. So what are we doing when we view someone else with contempt – we are looking with eyes that mare God’s creation that was named to be good and blessed.

Who are the characters in today’s story – a Pharisee and a tax collector? Let’s not let not let those descriptions just fly by us, unnoticed. The Pharisees have gotten a bad rap in the New Testament that sometimes causes us to forget who they were – these were the elite of the religious elite. They have studied their Torah; have been chosen by their teachers to teach others. We don’t even really have anyone to compare them to in today’s society. They are the cream of the crop when it comes to religious education. They were chosen to do God’s work and to study God’s word. And then we have a tax collector – hated by just about everyone. People with this occupation were given the legal ability to steal from their neighbors. They were foot soldiers of a political system that oppressed through economics. And then took even more on top of that.

We’ve got our character context – the highest of the high and the lowest of the low come to the temple to pray. The Pharisee may have been off by himself, but he was saying his prayer loud enough for others to hear it – he didn’t want anyone, including God, to miss what he had been doing lately. And how does he start off his prayer – by bashing his neighbor, the tax collector who had also entered the temple to pray. Now before we go off and start scoffing at the Pharisee, we need to ask ourselves, are we really any better today? Based on some of the things I’ve received in the mail this week, I would venture that we, collectively, as the church are not. Buried amongst my pile of mail was a large post card that read, “Alert! Alert! Alert! At stake – your congregations future: religious freedom, tax-exempt status, and tax-deductible support.” You flip the card over and there is paragraph after paragraph bashing the possibility of the legalization of same sex partnerships. And what is the organization sending this card saying: we need to be free to preach scriptural truths. Well, brothers and sisters, I’m not really sure what Bible they are reading because in the good book I read, Jesus says come one and come all. Including the tax collectors. Let’s be honest, we know what’s at the root of mailings like this – it’s the need to make the “other” into an enemy in order to make ourselves look good. We need someone else to sin a little more so we can label him or her the sinner and claim ourselves to be pure. And that is not how the good book tells us to behave.

The Pharisee doesn’t stop there – he goes on to tell what he does every week – he fasts twice a week and gives a tithe. Listen brothers and sisters carefully, spiritual disciplines are good. But they are a means of getting to know God and ourselves in a deeper more authentic way, not a way to manipulate God into doing what we want. They are not trump cards that can be pulled out of our pocket at any given time we want God to act a certain way or to take a little bit more notice of us. We engage in spiritual disciplines as an act of trust that we will recognize a little bit more each day that we are the Beloved of God.

You will find as we enter this holy season of Advent together in a month that I love spiritual disciplines. This past week I took 35 classroom hours of just learning more about them. There are some disciplines that we come together to do – like worship. But those aren’t the only things we are called to do – it must be a balance between public and private devotion. Whenever I feel myself getting caught up in the game of one-upping each other, which academic places seem to bring out in us, I know I need to turn to the discipline of secrecy. I need to do something for someone who will never know that I did it for them. Because my heart needs to get back in check that we are a people not called to be the best at showing off, but for spreading the love of Christ. And as I read this passage I can’t help but think that this particular Pharisee needed a bit more secrecy in his devotional life.

Let’s turn out attention away from the Pharisee though to the tax collector. Up until now he has just been listening to the Pharisee for a far off distance. And what does he do, he looked up to the Heavens to the throne of God and started to beat his chest in hopes to express the agony he was feeling on the inside. Beating away he cried, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” When is a last time you heard a prayer so clear and so sincere? Sounds a lot like the Jesus prayer that we’ve lost the art and power of saying, doesn’t it, “Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner!” This tax collector bore his soul before God, no excuses, just naming that which caused him pain and what he knew caused God pain. And what does he ask for, mercy – that which isn’t deserved. What a twist! Here is a religious leader who should know better then to tell God that he deserved anything, because we know we can only approach God because of grace and ask for mercy. But then there is this tax collector who gets one of the big messages of the Kingdom of God and can sum it up in one word – mercy. Have mercy on me. Maybe that’s what we need to be asking God for in our prayers a little more often – mercy. And maybe we need to clearly say, Lord this is how I’ve screwed up, I’m a sinner, a little more too. Not to degrade ourselves, but to be honest. We’re flawed. But we still contain the image of Christ in every fiber of our being, so let’s name the pain and move on, trying again.

It pains me to think of what one of the people we claim to be our founders, John Wesley, would think of the American church today. We’ve lost the sense that we are accountable to one another both for what we do and what we don’t do. We’ve lost the nerve to look each other in the eye every week and say, “How have you knowingly sinned since the last time we’ve met?” and “How are you growing in the faith?” and “What ways have you engaged in the disciplines this week?” And we are not better for it. We are living in the flux of remembering that we are sinners and crying out for mercy and trying to remind God how good we are. We need to be able to look at each other, when questioned, and say how we have fallen short and how we are growing, not for God’s benefit, but for our own. God knows what sins we have committed. And God knows what we are doing to grow and what heart we approach those disciplines with. No, we name and claim both our faults and growth areas, because we need to hear that from each other. We need a little bit more honesty in the church today, brothers and sisters.

Why was this man justified? Because he humbled himself both before God AND others. He spoke the truth of what he was feeling in that moment. And praise God for that! May we be a church that can lay it all down and truthfully say where we are in this given moment? The world has enough people pointing the finger at others in order to justify themselves, but the world is starting, Heaven is starving, and brothers and sisters we are starving for some authenticity in our walk with the Risen Lord. It is not going to be easy, and some times we are going to be tempted to go back to the easy game of fighting to prove who is best. But if we remember how God sees each of us – that we are the Beloved – it makes the game seem meaningless, and accountability a real option, because we can open up to each other, in love, knowing that what we say isn’t going to be held against us. Has anyone told you today that you are the Beloved of God? If not, let me. You are the Beloved. Now may we let our living claim it.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Finding Shelter in God - Psalm 91

My roommate is obsessed (to put it mildly) with the television program Glee. One of our moments of stillness together comes Wednesday mornings when we watch the episode from the night before online. The basis premise of the show follows the lives of the members of the glee club as they try to out sing each other. For the most part the show is just humorous, but this past week the topic was issues of faith, as one of the character’s father has a major heart attack that leaves him unconscious for days. Different denominations, depth of beliefs, and faith traditions were presented through the lives of the other characters, and at the root of all of the questioning was “what do you cling to when times get hard?” The character focused on the most in the episode, Kurt, whose father suffered the heart attack, notably is wrestling with this question from an atheist’s stance. He still needed to find something to cling to during his time of pain and uncertainty, even if it was not God.

The Psalmist today is struggling with the same questions of God’s protection during turbulent times in life, albeit from a theocratic position. He paints this majestic picture of God as a loving caretaker who will rescue those loved by God from dangerous situations and harm wished upon them. Battles, the terror of the night, pestilence, and destruction are just a few of the things that the Psalmist claims that God saves us from.

And yet, as the Psalmist goes on to claim, “You will only look with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.” I have to disagree. Do you know what the number one group around the world who suffer the most during times of disaster? Times of war? Times of deep terror? Children. Sexual violence against girls in Haiti has risen dramatically since the 2010 earthquake. Over 246 million children around the world are sold into labor to pay off the debts their families owe. And who are manipulated in Africa’s longest running war? Children. Throughout history children have suffered disproportionately for the actions of the wicked. More often then not, the wicked themselves are not punished; it is the innocent who fall. Are they not protected by God?

And what about the people who suffer for not? One of my hardest deaths this summer involved the birth of a baby boy who only lived eight days. His mother was a victim of domestic violence, who fled in order to save the life of herself and her baby. The baby boy was born without an esophagus, spleen, small intestine, or stomach. He also suffered from jaundice and hydrocephalus. The ironic part is none of his aliments had to do with the abuse his mother received at the hands of his father or genetics; the doctors called it a freak accident. As I prayed with and for him and his mother every day, I was floored by her degree of faith and strength she gained in the Lord. And he still died. Do our eyes really only see the punishment of the wicked?

The Psalmist then announces, “Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.” It could be that the Psalmist feels like he has to make this statement, as if God would not provide protection to those who do not put their full trust in God. In other words the Psalmist is hinting at one of the core questions humans raise, “Why do bad things happen?” The Psalmist, based on this verse, could say well… bad things happen because we don’t believe enough in God. But bad things happen to both good people and bad people – destruction does not fall only on the side of those whom do not find their strength in God.

There then is a dangerous element to reading Psalms such as these. They can make us feel as if we are protected, especially in times of distress. But they can also rock our world when terrible things happen in our lives. The Psalm tells us that God protects those who run to God for strength – so was our faith just too weak? Was our dependence on God not strong enough? That God delivers those whom love Him? Did we not love enough? Did we run away from God’s protection?

And where is God those times when we call out, again and again, and we do not receive an answer from God. We’ve tried to turn faith in God into a pre-requisite for protection, when maybe protecting isn’t why we should have faith at all. The effects of sin and evil are not contained only to the wicked – those who prosper from doing wrong. They are universals. Causalities of war, those clutched in disease’s firm grasp, and victims of violence are not limited to “bad” people – and even if we deem them to be so, who are we to wish harm upon them? To say that they get what they deserve – for such judgment can only come from the Lord, who also shows mercy and grace beyond measure. We’ve projected onto God what we want from God instead of watching for who God really is.

Maybe we do not find shelter from God that grants us the ultimate protection from all harm. And maybe finding shelter in God is not a stagnant thing, where God scoops us into wings of refuge. Maybe its rather assurance that God will go with us wherever we will go, whatever the consequences.

One of my favorite hymns is Just a Closer Walk with Thee. Most people know the first verse of the song, which ends pleading with God, “as I walk, let me walk, close to Thee.” But the lesser-known second verse is the one that kept coming to my mind with this text, “Through this world of toil and snare, if I falter Lord, who cares? Who with me my burden shares? None but Thee, dear Lord, none but Thee.”

How true and how realistic! The verse starts out by admitting that this world is full of toils and snares, what I would call dangers. They are indiscriminate. They are part of life. But who will share with us the burdens through life that we carry because of these troubles, Christ alone.

When we reduce the shelter of God to protection because of our faith, we will ultimately end up questioning our loyalty to God when we are in times of trouble. We start to see God as the Divine dueler of punishment instead of one walking with us, by our side, day in and day out. God is not a God who only gives protection to those who believe, but a God who has placed us, the church, here to love those who need protection the most – the abused, discarded, drunk, the barren, the homeless, the list goes on and on. The most beautiful moment on Glee this past week for me is when Kurt is taken to church with one of his friends. This friend stood up in front of the congregation and said, “I have a favor to ask you [church]. My friend’s dad is in the hospital and its pretty bad. I know we have all of our own burdens and troubles, but if we could just put them aside and focus all of our prayers on [this].” She goes on to look at Kurt and continues, “I know you don’t believe in God, you don’t believe in the power of prayer, and that’s okay. To each his own. But you’ve got to believe in something – something more than you can touch, taste, or see. Because life is to hard to go through alone – without something to hold on to, without something that’s sacred.” What a beautiful image of protection and strength. It’s found not in the idol of a God who we can hide within, and that will ultimately back fire on us, for bad things are going to happen, its part of life. Instead strength is found in life as we walk beside each other, advocating for each other, focusing our prayers for each other, believing in the power of God for those who cannot believe. We are not here to say that those who suffer are being punished. We are not here to be by silent bystanders as evil claims those dear to God’s heart. We are here to love. To bring shelter and hope to one another through the grace of God. To sit with those who mourn. To shelter those who are the most vulnerable to harm. To speak truth to the powers of the world the hurt so many. Life is too hard to go through it alone. Let us not turn away one of the greatest gifts God has given us, the gift of the strength we offer to each other, to this community, to this world. The strength that we can only offer because we walk each day with Jesus, our power and comfort along the rocky road of life. Life is too hard to go through alone.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Faith So Small - Luke 17: 5-10

Faith. It’s one of the necessary and vital parts of our Christian teaching. But is also amongst the most abused. I don’t know about you – but I’ve heard this passage preached many times throughout my life in the church. And very few of those messages were appropriate. I’ve been taught that faith lacks all fear. That the only way to test our faith is by doing extraordinary things. I’ve been told to disregard all that God has blessed me with in order to really learn what it means to trust God.

If I would sum up most of the teachings about faith I’ve stomached throughout the years, one word comes to mind – foolishness. Another would be arrogance. Faith becomes equated with noticeable works that are divorced from our inner lives. One winter I was blessed to be on a vacation with three of my best friends. One of my friends, who had been struggling with mental illness for many years, started to have increasingly concerning episodes on vacation. Being a group who believed in the power of prayer, we took her to a Christian worship center that had places of healing. We worshiped for a while before one of my friends went to ask if someone could pray with us for our friend in one of the healing rooms. I will never forget the answer he was given, “We only pray for physical diseases.” In other words, we only pray for that which can be seen.

I left that worship center livid. And to this day, I have mixed feelings when their name comes up in conversation. At the root of my issue was a question of faith – should we pray for the things we cannot see, cannot imagine, as an act of faith, or is faith only praying for the believable, the obtainable.

And it is that question that I bring to today’s text – What does it mean to have faith? How should it lead us to pray? What would a life of faith-filled living look like? And to be honest, after a week of studying the text, I’m still left in the paradox of Jesus’ teaching – but maybe that’s where the answer to my deep questions lie, in the messiness of the paradoxes.

Let us now turn to the text. The apostles come to Jesus, once again, asking for more. On the surface their request, plea, demand, sounds a lot like ours today, “Increase our faith!” But Jesus answer begs us to question what exactly was the motive behind the disciple’s request. And consequently, what is behind such a request on our part today. Why do we want more of anything – let alone faith? Has God not given us the means to nurture the faith that we have? What have we done with what we have been given in order to deserve more?

Or do we link faith with power? Listen to the following lyrics from a popular Christian Band: “ I have read about the days of old. About the men who followed You. About how they saw the supernatural and became the chosen few. So I come before You now, tearing off my earthly crowns. For this one thing I have found – I want a faith like that. To see the dead rise or to see you pass by. Oh I, I want a faith like that – whatever the cost, I’ll suffer the loss. Oh I want a faith like that.”

The more I’ve listened to this song as I’ve become older, the more it disturbs me, deeply. The song goes on to say: “I’ve caught a glimpse of what you want from me, and what I have is not enough.” In so many ways, we today are still like the disciples telling Jesus to increase our faith. At the root of our request are so many ugly things that we don’t realize: We want what someone else had or has, we want tangible signs of our faith, and by the way Jesus, you haven’t given we enough to live out a life of faith. Better try again.

I’m somewhat surprised that we didn’t have a repeat of Jesus in the temple with the tax collector here. What brings us to ask God to increase our faith? My guess is mostly we ask when, like a selfish child, we want what someone else has. My roommate and I are in the midst of a deep theological debate right now – and at the root of her discussion is wanting to know why she and I have different question and answers about what it means to live a faithful life. Because we aren’t the same! And the beautiful thing is that we aren’t meant to be! What you experience on your faith journey may not be what I experience on mine! And even if we have similar experiences, we cannot replicate exact moments. Even in my own life, I have had some beautiful moments that have torpedoed my growth – but even if I go back and try to recreate that moment again, I don’t think it will have the same effects. Because God is a creative God who uses moments and stretches of time, a lifetime in fact, to help us grow in faith.

There have been times in my life when I have been blessed with signs of assurance, maybe not as profound as seeing the dead rise or seeing Jesus walk by, but things that meant something to me. But what is the purpose of such a sign? Are they supposed to be seen as tangible markers that we are walking the right road? Lived expressions of our faith? Or just something that tells us to keep on keeping on? For me it is most certainly the later. The moment I remember the most clearly was camping out in a farm in Australia. I have back issues and camping is not recommended, but I went because it was required. After a few days of camping, the pain was so intense that I couldn’t sleep. So I slipped out of my tent earlier, hoping to have a shower and a time of devotions before everyone else arose. And this is what I saw. A sky marked by the sun rising in blue and pinks and deep oranges and yellows in different color combinations everywhere I turned. It was as if God had blessed me despite of and through my pain. And that spoke volumes to me. But I do not feel that it was a sign of my faithfulness. It was God’s gift to me, not vise versa.

And then like a child in a candy store, throwing a temper tantrum, sometimes we demand more faith, because we feel like what we have been given isn’t sufficient. But God’s grace is sufficient to meet us in any lack of faith we may have. And maybe a lack of faith is a good thing – because it reminds us that we can’t stand apart from God. We are meant to have faith in the one who gives us faith – not ourselves.

Moving past the disciples initial request – we see Jesus giving two interesting responses that have been threaded together. The first is about the mustard see – if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to the mulberry tree to throw itself into the sea to be planted and it would obey. That folks is a sign. In other gospel narratives it has been described as the faith that can move mountains. Jesus seems to be telling the disciples that they do not realize what enormous power they have in what they were given. But on the flip side, who realize deserves to have that power apart from God? Maybe there is a reason that we can’t perform acts like these as signs – and its because it would make us a little too much like God. I want to have faith to trust and obey God and not to think that I can survive on my own.

Jesus goes on to talk about the slaves who were called in after a long day of field work in order to set the table and cook dinner. In other words their service never ended. But they faithfully did what they were commanded. This my friends, is the type of faith that I want at the end of the day. The type of faith that doesn’t come through signs and wonders, but obedient living moment by moment. Yes, this is the more trying road, the longer road, and the rocky road, where I have to admit that I don’t own myself. But at the end of the day, what stretches, tests, and grows our faith more? Signs or faithful living?

Part of being in seminary is about reflecting – reflecting on who has impacted you and what makes you tick. And brothers and sisters, I’ve come to realize that at the end of the day, the people who have impacted my life the most are those who walk step by step, day by day, year by year in faith. People who put others above themselves. Who’s sole purpose of getting out of bed in the morning is to glorify God. People who may not even realize that they are living faithfully and have greatly impacted my life.

We live in a culture of immediate gratification and power that sides with moving mountains and commanding others, but how radical is it to feel blessed with the measure of faith that you have been given? To nurture what you have instead of demanding more? To prove yourself worthy of the faith you were bestowed by walking in it each day, being obedient to the will of God? I know which type of faith I would choose – what about you? What demands have you been making from God and have you taken a look at your bountiful blessings as they are?