Our Reward--More Work

October 7, 2007

By

Reverend Litton Logan

Scriptures:

¹Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! ²It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. ³Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. ⁴And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.”

⁵The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” ⁶The 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.

⁷“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’? ⁸Would 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’? ⁹Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? ¹⁰So 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!’” Luke 17:1--10 (NRSV)

Introduction:

Today’s passages of scriptures on the surface seem straightforward. However, when we place these scriptures in the larger context of Luke’s Gospel things are not as simple as they first appear. These scriptures contain a depth of meaning and truth not readily apparent. Not unlike the story of the two men, one married, one single, who were talking and the married fellow asked his single friend:

"How is it that you never married?"

"I just never met the right woman ... I guess I've been looking for the perfect girl."

"Oh, come on now, surely you have met at least one girl that you wanted to marry."

"Yes, there was one ... once. I guess she was the one perfect girl ... the only perfect girl I really ever met. She was just the right everything ... I really mean that she was the perfect girl for me."

"Well, why didn't you marry her?"

"She was looking for the perfect man."

Sermon:

In our scriptures today, Jesus has just disengaged from the Pharisees. Previously, Jesus corrected the Pharisees’ theology of wealth and prosperity as proofs of God’s blessings or rewards for righteousness. Jesus in effect tells us the Pharisees in the final analysis may be lovers of righteousness but they misunderstand the depth and breadth of true righteousness and its earthly and heavenly dimensions and rewards.

Jesus now turns from the Pharisees and addresses his disciples and his followers. I might add that Jesus’ correction of the Pharisees’ misunderstanding of true righteousness would have also served to correct the thinking of many Jewish Christians in Luke’s church.

Likewise, many others in Luke’s audience would have had their thinking challenged when Jesus next says that it would be better if a person’s head—Jew or Gentile--was stuffed through the hole in a mill stone and flung into the sea to drown rather than mislead, confuse, dissuade, or try to trip up one of the “little ones”—new converts or those young in the faith--with false doctrines, improper religious practices, convoluted religious sophistry, or the mixing of pagan religious practices and Jewish purity codes with the teachings of Jesus.

I would remind us that the prevailing moral and ethical teachings that governed the life of Luke’s Christian community would have been drawn from the Old Testament as interpreted and supplemented by Jesus’ teachings. Therefore, any attempt to enforce stringent, Pharisaical practices upon the Jewish or Gentile followers of Jesus or to introduce a level of Gentile religious promiscuity into the community of faith would have been an occasion for confusion, resistance, and conflict. Moreover, woe to the person that brings such confusion.

In the environment of emerging Christianity, amid pagan and Jewish cultural and religious diversity, disagreements would have been a natural part of the dynamics of Luke’s church. I might add that disagreements are a natural part of any community of human beings that seeks to bring people together around a common ideal or goal even it they do not come from as diverse backgrounds, educations, life perspectives, expectations, and aspirations as members of Luke’s church.

Speaking of cultural differences and people’s expectations reminds me of a story about people’s expectations.

It was a stifling hot day and a man fainted in the middle of a busy intersection. Traffic quickly piled up in all directions, and a woman rushed to help the downed man

As she knelt down to loosen his collar, a man emerged from the crowd, pushed her aside, and said, "It's all right, Honey, I've had a course in first aid."

The woman stood up and watched as the would-be-rescuer took the ill man's pulse and prepared to administer artificial respiration.

At this point, she tapped the rescuer on the shoulder and said, "When you get to the part about calling a doctor, I'm already here."

Let me expand a bit on Luke’s use of these teachings of Jesus’ we’ve heard today. Have you ever had one of those disagreements, arguments, or discussions with someone wherein you either come to the point or have it pointed out to you by a third party that you and the other person agree but are talking past each other because you are approaching a common truth from different perspectives? Your perspective on the truth becomes the bone of contention, not the truth itself. This is some of what is going on in Luke’s church. Luke’s church members want to worship God, they want to be true the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but it seems at times that their perspectives and approaches conditioned by lifestyles and culture confounds their efforts at reaching a consensus in understanding the Gospel and the Christ-like life.

In such at setting, Luke is like the mother of the boy who lost one of his contact lenses while playing basketball in the family driveway. The kid had looked and looked but couldn’t find his missing contact. He told his mother it was hopeless. Nevertheless, mothers being mothers, the boy’s mom went out to the driveway and in very in short time was back with the missing contact lens. The boy was amazed. “Mom,” he exclaimed, “How do you do that?” His mother replied, “Your motivation was to find a missing contact, mine was to find $250.00.”

Luke’s motivation in recalling these teachings of Jesus goes beyond proving religious or theological points. Luke wants to offer Jesus’ followers the moral and spiritual truths of the Gospel that can guide their entire Christian experience and relationships to one another.

More background. Luke’s church would have been comprised of Gentile converts to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as well as Gentile converts known as “God-fearers.” This latter group was Gentiles that had previously adhered to Judaism’s moral, ethical, and spiritual understandings but were not willing to go the distance of becoming full-fledged converts to Judaism, which entailed complying with dietary, and purity laws as well as more unpleasant requirements. The Gospel of Jesus allowed these “God-fearers” as well as all Gentiles to become a part of God’s covenant people without all the Jewish legalism. In Luke’s church, there would have also been many life-long, Hellenistic Jews, who had embraced the way of Jesus. Many of these Jews wanted the gentile members of the church to comply with various Jewish religious codes and other practices. Differences in understanding the Jewish nature of the Gospel as presented by Jesus and interpreted by the Apostle Paul was a scenario ripe for conflict in ancient Christianity.

In the process of sorting out the various levels of people’s faith, it was to be expected that people would become resentful and resistive as they were asked to give up or reinterpret lifelong practices and ideas. I am sure we all understand this. It would have been difficult in the best of situations to blend the Jewish and Gentile cultures with their long and diverse histories and practices into a unified body of people. The fact that the church survived as an inclusive body of believers and thrived over the centuries is truly, truly a miracle.

In this context of defensiveness, suspicion, conflict, change, and various internal and external persecutions, people would have been tense and on edge—spring loaded to take and give offense. People were apt to say and do harsh things to one another. However, if a person was confronted in love by those more mature in the faith or if a person came to their moral, spiritual, and ethical senses and in a moment of insight and sincere repentance (operative word here is sincere) asked forgiveness then the Christian community must stand willing to forgive and restore. Said another way--the Christian community must be spring loaded to forgive.

Upon hearing these stringent requirements to forgive, in keeping with the rabbinical injunction to forgive a truly repentant offender up to seven times in a day, the disciples asked Jesus to give them a special or supernatural allotment of faith--“Lord, if this is the way of the kingdom, we are going to need a little help here.” Jesus tersely replies that it is obvious that his disciples’ faith is so small as to be insignificant. If they had the concentration of faith of just the smallest of seeds then they could do monumental things. Jesus in effect tells disciples across the ages that faith is like a seed, it must be cultivated, before it will become powerful.

Hear Jesus again say disciples don’t ask for supernatural help when you already have all that you need to do the work of the kingdom. Disciples consciously will yourself to forgive people even if your heart isn’t in it. If you will conscientiously decide to forgive, low-and-behold you will experience the substance of your faith, as forgiveness becomes a part of your Christ nature. Your faith will grow and become stronger day by day with each conscious decision to forgive others as you have and are being forgiven.

At this juncture, let me point out that Jesus says that, we, his disciples, should be aware and very cautious about what we teach or preach. In addition, to intentionally mislead someone or attempt to trip up a young believer with some silly doctrinal issues or religious sophistry in service of one’s self-serving religious practices and beliefs is such a horrible thing that it would be better for that person if they had never had been born.

That having been said let me say, there are going to be many occasions for misunderstandings when Christian people from diverse backgrounds come together to learn and grow in their faith. The balm for such misunderstandings will be love’s mutual respect and patients. Each person’s feelings, understandings, and hopes for Christ in their life must be respected and validated while offering the best understandings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, presented in the most sensitive manner.

Christians are to be loving but firm in maintaining good moral order and discipline in the community of faith. If someone becomes frustrated, contentious, and acts out as they struggle to relinquish old ways of behaving and understanding themselves, others, and the God-life this is to be expected. If these struggles cause conflict within the church, this too is to be expected—Jesus said it. Therefore, we are to be patient and understanding but unyielding in the moral, spiritual, and ethical principles of Scriptures as we help people grow in the knowledge and the grace of God. Remember, none of us is comfortable turning loose of what is familiar as bad or as harmful as such things maybe to embrace the new or the unknown. This is especially the case in those critical areas of our lives that define us and fix us in community and in matters of eternal salvation. Therefore, as Christians we must be willing and eager to do unto others as we would want them to do unto us and forgive as we have been forgiven.

I was visiting in the home of some friends one day when one of their children, a little girl, came in and interrupted her parents’ and my conversation. She was obviously pleased with herself. She said, “Mommy, mommy, I’ve picked up all my toys, what kind of treat do I get.” Neither the mother nor father corrected the child for interrupting our conversation. The mother told her she was a good girl for picking up all her toys. The mother rewarded the child with two cookies. As you can see, that incident stuck with me. Why wasn’t the child corrected for interrupting? Why should the child have been given a treat for picking up the toys she had strewn around her room? She should have been encouraged to be responsible and to pick up her room but not praised or rewarded for doing what she should have done as a matter of course.

However, this is a common scenario today. People expect to be rewarded for doing what they are supposed to do. People expect rewards when they return lost property or report criminal activities. They expect praise and accolades for being morally courageous and responsible people. Many Christians also expect praise and recognition for living a Christ-like life and for being caring, charitable, understanding, and forgiving.

This ain’t, however, Jesus’ view on the matter. In the concluding verses of our Scriptures today, we heard Jesus taking such thinking to task. Jesus teaches us that those who think themselves first in line, or the greatest, shall be the least and the last. To this end, Jesus asked his audience, most of whom would have been servants or slaves, a rather facetious question concerning the relationship between a slave and his master. Jesus in effect says when we live by kingdom values, sharing with and caring for others, living by the law and the ethics of love, willing to confront sin and sinners, encouraging them to be the best they can be as well as to forgive those who sin against us in matters of faith we should not expect special considerations or praise. After all, we are only doing what is expected of a good and faithful servant of the Lord and as such, our deeds are not praise worthy.

Jesus’ as our master says, “Well done, well done, good and trustworthy servant because you have been trustworthy in little, I am going to give you a whole lot more responsibility and work to do in the kingdom of God.” Doesn’t sound like much of a reward does it? The faithful servant only gets more work, not a vacation or accolades for doing what they are supposed to do. Therefore, the more one has, the more one is expected to do. This understanding lies at the core of the Pharisees’ misunderstanding of righteousness and rewards. However, as Luke alludes to and Matthew says the trustworthy servant enters into the Joy of his Master. Imagine that, experiencing the very joy that Christ experienced before God as a good and faithful servant. What more could you hope for? What more could we aspire to?