You've Got Enough Faith. Fiat

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

October 6, 2013; 20 Pentecost, Proper 22, Year C

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 7:5-10)  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? So 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!'"

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A wonderful Episcopal priest named Ron DelBene led a retreat I attended and taught our group the technique called Breath Prayer.  It’s something I’ve practiced and taught ever since.  You can read about it in the little booklet about prayer that we give to newcomers here at St. Paul’s.

I’ll never forget the way Ron set up the teaching.  He asked each of us to imagine Jesus walking through the door in front of us.  Imagine Jesus looking directly at you, with gentle eyes, and asking intently:  “(Using your first name.)  What do you want?”  I did that.  I imagined Jesus looking at me and asking, “Lowell, what do you want?”  Immediately the response came:  “Help!”

That’s what the disciple’s cry sounds like to me at the opening of today’s Gospel.  They cry out to Jesus, “Help!”  “Increase our faith!”  And with a wonderful Mediterranean exaggeration about mustard seeds and mulberry trees, Jesus says back to them with gentle confidence, “You’ve already got enough faith.  Just act like it.”

Now I’m going to do some boring, abstract stuff first, just to cover some ground that needs to be covered.  Then I’ll tell a good story.

Some people think of faith as a synonym for “belief.”  If I just believe enough – believe enough about Jesus, or about God, or believe whatever the Nicene Creed says – then I’ll have faith.  No, no, no! 

Faith is not a noun, as in some theological content that you believe something about.  Faith is a verb.  Faith is active.  Faith is essentially trust.  Who or what do you trust enough to allow you to make the next step?  When you take the next step, that’s acting in faith – faithing. 

In Christianity, the “who” or “what” we are invited to trust is Love.  God is love.  Jesus is love incarnate.  Love is what God does. 

Jesus gives us the great commandment, Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.  Trust that.  Act on it.

But notice.  When Jesus tells us to love, it is a commandment.  That means love is a lot more than a feeling.  You can’t command a feeling.  You can only command a decision, an act.  The commandment is “Love.”  Just do it.  Or maybe better, using a Latin word, “Fiat.”  Let it be.  Let it be done.  Let love be the motivating center of your action.  Relax into love.  Be.  Fiat.  Let it be.  Let it be done.

You already know how to love.  You can love.  It’s the most natural thing in the world.  So do it.  Fiat.  Let it be done.  The cry, “Help!  Increase our faith!” can end up becoming only a little whimper, “Help me trust enough to love in this situation, here and now, and just do what I need to do.”  That’s enough.  Simple?  Yes.  But not easy.

Let me offer an example, and I think I can tie it to the second half of today’s gospel, the part about the when slaves come in and just do their work because it’s their work to do.

I have a friend named Jenee Woodard.  We’re Internet friends.  (Now you can ask yourself whatever you might project on that neutral statement.)  Jenee runs a website called Textweek.com, where she posts links to all sorts of helpful things about the Sunday scripture readings – commentaries, blogs, sermons, art, prayers, illustrations.  I’ve often used Textweek to prime the sermon writing pump when I’ve been dry. 

A few years ago, I started sending Jenee the Prayers of the People that I write for our use – they are prayers that are based on each week’s readings.  Jenee posts them as another resource on her Textweek page.  I learned at General Convention that an amazing number of people use my prayers each week, downloading them from Textweek.  Thousands of preachers like me benefit from Jenee’s resource.  And it’s all free.

Just this week I noticed a story written about how Jenee started Textweek.  It’s a good story.[i]  Jenee graduated from a United Methodist school of theology and planned to pursue an academic career, but when her son Phil was diagnosed with autism at age 2, she dropped out of her doctorate to deal with Phil’s autism 24/7. 

She loved her son Phil, and she was going to take care of him.  Fiat.  Let it be done.  She also loved having an academic Christian ministry.  Listen to what she says about that:  “A ministry, to me, means giving myself away – not for what it gets me or God or the church – but for the act itself.  To me, this is probably the essence of faith.”  In other words, she loves doing ministry, so she does it.  Fiat.  Let it be done. 

In 1998 the Internet was relatively new, and Jenee thought how cool it would be to read all of the difference commentators right there on line, doing without paper what used to require a shelf full of books.  And she “needed something engaging” to get her mind off her work and worry about her son.

She created Textweek.com – simple links to commentaries and resources.  She showed her site to her pastor, and he showed it to friends, and it grew organically the way these things grow.  She didn’t have a business model.  She earned no money from it initially.  Now through sponsorships she earns about what a pastor of a small-to-midsize church makes.  It supplements her husband’s income – he’s a special education teacher and music tutor. 

In her “spare time” she aggregates a wonderful variety of theological perspectives, history and creative thought, and she helps thousands of people like me. 

But it’s not easy, being Phil’s and Textweek’s mom.  Many times she’s had meltdowns over the demands of Phil’s care, screaming, “I can’t do this…  I didn’t ask for this!  I don’t want this!  It shouldn’t be mine anymore!” after more than twenty years.  She feels all of that.

She once got an anonymous letter from a member of her church saying “You’re not welcome here” because Phil couldn’t keep quiet during services.  She also notes that having a high achieving child like Jaie is a challenge all of its own.

Jenee says this:  “Phil’s autism has changed my theological understandings…  I am much less certain, since Phil’s autism, of anything.  I’ve come to understand ‘theology’ to be a whole lot more about listening than about stating.  I listen a lot, very deeply, respectfully and carefully, to people with whom I disagree and to people I do not understand.  To me, this is ‘doing theology.’  I think that I would not have come to that understanding without my son.”  Her website is a treasure of diverse theologies centered on the same scriptures each week.

Her husband Bob says that Phil’s autism opened a door that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.  Jenee now has an influence on others in the world of religious studies that is far greater than it would have been had she become the traditional religious scholar she set out to be.  She’s taken a mustard seed and planted a mulberry tree in the sea.

Jenee says it is simply her “responsibility… -- to give more than I take, …while giving myself a delightful new lens on texts and interpreters of texts.  This is the heart of my own faith and of my task, as I see it.”  And her son Phil now has a part time job soldering computer parts, and he volunteers trouble-shooting computer networks.  His social skills are still very limited.

Taking care of her son and acting on her love of religious studies in some sense is no big deal.  It was just her responsibility, as she says.  Her son Phil has autism; she loves her son; she does what she does to care for him.  She’s a religious scholar; she loves to study and learn; she does what she does.  Fiat.  Let it be done. 

Jenee doesn’t need a bunch of “thank yous” to authenticate her work, though it’s nice to be thanked every once in a while, and a few sponsorships in these recent years are nice.  Jenee is just living her life faithfully, trusting what she’s been given.  Loving God, and loving her son, and her neighbor as herself. 

Whenever she meet her limits and cries, “Help!” something inside of her knows, she’s got enough faith.  She can make it.  She can do this.  She has to do this.  It is love being incarnate in her life.

You can do it too.  Just trust a bit.  You’ve already got enough faith.  Mustard seed sized trust is enough.  You’ve already got enough faith.  Trust love.  Take it a step at a time.  And simply do what love commands.  Fiat.  Let it be done. 

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[i] Susan Oppat, The woman behind Textweek.com, http://www.faithandleadership.com/profiles/the-woman-behind-textweekcom

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