Marty and the Brick

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? 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!’”

Back in the early 70’s, Marty, a young engineer at Motorola, was asked to lead a team on a project to develop the next generation of a car radiotelephone.  Before he jumped in though, he stepped back and took some time to question what every had assumed was always true.  That led him to a new question, “Why is it that when we want to call and talk to a person, we have to call a place?” That led his team to begin working on disconnecting the person from a particular place… a home, an office, or even a car.  In 1973, Marty made the first cell phone call on a phone that would be known as “the brick” which cost $4000 and had a whole 20 minutes of battery life.  He didn’t just plow forward on old assumptions.  He stepped back and questioned old assumptions and with that, he and his team ushered in a whole new age in communication.

That, I think is what Jesus is doing in today’s Gospel lesson.  The apostles had come to Jesus in a panic.  They had suddenly realized that being apostles meant following in Jesus’ footsteps… INCLUDING doing all the incredible things that Jesus did!  They had watched as Jesus calmed storms, cured disease, made people walk again, fed five thousand with pretty much nothing, and hey, let’s not forget that little thing he did called raising the dead!  Their panic came from an their assumption, that the reason Jesus could do those incredible things was that his faith tank was chock-a-block, full up to the tippy top.  Out of that assumption they asked for their faith tanks to be filled up too, so they could do what they were being called to do.    

But Jesus replied in a way that was meant to rattle them out of those old assumptions.  He said, “Guys, if faith was something that could be poured into you, then with just a single drop you’d be able to shoot this tree out into the ocean and while you were at it you could turn the moon into green cheese too!" At this point, in my imagination, Jesus breaks the fourth wall of the Bible and looks right at you and me.  He shakes his head and says, “Apostles? Can you believe these guys.  Sheeeeesh!”

THAT, Jesus was telling them, was NOT the way faith works! And yet, in spite of that, people even today continue to insist THAT is exactly the way faith works.  As a chaplain in seminary, I was sitting with a father one Saturday on the oncology floor.  We sat there as his 20 something year old son’s life was coming to an end.  The dad was in agony.  He would sit by his son’s bed for a while then get up agitated and pace a bit.  But then two “Prayer Warriors” came in.  They had been sent by some other member of the family and when the dad got up to pace the next time, they told him, “Don’t loose faith or he won’t be healed.”  They believed that if this dad’s faith tank went empty, that, not the cancer, would be the reason his son died.  I’m not sure if even 26 years later, I’ve ever been as angry.  

Faith is indeed a gift from God, but to assume that gift is something poured into us, leads to all sorts of bad theology and hurtful and exclusive places.  That’s why Jesus was helping those apostles then, and us apostles now, to step back from old assumptions and see that faith was not something God poured into a tank within us, instead it is us who are swimming in an infinite pool of faith… It is in God, as Paul says, that we live and move and have our being!  We are literally swimming in faith, breathing it in and out like a fish swims and breaths and lives in water.  

Faith is not measured in gallons or pumped into us like gas at from a pump.  Faith is a gift in which we live each and every moment of our lives.  It is a gift of belonging.  It is like amniotic fluid filling a womb where we grow with loving and gentle guidance… where we are willed and coaxed and lured and poked and cajoled with love and care and tenderness toward not just life, but abundant life.

That’s what Jesus was trying to tell the apostles with that last piece of today’s Gospel.  I know the slavery bit gets very  sticky for us, but when we put that aside, what Jesus is telling us is that faith doesn’t come to us with a cosmic bang, an intellectual revelation, or even an angelic visit.  Faith surrounds us and fills us, in, with and under the regular ebbs and flows of everyday living.  Faith comes as we get up for work in the morning and put on the coffee.  Faith surrounds us as we answer emails and scroll through the news.  Faith flows through us as we come home tired and exhausted and over the world in general… and then go ahead and get dinner ready in spite of being over the world in general.  Faith comes to each of us as a gift... in, with, and under every step and every breath we take through each and every day.  

That’s what makes faith a REAL gift.  You don't have to work for it, search for it, qualify for it, or ask for it.  It's simply always there, surrounding each and every one of us, flowing through us, in every moment of our lives in everything we do.  Faith is everywhere we live.  Faith is everywhere we move.  Faith is everywhere we have our being and immersed in that Faith God is always and forever moving us toward new and abundant life, for ourselves and for the world around us.  Amen.