Text: Luke 17:1-10
Date: October 2, 2022
Event: Proper 22, Year C — Annual Church Picnic
Luke 17:1–10 (EHV)
Jesus said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! 2It would be better for that person if a millstone would be hung around his neck and he would be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. 3Watch yourselves.
“If your brother sins, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. 4Even if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times returns to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
5The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”
6The Lord said, “If you had faith like a mustard seed, you could tell this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. 7Which one of you who has a servant plowing or taking care of sheep will say to him when he comes in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at the table’? 8Won’t the master tell him instead, ‘Prepare my supper, and after you are properly dressed, serve me while I eat and drink. After that you may eat and drink’? 9He does not thank the servant because he did what he was commanded to do, does he? 10So also you, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants. We have only done what we were supposed to do.’”
Trust in the One who Forgave You
Faith is, perhaps, one of the most misunderstood spiritual concepts in our day. Even many Christians may not be able to accurately describe and define what faith is. You might have heard people say, “Well, you just got to have faith! You just have to believe!” When talking about anything from applying for a job, to a scary medical diagnosis, to an emotional hardship, people can point you to believe. But… believe what?
Faith always needs an object. If we’re going to have faith, it means we are trusting something. You have faith in these public picnic tables to hold you up and not break while you’re sitting there. I have faith that this music stand isbn’t going to topple over and break my tablet that’s sitting on it. But we have to be careful that we’re not creating fiction to trust in, right? No matter how earnestly I may believe I can fly by flapping my arms, that does not make me able to fly.
The thought behind the statement “just believe” with the job application, or the medical diagnosis, or the other emotional hardship is often communicating a thought along the lines of: “God is going to do what you want him to do in this area,” be it getting you the job, curing the disease, or smoothing out the rough problems. But has he made those promises, or are we trusting promises he hasn’t made?
Jesus addresses the concept of faith in our lives in our Gospel this morning, and leads us to examine whom or what we are trusting and what expectations we have from that trust. Jesus urges us to trust the one who forgave you, because that is depending on the promises of God.
The last few weeks we’ve been hearing Jesus’ warnings and directions to the Pharisees. When it came to Jesus’ teachings, we might call the Pharisees unbelievers or fringe believers depending on the person. But in our Gospel this morning, we’re told that Jesus spoke to his disciples. This would include the 12, and probably the broader 72 that Jesus had earlier sent out to do some preaching and teaching work, and maybe an even bigger gathering of disciples. The point is that these words were not spoken to a mixed crowd. Jesus is not trying to shake unbelievers out of their spiritual slumber or apathy. He’s speaking to believers, which means even more than before, Jesus is speaking directly to us.
I want us to jump to the middle of our Gospel. After something that felt difficult to believe, the disciples responded to him, “Increase our faith.” They didn’t think they had an adequate faith to trust or do the things that Jesus was saying. And then Jesus responds with a wildly vivid picture: “If you had faith like a mustard seed, you could tell this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
Can you imagine doing that? Can you imagine me turning and speaking to one of these giant eucalyptus trees here in the park and saying, “Be uprooted and planted in the Bay!” and then it does it? It might feel like I had a wildly strong faith, or a uniquely strong connection to God to do such a thing.
But Jesus says that such an amazing outcome doesn’t require huge faith; it requires mustard-seed faith. Mustard seeds are really tiny. You can see a whole bunch them in a person’s palm on the front cover of the bulletin. Those are not impressive in size or scope. So what is Jesus’ point?
Faith’s power is not from the faith but from what it trusts. If you sit in a strong chair that you just barely believe will hold you, that chair will hold you just as well as if you were completely confident in its stability. Mustard-seed-faith or strong-faith doesn’t matter; what matters is what is trusted.
So, if God had made a promise that you could yell at trees to relocate themselves into the heart of a body of water, and you believed that promise even just a little bit, you could order the trees and they would obey. Because in that example, the power is coming from God’s promises—you’re just trusting that the promise is true and reliable. Of course, God hasn’t made that promise—Jesus is using a hypothetical example. So I would not recommend yelling at the trees the rest of the morning here to see if they’ll move.
We might think of Scriptural example of a one-off promise that was trusted—sort of. Think about when Jesus walked on the water and Peter asked Jesus to bring him out with him and Jesus says, “Sure, come on down!” He made a promise in that moment for Peter that he could walk on the water. And what happened? Peter walked on the water—at least until the wind and the waves shook his faith. That’s the argument for faith that is bigger and stronger than a mustard seed. Strong faith is less likely to let go in times of trial and hardship. But strong or weak faith doesn’t have any effect on the promise believed.
That means that faith has to trust a real promise. Faith can’t make the promise a reality. So, if our faith is going to depend on something, it has to depend on what God has actually said to us. And while God has made a lot of promises in many different areas of our lives, the principle one is that of the forgiveness of sins. He promises through the prophet Jeremiah, “I will forgive their guilt, and I will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:34) and through the apostle John, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
The forgiveness of sins is not some wistful hope that we throw into the spiritual ether hoping it will become a reality. The forgiveness of sins is not a hypothetical situation like the tree being uprooted and planted in the sea. The forgiveness of our sins is not a one-off promise made to one specific person at a specific time like Peter walking on the water. The forgiveness of sins and the certainty of eternal life are the clear, consistent, and accomplished promises from God to all people, including you. Your forgiveness is a reality. Your sin is washed away in Jesus’ blood. You can trust that with all of your heart.
With that established, trusting the one who forgave you, we can start to apply Jesus’ teaching a little more clearly. The fact that you have been forgiven changes your outlook and approach to life. Knowing that Jesus died for you means you approach things differently than you otherwise would. Jesus said, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for that person if a millstone would be hung around his neck and he would be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. Watch yourselves.”
Trusting that we are forgiven means that while temptations are unavoidable, sin is not. Trusting that we’ve been forgiven means we can tell temptation to take a hike and leave us alone because we are the children of God. It enables us to resist that temptation, and more than that, to not be the one through whom they come to others. So, because we are forgiven, it means we don’t try to get people in our lives to do what is wrong. We don’t act as a conduit for temptation for friends at school, our spouse, or our coworkers. Instead, we build them up to do what is right. We live our lives making clear that temptation is not something we want, because we want the chance to be able to share what Jesus has done with them.
And because we are forgiven, we know that when we stumble, when we do let temptation get the better of us and we do sin—because we will—we don’t have to fear that that is the end of everything. We can confidently bring that sin to God and say, “Lord, please forgive me.” And we know that, for Jesus’ sake, that sin is gone.
Jesus goes on: “If your brother sins, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. Even if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times returns to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” Trusting in the one who has forgiven you means that you can turn around and forgive others. It means treating other people’s sin like God treats your sin. Does God say he forgives you and then later throw it in your face? No, when God forgives, it is gone. Does God say you have to do something to earn his forgiveness? No, Jesus did it all in our place. So when someone wrongs us—even if it happens multiple times in a day—because of our trust in Jesus we can truly forgive that person each and every time.
Lastly, Jesus uses the picture of a servant taking care of his master. The servant receives no special accolades for doing what he was supposed to (though one would hope in that human relationship, gratitude and appreciation is expressed). But when it comes to our relationship with God, we don’t bring all the things we did because we trusted in him and look for special treatment. We don’t say, “Hey, I didn’t succumb to that one temptation—can I get something special?” We don’t say, “Hey, I didn’t bring temptation to someone else—can I get something special?” We don’t say, “Hey, I forgave that person who sinned against me multiple times—can I get something special?” No, when we do those things, we simply say, “We are unworthy servants. We have only done what we were supposed to do.”
As we approach the tasks that God has for us to do, we always remember where we came from. We were sinners, lost to hell for that sin. But God saved us. Jesus’ life and death forgives us. We are restored and whole again with God. That means we’re not looking for special treatment when we do what God asks us to do because he’s already given us that special treatment. We do these things because we trust in the one who forgave us, thus we are doing so out of thanksgiving to that one who forgave us.
Trusting God means depending on certain promises. Trusting God means you will not be disappointed or let down. Trusting God means leaning on him exclusively for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Trusting in God means knowing that we have all that we need for life and eternity, and that we can live our lives thanking him for what he’s done.
Trusting in the one who forgave you doesn’t mean you can command trees to be planted in the depths of the sea. But trusting in the one who forgave you does mean you can soothe your soul with the fact that God has rescued you from the depths of punishment. May God bless your lives lived in joy and thanksgiving to the one you trust, to the one who forgave you! Amen.
