Trusting in a Great God and Not in a Great Faith
TranscriptioN
Good morning again, my friends. It is good to be with you this morning. I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church, and it is a joy to celebrate the Lord with you this morning.
Today's passage is about the relationship of faith to following Jesus, and the nature of relationship is really important as Jesus pushes back on the hubristic type of approach of thinking that there is a transactional approach to having a relationship with God. It reminds me a little bit of a book I was reading a while back on marriage, where it pointed out an unhealthy pattern in some couples, where one spouse would deeply long to have their spouse meet a desire for them. It could be physical, could be emotional, whatever it is, and whether they name that need or not, they would start doing extra things for their spouse, not out of a sense of love, but to obligate their spouse to meet their need, right? There's this ulterior motive, and along those lines, I once heard a pastor somewhere say, you know, if you give your husband a crown, you'll make him a king.
In other words, what he's saying is if you fake it, and you treat him better than he is, then he'll rise to the occasion. Ew. First of all, it's terrible advice. It doesn't work. And second, it's just placating immaturity in your spouse. But also, what's interesting about that transactional approach to marriage is that it makes the actions of the wife suspect at any given time.
You know, is marriage then a big transaction of each other trying to have their needs met by doing kindnesses to one another? It brings in this ulterior motive, and that's just not the nature of relationship—true, authentic goodness. So similarly, in our walk with Christ, we have to watch that we're not obeying out of this desire to obligate or try and obligate God to having our needs met or having certain outcomes arise as a result of our faithfulness.
And this morning, in our gospel passage, we're encountering Jesus giving his disciples instructions about what the life of faith looks like. What does it look like to have a relationship with God as our King in the kingdom of God? And this passage has really two important descriptions of the nature of faith. First, it's that the presence of faith shows how great God is, not how great our faith is. Good faith shows how good God is, and not how good our faith is. And second, faithfulness is given because of who God is and the grace that he's given to us, not to try and obligate God to anything, as though we could even do that. So as we look at our gospel passage this morning, let me pray for us.
“In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, I love that psalm where if we delight in you, you give us the desires of our hearts. And so it is a work to grow in delighting in you, so that what we want is to see you in all of our doings and in all of our goings and all of our words and thoughts. So, Lord, be with us and help us to desire you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.”
We start the gospel reading this morning with this really enigmatic phrase that Jesus says about, if you just have a mustard seed amount of faith, then you could take a giant mulberry tree, uproot it, and go plant it in the sea—which is sort of a silly image. Mulberry trees don't grow in water. And that's the point. It's impossible to uproot this mulberry tree and to plant it into the sea. But that's also the point here—that God does the impossible. It's not dissimilar from when Jesus says, you know, it's impossible for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, but with God, all things are possible. Here it points to this reality.
Jesus isn't interested in having his disciples go around figuring out how to uproot mulberry trees and throw them into the sea. Nor is he worried about them going around wondering if they have enough faith in each moment. That is not his concern. The point is that the effectiveness of faith to accomplish the work of the kingdom isn't about the greatness of somebody's faith; it's about the greatness of the God in whom we have faith. It's not about adding more; it's about just the presence of it. And so the whole reason Jesus brings this up is he gave them a really hard saying before. He started talking about, you know, as you're my disciples, you're gonna have to rebuke one another at times.
There are times where somebody's going to get out of line, believe something erroneous—whatever. You're gonna have to rebuke somebody for something. And when that happens, if that person who follows me turns and repents, then you need to be prepared to forgive them.
And so that is a hard thing to do once, but Jesus goes above and beyond and says, as many times as they repent, you're to have the disposition of forgiveness. And this prompts them to ask, well, Jesus, can you add to our faith? Because that is a lot. And presumably, then, they believe that they don't have enough faith to accomplish that thing that shows them to be followers of Jesus.
And so Jesus begins to talk about not the amount of faith, but just the presence of it. Because if it were the amount of faith, then it would be up to each one of us to muster up something in ourselves, and it would depend on our greatness. But instead, this is a miracle.
It comes from the power of God. It's not my ability to accomplish something; it's God's power to do it. And so it's the presence of faith, as small as a mustard seed—not my ability to move God.
And so God calls us to pray and to trust. He isn't waiting for us to hit some arbitrary goal, like, you know, if you're fundraising or something, and you get the red line up—you know, it's not that you have a faith chart. And eventually, once you hit that goal, God starts answering your prayer.
That's way too transactional. It's not how God works. But he invites us to prayer, which is a mystery—not as a transaction, but as an invitation into participation in what he's doing. And so, in a real way, then, prayer is more for you and me than it is for God and his sake. And as I make a habit of seeking God, knowing the desires of God and the love of God, and aligning my loves and desires with the love and desires of God, listening for what God's doing, paying attention, then I start to begin to participate in God's work.
So you can see how these sorts of phrases in the Psalms work, like, I want to grow in my desire for you and your desires, and give me the desires of my heart. Because there's this interplay of growing in the desires of God so that we can truly say, God, give me the desires of my heart—which are supposed to be growing in alignment with yours. I'm invited into participation in what God's doing.
And so we're not just looking for mulberry trees to go uproot and plant into the sea, but we're looking, in the slowness of relationship, we're learning what our great God can do in us and through us, as in the daily operation of the Holy Spirit, we're seeking God's kingdom in the everyday stuff of life that he puts in front of us. So as we follow Jesus, seek his kingdom, and live lives of prayer, God sometimes does, in fact, change our outward circumstances.
This is one of the mysteries of the economy of grace—that he, in fact, does hear our prayers and relieve our pain, as the confession liturgy says. And sometimes he does a work in our hearts to bear the outward circumstances that aren't changing. Sometimes he uses us to pray with someone and change their outward circumstances.
Sometimes he uses us to speak a word of encouragement that helps them endure the situation that's not changing. All of those scenarios are equally miraculous, as the Holy Spirit is doing his work in our hearts. And so Jesus's point is to normalize a life of faith.
Normalize ordinary faithfulness. We have to cultivate this life of faithfulness and trust in him as we walk, and not look for extreme, ecstatic moments all the time, but live lives that are curious and discovering the kingdom of God in that everyday, ordinary stuff of life—and what God's doing in us and the people that we're in relationship with. It's learning to be curious and discover the kingdom of God around us.
And so a growing disciple also understands, in this parable, he moves from mulberry trees to an analogy about servanthood. A growing disciple understands and grows in this idea that we can never put God into our debt. We can't obligate him to certain circumstances.
And he illustrates the point with slavery, which in their culture was a common institution. Everybody knew about it. And so if somebody had a slave who had just come in from working in the field, the owner's not going to sit the slave down at the table and say, I made a meal for you, come sit and eat with me.
But instead, the slave's going to come in from the field, they're going to make dinner, and then at the end of the meal, then they can eat and drink. And does the master even give him a thank you in this parable? No. And again, parables are not like a one-to-one correspondence.
So we don't want to think that God is some cruel slave master. That's not his point. His point is that servitude in this parable is just assumed.
There's not this expectation of, oh, what a great job you've done all day. God's not doing this for us either. He's not saying, oh, look at how wonderful you are, right? But no, the servitude is just expected.
And so we serve God because of the things that he's done for us in Christ—the grace, all the goodness of the work of the Holy Spirit has been—the Holy Spirit himself has been poured into our hearts. And so St. Ambrose, the one who is responsible for St. Augustine's conversion, says it this way: “Grace must be acknowledged, but nature not overlooked. Do not boast of yourself if you have served well, as you should have done.” And I think what's helpful about understanding this nature of living into grace without expecting a thank-you all the time is this: there are two things I think it speaks to.
First, our tendency to try to obligate God to our success and to successful outward circumstances. And second, to frame our success as God's blessing. These two things may not be true.
In the first case, imagine somebody, you know what, today I need to start obeying God so that things get better in my life, so that things get better overall. And at the root of this is the prosperity gospel, right? This idea that if I just change my behavior and act better, God will give me outward prosperity and I will be fine. God, I'll stop smoking today if you heal my lung cancer right now, right? It's that sort of idea that's trying to obligate God to outward circumstances and success.
But instead, in this day-to-day life, we are expected then to name brokenness, to turn towards the God who longs to give us grace, and seek to amend our lives because of what he's done for us—whether we're in a season of trial or whether we're in a season of flourishing. That's the everyday stuff of faithfulness. Marriages might get better as a result, parenting probably will get better as a result, you know, but the motivation is different.
I'm not obligating God to anything. We are just servants, and we're doing the hard work of naming brokenness and naming grace to discover what God has made us to become and what his kingdom should look like in our lives. And so we leave the outcomes to God because whatever those outcomes are, we can discover the kingdom in them.
The second error is thinking that success is necessarily a sign of God's favor. A few years ago, in our community lawn in our townhouse subdivision, I saw these beautiful flowers that sprung up in the community lawn, and I thought, oh, those are great, I should put those in my yard. So I went out with a shovel, dug them up, put them in my yard, googled, hey, what are these things, and discovered that these are wildly invasive.
I think it was called Star of Jerusalem. And not only do they seed, they also spread through their roots. And so I was like, oh no, I have made a huge mistake.
Even though this thing is beautiful, I'm gonna dig this out and throw it in the trash. So I threw it in the yard waste. But what's interesting is every year now, I have to re-dig them out because they keep coming back. And as I look at the community lawn, they have just flourished out there, untended.
And so it's a helpful reminder to me that just because something grows fast and something grows large and it looks pretty or successful does not mean that it is healthy. That Star of Jerusalem, whatever it is, is getting rid of the grass that should be there. Once it's dead, it gets brown and nothing lives there.
And so it's not healthy. And so just, you know, whether it's a church or a business, a podcast, a person—whatever—people with big platforms and followings may not be healthy. And their organizations might be incredibly fragile.
Just because something grows fast, large, looks pretty, does not necessarily make it healthy or indicate that God is blessing it. Again, there's a subtle type of transactional theology in this. And it's very American.
I think sometimes we evaluate someone's veracity by how large their following is. Hey, they have six million views. Doesn't make them more true than someone else, right? But this is how we judge things.
It's a transactional theology at work. And things seem to be going well, so I must be doing okay.
God must be blessing it. I am fine. And as a result, I don't do the hard work of naming brokenness, naming the grace of God, and discovering the kingdom when things are fine.
So that when hard things do come up, I'm totally unprepared for them. From our Old Testament reading today, we read my favorite Old Testament book—if I'm allowed to have one—the book of Habakkuk. Three chapters. Go read it when you get home. It's fantastic. Habakkuk, who's actually—I didn't put this in here—but his name, Chavakuk, means to hug. It's like an embrace. And so, in all of the complaint, remember that Habakkuk is like God's big hug for us.
So in the Old Testament, Habakkuk gives us this example of daily faithfulness. And he's complaining in the very beginning, saying, how long, Lord, do I have to cry for help and you're not going to listen to me? How's that? Does that scream faithfulness to you? But this is faithfulness in God's eyes.
And so his first complaint is about the injustice he's seeing around them as God's people are making a muck of the law, and everything is coming out perverted. And then God says, “Don't worry, I'm going to take care of it. I'm going to send the Babylonians.” And Habakkuk's like, “Is that a good idea? Because that's going to make you look bad, right?” And then chapter two is God addressing, “I'm going to take care of them too.”
And I call it the woe oracles—the waracles. It's like a funeral, basically, for the future Babylonians. And so in between chapter one, with Habakkuk's complaint, and the bulk of chapter two, where Babylon is going to be destroyed, Habakkuk is called to sit there at the watch post and wait.
And so he has to sit somewhere between “How long, O Lord?” and the woe oracles that signal the death of Babylon. And that prayer in that in-between is what is aligning Habakkuk's heart to God's heart and God's will. And as Habakkuk comes to terms with what God's going to do, he stations himself as this prophetic watchman to tell the people the prophecies that God is going to give him.
And in verse four, you have this famous phrase, part of which gets picked up in the New Testament: it says, “See, the enemy is puffed up; his desires are not upright, but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness,” kind of no matter what comes.
This is the character of righteousness—day-to-day faithfulness in the in-between. There's this day-to-day faithfulness that strikes me in the book of Habakkuk, where there's a capacity on God's part to hold our complaint in the light of unmet expectations. Because the reality is, we are going to feel that strain.
God, what are you doing? I thought things were going to be better than this. I had expectations, and it didn't turn out that way. And the good news is, God is big enough to hold that complaint.
And not only is he big enough to hold that complaint, but actually our voice of complaint in those moments is itself an act of faith, according to Habakkuk. So before you run and spew your rage on social media, spew your rage before the God of heaven, because that is an act of faith. And so when things don't go as planned, when we're tempted to think, hey, where did I go wrong that God's doing this to me—which assumes that my circumstances are an indication of God's favor—
Instead, note what Scripture talks about a lot: that whether in seasons of plenty or famine, success or perceived failure, God is at work doing something in us. And faithfulness is this invitation to say, God, how long am I going to cry to you for help, and you're not giving me an answer? And the resolve to sit at the watchtower and to wait for the revelation of God. God's present with us, showing us more of himself as we walk with him, as one pastor famously said, in a long obedience in the same direction.
And so as we close this morning, remember that our faith is in the greatness of God, and it is not in the greatness of our faith. It only takes a mustard seed amount of faith to see God do the miraculous works around us and in us. And let's remember that we can't obligate God to material success, the things that our hearts or wills are longing for.
But instead, we live life with him day to day in faithfulness, watching not just for what he's going to do around us, but what he's doing in us. And it's that kind of humble, daily faithfulness that's going to characterize the follower of Jesus. Let me pray for us.
“Oh God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment and light rises up in the darkness for the godly, grant us, in all of our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask you what you would have us to do, that the spirit of wisdom may save us from all false choices, that in your light we may see light, and in your straight path we may not stumble. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited using ChatGPT.
