Uprooting Trees (Proper 22C; World Communion Sunday; October 6, 2013; Luke 17:5-10)

Uprooting Trees

Proper 22C; World Communion Sunday
October 6, 2013
Luke 17:5-10

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

What in the world is Jesus trying to say in the first few verses of our gospel reading?  The longer I look at it, the less sense it makes.  Usually, not always, but usually when I sit with a text in the Bible long enough and I use the tools I’ve been taught to use, something eventually pops out.  Usually, not always, but usually, that something is something I can use, something that if coaxed a little can grow into a sermon.  Usually.  Maybe if I had more time, it would, but it is in the nature of preaching that Sunday comes relentlessly, once every seven days, ready or not.  And so, as happens sometimes, I am befuddled when I most hope to be clear. 

Even though this is a very familiar text, the longer I look at it, the stranger it becomes.  I’ll show you what I mean.  First, let’s look at the last part, the part about the mulberry tree.  “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to the mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey.” 

I’m trying to picture this.  Here is a mulberry tree, possibly a black mulberry, one of several different kinds of mulberry, a fruit-bearing tree that grows no higher than fifty feet.  This particular tree is living its life and doing whatever it is that mulberries do when Jesus threatens it with becoming an object lesson in the course of which it will be violently torn from the earth and “replanted” in the sea—a sort of hydroponics experiment?  Though the story doesn’t say so, I suspect that the tree was grateful that none of the disciples tried to take Jesus up on what seems to be a dare.

It would certainly have been impressive.  It would have been a breathtaking display of power.  But my question is, Why?  Why would you uproot an innocent mulberry tree and replant it in the sea?  What purpose would that serve?  Why would anyone say, “Well, it’s a very nice mulberry tree and all but it would be altogether nicer if it were planted in the sea”?

So that’s my first problem.  My second is this matter of the size of faith.  “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed,” Jesus said.  I did not know that faith comes in sizes.  What scale is used to measure faith?  I guess a mustard seed-sized faith would be on the small end of the scale, but obviously not the smallest, since the disciples don’t have “faith the size of a mustard seed.”  Maybe the disciples have poppy seed-sized faith?  And what would a large faith be?  Would it be the size of a peach pit or maybe an avocado pit?  How do you measure the size of faith, especially when there are no mulberry trees conveniently planted nearby?

Jesus talks as if faith has size, takes up a certain amount of space, displaces a certain volume, but the more seriously we take his statement, the less sense it makes.  Sometimes when reading a text in the Bible it helps to see what comes before and after the part we’re trying to understand. 

After the verses we’ve been looking at in which Jesus tells his followers about mulberry hydroponics project, he tells them that they shouldn’t get their hopes too high; they shouldn’t put on airs; they are nobody special and they shouldn’t forget that.  That doesn’t seem to help us much.

Before our reading begins Jesus talks about forgiveness and tells his followers that if someone comes to them even seven times in a single day and says, “I’m changing my ways,” they must forgive them each time.

The disciples then say, “Increase our faith!” as well they might, since they’ve been told to do a very hard thing.  And then Jesus responds to their request to “add to” their faith by telling them, “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.”

So actually, it’s the disciples who bring up the matter of how big faith is by asking Jesus to make theirs bigger.  As often happens, Jesus does not grant their request.  Somehow it’s misplaced, misguided.  And what if he had granted their request?  You know how they are.  The first thing you know they’re going to be comparing their faith to each other’s faith.  “My faith is bigger than your faith.”  “Did you see the size of his faith?!”  It would have ended badly.  Never underestimate the foolishness of men in groups when they get competitive.

So maybe what Jesus does is to cut off this notion of faith that is bigger or smaller with his challenge or dare or provocation or whatever you want to call it.  “It isn’t about size, people!  But if you want to play the size game, just know that even a mustard-seed sized faith could do something as foolish and as useless as transplanting a mulberry tree in the sea.  But it isn’t about size.  Size doesn’t matter!”

Wait.  What?  What does he mean, “Size doesn’t matter”?  Of course size matters.  Whoever thinks size doesn’t matter has never played tackle on an offensive line.  Bigger is better.  Who wouldn’t want a house with extra bedrooms and bathrooms?  Who would trade a house with 1800 square feet of floor space for a house of 1000 square feet?  When you rent a car and they offer you an upgrade, it’s always for a bigger car!  We even want bigger churches and bigger church programs. 

Bigger is better.  That’s what the world around us thinks, anyway.  And sometimes we even think it ourselves.  We think it when we’re fighting for our community and we’re up against some big corporate interest and we see that “big” can afford lawyers and experts.  We settle for muddling through our lives as best we can because the things that need to change are really big and there are big companies and big governments and people with big checking accounts arrayed against us and how can we possibly win and so why even take up the fight?  We’re small. 

Do you see how that “size matters” story takes away our power, demoralizes us, takes the fight out of us, makes it so we don’t even want to see injustice in the world?  We feel like David going up against Goliath.

Do you see how the Bible—in tales like “David and Goliath”—offers us a different story, a story in which size is no advantage?

Jesus falls squarely in this tradition.  Think of how many of his stories were versions of Springsteen’s song, “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come).”   There’s the Parable of the Yeast: a little yeast makes the whole loaf rise.  There’s the Parable of the Sower: just a few seeds, if they fall on fertile soil, can make the whole crop.  There’s the Parable of the Mustard Seed: a tiny seed can produce a huge plant.  A little salt flavors the whole dish.

There are other passages—and I’m only looking at the Gospel of Luke—that point in the same direction.  Five loaves and two fish feed a crowd of five thousand men plus women and children.  The poor widow seems to be without power, but she can nag a judge into doing the right thing for her. 

Jesus tells us that in God’s eyes, the little matter, the small are important.  Their struggles for dignity and their resistance against oppression are the places where the new reign of God is at work and where God’s power can be seen.  One sheep gets lost and it’s important.  One coin is misplaced and God turns her household upside down. 

Big is not the way God works.  Big institutions and big corporations and big governments are not where God lives and works.  God works in the corners, in the cracks, in the alleys and around the corners.  God works through the small.  God works in and through the veteran who has come home with a broken spirit, ravaged by what he has seen and done, who refuses to give up and give in to the darkness in his soul and struggles to do right by his wife and children even when it seems like a losing battle.  God’s power works in and through a young park ranger doing a difficult job and facing down a grandstanding congressman looking to score political points. 

God works through a few grains of salt.  God works with a little yeast.  God works with mustard seeds.  God even—and here is the least believable example of all—works with us.  No, we’re not very big and we’re not very strong and we’re not very rich, but none of that matters much to God. 

When God’s name is hallowed, it won’t be because of some great ecclesiastical institution.  When God’s Kingdom comes, it won’t come from Washington.  When God’s will is done on earth as in heaven, it won’t be because of Wall Street investment bankers.  It will be because God worked through the weak and small and poor.  It will be because God worked through us.

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Tripping Over the Poor (Luke 16:19-31; Proper 21C; September 29, 2013)

Tripping Over the Poor

Luke 16:19-31
Proper 21C
September 29, 2013

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

Parables are stories that are drawn from scenes of ordinary life: farmers planting seeds, women sweeping floors, a father with a conflict between his two sons, a rich person ignoring a poor one, and so forth.  But a parable always includes something that is just a little “off.”  There is always something that doesn’t quite fit.  A parable shows normal, natural, ordinary life in a way that calls into question what is normal, natural and ordinary.  A parable opens up a way of seeing past distractions to the reality that hides behind the normal, natural and ordinary.  So let’s look closely at this parable to see what we can see.

The first thing we see is that only one of the main characters has a name.  The poor beggar who lies at the gate of the rich man’s house is named Lazarus; the other character, the rich man, has no name.  Our tradition has not been satisfied with that, so it has supplied him with a name: Dives.  But Dives isn’t a real name.  It’s only Latin for “rich man.”

In the world that Jesus’ listeners knew and the one that we know too, a rich man is somebody.  People know who he is.  We know names like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Ted Turner.  In the real world, rich people have names; they are not nameless nobodies.  It’s poor people who are invisible nobodies.  It’s poor people who are nameless.  But in the story that Jesus tells, the poor man has a name and the rich man is only “the rich guy.” The story Jesus tells invites us to value Lazarus over the rich guy, to value the Third World over the First

Two people, Lazarus and “the rich guy,” have been put in the story.  And where they have been put is the gate of the rich guy’s house where Lazarus is lying begging. 

Beggars were a common enough sight in the ancient world.  Most people lived very precarious lives.  Peasants, that is, people who owned and farmed a little land and grazed animals on a village’s common lands, were suffering enormous financial pressure in Roman Palestine.  Under the Romans Palestine’s economy was being “monetized.”  Money was being required for taxes and rents and there was not nearly enough of it.  Peasants were forced to borrow money at interest to make these payments.  They were falling behind and many were losing their land.  Without land, peasants with no special skills became day laborers who earned almost enough to feed themselves—when they were able to find work, which was not every day.  Over time they became under- and mal-nourished and too weak to work.  Then there was nothing left for them but begging and that was only a way to slow the dying process.  Lazarus was near the end.  He was so badly nourished that his body could no longer maintain the integrity of his skin.  And soon he would die.  This is what happens in a society without safety nets, as it will happen in ours if we continue to despise the poor for their poverty.  Jesus’ hearers were all too familiar with how people became beggars and what happened to them next.

So the characters in the story were familiar.  But the setting of the story doesn’t fit.  Lazarus is shown lying by the rich guy’s gate. Then and now the First and Third Worlds seldom meet each other face to face. Then and now the rich and the destitute don’t come that close to each other.  Today we have zoning ordinances.  Today we have laws that prohibit sleeping in public.  We put benches in parks that have arm rests that make it impossible to lie down.  Some people put fences around our communities and install gates to keep “them” out.  We ignore the needs of the poor for decent low-income housing so that they can no longer live in our town and then we discover that we can’t reliably get people to do the menial tasks that it takes to run a community. 

The rich guy didn’t have zoning ordinances or anti-vagrancy laws.  But he had his own way to keep the approaches to his gates from becoming a gathering spot for the poorest of the poor.  He had security people.

In this as in all things the rich guy had arranged his life carefully.  He insulated himself from other classes of people.  He wasn’t the one who collected taxes.  No, he contracted on behalf of the Romans for someone else to do that.  He didn’t collect the rents on his lands.  No, he had an overseer to do that.  He didn’t force peasants off their land when they couldn’t pay their rents.  No, he had his security people to do that.  He covered his tracks so that there was no obvious connection between him and people like Lazarus. 

The only time he had direct dealings with the poor was when he gave alms.  Alms weren’t enough money to solve any problems.  But they weren’t designed to solve any problems.  Alms were designed to be a cheap way to gain him respect and honor in the community.  It was like Wal-Mart tossing a pittance at the problems in our community that they help cause and perpetuate and calling themselves a good corporate citizen for doing it.

What Jesus did in telling his story was to collapse the distance that the rich liked to keep between themselves and the poor.  He stripped away the excuses and the games that the rich play.  He brought the rich guy and Lazarus face to face so that everyone could see what their real relationship was.

And how did the rich guy respond?  Not very well.  In life he trips over Lazarus in his gate but fails to see him.  Even in death he doesn’t get it.  He is so convinced that the world should be arranged for his benefit that even tormented in the place of the dead, as the story has it, he believes that he can order people around.  “Lazarus, get me a drink of water!” “Lazarus, go warn my brothers!”  The rich guy is clueless.

So clueless in fact that Abraham says that not even someone rising from the dead would break through the layers of pride, privilege and self-delusion that shield the rich guy and his brother.

Now here is the thing about parables: they do not tell us what conclusion we are to draw.  We are left with that job ourselves.  Where do we place ourselves in this story?  We are members of the middle class—most of us—and the story deliberately leaves out the many layers between the very top and very bottom of the social pyramid where we would fit. 

Twice Father Abraham tells the rich guy that Moses and the Prophets could point his brothers toward a path that would let his brothers escape the rich guy’s torment, but the rich guy doesn’t seem to think that will be enough.  And maybe it won’t.  After all, we ourselves have a centuries-long habit of reading the Torah, and the Prophets, and even Jesus himself through middle class eyes.  We have a hard time hearing them except in ways that reinforce rather than challenge the comfortable ways we have of living in our present system of wealth and power.

How can we find new ways to read Jesus, Moses and the prophets so that we can place ourselves with Lazarus, so that we, too, may be found by Abraham’s side? 

It comes down to the rich guy and Lazarus; it comes down to the First World and the Third World.  We live in the First World and see life through First World eyes.  We read Jesus and Moses and the prophets through First World filters.  It all looks natural to us. We seldom question it.  How can we come to a place from which we can see our own filters and biases more clearly?  How do we see the First World for what it is? 

As long as we are standing in the First World it is impossible to see the First World for the same reason that you cannot see England from Trafalgar Square.  To see England we have to go somewhere else: to France, say, or Ireland.  To see the First World clearly we must stand in the Third.

And that, fundamentally, is the reason that we send work-campers to Beverly, Kentucky.  That is why we are a part of the Sister Parish movement and why we have had a ten-year relationship with the community of Potrerillos in El Salvador. 

During our last Sister Parish delegation in June, one of our conversations was with a Catholic priest named Rutilio Sánchez.  Padre Tilo, as he is called, was a younger colleague of Monseñor Romero.  Today he works with several dozen Christian communities to help them live out the good news of Jesus in their lives and in the life of their communities.  Padre Tilo asked us a question that has haunted me since.  I never like to keep a good haunting to myself, so I’m going to share his question with you and let it disturb you for a while. 

Padre Tilo said that everyone who comes to El Salvador wants something.  The conquistadors wanted gold.  The colonists wanted cacao and indigo.  In the 19^th century American companies wanted coffee.  Now the mining companies want gold and silver ore.  “So,” he wanted to know, “what do you want?”  Of course, placing us as the latest in the long list of conquerors, invaders and exploiters warns us that just because we have flown from Iowa to El Salvador does not mean that we won’t continue to see the world through First World eyes.  That is always possible, always a temptation. 

What did we want?  He let us off the hook and asked a different question and our conversation went on.  But I haven’t been able to let his first question go. 

What do I want?  I want to be able to stand alongside people whose Third World experience is quite different from my First World experience, to share our stories, to see and to listen and to learn so that I may begin to see what the world looks like to them, to begin to see the First World from the Third, to know myself without my usual excuses and protective strategies, to become open to God’s Spirit, to allow myself to be remade after the image of Jesus, to read Jesus and Moses and the prophets through the eyes of Lazarus. 

What do I want?  I want to see Jesus in the lives and stories of Jesus’ people.  I want to come away changed, converted, reborn.  I want for Jesus to take my old life and ruin it so that I can never again live my life in ignorance.  I want God’s will done.  I want God’s kingdom to come.  I want God’s name made holy. 

That’s what I want.  Or at least that’s what I want to want.  And that’s a start.

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