Want Faith? Well, Then: Be Faithful!

Message for Sunday, October 6

Part of a Season of Pentecost series:
"On the Road with Jesus: Our Journey to Jerusalem"

Luke's Narrative of Jesus' Exodus into the Nation's Capital!

Luke 17:5-10

“Stupid is as stupid does.” Quick: What movie is that from? ...

Think on that statement with me for a moment. It’s not “Stupid is as stupid thinks.” Stupid as defined by my dictionary : “slow of mind,” “given to unintelligent decisions or acts.” The statement’s not even, “Stupid is as stupid feels.”

It’s, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

I think Forrest Gump may have been well-schooled as a lad in Jesus.

The Scripture. “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.” (see depiction above)

Ah, those words: “Increase! Growth economy! Let’s get more!” But Jesus would have none of it! In this case, not the grandiosity, the pomposity, the heroics of believing more. Jesus emphasizes instead – as his ensuing words make clear – unceremoniously doing the next right thing: “We are your servants, Jesus – we have done only what we ought to have done.” No pats on the back. Just doing it. “Service is as service does.”

“Want faith?” Jesus is saying. “Well, then: Be faithful.”

Think of faithful, and many of us think of the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of over 4500 sisters and in 133 countries today. They run – as she did – hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis … soup kitchens … children's and family counseling programs … orphanages … schools. Beyond the typical three vows of chastity, poverty and obedience for a religious life, Mother Teresa had a fourth vow added: to give "wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor".

That’s what’s known as being faithful.

As for Mother Teresa’s faith? Here’s what she said to a priest in 1979: “Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.”

Certainly, she should be allowed that momentary doubt! And yet, the letters she wrote – compiled in a book and published after death – revealed more. Shortly after beginning work in Calcutta's slums, her spirits sank. "Where is my faith?" she wrote. "Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness... If there be God — please forgive me."

Eight years later, she was still looking to reclaim her lost faith: "Such deep longing for God… Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal," she wrote.

As her fame increased, her faith refused to return. Her smile, she said, was a mask. "What do I labor for?" she asked in one letter. "If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."

  Mother Teresa: Faithful as any to the end. As for her faith? … Welllll …

“The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’” And the Lord replied – in so many words: Pay no attention to your faith – or at least the size of it! Enough with the “I believe” assertions! Put away those creeds! Know you are servants. Do only what you know you ought to do.

But what about justification by grace through faith – the cornerstone of the Protestant revolution? Well, that five century-old Protestant revolution is now an institution, and not very Protest-ant. We have worshiped at the house of the Apostle Paul with these words, and upon entering that house we have made of these words a restricted-entry theological parlor game.

Judging by the zeal of Paul’s commitment to the gospel, I think he would toss this faith-versus-works game aside and vigorously affirm a few words from Sr. Helen Prejean as closer to what he meant. Sr. Helen is the author of Dead Man Walking, and is a renowned advocate for the abolition of the death penalty. I can sense the Apostle Paul’s spirit in these words Sr. Helen once told NPR: “I watch what I do to see what I really believe.”

Sister Helen’s faith is, like the Apostle Paul’s and Mother Teresa’s, a journey-oriented faith. Faith not as a Sunday statement of right beliefs, but as a journey with Jesus to the Jerusalem of our lives, seeking with him the next right actions. Not right beliefs, first … but right and prayerful actions.

  Want faith? Well, then: Be faithful!