Pentecost 19, Year C

October 7, 2007

The Rev. Dena Cleaver-Bartholomew

I read a story about a five year old girl named Carmine. Carmine lived in Seattle and one Sunday afternoon the priest stopped by to talk her mother. Carmine had just been given a jump rope and was outside trying to learn how to use it. The priest showed her a few pointers. Carmine began to get the hang of jumping rope and both her mother and the priest clapped and cheered as she worked at improving her skill. After a short while she went off to practice on her own while the adults talked. A few moments later Carmine returned, looking very sad and discouraged. “Mommy,” she lamented, “I can do it, but I need lots of clapping.”

Clapping and cheering are wonderful things when we get them. Encouragement often comes when we are first learning a new skill. Think of all of the milestones we celebrate as children develop: rolling over, sitting up, walking, talking, using the potty, tying shoes, learning to read and write. Unless someone is injured or developmentally disabled, such things become expected. No one cheers when we walk down the hall, tie our shoes, or read. There are days when I wish there were recognition for taking care of groceries, laundry, cleaning, and carpooling. Sometimes after a big cleaning binge I have my family members come into the transformed room and go “Oooh, Aaah,!” It does feel better to have the effort recognized, if only momentarily. Would I do the work anyway? Of course I would. It needs to be done.

There are times when it is difficult to motivate ourselves to do what we need to do when we don’t feel like doing it. Where is that clapping and cheering section when we need it? Recently it was revealed that Mother Theresa, the famed indefatigable saint who worked among the people considered “untouchable” in the slums of Calcutta, India from 1946 until she died, did all of her work there without any discernable clapping and cheering from God. From 1946 until her death she experienced what we call a “Dark Night of the Soul,” a time in which one has no sense of the presence of God. Mother Theresa worked among the poor, the sick, the dying, and the outcast with no assurance that God noticed, or for that matter, even existed. How did she do it?

“Increase our faith!” cry the apostles. They are already following Jesus. They have just heard several challenging parables and the explicit expectation of frequent forgiveness of others when they are sinned against, as many as seventy times seven. Which part of this is too much? There are several ways in which we could understand their request. There is the faith we assent to with our heads, the kind that says we believe. I believe a lot of things, even though I can’t understand or explain them. I believe that electricity works, that gravity is real, that giant squid are incredibly cool and mysterious. I think most of us come to faith in God with some of that intellectual acceptance, but for few is it the basis of our belief. Then there is the kind of faith we feel with our hearts, the sense that God is real, that we can trust, that in some way all will be well. This is the kind of faith many of us long to have, or to have more fully. Finally, there is the kind of faith in which we live out of where we are. It is the faith that takes whatever intellectual assent and feeling we have and commits. It is the faith the dictionary describes as loyalty, fidelity, steadfastness. I am not sure if the apostles are asking for more head faith or more heartfelt faith, but it seems that Jesus is saying what they really need is more lived faith. Just as we can grow in love by being more loving, we are told we can grow in faith by being more faithful. Our faithfulness can create the possibility of more faith. Thomas Keating once said “The primary spiritual practice is fidelity to one’s commitments in daily life.” It isn’t glamorous. It seldom comes with a cheering section. Like building a true friendship, learning to love others, or fulfilling marriage vows, we need to live it.

So here we are, on an ordinary day, in the middle of Ordinary Season in the Church year. We hear in Paul’s letter to Timothy that even those in the early Church needed to be reminded of their faith and encouraged to “rekindle the gift of God that is within you.” We know that the apostles themselves cried out for more faith. We have discovered that even Mother Theresa encountered a long silence on the part of God. Yet we are asked, as Christians, to look at the mustard seed potential in each of us and commit. What is it that we are doing to be faithful? What gift in us needs to be kindled or rekindled? I regard it as no coincidence that these readings are the ones given for the day we have the Lay Ministry Fair. First we worship; then we seek application. Tune the head and the heart through the hearing and receiving of God in Jesus Christ; then go look at all of the possibilities for ministry and see where you are called to commit. We have been given what we need, the core of faith in both Word and Sacrament. Take that mustard seed and cultivate it.

Amen