Jesus invites his disciples to look beyond the power, the expectations, and the culture to see what God is doing.
How Jesus invites us into a new way of seeing
Proper 22C | Luke 17:5-10
Aren’t you at least a little bit curious about what happened right before this gospel passage?
Last week, we read the end of chapter 16 and now we’re starting in 17 with verse 5. And the Disciples come up to Jesus and say—wait a minute. It doesn’t say Disciples. It says Apostles. OK. The Apostles come up to Jesus and ask how to increase their faith.
Something has happened here. Why are they asking for more faith?
Here is what we’ve missed.
Remember that Jesus is talking to this mixed crowd of people. He’s got his followers. Which include The Twelve and the rest of the disciples. He’s got the crowds. And in that group, he’s got some religious leaders who have been confronting and even mocking him.
In chapter 15, he speaks to those leaders, then in 16, he speaks to his disciples in the first half and the religious leaders in the second half.
Then at the top of chapter 17, he turns back to his disciples and tells them
“Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”
— Luke 17:1b-2
And then:
“Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, “I repent”, you must forgive.”
— Luke 17:3-4
Heavy stuff here. Causing people to stumble, millstones, rebukes, forgiveness. We hear that and think it feels like a lot. They must be so confused.
No wonder they ask for help.
They hear that and think: You know, I have some faith. But I’m not sure I have that much faith. That sounds like a lot, Jesus. You want me to be careful about how I treat other people and you also want me to forgive others?
And like, you want this forgiveness all the time? Even those people causing others to stumble and ought to have a millstone hung around their necks and thrown into the sea? Like, we don’t get to do that wrapping and throwing: but forgiving?
And Jesus’s response is like: Yeah. Like, if you have any faith at all, you’ve got enough!
So, you know they’re all like, fat chance, Jesus!
Or else they’re like Dude, you keep piling it on!
We’re saying it’s all too much and your response is essentially nah, you’re good?
If they are confused by this, I have little doubt that we would be confused. So let’s call a timeout.
Let’s focus on the fundamentals.
What is happening here?
Who are these people who are following Jesus?
What is the purpose?
We’ll take these in reverse order.
What is the purpose?
People followed Jesus because he promised them a better life. A better life than the one they had.
They were lost and confused. Stuck. Living a life that someone else designed for them. Some of them fished; the family business. There’s a tax collector. A healer. Regular people. Some with money and some without. But they heard something from Jesus and they saw something in Jesus that made them throw those regular lives away. To make a better life with few possessions.
Because that better life that Jesus promised is possible. And Jesus will show them how.
Who are these people?
We’ve already covered that a bit, but let’s say more. These are all kinds of people. Today we might say they are from every class. And he has collected followers from all over. Some of them may even be from the religious elites. Just none of his closest followers.
This leads us to that question that came up right at the beginning.
Jesus speaks to his disciples about stumbling and forgiving and then his apostles ask him for more faith.
We think of it this way: the twelve people who follow Jesus are The Disciples. And after the Ascension, when Jesus leaves, they become Apostles. But in Luke, this happens way earlier.
We are first introduced to this title-switching way back in chapter 9. When Jesus empowers the disciples to go out and do his work in the world, Luke then describes them as apostles.
So they aren’t apostles because Jesus is dead or ascended, they are apostles when they are doing Jesus work. And when they are students learning from their rabbi, they are disciples. They are both.
Which means we too are both. We are students and teachers. We learn and share. It is fundamental to following The Way.
What is happening here?
Jesus is teaching his students about forgiveness. Then, as practitioners of that teaching, they ask him for help.
So in this moment, they are apostles, the very people who use Jesus’s power in the world and they are explicitly asking for more. They are saying that they can’t imagine that they have enough faith to do what Jesus has asked them to do.
Essentially, to forgive the unforgivable.
And Jesus seems to say that they’re looking at it backward. That it isn’t a problem of volume. They’re looking at a problem like a dude with a pickup. Like they’ve got a chain strapped to the back and they’re trying to pull a stump out. Jesus, we need more torque!
Jesus responds by saying that it doesn’t take massive faith to transform the world. It takes any. Faith so small you can’t even see it is enough to uproot that tree.
It isn’t volume: it’s about your perspective. They don’t lack sufficient faith. Any is sufficient.
The Part About the Slaves
Then Jesus invites them into another shifting of perspective.
He’s like: Imagine you’re rich and have a dozen servants. And the one who brings the dinner to the table…brings the dinner to the table. Are you thinking…hey, maybe you should sit and eat with us! Of course you’re not.
Now, these disciple/apostles just heard Jesus shame the religious elites with a parable about a rich man being condemned for…that’s right…ignoring the man starving outside of his house. The one who never invited the servants to come eat with him.
So we shouldn’t hear Jesus this week and be like: that’s an honest division of labor. When last week we learned that such division causes our torment.
Instead, remember that any faith is the point, not maximal.
So when Jesus speaks to our doing the minimum and expecting maximal reward, we’re misunderstanding the Kin-dom.
Command
So, disciples, apostles, saints, what are we called into by this passage?
We hear a Jesus who is compelling us to change our expectations: For God, one another, and ourselves.
Expectations that are born out of a model of suffering and oppression. One that encourages us to help people when they are off track and forgive them when they seek to be forgiven. To see the faith we have, the smallest spark of it, as enough. And to see the work as the work.
The parable of the mustard seed is flashy. Because we hear about pulling trees out of the ground and flinging them into the sea and we’re like Now that’s a superpower. How do I get to do that?
Which is literally the kind of thinking Jesus is saying not to do. He says that any faith can do that. We’re not throwing trees in water.
The job of apostles (and saints) is to heal and talk about the Kin-dom.
This is who Jesus is talking to. In the text and in this (and every) room. Our job isn’t tree-throwing. This isn’t the Highland Games. We’re not hosting a caber toss in the street.
We share Kin-dom life with others.
That’s our work. Healing and restoring. Loving and forgiving. Drawing people into health from addictions that steal it. Liberating captives of all kinds of oppression. This is what Jesus has been saying to us for the last eight chapters of the Gospel of Luke.
How to share the Kin-dom.
Making neighbors, shaming oppressors, healing the broken, breaking boundaries, returning the lost, and throwing great big, extravagant parties every time the dead come back to life: when the impossible happens: when the world is transformed: and the old is made new.
We throw a party.
Because that is Kin-dom life. That is sharing Kin-dom life. And that is what God commands. Not to have the perfect life or the perfect church. Or to have mountains of faith.
Just to have some. And use it.