By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, RectorIn the Gospel passage we just read, the Apostles said to Jesus, "Increase our faith." This passage comes in the midst of a series of seemingly unrelated sayings, which happens from time to time in the Gospels. Jesus' response was that if they had faith the size of a mustard seed they could uproot a tree and replant it in the sea. That would be quite a trick! It's an interesting choice of seeds, however. In another parable, Jesus told them that the mustard seed is the smallest of seeds which grows into the largest of bushes or trees, depending on which Gospel lesson you read.
While the botanical accuracy of the parables is debatable, the point is entering into it as it was intended. If we had faith the size of a mustard seed, the smallest of the small -- we could accomplish the greatest of the greatest deeds. Faith is a truly amazing gift in each of us. How much do we have? How do we acquire more? Where will it take us and what will we do along the way? The Apostles had these questions answered in their lives in very powerful ways. We too, have these questions and to the degree we wrestle with them, we will find the answers for ourselves.
This lesson caps a series of difficult lessons. Again I find myself wanting to skip over the tough ones, but they stick out like sore thumbs and need attention. The lesson from Lamentations is heartbreaking. Often attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, this book of sadness chronicles the fall of the kingdom of Israel in narrative and poetic styles. Once a prospering and bustling kingdom, it boasted of thriving cities and grand buildings not the least of which was the temple in Jerusalem. They had a long heritage and legacy of great Kings like David and Solomon. But when they were conquered by the Babylonians all that was lost. Everything great about them was destroyed, their buildings, cities, their beloved temple, their way of life and even their people dragged away from their homeland and resettled hundreds of miles away in a foreign country where it was expected they would assimilate and over the generations forget there was even a country called Israel.
Jeremiah's laments were written and have lasted through the ages and express the grief of people in the midst of their suffering. The psalm complements this reading beautifully. It was believed to be written by someone who had been taken from Israel and resettled so far away. It begins with a melancholic tone and rises in anger to a pitch of rage that calls for the destruction of the babies of their enemies. It's a rage we are unaccustomed to and yet when we open our eyes and ears to comments today we can hear echoes of this shocking request. We hear it from the anguished lips of mothers and fathers who bury their children fallen in war on either side of any conflict. The rage captures not only the grief but confusion of the cruelty of others, the futility of war and the impotence of their own rage in the face of forces greater than they are. One of the more chilling moments in the new movie "The Kingdom" comes when people on both sides of the conflict in a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia console the American and Saudi families of fallen soldiers by pledging to "kill them all." Our connection to this psalm is as deep as it is disturbing.
I've always been grateful that the Bible includes such raw emotion, even when it's negative. Simply because it's real and we can't gloss over it. We need to recognize it and confront it and with God's help overcome it. Like the Apostles who asked Jesus to increase their faith, ours too must increase to where we can take these foolish notions of war and greed and uproot them and throw them away.
In Paul's second letter to Timothy, he continues his mentoring of the young man and encourages his steadfast faith. He appeals to Timothy's spirit and reminds him of the spirit that Paul himself had bestowed upon him by the laying on of his hands -- an image from which we get our own ordination practices today. This spirit is not one of cowardice, but power, love and self discipline. These tools will see Timothy through his difficulties and these come through grace and grace is a gift of God. "Increase our faith." the apostles said. And God does, for them and us.
Today we celebrate the life of a beloved saint in the church's history -- St. Francis. We remember his kindness and poetry. His abiding faith and love of animals. We honor his sacrifices and devotion to the poor. He inspires us in our care for them, for the environment and for all of creation.
I became excited by the connection I saw in these readings today and the life of St. Francis. Believe me, it's not really a big stretch! In his early life, he was the son of a wealthy merchant and enjoyed the games and sport of spoiled rich young men of his time with out much concern for the future. When a local war broke out among neighboring kingdoms he thought it would be fun to go and do some fighting. His soft life did not prepare him for the brutality of the war he experienced. He sustained wounds that almost killed him and he was brought back to his parents' home where he recuperated.
Like the book of Lamentations, he saw his old life shattered by the realities of what he experienced. The false importance he placed on his earlier play cut him as deeply as his battle wounds and as he recovered he found a new purpose in living to help others and in that way find a richness in his life he had never known.
He was encouraged in his ministry, as Paul had encouraged Timothy and he found the power, love and self discipline to continue his work. And as his faith increased, he accomplished great deeds lasting into the present.
It is here that I want to find the good news today. There's not a person here, I suspect, who hasn't know some lament or rage for something in the past. There's not a person who hasn't felt somehow wronged by another and felt those horrible, deep feelings of sadness that come to victims and rage at the consequences they've had to pay for someone else's aggression, greed or thoughtlessness. It's how we're wired, it's natural and all too common.
What is not as easy, and yet ever so much more needed is the encouragement to move from being a victim to a victor. We can use the very hurts in our lives to make us stronger in our own spirits and more empathetic to others in their times of need. Like Paul to Timothy I have received encouragement in my own challenges, and I encourage you in yours to find the spirit of power, love and self discipline that God's grace provides us with. If we don't we stay in a hopeless spiral of rage and revenge. But we can move beyond that place to a stronger place where the increase of faith can bring out of us incredible accomplishments -- the most important perhaps will be to break the cycle of rage that plagues humanity. I've watched landscapers and observed that while it's sometimes difficult, replanting trees is fairly commonplace. What is truly a miracle to me is teaching a child how to get beyond anger to find healing and constructive response. It's a miracle and lesson we can only teach if we have found the way ourselves. And we can.
We live side by side with people from all over the world who live out their love or their rage in the actions of their lives. And the potential for this same love or rage lives side by side in each of us. We can choose how those raw emotions get acted out. We can make pledges to those around us to let the negative in our lives produce positive growth. And we can only succeed by grace and God's love.
Let us pray, Lord increase in us the faith to find the power, love and self discipline to conquer the anger and rage that is formed in us. Find in us the seeds of faith, whether small or large and bring them growth to accomplish in us that which we could never imagine. Inspire us with prophets and saints, encourage us with teachers and friends, be our guide and source of faith and allow us to be channels of your peace. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.
© 2007 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ
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