A t the prayer service at Thomas House this past week remembering Chuck Dynes, one of our long-time church members who died last week, as people were sharing about Chuck’s life, I thought about my Great Aunt Olive. And I thought of both of them when I read the words to the hymn we just heard [see words below]. And thinking about the two of them, and listening to this hymn, have finally helped me figure out what Jesus may have been getting at in this troubling little parable about the slave coming in from the field for dinner.

      The disciples come up to Jesus asking him to “increase their faith.” Reading through these difficult texts in the Gospel of Luke these past several Sundays, we can certainly understand why. It’s been an unrelenting and exhausting array of demands, one right after the other: count the cost, take up your cross, sell your possessions, reach out to the poor. In the verses just before the disciples make their request, in a section which the lectionary for some reason leaves out, Jesus tells them that they must also forgive one another, no matter how often the offender has asked for forgiveness.

      “Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, but 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 [seven times].”

      No wonder the disciples pleaded with Jesus to increase their faith! He responds to their request by saying that if they had faith the size of a mustard seed, they could uproot a tree and throw it in to the sea. At first, that sounds sort of encouraging– wow, that’s a lot of faith!– until you realize that none of them have thrown a tree in to the sea lately, suggesting that perhaps they don’t even have faith the size of a mustard seed. And then the Gospel seems to take an even sharper turn for the worse when Jesus tells about the slave coming in from the field. It’s hard to read this without it sounding a little harsh. Jesus seems to be saying to them, don’t expect a reward for doing what you are expected to do. If your job is to plow the field and then prepare the meal, you don’t stop in the middle and expect a pat on the back. In other words, the work of discipleship is the basic minimum of what God expects of us.

      Now, the translation here is not exactly perfect. The last phrase of Jesus’ parable is translated, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.” But that not really what it means. It doesn’t mean worthless in the sense of having no value. It means we are slaves to whom no debt is owed. In other words, God does not owe us anything for being the people that God calls us to be.

T hat’s when I thought of Chuck and my Great Aunt Olive. Aunt Olive was ninety-three when she died. She had lived alone for about twenty-five years. My Uncle Clyde died just after retirement. She lived in the same house in Kenmore, New York, where they had raised their family. She was actively involved in the Kenmore Baptist Church, where my grandfather had once served as pastor. She was involved in a half-dozen community causes. She used to take in international students from the local university as borders, one small way that she tried to live out the Christian practice of hospitality in her daily life. When she was ninety-one, the ravages of child-hood polio finally caught up with her, and she could no longer walk, so she moved into a nursing facility. She couldn’t get out much, but every day she would go around in her wheel chair from room to room visiting residents who did not have family in the area. She may have been limited to that chair, and somewhat trapped in that home, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something she could do live out her Christian faith, no matter what her circumstances.

      So in the same way, soon after Chuck and Elinor moved to Thomas House, Chuck suffered a severe stroke that left him unable to walk. Those of you who are newer to the church never had a chance to meet Chuck and Elinor, who in their younger days were involved in just about every aspect of church life. It has been hard for them to be more or less confined to their apartment. But even from his wheel chair Chuck managed to take on the administration of Thomas House, working especially to reform their emergency protocols, and person after person Thursday afternoon bore testimony to the impact Chuck made on that place in four short years, all from a wheel chair, and in between his multiple stays in the hospital.

      But here’s the thing. Neither Chuck nor my Aunt Olive would have said they had extraordinary faith. Neither of them expected or even really wanted any particular recognition or thanks for what they had done. This was just what Christians do. You do what you can, day by day, to improve your little corner of the world in a Christ-like manner. You don’t do it in order to get a pat on the back. It’s just what you do.

      So here’s what I think. It’s not that we don’t have faith the size of a mustard seed. In fact, the Greek Luke uses implies that the disciples do have such faith. It’s that this is not necessarily the faith that Jesus calls us to. We’re not called very often to pluck up a mulberry tree and cast it in to the ocean. The life of faith is primarily about a life-time of rather mundane acts. My Aunt Olive wheeling from room to room to bring comfort to the lonely. Chuck patiently editing the emergency evacuation plan for Thomas House. Helen Cope making sure there are flowers on the table every Sunday. Tsehai lovingly preparing the communion elements each month. The dozen or so volunteers who prepare the meal, bag the sandwiches, and serve the homeless who gather Sunday afternoon at our back door. Visiting the sick in the hospital. Yesterday was the Pilgrimage Service Day, and we did more of the same: Serving meals for the hungry, bagging groceries at the Food Bank, planting trees in Washington parks. Kind of boring, really, but this is how we live out our faith, day by day, in small acts of loving kindness. That is the work we are called to do.

T oday is World Communion Sunday, when we receive the annual Peacemaking Offering of the Presbyterian Church. On this Sunday, of all Sundays, we are inclined to imagine that the struggle for peace is indeed about moving mountains. But I am persuaded that the pathway for peace is about many, many small steps taken by ordinary people. This is the faith we have been given– extraordinary faith for ordinary life.

      In our adult education class this morning, we were learning about the Taizé community in southern France. Taizé was founded in 1944 by Brother Roger, an unassuming man in a simple white alb who somehow managed to form a community that draws tens of thousands of young adults to Taizé each year on pilgrimage. Life at Taizé is not about moving mountains, but about simple acts of daily life: worship, prayer, Bible study, common meals, common work. Brother Roger was not a big speaker. He rarely preached a sermon. So much about what he did was about doing less, not more. Most of the time at Taizé is spent not in activity, but in silence. Yet that silence, somehow, manages to speak volumes.

      After spending the week in community at Taizé, the young people the community has taken in are invited to make a “pilgrimage of trust on earth” This does not mean organizing something grand or dramatic, but simply that each person is invited, after his or her stay at Taizé, to live out in their own situation what they have understood, with greater awareness of the inner life within them as well as of their bonds with many others who are involved in a similar search for what really matters. Speaking at a gathering in Paris in 1995, Brother Roger spoke to more than 100,000 young people who, in typical Taizé style were sitting on the floor of an exhibition hall scattered with backpacks and lit with candles. The one from whom they had expected to hear answers instead spoke about his own searching: “We have come here to search,” he said, “or to go on searching through silence and prayer, to get in touch with our inner life. Christ always said, Do not worry, give yourself.”                                                         ✞

© 2007 Jeffrey K. Krehbiel

For One Great Peace

by Shirley Erena Murray

      This thread I weave, this step I dance, this stone I carve, this ball I bounce, this nail I drive, this pearl I string, this flag I waive, this note I sing, this pot I shape, this fire I light, this fence I leap, this bone I knit, this seed I nurse, this rift I mend, this child I raise, this earth I tend, this check I write, this march I join, this faith I state, this truth I sign, this is small part, in one small place, of one heart’s beat for one great Peace.