2 Timothy 1: 1-14 Luke 17: 5-10
The great television chef, Clarissa Dickson-Wright, once said that we don’t show enough gratitude to God. I think she was right and we can’t repeat too often the reminder to ourselves that the word that lies at the heart of this act of worship now – Eucharist – means ‘thanksgiving’.
Faith in God is often presented by its adherents as an obstacle course with hoops to be jumped through and hurdles to be overcome that not only make it very unattractive to many people today but also make it the inverse of what it’s meant to be. Faith is a response to a gift that has already been given but we may have made it a means of earning the gift.
As a result, people have come to see faith as a test rather than as a response. And, to make matters worse, some church people have even create league tables of worthiness whereby their faith is bigger than yours, thus implying that faith the size of a mustard seed isn’t going to get you very far.
As they themselves might say, What would Jesus do? So, Luke, chapter 17, verse 5: ‘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.’
With his classic use of hyperbole, Jesus points out to his oft-befuddled disciples that there aren’t different degrees of faith which might somehow elicit different degrees of response from God. St Paul, in his Second Letter to Timothy, reminds his co-worker that God’s saving and calling of his people is an act of grace, not a reward for merit.
But there might be different degrees of gratitude. Remember Miss Dickson-Wright and her assertion that we don’t show enough gratitude to God. The passage immediately following this morning’s Gospel lesson is the story of the ten lepers who were healed by Jesus and told to report to the priests but one of them returns and gives thanks to Jesus.
Nothing else happens to him as a result: he isn’t more
healed than the others. What we see here is a parable of response to a gift already given. In a nutshell – or indeed in a mustard seed – the essence of faith is: a response to God’s grace, not a means of earning it.
One thinks of the parable of the labourers in the vineyard who all received the same rate of pay regardless of the amount of labour they’d put in that day. All very counter-cultural and all very disempowering of the priesthood: to think that those of us who are called to be priests should spend all of our time giving thanks to God and encouraging other people to do the same doesn’t sound as exciting as testing the degrees of faithfulness of one’s fellow Christians – making God’s love too narrow by false limits of our own.
But today’s Gospel lesson, in counter-cultural language of a different kind, makes it clear that disciples, priests and lay people, having done their duty, are not thereby empowered to lay any personal claim upon God. We cannot make ourselves more worthy of God’s graciousness towards us, in the same way that none of the ten lepers could be more healed nor any of the labourers in the vineyard better paid.
Because God’s graciousness is sheer gift and there is no limit to the gratitude that can be shown in response to a relationship with God – a relationship which the rainbow of the Old Testament and the cross of the New Testament make unbreakable. Whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not, it is true – and all that is asked of us is a response and that response is faith, even faith merely the size of a mustard seed.
And there is no Christian minister anywhere in the Church who can make you sign a contract to prove that you are worthy enough of God’s grace because God’s grace is sheer gift.
The privilege of being a priest, if I may speak personally for a moment, is the privilege of giving away riches not one’s own – and to do so with the same careless risk with which the sower scatters the seed abroad with no thought about where it may land but with a fervent desire that it will bear fruit, fruit that will last.
In his poem ‘Gratefulness’, George erbert Herbert prays to God for a grateful heart: ‘Thou hast given so much to me, Give one thing more, a grateful heart. ... Not thankful when it pleaseth me; As if Thy blessings had spare days; But such a heart, whose pulse may be Thy praise.’
We cannot make ourselves more worthy of God’s grace but we can make ourselves more grateful of it. It is almost too wonderful to be but then that’s the truth that is depicted in the rainbow and the cross: a relationship with God and his kingdom of grace. A gift already given. Dare we ask for one thing more? A grateful heart? Yes. Our very asking will be a vehicle of grace and an expression of love.