“TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

Luke 17:5-10

Perhaps the folks who put together the lectionary readings overestimated us. The reading from Luke begins with the apostles crying, “Increase our faith!” but we don’t know why. Now perhaps you can remember what happens in the preceding verses, but I couldn’t.

I heard these words and thought, maybe the disciples had some form of free floating anxiety.

Or, maybe they just felt like you could always use more faith so they just periodically asked for more.

Or, maybe they felt they were duty bound to ask for more faith – maybe it was a faithful kind of thing to do.

But, realizing I had no clue, I decided to go to the source and so after opening my Bible, I discovered the real reason was simpler than these but also harder.

Jesus has just asked the disciples to do something they know they cannot do. He tells them, “If a person sins against you seven times a day and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.”

No wonder the disciples were crying for an increase. Perhaps they could forgive seven times in a lifetime, but seven times a day? Trust me, I don’t think even Mother Teresa could do that.

I think the disciples are more like us than we realize. They are willing to do what is reasonable and even exceptional to follow Jesus.

They have left their homes and their jobs and their families to travel with their Master (okay, maybe they aren’t like us – but at least a little bit), but now Jesus begins to ask impossible tasks and they don’t know how to do them.

As a matter of fact, they know they can’t do them – now, that we can relate to!

When they come to this brick wall, they want Jesus to wave some magic wand. They want him to give them some superhuman powers to do what they know in their hearts cannot be done.

They want some blueprint-some clear manual-that offers seven steps for being a disciple.

In short, they want to be transformed, but they don’t really believe they can be – not as they are. They have become so accustomed to seeing their world as it is that they have a hard time imagining the world as God wants it to be.

 They cannot imagine seeing the people who may wrong them again and again as their brothers and sisters instead of villains.

There are so many ways that plays out in our world today.  Parents at odds with their children.  Conflicted relationships at work or school.  Mean people.  Selfish people.  Sick people. Destructive people.

Unfortunately, in dealing with these people, we can get stuck.  Stuck when we are wronged.  Stuck when we are disappointed. Stuck when we are hurt.

And then once we get stuck – it’s hard to turn things around.  We don’t want to forgive. We can’t let go and let God. 

We don’t want to let go.  And we begin to see that person … that community … or that nation that has wronged us (or we think has wronged us) – we see them only as other, as abuser, as the villain.

Yet Jesus says if a person repents seven times in one day, seven times we are to re-see them as a child of God.

Jesus calls us to look again at the person who has wronged us and see them as God sees them: not as a villain but as a child of God … capable of sin (as we all are), but a child of God, still the same.

Now, don’t misunderstand me, forgiveness is not about whitewashing the past; but it’s about seeing the present in a new light and looking toward a future of redemption.

Did you hear that?  Let me repeat it: Forgiveness is not about whitewashing the past; it’s about seeing the present in a new light and looking toward a future of redemption.

Forgiveness insists that the people are not bad or good, red, white, or black. Instead we all belong to the flock with Jesus as the shepherd.

No wonder the disciples cried, “Increase our faith.” Jesus is calling for them to see their reality in a new way.

Since they don’t know how to do this, Jesus gives them an answer, but it’s not the one they expect. He tells them, “If you had faith the size of a poppy seed, you say to this sycamore tree, ‘Go jump in the lake’ – and it would do it.”

That isn’t how we wanted Jesus to respond.  When the disciples said, “Increase our faith,” we wanted Jesus to increase their faith.  We want him to wave a wand over their heads and endow them magically with great faith. 

We want him to say something clever that would “buck them up” -- that would give them sudden insight -- that would increase their faith. Because if he would do that for them … maybe he would do that for us!

But he says, in effect, “If you have the faith of even a tiny poppy seed, then you could tell a tree to jump and its response would be ‘how high?’” 

Jesus didn’t mean that literally, of course.  He didn’t mean that we could SHA-ZAMM a tree to make it jump either just out of the ground or into the sea. 

He was using what is called hyperbole -- dramatic language -- exaggerated language.  He was using the image of a tree jumping out of the ground to teach the disciples something important -- that even tiny faith could give them great power – including the power to forgive.

 I’m not sure they understood that. The disciples wanted a diagram for getting from point A to point B, but they didn’t get one.

See, faith isn’t a game plan for solving our problems, nor is faith understanding why things are the way they are. At the end of the day, faith isn’t about answers.

Faith is about the love of God through Jesus Christ. Faith is about being grasped by Jesus so that you know in your heart and bones that your life and his life and the life of the world are inseparably mixed together.

Once that happens, you see yourself and your neighbor and your world with completely new eyes. Once that happens, you know that the only thing that matters is that love and that the only reality is grace.

Once that happens, you can forgive because you are a new creation; and, therefore, you see everyone else as a new creation. Isn’t that neat?

The hard truth is that we cannot earn this gift nor can we achieve it. It’s a gift. But, all we really have to do is open up a little and God does the rest.

We do need faith, but only faith as small as the size of a poppy seed that is, we only need a small crack in our frozen hearts … and if we are open to it …God will enter that small crack and transform us.

When we think about how we can change the world, we frequently always despair.

But remember it’s not about us, it’s about God working through us. Alone we can do little, but is there anything God cannot do? Our task is to pray for faith and then to trust in the giver.

And the truth is, it doesn’t take much. A word, a touch, a gesture can cleanse our eyes – give us new vision. It only takes a faith the size of a poppy seed for God to transform us.

Remember in “To Kill a Mockingbird” when the white men come at night and surround the jail where Tom, an African-American wrongly accused of a crime, is held?

The men are a mob. They do not see Tom; they only see an enemy. They are blinded by rage.

Scout, a little girl, watches them. Her father tells her to run away and go home. But Scout doesn’t run … AND … she doesn’t fight. Instead she finds the right word that becomes the poppy seed.

Scout looks at one of the men in the mob and says,

“Hey Mister Cunningham, don’t you remember me? I go to school with Walter. He’s your boy, ain’t he? We brought him home for dinner one time. Tell your boy ‘hey’ for me, will you?”

There was a long pause. Then the big man separated himself from the mob, squatted down and took Scout by both her shoulders.

“I’ll tell him you said ‘hey,’ little lady.”

And with that … the mob dispersed.

The girl whispered the words of grace. She gave the poppy seed of faith that opened (softened) the man’s eyes and heart and soul.

Instead of an “us versus them” world, in God’s world it is a world of grace. God whispers those words every day in every place.

May we be open enough to receive them.

Let us pray.

Gracious God, because we so often lose our way and become blind, open our eyes to see our brothers and sisters as truly our brothers and sisters. We pray for you to open our hearts to your life-giving grace so that we might know more of you and become instruments of your will. We ask these things in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.