Without a Word of Thanks

Text: Luke 17:(1-4) 5-10
 

It came as a complete surprise to Billy. He was an institution in the Academy where he had spent his whole working life. His gregarious nature made him popular with students and teachers alike. His work ethic, wicked sense of humour and skill on the football pitch endeared him to people. Billy was a janitor at the secondary school and was awarded an MBE for services rendered to the community. Billy was just Billy. I don’t think for a moment he did what he did with an MBE in view. It was the community’s way of saying thank you for being who you are and doing what you do willingly and reliably.
 

The honours system does not sit easily with me but if ever I do take pleasure in it it’s when these awards are conferred on people like Billy. It is ordinary people who get on with low paid and undervalued jobs and do them well that makes our communities the kinds of places they are. Whether it’s an MBE or a Citizen of the Year Award, there is something quite attractive about acknowledging the contribution that people have made.
 

Most people want to be appreciated. A word of thanks never goes amiss. But when we’ve worked hard...gone beyond the call of duty...slogged our guts out...and no one notices, how does that make us feel? Are we being taken for granted? We might end up saying, “After all I’ve done and not so much as a thank you. Well! I don’t know why I bother.” Beneath this is an unwritten rule that says we should be rewarded for what we’ve done.
 

Does this expectation creep into our faith? I believe in God. I go to church. I’m nice to my neighbour. I give to charity. I try my best to be helpful and kind. I’ve raised my children in the best way I know how. I’ve been honest in my affairs. I try to live by the Good Book and follow the Golden Rule. Surely God will be good to me. He’ll protect me from bad things happening.
 

This feeling that God owes us something is expressed when disaster befalls. “Why is this happening to me? I’ve lived a good life and done all the right things. Why is God putting me through this? Look at all those folk who never darken the doors of the church...are foul mouthed...don’t care about anybody except themselves. They’re all living the high life. It’s not fair.”
 

Faith does not involve fairness. Faith is about faithfulness. Following Jesus is no soft option. The demands of discipleship are high. The way we are asked to live is not for the faint hearted. It involves doing our duty without any expectation of reward.
This does not sit easily with us. Receiving compensation for what we do is fundamental to our own society. Employment law is in place to ensure that people work in a safe environment. The minimum wage is an attempt to make sure that people get paid a reasonable wage. Unions exist to protect the worker’s rights.
 

Our inbuilt expectation of a ‘thank you’ and of fairness in the work place makes it impossible for us to grasp from our own experience what Jesus requires of his disciples. The four separate sayings of Jesus which Luke has gathered together and placed side by side have no logical connection. The only thing they have in common is the enormous difficulty they pose to followers of Jesus.
 

School sports day always involved the high jump. We all had to take a sideways run at the mat and throw our bodies up and arching backwards, ensure that we did not dislodge the bar. Not being the most agile of people I kicked the bar off early in the proceedings. However, I’ll never forget watching Todd – yes, I can see him now and I’ll never forget his name. Tall and lanky the bar crept up to a height that seemed spectacularly difficult to me. Yet he kept flying over with ease. Eventually he did knock the bar off otherwise he’d have been superman. He won the gold.
 

To be a follower of Jesus the bar raised is impossibly high. We might compare these sayings of Jesus to four measures of discipleship. Measure one: care for the weak. Jesus warns of woe upon those who cause ‘little ones’ to stumble into wrong doing. Jesus’ reference to ‘little ones’ may refer to children or to those who have newly begun to follow Jesus. Jesus acknowledges that it is inevitable that temptation will come but that we should not be the cause of it. Tripping up someone is so serious that it would be far better for us to wear a millstone round our necks and drown in the sea first.
 

Measure two: unlimited forgiveness. If someone does you wrong you must challenge them. A follower of Jesus calls wrong a wrong. If the person admits they’ve done wrong then we are obliged to forgive. Here’s the tough bit. If that same person does wrong to you again – even if it’s seven times a day – and they say “I’m sorry, I will change” – you must forgive.
 

Unlimited forgiveness is a measure that poses huge problems for us. What happens if you’re being abused? Should you let the abuser apologise and let them carry on abusing you? Jesus doesn’t answer this question explicitly. But the fact that he says we’ve got to ‘rebuke’ or challenge the wrong doer suggests that forgiveness does not imply putting up with bad behaviour. Jesus is calling us to stand up to sin with a forgiving attitude. Practically, I would say confront, forgive, and get out of harm’s way.
The high measures of not causing someone to sin, whilst at the same time forgiving a repeat offender not only shocks us, it shocked the apostles too! They with us exclaim, “Increase our faith!”
 

Measure three: small faith accomplishes big things. Gabriel assured Mary at the annunciation “...nothing is impossible with God” (1:37). It is this reality that is the basis of faith for all followers.
 

Now Jesus’ words could be taken two ways. “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed – and you don’t – with a word you would be able to uproot a mulberry tree and plant it in the sea.” Or, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed – and you already have some faith – then you have the authority to command a mulberry tree to transplant in the sea.” Obviously the apostles are assuming they have some faith because they’re asking for it to be increased. It would seem unlikely that Jesus would dash their faith as delusion in such a cavalier fashion.
 

There can be no doubt that the ability to clear the hurdles of discipleship is not a matter of our own effort. Faith makes possible the impossible. Some scholars think that the tree which is translated ‘mulberry’ should actually be translated ‘fig-mulberry’, the reason being that the fig-mulberry tree was notorious for being deep rooted. Whatever kind of tree it is - deep rooted or not – it is beyond imagining how faith alone can wrench its roots and soak them in the sea! What’s more, who in their right mind would do such a thing anyway! Like the camel threaded through the eye of a needle, Jesus uses an image that is totally outside our human experience to show that faith take us beyond ordinary expectations. The hurdles of following Jesus are beyond us and yet possible by faith.
 

This brings us to the fourth measure: faith is getting on with the job without expecting a word of thanks. This story of a slave takes us beyond our experience. He’s not an employee. He’s not a member of a union. He’s a slave, a piece of property. He has no wages. He has no rights. His master holds the power of life and death over him.
 

With this in mind, imagine the situation Jesus describes. A slave returns home from ploughing the field or tending the flocks. Would he expect his master to invite him to sit at the table and eat up? Absolutely not! It’s unthinkable.
 

Instead a slave would expect to be told to prepare a meal for the master. The slave would put on an apron and serve the dinner. After the last morsel is eaten and the plates are cleared away, would the slave expect the master to thank him for doing what he’d been asked to do? No! Slaves were supposed to serve their master without question and without thanks.
 

The master – Jesus – expects his followers to be slaves. Jesus, who announces good news to the poor expects his followers to serve without expecting a reward. “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!” does not suggest that Jesus’ followers are not to love themselves. Rather, they know that they have no rights – no worth – no existence except as slaves of their Master.
 

The four measures of following Jesus - caring for the weak, forgiving without limit, having small faith that does big things, and being faithful without expecting a thank you note lead us to exclaim, “Oh Lord! Increase our faith.” Jesus calls us to follow him in a way of life that is beyond our strength but is doable by faith. Will we follow him in faith? Will we get on caring, forgiving, uprooting, and serving in faith and faithfully? By faith will we uproot all that is self-serving and be transplanted with deep roots in the service of others?