Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Photo by ross tek on Unsplash

Luke 17:1-10

Grace and peace to you all from God the Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the backyard of my childhood home stand two mulberry trees. They are big, dense trees. They stand probably 15 yards or a little less apart and their canopies stretch to about 30 or so feet high. The leaves are like waxed paper and create a thick shade. My cousins came over one year and planted a small maple tree between them and over the years that poor maple twisted and turned pining for the light until my parents removed it because it was so scrawny. Every 3 to 5 years my parents thin out the canopy but these little wispy branches spring up off the larger branches and grow quickly filling in the gaps and plunging the yard back into dark, cool shade.

These big, dense trees are permanent fixtures of the yard despite my parents’ annual frustration with them! They are rooted; they’ve claimed their space; they are there to stay. Only drastic measures would take them down.

So, I have a good understanding of what Jesus means when he says the faith a size of a mustard seed could command a mulberry tree to uproot and plant itself in the sea. Moving a mulberry tree – any kind of mature tree, really – is a big task that even a tiny faith in Jesus can overcome very simply.

But, how does a faith like that come to be in me? In us?

The mustard seed parable is just one of four proverbs that we just read in today’s gospel. A proverb is a short saying that states a generalized truth or piece of advice. And the advice that Jesus focuses on for the disciples at this point in the Gospel centers on the responsibility of being a disciple and what the disciples can and cannot expect within that responsibility. Faith being central to that responsibility.

The first proverb addresses the disciple’s responsibility for not being a hindrance to the discipleship of others. Jesus uses a pretty extreme example to illustrate how important it is to be a positive force for faithful discipleship by saying it would be better to have a millstone tied  around your neck and be thrown into the sea than to cause “one of these little ones” to stumble. That’s a very graphic way to tell someone to share their faith and not be a stumbling block to someone elses.

The second proverb concerns forgiveness. This one demands that the disciples hold sinners to account for their sin while offering forgiveness each time that a sinner turns back, repents, and asks for forgiveness. And another extreme example is given: Jesus says, you must forgive each time the sinner repents even if it’s 7 times per day!

And this extreme example leads to the disciples pleading to Jesus for more faith. How can someone forgive another person for wronging them that many times perday? It’s exhausting having to forgive someone at all, let alone that many time – it’s impossible for us humans to do such a thing. And so, the disciples beg for more faith to do it. And then Jesus gives the famous mustard seed example. A faith as tiny as a mustard seed can work absolute miracles!

Finally, Jesus shares the fourth proverb using a brief story about a slave. This is a hard example for us modern Americans to hear because we know the atrocities that chattel slavery wrought on black and brown bodies in our own country’s history. And that needs acknowledgment. Indeed, this proverb was one of the biblical texts used by Christians throughout history to justify slavery. However, we must look at this example within the context of Jesus’s time and his other proverbs on discipleship.

I wonder if this final parable can actually be the window through which we find meaning in the other three proverbs?

So, what if the master is God and we, the disciples, are the servants?

This is a pretty cliché and typical way to interpret times when Jesus is using stories about servants to make a point. But, then let’s expand this toward the other three proverbs…

Moving backward through them we first have the mustard seed proverb. So, being a servant – or a disciple – is our response when we receive the gift of faith – even the size of a mustard seed - from God’s Holy Spirit through the Gospel. We can put our trust in that tiny bit of faith that we receive from God knowing that a mustard seed grows to be the biggest of all shrubs, and so we serve God out of that faith to glorify that gift of faith.

And then we move back to the proverb about forgiving 7 times a day. Being a servant – or a disciple – is our response because through Jesus Christ we know God has forgiven 7 times and more per day! So, our response is to serve God and to glorify that forgiveness we’ve received by forgiving others.

And finally we encounter again the proverb about not being a stumbling block for other’s discipleship. Being a servant – or a disciple – is our response when God reachs out to us and removes stumbling blocks because we are the little ones who need God to be present with us in our darkest times. So, our response to God’s presence in our lives is to glorify God’s presence with us by sharing about it with others, to invite them to discipleship, to be build people up with our prayers and love.

Each of these proverbs tells us about a gift that God has given to us through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Our response to these gifts is to glorify them in our daily living as disciples by doing likewise.

Like the slave in the fourth proverb, “we do what we ought to do” to glorify God’s goodness. Because it’s already been given to us - all the way down to the very grains of faith we might have to cling on to. That’s where it all comes from, that’s how a faith like this gets in all of us – it’s all God’s gift to us and we live a servant’s life, in service to God, in response to God’s overflowing grace.

So, go, lift up your neighbor, invite them to discipleship, forgive those who sin against you, and serve God in all that you do. Notice how different that all sounds from the world in which we currently live? Yeah – that’s God’s way. So, let’s go and do likewise.

Amen.

Rev. Ryan | October 5th, 2025