Luke 17:5-10
Proper 22 (27) - Year C
It takes a good deal of trust that forgiveness is the way to go. This is particularly true when it appears that forgiveness is not an effective tool to change the behavior of someone else.
If there is not a change in another’s behavior after we have forgiven them for an incident, we have a built-in excuse to not try that again and pull out a countervailing power. When even that doesn’t work there is only escalation left—a hand for a fingernail, an arm for a hand, a life for a felt slight.
No wonder the disciples asked for a sign worthy of their greater trust—that their reservoir of forgiveness would not run dry.
Jesus does not give such a sign. Instead he refocuses on seeing there is no lower limit to an innate ability to be engaged in a relationship to understand, modify, and transcend previous behaviors.
The second part of this passage is problematic as it is based on “earthly” behavior in need of a “heavenly” reconstruction. It is important to not be satisfied with a master-servant example when it comes to basic relationship dynamics.
If we stop here we justify abusive relationships.
Homework: How would you improve this passage by substituting some other example or an additional image to reinforce that we have sufficient resources to forgive without tying that to behavior control or privilege within a relationship?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/10/luke-175-10.html
Mandated to forgive, Jesus' students ask for more faith.
Apparently they think there is a connection between forgiveness and faith.
Their thinking is: to not forgive is to lack faith.
Jesus avoids this connection, just like he does with some of the healings. Not every healing has to do with faith. Likewise forgiveness is not always tied to faith. More faith would be overkill, see what a smidgeon of a jot or a tittle will do.
Jesus pooh-poohs the need for faith in the face of a clear and dramatic instruction about forgiveness - as often as it is requested, it is to be given. That's all. It doesn't take faith, it simply takes the doing of it.
They are simply to do what they were asked to do without gussying it up or getting faith involved -- forgive.
Can you imagine forgiveness simply being forgiveness without forgiveness being a product of faith?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/october2004.html
We have been off lection for the last couple of weeks. A focus has been upon spiritual gifts. One of the consequences of identifying and following one's gifts is that the emphasis is taken off the results of our living as the measuring rod of quality living. Rather, the joy of living within one's current gifts (not those one once had or may have sometime in the future) takes a prominent place.
Do you thank someone for doing what their gifts calls for? Well, yes. Thanks in this case is quite appropriate. Well, no. They have simply and naturally and graciously/gracefully done what was theirs. Well, yes. Even those living from their gift base have a need for thanks (after all we are in the image of G*D who seems to desire thanks). Well, no. The rest of us simply begin to use the gifts given us - this is thanks enough.
Not only increase our faith, but increase our identification and encourage our following the gifts given us for the common good.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/october2004.html
"Increase our faith" that we might be able to do what Jesus asks of us - to make possible the impossibility of forgiving the same person 7 times per day.
This is the equivalent of saying, "As soon as I graduate, then I'll be able to make a difference - well, as soon as I get in the right position, I'll make a difference - any day now, I'll make a difference." Somehow, someday never comes.
A creative insight at creation is that light is already a potential presence in the midst of chaos. It takes an inquiring mind to grab its various waves and particles and to bring them together - let there be light. Likewise, faith is already present. We delay our insight regarding faith's presence, by never perceiving enough and always waiting for, "Increase!"
As a creation story begins the rest of the story, so, too, the smallest dab of faith begins the rest of it's journey.
Of course we will do some crazy things with our faith and its increase (sort of like the Sorcerer's Apprentice) such as polluting oceans with mulberrys for no good reason. But faith is an active implementation of belief and as such we look for it to simply do its job of being big enough for what is at hand, and no bigger. Faith can be seen as the subtext of the servant in the story that follows. Try substituting "Faith" as a personal name for the servant and see how it flows.
- - -
how was your week
did you note
day by day
servant Faith
plodding steadily along
ready to serve
and if you did notice
did you try serving faith
or see that faith served
faith put to work
brings good weeks
faith coddled doesn't
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html
[verse 4] "You must forgive!" ~ Jesus [4 BCE - ?]
[verse 5] In response to this dicta, Jesus' friends responded with equal intensity, "Increase our trust!" (our ability to persistently forgive before, during, and after repentance has been requested).
[verse 6] If we are not careful what follows is seen only in terms of religious jargon regarding "faith." In light of the action of forgiveness, we only "do what we ought to do" when we forgive. The mulberry talk and slave/master imagery can take us pretty far afield if they are not linked more closely than the NRSV heading of this section, "Some Sayings of Jesus". These might be isolated sayings but these sayings take on greater significance if they are recognized as reordering our community life. This reordering is very difficult work for the injuries and difficulties we want to heal are so deeply rooted and grow back so quickly that we need to practice the trust involved with forgiveness and, then, practice it some more.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/09/luke-175-10.html