You Are Enough

'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.

"Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, `Come here at once and take your place at the table'? Would you not rather say to him, `Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink'? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, `We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'"'

--Luke 17: 5-10

How much is enough?  We live in a culture that is obsessed with the idea that we can never get enough and can never do enough. I once heard it said that you should never let good enough be good enough, that you should always show up to a meeting 10 minutes early, because to be on time was to just be average; and if it ever comes down to you and another person for a job, who do you think will get hired: the one who did just enough to be on time or the one who went the extra mile to be early? Oh, and once you get that job be sure you’re always the first to arrive and the last to leave, so that you maintain that level of excellence. We place a very high value on never being satisfied with ourselves, don't we? 

But where does this mindset get us?  Very often it leads to feelings of tremendous inadequacy.  I didn’t do enough, we tell ourselves.  Our culture preaches the message that we can never really do enough, and it starts from an early age.  How many students bring home a B+, only to have their parents wonder why it wasn't an A?  They simply aren't doing enough to be good students. My junior year of college baseball I was on the mound in a critical game to get my team into the playoffs for the first time in a decade.  I pitched well for three innings, but the one I remember is the last one, when I left a change-up out over the plate, a pitch I can still see to this day, which led to us losing the game and missing playoffs.  Because I had not done enough.  Even as parents we experience this phenomenon.  Think back to when your child was an infant and cried incessantly.  Do you remember how that made you feel?  Or do you remember how badly you felt the first time you intentionally did not run to your child to soothe them during a crying fit?   I imagine some of you thought you were the worst parent  in the world and you told yourself that you weren’t doing enough to meet the needs of your child.  Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott coined the term “the good enough mother” in 1953, saying that, contrary to our every instinct, when we accept being good enough—rather than perfect—we actually teach our children about frustration, and eventually they learn to self-soothe and rely less on the protection of parents as they grow.

Being a good enough anything is a concept that simply does not fly in our culture.  We don't just see it in our lives as students or athletes or parents, but we even experience it in the church.  As a priest, I am constantly worried about whether I am doing enough, whether that means spending enough time in the office, in the community, or with parishioners (not to mention stressing over if I've spend enough time in prayer and study to make sure my sermons are nothing short of perfect!).  It's not just clergy, though.  I see it all the time in regular churchgoers, who stress over whether they are dressed the right way or worshipping in the proper manner (not to mention stewardship season, during which time everyone is fretting over whether they are giving enough to the church!). It is in these moments when we are so worried about doing enough and living up to impossible standards that we really need Jesus. 

Blessedly, Jesus understands our plight, as he dealt with similar behavior from his own apostles.  Unfortunately, the text for this week cuts off the first 4 verses of chapter 17 of Luke’s Gospel—seems to be a trend lately.  In those verses Jesus gives instruction on what their ministry will entail:  they are to be sure not to put a stumbling block in front of anyone and to not only rebuke the sins they see but forgive anyone whenever they ask for forgiveness, every single time.  The apostles, understandably, see these as impossible standards to live up to, and their response is, “Increase our faith!”  

That makes sense, doesn’t it?  They want to be the best possible apostles that they can be.  They don't want to disappoint Jesus, so they ask for extra faith to help them get the job done.  We can see the correlation to our own lives, can’t we?  We often ask Jesus for more faith, more grace, more patience, more guidance, more of whatever the thing is that we think will enable us to be the best whatever:  the best ball player, the best parent, the best church goer, the best priest.  How does Jesus respond?

He tells the apostles that if they had faith the size of a mustard seed, then they could command a tree be uprooted and throw itself in the sea.  The implication is that they don’t have faith even the size of a mustard seed.  Well thanks, Jesus.  That makes us feel better.   The apostles don’t even have enough faith, what hope do any of us have?  It seems that Jesus is picking on the apostles' faith, and by extension our own, but if we take a closer look I suspect we may find that Jesus is doing the opposite of this. 

What they are asking for is not something that is quantifiable.  They believe that getting more faith will help them measure up to Jesus’ challenge to keep others from stumbling and to confront and forgive sins, but to think in such a way implies that it is up to them, when in reality it is up to God.  They simply do not understand what faith actually is.  Rather than some kind of magic formula that will give them superpowers and allow them to live up to Jesus' standard, faith is instead the agent that is already within them, that which  enables God to work in their lives in ways that defy human experience—like telling a tree to be uprooted.  Jesus is not criticizing their lack of faith, but rather he is trying to get them to see that ANY faith, no matter how small, can do great things.

Have you ever seen what a mustard seed grows into?  It’s not a big beautiful tree.  It’s more of a shrub, a very invasive shrub that takes over everything around it.  I now many of you are gardeners, and I bet none of you has a mustard plant in your gardens because you know that it’s something you would only want to plant in small, controlled doses.  In the end, though, you can't control it, and eventually it will consume everything around it and get totally wild. That's how faith works, Jesus says.  It's not about wishing we had faith even the size of a mustard seed, but rather remembering that if we let God give it growth, our faith will spread into every facet of our lives, and we won't be able to control it.  That's the point.  It's about control.  Our pursuit of perfection is about thinking we are in control of our lives.  If we work harder, pray better, or give more, then we will be able to control everything.  It all eventually becomes up to us, even the salvation of the whole world, and we become what is often called a functional atheist, which means we say with our lips that we believe it’s all up to God, but we act like it’s all up to us.  The apostles often acted as functional atheists, but Jesus cut through that.  We see one such example in the parable he gives at the end of our pericope this week.

The imagery of a master and slave is crude and cruel, and we need to acknowledge that, but the point of the parable goes beyond those roles.  When Jesus starts the parable, the hearers are supposed to identify with the master—“Who among you would say to your slave…?"  But before it’s done, the roles are switched, and the hearers are meant to identify with the slave—“We have done only what we ought to have done.”  The point here is that we so often start out thinking that we are the ones in control, but eventually we realize it is God.  Our role in all of this is not to be perfect, but to be faithful, to do what we can, where we can, for the sake of the Kingdom of God.  What that looks like for Christians is living into our baptismal vows: continuing in the apostles' teaching, sharing fellowship, breaking bread together, praying, striving for justice and peace among all people, and whenever we all into sin, repent and return to the Lord.  That last one is so important because it reminds us that our faults and failings are not a matter of "if" but "when," and after each of those promises we always say, "I will, with God's help."  With God's help because it is not all on us.  We have to be able to fail and to know it's ok.  We have to remember that it is not all up to us, that God is in control, and that we need only to, as Desmond Tutu said, "Our little bit of good, in our little corner of the world." We don’t have to tear up the trees and throw them into the sea.  Leave that up to God.  

Many of us live in a state of perpetual fear that we are not doing enough.  Eventually this leads us to a place of believing that we aren't enough.  This is shame, and it is of the devil!  Shame keeps us from seeing ourselves the way God sees us, and it causes us to think that everything is on us, that if we fail the entire world will fall apart.  Martin Luther called this the terrified conscience.  But while the world may operate out of such a paradigm that enough is never enough, God says to each of you that, in fact, you are enough.  You are enough for God.  That is what grace is about, which is why Martin Luther called it the only cure for the terrified conscience.  God’s favor cannot be earned, nor can it be lost.  It is freely given to us all, and it sets us free from the false Gospel that we will somehow receive a special reward if we work 70 hours this week, meet every single need of those we love, or write the fattest check during stewardship season.  That’s not how any of this works!  Who you are is enough for God.  What you do is enough for God, so long as it comes from the depths of your soul.  Is it, though, enough for you? 

You don’t have to be perfect. What good news it is to know that it is not all up to us!   I would guess a great many of you reading this blog have faith in God, but do you have faith in yourself?  Do you have faith the size of a mustard seed in yourself, in the belief that who you are and what you offer is enough for God?  Imagine what could happen if you take that little bit of faith in yourself and let your faith in God give it some growth.  You may find that it will spread to every corner of your life, and you won't be able to control it.  And that's the point. Trust in God.  Trust in your own belovedness.  Because you are more than enough.