“Speak Up”
Text:
Luke 17:5-10
© October 7, 2007 by C. Edward Bowen at Crafton
United Presbyterian Church.
If
you take a look at the cover of today’s bulletin, what do you see? I’ve found that, at first glance, most people
don’t see anything there – nothing that is, except some sort of weird ink blot design. But if
you really look at it for a while, you’ll discover that right there in front of
you is…Jesus. (A hint – focus on the top
center section, and you’ll eventually make out Jesus’ eyes and nose and beard
and face.)
The
truth is that quite often, just like with that bulletin cover, Jesus is right
there in front of us, but for one reason or another, we don’t see him, we don’t
recognize that he’s there. I believe
that was what Jesus was getting at in this passage that we just listened to in
the Bible. The scene starts with the
disciples coming up to Jesus and saying, “Jesus, increase our faith. Jesus, we’ve been taking a look at our lives,
and we just don’t see you there. So give
us more faith so that we can see you, so that we can know for sure that you’re
really there.”
But
Jesus basically answers them by saying, “Take a look at this little seed, this
tiny little mustard seed. If your faith
is just this big, you’ll see me. If you
have even the tiniest amount of faith, there’s no telling what kind of amazing
things God can do in your lives. Because
if you have even the tiniest amount of faith, you could say to this tree over
here, ‘Be taken up and be tossed into the ocean,’ and it would happen.”
As
I was looking at these verses this week, and reading them over and over, all of
a sudden something jumped out at me. I
noticed that Jesus didn’t say, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,
you can make trees jump up and be tossed into the sea.” No, what Jesus said was “If you have faith
the size of a mustard seed, you’ll be able to say to a tree, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the ocean,’ and it will
happen.” In other words, to get from
believing in our heads and hearts that God can
do something to having it actually happen – Jesus says we need to speak
up. We need to have the courage to put
into words and say out loud – for other people to hear – what it is that we
believe God can do. And by doing that,
by speaking up like that, by taking that step of faith, there’s no telling what
God can do.
To
illustrate what I mean, let’s take a quick look at two stories in the
Bible. The first is a somewhat strange
little story that we find in the Old Testament, in the book of the prophet
Ezekiel. In that story, one day Ezekiel
had this dream, this vision. And in that
vision God led Ezekiel out into this valley.
And as Ezekiel looked around that valley, everywhere he turned were
bones. The whole valley was filled with
thousands and thousands of old, dead human bones.
Then
all of a sudden God said to Ezekiel, “Ezekiel, what do you think? Do you think these bones can live
again?” Well, Ezekiel wasn’t quite sure
what to say. On the one hand, he
believed that God could do anything. But
bringing a whole valley of dead bones back to life – who ever heard of
something like that happening?
Well,
since Ezekiel seemed to be at a loss as to what he should do, God told him what
to do. God told him to speak up. God told him to start preaching, to start
talking to those bones about God and about what God is able to do. You can just imagine what Ezekiel must have
been thinking. He must have been thinking,
“I sure hope nobody I know is around.
Because if anyone sees me out here in this valley talking and preaching
to a pile of dead bones, and telling those dead bones that there’s hope for
them, they’ll think I’ve lost my mind.”
But
as Ezekiel went ahead and did what God said, as he went ahead and spoke to
those bones, the bones started to move.
And as Ezekiel continued to speak to them, God brought about a miracle
as the bones came together and formed skeletons, and then skin appeared on
them, and the next thing Ezekiel knew, that valley of old dead bones had been
transformed into a valley filled with living, breathing human beings. And the key to that miracle was Ezekiel’s
willingness to speak up. The key to that
miracle was Ezekiel’s willingness to say out loud what he believed God was able
to do – and as a result, God did it.
The
other story in the Bible that I want us to briefly consider is found in the New
Testament, in the Gospel of Mark. In
that story Jesus was walking along through the town of
But
of all things, the question that Jesus asked the blind man was this: “What do you want me to do for you?” Wasn’t it obvious that the blind man wanted
to have his sight back? But Jesus knew
what he was doing. He realized that it’s
one thing to know what God, in theory, is able to do, but it’s another thing to
have the faith to say what you believe out loud for other people to hear. But even though Bartimaeus
was wanting the seemingly impossible, even though he
was wanting to have his sight restored to him, something that virtually never
happened, Bartimaeus had the faith to say for
everyone to hear, “I want to see again.”
And the next thing Bartimaeus knew, he could
see again. The key to that miracle was Bartimaeus’s willingness to speak up. The key to that miracle was Bartimaeus’s willingness to say out loud what he believed
God was able to do – and as a result, God did it.
A
couple of weeks ago our Acts Initiative group met. The Acts Initiative group is a gathering of
about 6 people from the church who meet with me every 2 or 3 weeks to do some
brainstorming, to try and figure out where God is leading us as a
congregation. The last time we met I
asked the group this question. I asked,
“In three years from now, if we’re really faithful in doing what God wants us
to be doing as a church, what would be different about our church? In three years from now, if we’re really
faithful in doing what God wants us to be doing as a church, what would our
church be like?”
And
I have to admit, the response that I got back from the group wasn’t exactly
what I had expected. Because they said,
“In three years from now, if we’re really faithful in doing what God wants us
to be doing, there will be 100 more people coming to worship here on Sunday
mornings.” In other words, they were
saying that if we’re really faithful in doing what God wants us to be doing as
a church, in three years we should more than double
the size of our church. And these aren’t
crazy people on the Acts Initiative team – at least, most of them aren’t. No, the group is made of up of Mid Davis,
Nancy and Alicia Conboy, Elaine Crist,
Jacque Loftus, and Tricia Sanders. And
so I asked them if they were serious – if they meant what they were saying
about having 100 more people become a part of our church within the next 3
years. And they said yes. They said they believed that that’s something
God could bring about in our midst if we really had faith and did what God
wanted us to be doing.
It’s
funny how God works. Two days after that
meeting, late in the afternoon the telephone rang here at the church and I
picked it up. And on the other end was
this woman who said that she was the mother of a 4th grader and a 6th
grader who go to Carnegie Elementary School.
And she asked if we were the church that sponsors the dances for kids at
Crafton Elementary School. I said yes,
we do that.
And
so the woman said, “Well, I wanted to find out about having dances for the kids
at Carnegie Elementary School.” And so I
assumed that the woman was probably on the PTA there, and that she and some
group wanted to start organizing dances for kids in Carnegie. So I explained to her how we get a DJ, and
how we advertise the dances to the kids, and how we line up chaperones, and how
we make sure that the wrong kinds of music don’t get played. And after I had spent several minutes
explaining all that, I asked her if she had any questions.
And
she said, “Well, the reason I was calling was to see if you could put on dances that the Carnegie kids could come to.” Apparently the mother had asked around at
some of the churches and other organizations in Carnegie, and it didn’t look
like anyone in their community was willing to do that. And so she wanted to know if maybe our church
could expand the circle of kids that we reach out to and include the kids in
Carnegie.
To
be honest, after I hung up, I thought to myself, “That woman’s got to be
kidding! We have our hands full just
trying to do what we already do for the kids in Crafton and Ingram – between
dances and Youth Club and Adventure Group.
Yes, those dances are an important way for lots and lots of kids and
their parents to get acquainted with our church, but why would that woman think
that we’d be interested in all of a sudden reaching out and starting up youth
programs, like dances, for possibly a hundred or more kids from the next town?”
But
then all of a sudden I remembered that meeting from two days before – that
meeting where the Acts Initiative team had said, out loud, that in three years,
if we’re really faithful in doing what God wants us to be doing, we could be
touching the lives of a lot more people than we currently do. Was that phone call from that woman in
Carnegie God’s way of saying, “There are a lot of kids, a lot of families, a lot of people of all ages, all around you who are looking
for a place where they can feel that they belong”? Was that phone call from that woman in
Carnegie God’s way of saying, “You’re thinking too small.
If only you would have some faith, even
if that faith is as small as a mustard seed, you’ll see what kind of great
things are just waiting to happen”?
Jesus
said, “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 happen.” We’re not necessarily interested in seeing
mulberry trees flying across the sky.
But what are we hoping and praying that God will do in our lives? What are we hoping and praying that God will do
in the life of our church? Don’t just think about what God might do. Don’t just believe that God might do something great. Instead, have the faith to say it, and to
trust that with God nothing is impossible.