Parable of the faithful servant (Luke 17: 5 – 10)

5The apostles came up and said to the Master, "Give us more faith." 6But the Master said, "You don't need more faith. There is no 'more' or 'less' in faith. If you have a bare kernel of faith, say the size of a poppy seed, you could say to this sycamore tree, 'Go jump in the lake,' and it would do it. 7-10"Suppose one of you has a servant who comes in from ploughing the field or tending the sheep. Would you take his coat, set the table, and say, 'Sit down and eat'? Wouldn't you be more likely to say, 'Prepare dinner; change your clothes and wait table for me until I've finished my coffee; then go to the kitchen and have your supper'? Does the servant get special thanks for doing what's expected of him? It's the same with you. When you've done everything expected of you, be matter-of-fact and say, 'The work is done. What we were told to do, we did.'"

The disciples ask Jesus for more faith. He tells them that they don’t need it – a poppy seed’s worth is more than enough. Jesus then tells the disciples a story to illustrate to the disciples exactly what he means: don’t expect any extra credit for doing what is properly yours to do anyhow. A mother is there to mother, a teacher is there to teach, a pupil is there to learn; Simplicity is not only a virtue it is a God given way to live. Just let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one (Matthew 5:37). It is no wonder that the Nike advertising logo is so successful – it touches a deep chord within human nature: Just do it!

There are two ways that we scramble this message and make life more complicated than it needs to be. One way is to hide behind ourselves and the other way is to hide behind other people. It is easy to look for extra recognition for what we do. We crave some form of social credit for how we live our lives: to become personally more important, to get the attention of others and increase our own prestige among our family and friends. We live our lives with exclamations such as ‘Do you know what happened to me?!’ ‘What do you think I did about it?!’. Do we really need a pat on the back, or some kind of special treatment when all we are doing is what is expected of us?

At its most extreme this leads into the cult of the celebrity. Celebrity Big Brother winner (2006) Chantelle Houghton told reporters when she left the house she planned to spend her £25,000 prize money on a holiday - and orange lipstick. Chantelle, a model from Essex, said she believed the public had voted for her because she was "down to earth". I'll never change. I'm just little old me. Chantelle isn’t bothered that she’s known as the ‘Travel Lodge’ version of millionaire heiress Paris Hilton, she’s just pleased she can ‘live the dream,’ which is apparently being in Heat magazine (www.headliners.org). Fame (being known simply because you are known) becomes a form of secular redemption lifting Ms Houghton from the anonymity of ordinariness. Capitalism has commodified culture for economic profit. Celebrities become the ‘opium of the people’ as their images are used to entertain, to distract and to divert attention from the inherent injustice within the capitalist system.

The second way that we clog up the simplicity of what Jesus says is to hide behind ourselves. We either try to do too much or else too little. When we do to try to do too much we script God out of the equation and assume that it is our responsibility to manage everything ourselves. We make decisions and then we worry. Modern life is stressful. 1/10 Britons feel constantly at boiling point and 2/10 feel stressed out even before Breakfast according to a survey done by the Relaxation for Living Institute. The teaching in the Bible about this is blunt.

25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? (Matthew 6:25)

In crude terms to worry is to take the place of God and to assume that things are entirely are responsibility to arrange. Jesus is not saying that we get out a spade, dig up the sycamore tree and then throw it in the lake. We are asked to live in faith and to leave the sycamore tree to God.

When we do too little we convince ourselves that we are not good enough. This is not humility but defensiveness:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” (Marianne Williamson is from her book, A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles)

The stillness of radical Christianity is when we know not to judge because we cannot fool ourselves into a sense of superior righteousness; it is patient waiting, full of hope. This stillness of faith is a gesture of confidence in the meaningfulness of reality. The holiness of this God, of things as they are, is inevitable and indivisible. Revolutionary stillness is a way of doing nothing; it is what the Bible calls repentance. The word ‘repentance’ has become so weighed down with emotional feelings of guilt that the point can be lost. Repentance is the recognition that the process of healing depends on deeper, more actual and urgent forces than what I can muster on my own.