PROPER 22-C, October 3, 2004

If you have ever been to the hospital to visit a patient, any hospital, you may have noticed that there is a waiting room on each floor. And if you have ever been in those waiting rooms, you will have noticed that they all look somewhat alike. There are a few tables with chairs around them and a few other chairs that are somewhat comfortable to sit in.

The rooms are there for those who must spend a lot of time in the hospital, usually hours at a time, waiting to go back into the room to visit a loved one who is only allowed so many visitors and only for a very short amount of time. The time limit and visitor limits are set because the patient is so ill. And so the visitor’s lounges. People gather there to pass the time, usually the long time, from short visit to short visit. Magazines are often scattered on the end tables for people to leaf through while passing the time.

One of the hospitals back in Spokane does something I find fascinating, to help those who wait occupy their time. They place jigsaw puzzles on the larger tables. Whenever I walked into one of those rooms, I would always find jigsaw puzzles in various stages of completion. Sometimes there would be people sitting there trying to put them together, and sometimes they lay unattended, just waiting for another visitor to plop down on a chair and pass the time trying to find the pieces that fit.

The truth is, if we think about it, there is often a lot of puzzle solving going on among those who sit at those tables in those waiting rooms, not just jigsaw puzzle solving. Many are also often trying to fit together a lot of pieces to a lot of puzzles in their lives. I know. I used to be one of those puzzle-solvers who hung around those rooms waiting to see someone I loved and cared about. And while working that jigsaw puzzle on the table, I was also trying to work out another puzzle in my mind.

For so many times while putting together a jigsaw puzzle while waiting to see someone who was very ill, the puzzling statements in today’s Gospel came to mind. I knew the person I was waiting to see was very, very ill and was also a very faith-filled person. He or she loved God and tried to live a good, Christian life. Why was she suffering so? Why were her and our prayers for healing not being answered especially in the light of today’s Gospel reading? Was it because of our lack of faith? That was the other puzzle I was working on as I was trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle.

At the beginning of the reading the Apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith. Why did they ask that? Well, we have to go back a few verses when Jesus tells his Apostles that a requisite in being a follower of him is to be very forgiving. He says that if someone sins against them seven times a day and seven times a day asks for forgiveness, they must forgive. They know that’s not easy. They’ve been there and done that. They know that to be so forgiving takes more than a simple willingness to do so. It takes faith and a lot of it. And they know such faith is something they lack, and perhaps lack in abundance. So they ask Jesus to increase that faith.

Jesus’ response, I suspect, is both startling and very puzzling. He tells them that if they had faith the size of a tiny seed, not only could they forgive someone seven times a day, they could say to a tree, "uproot yourself and plant yourself in the sea," and the tree would do it. Jesus startles them by convicting them of a lack of faith and the puzzles them by telling them what great miracles they can perform if they had even a little faith. They could even forgive over and over again.

As I said, this conversation between Jesus and his Apostles reminds me of all those people working all those jigsaw puzzles in those hospital waiting rooms. It reminds me of me sometimes. The Gospel says that if the people bending over those puzzles had enough faith, they could just command that the sickness of their loved one to go away and it would. If I had enough faith, I could walk into that sick person’s room and command that that person be healed and on the spot and it would happen. Yet, the puzzle remains. Was the person sick because she lacked faith? Was she still sick because I lacked the faith to heal her? That’s what Jesus seems to be saying. He seems to be saying that all we need is the faith the size of a seed, and we can work miracles, uproot trees, even move mountains.

Now I know you and I cannot do that. Or is it that I do not believe we can? Does that mean we are a faithless lot here, we people of Christ Church. Does it mean that together, together, we don’t have faith, the sum total of which will equal a seed? Is that what Jesus is saying? Is he saying that our faith is so weak it is powerless? That’s what we normally think, isn’t it? We think faith means power. I think: if only I had enough faith, I could make it all well. I could make my family well, my friends well, my church well. I could heal all those wounds, if only I had enough faith. And that is true. That is what Jesus is saying.

But, but, but, as he says in his next breath, faith is not just about power, miraculous power; power to forgive, power to heal. It is about that. But more importantly it is also about obedience. To remind them of that Jesus tells them about a slave who comes home exhausted from working all day. All he wants is to take off his dirty clothes and grab a quick shower. But he cannot even do that? He has to immediately prepare supper for his boss. And then to top that off, Jesus says that the boss doesn’t even have to thank him for being so faithful. He was only doing his job, doing what was expected of him.

Yes, faith is about power, it is about the power, the grace and strength God gives to us to live out our lives by obeying God’s commands to live a life of love and service of others, especially the last and lost and least of this world. Faith is about being obedient when we are tempted to be disobedient, to trust God, even when things are not going well for us – when we are sick or a loved one is suffering. It is about the power to be faithful, to accept God when everything in us wants to be faithless, wants to reject God. It is about hanging in there in humble obedience, doing what God expects of us, even as so much of our life remains a gigantic jigsaw puzzle.

When I am sick, I want God to heal me and usually heal me immediately. When a loved one is sick, when I am visiting someone in the hospital, I want God to heal these people immediately. I want to say the word and that person be healed. That is what I want, and maybe that is what the person I am praying for wants. But what God wants is that we trust in Him. What we need at those moments when all seems lost, when we or a loved one are suffering, is not a miracle but faith; faith that God will not leave us; faith that God will help us fill in the pieces of the puzzle; faith to get us through when it seems that all the pieces just don’t fit.

In so many ways sometimes our life seems like putting together a jigsaw puzzle in a hospital waiting room. When the pieces are spread all over the table, we don’t think we’ll ever get it together, ever solve the puzzle. But the pieces are all there. We simply need the faith in God that obedience to God brings in order to put it all together knowing the pieces will eventually fall into place – but in God’s good time and in God’s way, not ours. In the meantime, our task is to be obedient by faithfully and fully working on this puzzle we call life.

For when we are faithful, we are also obedient to God’s will, placing service of God and others above service of self. Faith like that is powerful. It can tell a tree to uproot itself and a mountain to move, and they will. It can tell a sickness to vanish and make the blind see. That’s the faith we can have, you and I. The problem may simply be that we just don’t realize it – or, perhaps, are too afraid of possessing. But that’s another sermon. In the meantime, imagine what would and could happen if we did have faith even the size of a mustard seed?