"Above and Beyond"

Our text this morning seems to be a miscellaneous gathering of points about faith sandwiched between two significant teaching events – the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, which was the topic of our sermon last week, and the healing of the ten lepers, which is just after our text. Our text seems to be a disjunctive gathering of faith items, all calling for a different response.

So it would be a reasonable question to ask just what is Luke trying to point out with this disjointed assembly of instructions. Let me list again the five points of our text:

1. Not causing little ones to sin (vv 1-2)
2. Forgiving a brother seven times (vv 3-4)
3. Increasing faith (v 5)
4. Mustard seed dynamics (v 6)
5. The unworthy servants who only do their duty (vv 7-10)

It’s quite obvious that Luke offers some rather moving lessons just before our text, in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus – the most important is that we should listen to Moses and the prophets and the One who has risen from the dead – and just after our text, with the incident of the ten lepers and only one, a Samaritan, returning to offer thanks, with the implication that we should do the same.

Surely the piecemeal sequence of items in our text need to be broken down, sorted out, and commented on individually. But there is a profound truth in the fact that the challenges of life and faith do not come as prepackaged stories and lessons like the rich man and Lazarus or the ten lepers.

The challenges of life and daily faith come to us in random, miscellaneous, unpredictable fashion all the time. The ad on TV says life comes at you fast; life takes Visa. A Visa card might help pay your way through life, but it won’t help you sort through life. Our lives – like our text – are quite seemingly random sequences of circumstances that call for us to go above and beyond.

Just as the phrase in verse 10 says "We are unworthy servants, we have only done what was our duty," spoken by the servant in our text implies that "worthiness" requires us to go above and beyond, so do the random circumstances of life.

In fact, if we look carefully at the text, it seems that the intensity of commitment called for progresses exponentially: Do not cause children to sin – that sounds easy enough. Forgive our peers unceasingly – that’s a little more challenging, and will probably require some divine assistance. Teeny, tiny, mustard seed sized faith – clearly only God can increase that. Yet, a mustard seed is asserted to be greater than our faith – which gives us an idea of how impossibly far we have to go. And finally, we worked and slaved all day, only to be reminded, "You only did your duty." Our efforts are totally futile.

I think you would have to agree, that compared to the two book-end lessons of listening to Moses and Christ and returning to give thanks, the above and beyond calling of our text is more than intimidating. It is, without a doubt, absolute humiliation.

We often look at the apostle Peter and maybe even chuckle to ourselves about his failings. And yet the task of fulfilling the obligations of our text would be incredible. Even after doing our best, we would have to look at ourselves and say; "We have only done what was our duty."

It’s like being in a game of dodge ball: We’re in the center of a circle, and people are throwing balls at us from all sides. We get nailed from every direction, and then it gets worse. That’s what’s going on in our text. We are being challenged intellectually to sort through all the stuff out there that affects our faith and lives, in whatever sequence it comes at us.

Literature offers an abundant number of metaphors that can be used to picture life. The Odyssey uses the metaphor of life as a journey, with a variety of things happening to people as they journey through life – some good and some

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn uses the metaphor of the river to present the life of two "innocent" beings, Huck and Jim, as they travel through a land that’s lush and abundant in terms of nature, but evil and intimidating in terms of the humans who live on the shores of the river and terrorize Huck and Jim as they sail and float along.

Our Old Testament reading from Habakkuk for today gives us a similar scenario of daily life. Habakkuk says, "Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. I will take my stand at the watch post and station myself on the tower." Presumably, Habakkuk is ready to go above and beyond so that the vision of the calling of the Lord is ever before him and he can, at least, declare "We have only done what was our duty."

Our Epistle enhances the imagery and challenge from a little more of a gentle perspective – in a father to a son perspective – but still a pretty intense perspective, because Paul writes to Timothy, "Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the Gospel by the power of God, who saved us an called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began."

Sometimes life is a bunch of random items about faith sandwiched in between family, friends, career, and all the stuff of life in general. So where does that leave us? It leaves us right where our text ends. In the course of human events, our daily events – we throw up our hands because life makes no sense. We don’t know what to do or how to handle the stuff that comes at us. We wear ourselves out trying to second-guess God.

We certainly can’t even begin to captain our own ships when we can’t even chart the waters of the pond in our own back yard. "So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘we are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’ "

"Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at the table’?" No, not one of us, if we had servants ever would. But there is One who had a whole universe of servants who did. He said, "Let me serve you. Let me spread a whole banquet table before you. Even though you are indeed unworthy servants, let me, the Master, be your slave."

Try making sense out of that random circumstance. Try second-guessing that one. Nothing quite like that has ever happened in any other sphere of life. There’s no precedent for it. There’s no logical order to it. And yet it’s the one truth that gives order to all the random, mixed up, crazy stuff in our lives. It’s the one thing that makes everything suddenly make sense.

The disorder, the unachievable over-and-above that life demands, that show us how unworthy we are, serve a purpose. They bring us to depend solely on the Master who served us.

He served us by entering this chaotic, sin-disordered world. He served us by taking off his robe and tying a towel around his waist. He served us by having his beard plucked, being stripped and beaten, by giving his life into death on a cross.

He served us, not by forgiving us seven times a day, but seventy times seven. He served us by giving us the one thing, the One in whom we can have faith. He served us by seating us at the heavenly banquet, even if our faith in him is nothing but a grain of mustard seed. He served us by giving us a taste of that banquet again this morning.

Christ Jesus, our Master, has gone way over and above for us, his unworthy servants, and that sorts out all the random stuff that makes life so confounding.

What makes no sense – the Master of the universe going above and beyond to serve his unworthy servants – makes sense of everything.