The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, 10/06/2013

Sermon on Luke 17:5-10 "Sermon after Surgery", by Gregory P. Fryer

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I have titled my sermon this morning "Sermon after Surgery," and my text is from our Gospel Lesson, from Luke 17:

⁵The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" ⁶The 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. (Luke 17:5-6, NRSV)

My! Wouldn't that be dramatic! I bet it would take a tractor to uproot a Middle Eastern mulberry tree. According to scholars that tree is probably the "proverbially deep-rooted fig-mulberry."^¹ Hercules himself would have trouble pulling that tree out of the ground and casting it into the sea. Yet, Jesus says, faith can do such a thing.
Even more dramatic is the Saint Matthew version of this saying. There, the disciples are discouraged because they have not been able to do what Jesus could do: Jesus had healed a boy possessed of a terrible demon. The disciples had failed in their attempts to help the child, so they ask Jesus why they were unable. Jesus gives this answer:

And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. (Matthew 17:20, KJV)

Again, I say, My! Wouldn't that be dramatic! Who has ever heard of someone saying to a mountain, "Be up and cast yourself into the sea," and it would be so. Imagine that mountain to be one of the Colorado Rocky mountains. Suppose yon mountain to be that Colorado mountain. Who could uproot such a thing, let alone hurl it halfway across the continent to land in the sea? Yet, Jesus says that faith can do such a thing.

So, I invite you to agree with me: Wouldn't it be dramatic? Wouldn't it be moving and remarkable if faith were to cast a mulberry tree or a mountain into the sea?

Useful too

Indeed, wouldn't it be more than dramatic? Wouldn't it also be very useful for faith to be able to do such a thing? Especially if you are lying in a hospital bed, flat on your back, awaiting surgery the next morning? I say it would be both dramatic and very useful for faith to be able to say, "Illness, be gone! Be up and into the sea! Danger (for there is always danger connected with surgery) be gone! I am a person of faith, and I say to you, let me survive this surgery. Let it all work together for my good. Let me live to see another day. Let me live to go on taking care of my family and doing my work in this world." Yes, such faith would indeed be useful!

Well, let me tell you how it worked out in my case. About six weeks ago, I was the one flat on my back in a hospital room, awaiting open-heart surgery. And by God's grace, I have survived! I have lived to see another day. Great day in the morning! It is good to be alive!

Since then I have been recovering from my surgery. The recovery has felt slow to me. Never before have I been laid up in such a fashion that I could not simply spring back in a day or so. But I had been warned that it might take twelve weeks to regain my strength and stamina. I am about halfway through that now, and I think the doctors knew what they were talking about. I have concluded that under God's providence, the body has its own pace and wisdom about healing, and I am learning to trust that. I am confident that I will be back to work about three weeks from now, for Reformation Sunday.

Meanwhile, I have been going slowly. This includes walking and exercise, but also time simply sitting on the sofa, staring off into the distance, thinking about my place in the world and about how eager I am to go on working, go on with my ministry, go on trying to take care of my family. And this recovery time has included time to reflect on my surgery and to recall some of those days at the hospital.

One hospital conversation especially remains strong in my memory. It was a conversation with a fellow patient. He was on the recovery-side of his heart surgery; I was facing mine in the morning. He knew that I am a pastor, and so he felt free to give me encouragement by way of that most lovely of methods - by saying that he would pray for me.

I was grateful for his prayers and I told him so. But there was something about the way he expressed his confidence - his confidence that all would go well for me - that caused me to linger some with him and to discuss prayer a bit more with him. You see, he was more confident than I was that I would survive the surgery.

Don't get me wrong. I was indeed confident, but what I was confident about was something a bit different from the confidence of my friend. I was simply confident that I was in God's hands and could rest there. He was confident that I would survive the surgery. These are not quite the same thing.

So, I tried to explain this to my new friend. I said that I was grateful for his prayers and I prayed too with all my heart that I would survive the surgery. As best I could, I was knocking on heaven's doors, offering my opinion and urgent request to Almighty God, Maker of heaven and earth, that I come through the morning's surgery okay. But, I said, I feel it best to end my prayer as Jesus ended his prayer in Gethsemane:

³⁹ And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. (Matthew 26:39, KJV)
Now, here is the earnest response of my friend: He answered, "But it would make no sense if you did not survive the surgery. You seem to me to be a good man. Why should you die? How can that make any sense?"
It was a chance to speak of the resurrection. And so I did. Please note that at this point in my life, this was no calm theological discussion for me. I was a sick man trying to explain my faith as I entered into surgery. So, I tried to explain to my new friend that the content of my faith was not so much that I would make it through the surgery okay, but simply that I trusted God, whatever his will. Therefore I believed that if I should die in the morning, one day I would understand and give whole-hearted thanks to God for that path. Furthermore, I said that I would be able to do so - to see and understand and to give thanks - because I trusted Jesus to raise me up to life again. The resurrection of Jesus is what makes sensible the path that at first seems very hard, even dreadful.

I am not sure my friend followed this line of thinking. Perhaps you do not follow it either. I fear that I am not being very articulate about it. The bottom line is this: It would be great, it would be dramatic if I could say to yon illness, "Off with you. Cast yourself in the sea." But often the ways of God are not so dramatic. Often the ways of God are quiet and run along regular routes, including the wonderful skills of the surgeon and the whole team at the hospital.

Waiting upon the Lord

When the Lord works slowly, in accordance with his regular way of doing things, he is working nonetheless, and his work will certainly yield salvation. Our job, then, is to wait upon the Lord:

...they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31, KJV)

We are to put our trust in him, bring our honest petitions to him, and then walk with him like children taking the hand of a loving parent. We can pray most earnestly for the casting of the mulberry bush or the mighty mountain into the sea. But we can also entrust the outcome to the Lord and walk quietly with him as long as our walking lasts.
My pastor from the long ago days when I was young, Rev. Raymond Shaheen, once told a story about one of England's great preachers, Leslie Weatherhead (1893-1976). Pastor Shaheen said this:

In one of Weatherhead's sermons the Holy Spirit laid hold upon a young woman and she became a convert. She was thrilled with her new life in Jesus Christ. But alas, after a month she came back to Weatherhead and she said she was going to give it all up. She just wasn't making the progress that she felt she ought to be making as a Christian... "I can't control my tongue - I can't allow my heart always to be ruled by love" ... she disliked certain people, she almost hated them, and she was constantly aware of this sin that so easily beset her. She wanted to make so much improvement...she wanted her sainthood overnight - she wanted to become an instant saint! So after four weeks, she said, "I'm giving it up."

I don't know what Weatherhead said to her, I don't know how he ministered to her, I am sure he did his best to be effective. But the story goes on to tell that shortly after she left his office he received another caller, and this was a man who came in a said, "Dr. Weatherhead, I'm not a member of your congregation, and I have never heard you preach. But would you please accept this five-pound note. It's a thank-offering. A daughter of ours came one time to hear you preach. She's been a different girl ever since. Something's happened - we can see."... and it so happened that he was the father of the young woman who had just been in Weatherhead's office. She herself could not see the progress that was being made, but others could.

Pastor Shaheen then offered this exhortation:

Be patient, my friend, God is always at work, in ways that we might not be able to see, in ways that we might not be able to understand. But at work He is. Occasionally in history you might find some evidence of His dramatic display of power; His preferred way is slowly, quietly, earnestly, in the lives of people, day by day, where they are.^²

When we are in trouble - when we are in the hospital bed awaiting surgery, in the interview room hoping for a new job, in school taking a key exam, on our knee proposing marriage to that one who has captured our heart - whenever we are in need, let us pray with the confidence of Abraham himself, bringing our petitions to the Lord. But then let us be still and trust the matter to him. Let it be with us as with the Psalmist of old, who knows well about the tumults of life, yet believes even more in the Lord of life who says to each of us -

Be still, and know that I am God: (Psalm 46:10, KJV)

As best we can, then, let's follow the example of the One who prayed, "Not my will, but thine be done," and to whom belongs the glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit now and forever. Amen.

Pastor Gregory P. Fryer
New York, NY
E-Mail: gpfryer@gmail.com

Zusätzliche Medien:
1 The Lectionary Commentary: The Gospels. Edited by Roger E. Van Harn. (William B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2001), page 422.

2 From "God in Slow Motion," sermon preached by Rev. Raymond Schulze at Saint Luke Lutheran Church, Silver Spring, Maryland, August 27, 1967

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