Faith and Fear: A Sermon on Increase our Faith

Text: Luke 17:5-10

         I’d like to start with reading the verses leading up to our text today. Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! ² It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble.³ Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. ⁴ And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.”

         To which the Disciples cry out, Increase our Faith!

         After the last couple weeks of difficult texts, (Luke 16:1-13, Luke 16:19-31) that hit us to our core, the love of money and the division we create between ourselves and those in need, I feel sort of the same way as the Disciples do. It almost becomes an impossible feeling situation. There is so much to be done in this world. There is so much hurting, so much pain. We are fearful, scared. And you look around and everyone else is scared too. We hurt and so do our neighbors. And it can get to that point, of what can I actually do? I’m not going to make any difference, or the things asked of seem way too hard. In this set up to Jesus’ teaching regarding forgiveness, forgiveness is so hard, especially when it’s over and over like this. It’s not just forgiving the person once, but repeatedly, again and again. The reaction would seem to be to cut the person off, but Jesus says forgive.

         We’re watching episodes from a TV show on Faith in the High School group, and one of this weeks stories was about a Christian Pastor and a Muslim Cleric in Nigeria. For countless years there had been massive violence between the two groups. The Christian group killed the Muslim Cleric’s teacher and mentor, and the Muslim group in an attack cut off the hand of the Christian Pastor, countless others died. One day though, they were brought together by chance and they actually looked each other in the eye and shook hands. Still each full of anger and want for revenge. When they returned home thought they each read from the Bible and Quran respectively and prayed. The pastor read a passage on Jesus saying that the duty of a Christian is to forgive, while the cleric read that the life of a Muslim should be one of forgiveness. And they both finally heard these texts differently. Their prayer changed them, and they joined together to begin the hard, hard process of finding peace.

         Situations like that seem impossible and to the thought of that the disciples call out, increase our faith! Actually, they’re called Apostles here, meaning ones who are sent out. They know that they will be in that situation, that they will find themselves in such a hard situation that they will see as impossible. So, Increase our faith!

         And Jesus responds, “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.” Or to use the more familiar line from Matthews version of the story, you could move mountains.

         We read this as a rebuke often, oh, you disciples, you need to get some more faith. But, Greek is weird, it has a way of speaking so that what Jesus is meaning isn’t apparent to us. Jesus is actually saying, if you had the faith the size of a mustard Seed, and you do!

         He’s not telling them that they don’t have any faith, he’s reminding them that they do have faith, and even the tiniest amount of faith is enough. This may seem like an impossible task, but through faith you can accomplish it!

         There’s a true story of a man in India who lost his wife because the journey to the hospital took him around a mountain and it took too long. So, he dedicated the rest of his life to making a tunnel and made a journey of days into hours. He literally moved a mountain.

         With faith we can amazing things. What is faith? It’s trust in God.

         It’s trust that God surrounds us and protects us and gives us gifts and abilities, maybe it is the gift like that man to hack our way through a mountain, but God also gives us the gift of community.

         Faith means we are people called to go into the world to help those in need, along with those around us. But, it’s not a competition to see who can do the most good stuff and somehow that means they have the most faith so they’re the best.

         Faith isn’t a thing we have, faith is a way we live. It’s not a commodity that we accrue through doing things or forgiving people, its just the way we live. We don’t live as people who need to gain faith, or need to be rewarded for what we should already be doing, we live as people of faith, faith given by God, who go out to serve.

         Our reward is that we have already been invited to the banquet. Communion here is simply a foretaste of the great feast we are already invited to. When we come forward, we aren’t receiving faith, we are being reminded that we have it. And as we look at all the others communing with us here, we are reminded that communion means we are brought into a community. A community of people filled with faith. A community that here eats with Christ. We face all these impossible seeming situations not alone, but with God who loves us. With God who loves this whole community of children of God, who sends us together out into the world.

         Let us live like that, full of the knowledge that we indeed have faith, and that we are surrounded by so many others who have faith as well. That’s how we uproot mulberry trees, and move mountains. That’s how we forgive over and over again, even in the hardest of moments. That’s how we change the world, so that peace, love and forgiveness may rule.

         May we go out full of faith, living with Christ.

Hymn of the Day: If you but trust in God to guide you ELW 769