Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 • Psalm 37:1-9 • 2 Timothy 1:1-14 • Luke 17:5-10
The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" The 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." Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, 'Come here at once and take your place at the table'? Would you not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink'? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, 'We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'"
Got faith? If there were a bumper sticker summary of God’s Word for us today, that could be it: “Got faith?” The theme coming through several of our lessons speaks directly to our life of faith, and the dangers and promises that lie within a life of faith.
For the prophet Habakkuk, when he looked around him, he didn’t see anything at all that prompted faith in him—the pre-exile ruin of the Israelites was at hand, and the Babylonians were making a mess of everything. “How long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?” he cries to the Lord. (1:2) God’s response comes in the form of a promise—a promise shown in a vision of a different, future time…a time when God will save God’s people…a time that cannot be grasped by any evidence or proof, but only by faith in God’s provision of what God says God will provide. God proclaims to H abakkuk, “the righteous live by their faith” in what God has promised. (2:4)
In Luke’s Gospel, the disciples have just been commanded by Jesus not to be a stumbling block to the weak and to forgive anyone who sins against them seven times and asks for forgiveness seven times. And the disciples respond immediately, “Increase our faith!” (17:5) It’s as if the disciples have been traveling on this journey, following Jesus, learning from him, extending his ministry of proclaiming and healing, and this last command is the straw that has broken them, wondering if they can carry on any more: “Lord, just give us more faith so we can follow you. What you’re asking of us is so challenging…we’re not going to be able to take this much longer!” Jesus’ responds to their exasperation with strange images of mustard seeds and mulberry trees, and a brief parable about a slave.
And it’s here where one of the dimensions of faith comes alive for us today. The disciples themselves show that it is not as though they have no faith—in Greek they’re actually saying something more like, “Add faith to us!” The disciples have faith, it’s just not big enough for them. Jesus tells them faith does not have a size or quantity. Faith the size of a mustard seed—the tiniest of seeds!—is enough. Mustard seed faith can do the impossible—even plant trees in oceans, Jesus says! It’s as if Jesus says that mustard seed faith cannot come from us; it begins with God for it to be faith. So when we may be in the disciples’ shoes of being overwhelmed, and wondering if we have faith any longer—we do not look to ourselves to find faith again. In the hearing of God’s promises, we discover faith—faith in seemingly impossible promises but promises nonetheless God gives us: to love us freely as a gift, and promises to empower us for service to our neighbor and all Creation.
This notion of looking to God as the source and beginning of our faith is illustrated with a beautiful story that is told by a pastor who is talking to a youth group. He asks them, “Do you believe in God?” And they immediately shake their heads, “no”, as if they were describing whether it is raining outside or not. And this pastor was so mad and ticked off. It was as if everything he stood for had been shot down in a brief moment—and several thousand years of passing on the faith was about to stop with the suburban teens who were sitting in front of him. And then he went on, and later he happened to throw out another question: “Have you ever felt God close to you?” And they all immediately raised their hands. Whew! he thought. The youth went on to talk about being close to God while they had been in church services; they had felt God close to them when they noticed a different feel in the air at a loved one’s funeral, something that was bigger than themselves that was holding them throughout that time. It wasn’t that they did not have faith; it was finding a language for how to express it. A God who is near in the midst of pain is indeed the God who God reveals to us on the cross of Christ…it’s a faith that begins in God…God who in coming near to us in Christ grounds our lives in the faithfulness of God.
Jesus’ response to the disciples’ cry for additional faith to follow him reveals another of the dangers of faith: it can become a crutch rather than something that truly comes alive when we take a risk. Faith does have power to allow God to work in us as recipients of God’s sustaining Spirit. In Jesus’ day, masters would never address or give their servants any extra praise for doing what was plainly expected of them. Jesus tells the disciples that they are not worthy of special praise for taking the acts of faith that following Christ involves. Often times, we Lutherans can fall into this trap of believing we need to get our theology and our articulation of our belief correct in our heads before we will put our faith into action. Faith can start with the head, but it also starts with the heart—and forgiving someone, taking time to listen to a person in need, daring to speak out for justice, or any other act of faith can inform and shape our faith in a profound way that would not be possible without taking that risk. Sometimes, faith comes by acting ourselves into a new way of believing—rather than endlessly trying to convince ourselves of something that is altogether right for us to do but which we never actually step out and risk doing. Jesus warns us today that faith gives us peace from God, but not security; faith brings us a connection to God who is larger than our lives, but does not give us a free pass from life’s most ordinary challenges; faith can accompany us anywhere we go, but will not automatically erase our doubts, our illnesses, or our economic hardships. Jesus-faith is a bold faith, both present to us but also awaiting to be discovered in even the most simple but profound acts of mustard seed faith—a discovery that can start when we put one foot in front of the other.
The risks of faith awaiting discovery become possible because faith, by it’s very nature, trusts in what is not seen, as Habakkuk testifies. God’s response to Habakkuk’s lament of the destruction of Israel comes not with an immediately visible change of the situation, it comes with a vision—and that’s a profoundly important dimension of faith: trust gives way not to sight, but vision. God promises Habakkuk that the eyes of faith see will see a vision of God’s mercy, as God says, “there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.” (2:3) In this way a faith-driven life differs from a success-driven life, or a bottom-line driven life. Faith in God cannot always see what God is up to in our lives; but faith trusts that just because we don’t see God, God still is up to bringing us from death to new life. Faith can trust that lives oriented towards God don’t usually go from point A to point B to point C in a straight line. Lives of faith take a meandering way, a way that rests in the hands of God, a way that has many unexpected bumps and turns, a way where confusion at what we see around us does not keep God from giving us a vision for our future. A life of faith, rather than resting entirely on our shoulders, rests on God’s promised faithfulness to us.
Faith brings us together and forms us as God’s people. How will we as the church testify to the treasure of faith that’s discovered and shared in this community? We can…by living out faith as our way of life. It’s a life that begins in God, who works in us, to direct our whole lives—not just Sundays, but also Mondays through Saturdays—into lives covered with God’s gift of new life in Christ. That risking, mustard seed faith that grants us a vision beyond what we see shapes our lives into ones that become channels—channels who pour out the gifts of God’s grace to the world.
When Martin Luther was asked what he would do if he learned he had one day left to live, he is famously known for saying he would plant a tree. Such mustard seed faith is more than enough faith for God to grant us to trust God’s promises; such mustard seed faith is enough to risk bringing a gift of healing to the world in the face of death; such mustard seed faith is enough to envision a God at work in more ways than we can imagine.
Got faith? For a mustard seed being all the faith that’s sufficient for us to give life to the world, let all God’s people say, Amen.
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