Increase Our Faith
What do you do if you want to increase something in your life? If you want to increase the amount of money you have or the number of friends you have or your skill on an instrument or at a craft, in a sport or in another endeavor? What do you do if you want to increase your physical strength or endurance or your emotional intelligence or resilience? How do we increase those things?
By giving time, effort, and focus; we have to work at them and practice them and make them a priority. It’s an active process. Merely hoping any of those things will just happen isn’t likely to be successful. Would you agree?
Not only that, but it takes some risk and courage to increase these sorts of things. Sometimes we have to risk losing money to increase how much we have. We may risk rejection in seeking to make a new friend. We risk feeling embarrassed in the early awkward stages of trying to learn an instrument or getting used to a new workout class or new exercises. We may have to admit or acknowledge our weakness, ignorance, or our need in starting something new because it’s so obvious we’re a beginner, not a master. It can be difficult to admit we need help. Emotional intelligence and resilience are highly desirable, most of us would like to possess those qualities, yet they are often developed and honed in stressful or challenging circumstances that we prefer to avoid.
September 29, 2013
Luke 17:5-10, Increase Our Faith
Doug Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
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There may be a number of things we’d like to increase in our life. Because you’re here in worship today, perhaps one of the things you’d like to increase is your faith. There are so many things that work against having faith in God. The terrible, senseless acts of violence, selfishness, greed, abuse, prejudice, ignorance, and stupidity we see from human beings every week can cause us to question how a good or powerful God could possibly exist. It can cause us to pull our hair out in frustration, which is what happened to me. On the other hand, every week there are intentional acts of peace-making and reconciliation, unselfish acts of neighbors helping neighbors and even complete strangers; there are acts of generosity, caring, justice, acceptance, and intelligence. There is enough evidence for the bad or the good, to believe in God or not, to enable us to choose to go one way or the other. Difficult circumstances and challenges make us wish for more faith. We’re not the first people to feel that way.
The 17th chapter of Luke begins with Jesus telling his disciples about the demands of forgiveness and faith. He urges them not to being a stumbling block to another person. If someone we know is sinning against us we’re to talk with them about it, and if they repent we’re to forgive them. And then Jesus says, “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.” What would you say to that? This is how the apostles responded: 5 The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’
6 He replied, ‘If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it will obey you.
7 ‘Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, “Come along now and sit down to eat”? 8 Won’t he rather say, “Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink”? 9 Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.”’
This isn’t an easy passage is it? Perhaps if we focus on the apostles’ request, “increase our faith,” that will help. We’ve already talked about what we do when we want to increase something so let’s consider the phrase “our faith.” It’s important to note the phrase is not, “Increase my faith.” This is not the cry, plea, or request of an individual; it’s the prayer, the desire of the apostles who represent all of us who would follow Jesus. “Increase our faith.” This communal plea is consistent with what Jesus taught the disciples to pray when he told them to say, “Our Father, who art in heaven…give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, lead us not…but deliver us from evil..” There is a relational component and nature to being a follower of Jesus that is inescapable. We’re in this life and this thing called faith together with other people whether we like it or not; so we need to work at it – unless you go off and live as a hermit somewhere so you never have to encounter another person. But even if you live alone, sooner or later you need to go out and people are everywhere. And where there are encounters and relationships with people, there will frequently be the need for forgiveness.
Why did the apostles need to increase their faith, why do we need more faith? Specifically in this context, and it’s always important to read the Bible in context, the cry for more faith comes immediately after hearing how we need to be people of forgiveness and even more so we need to be willing to forgive others repeatedly. This doesn’t come easily to most people, not even apostles. It takes faith to follow Jesus; he doesn’t make it sound easy; he makes it sound more like joining the Marines.
Earlier in Luke’s Gospel Jesus described what it means to follow him in tough terms. To one would-be follower, he cautions that the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. To those who want to follow him but first take care of family matters, he says that they need to keep the kingdom of God as their first priority without wavering or looking back (9:57-62) To crowds travelling with him, he emphasizes the cost of following him: none can become a disciple without carrying the cross (14:27), placing family ties as secondary (14:26), and giving up all possessions (14:33).
Jesus does not give his disciples an easy answer to their request for faith. With a twinge of irritation (indicated by the Greek syntax in 17:6) he tells them in so many words that they have all the faith they need. This is the surprise in the passage. Jesus says if they had faith “the size of a mustard seed” they could command a mulberry tree to be uprooted and moved to the sea. The tough answer from Jesus might sound surprising, after all, the apostles have spent more time with Jesus than anyone else, heard more of his teaching than anyone, yet after all the time and teaching, they still don’t seem to have the kind of faith Jesus expects them and wants them to have. If you read through the Gospel of Luke, those we least expect to have faith are often held up as examples of it. When a woman, a so-called “sinner,” pours ointment on and kisses Jesus’ feet — to the irritation of Pharisees — Jesus not only forgives her sins but also says “your faith has saved you.” (7:50) He says the same thing to several folks: a woman who touches him in order to be healed of hemorrhages (3:48), a Samaritan leper who comes back to thank him after he has been healed (17:19); and a blind beggar who wants to see again (18:42). When a Roman centurion goes to great lengths to have him heal a trusted servant, Jesus exclaims, “Not even in Israel have I found such faith” (7:9). These folks are in contrast to the disciples who often appear to lack faith, and not just in today’s passage. When they’re in a boat with Jesus and a storm happens, they get so anxious that Jesus has to ask, “Where is your faith?” (8:25). Later on, aware that Peter will betray him, Jesus prays that his faith will not fail him (22:32).
To have faith means having our whole way of perceiving and responding to life transformed by God. R. Alan Culpepper states, “The point is not that the disciples need more faith, they need to understand that faith enables God to work in a person’s life in ways that defy ordinary human experience.” What seems “impossible” for us is “possible” for God. Having faith is not about being able to do spectacular tricks like making a tree uproot and be planted in the sea. Rather Jesus is making the point that if we have even a little faith that God can transform how we perceive and respond to life, then we can live according to his teachings and do what we know we should do.
What Jesus says about “faith” sets the stage for what he says about being God’s servants or “slaves.” Jesus points out that a farmer simply expects a slave, after working all day, to “prepare supper … and serve me while I eat and drink” (17:7-9). Of course, stories about masters and slaves are problematic for us because it’s not acceptable. Yet in the ancient world, a “slave” was not only a socioeconomic entity but also one wholly devoted to another. At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, Simeon described himself as God’s “slave” when he gave the baby Jesus a blessing (2:29). Later, Jesus urges us to be watchful “slaves,” who are not only responsible in using what has been entrusted to us (12:35-48), but also prudent in generating as much as we can with what we have been given (19:11-27). Most importantly, the Gospels transform ancient conceptions of relations between masters and slaves. Unlike Gentile rulers who lord it over others, leaders among Jesus’ disciples must serve. As Jesus observes, “For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? But I am among you as one who serves” (22:24-30; Matthew 20:24-28; 19:28; Mark 10:41-45).
If having “faith” — even faith the size of a mustard seed — means having one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions wholly transformed by God, then it means being a “slave” of God: one devoted to God’s purposes in the world. God blesses us with a beautiful world, the gift of life, and everything that we enjoy. God has been so generous to us, God owes us nothing; we are blessed to belong to the Lord. How many of you have refrigerator magnets or a framed needle point or a screensaver with a Bible verse? How many of you have Luke 17:10? That’s what I thought. “God is love, The Lord is my Shepherd, The Joy of the Lord is my strength,” these verses all sound a little nicer to us than: “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.”’
What does this passage teach us about God? Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says (12:37), “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.” Then in Luke 15 God is portrayed in the father who runs to greet his long lost son and gives him a ring, a new robe, shoes for his feet, kills the fatted calf and throws a big party. Both of those passages sound appealing to us: sitting down and being served; receiving all kinds of goodies and a party even after we’ve significantly messed up. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
That’s not what we get in Luke 17. In this parable in Luke 17, the pendulum swings the other way and may even offend us since we live in a time when self-esteem is all important and everyone is winner and gets a trophy. Jesus is reminding the apostles and all of us of God’s authority and our dependence. God owes us nothing; we owe God everything. God gives us life, the ability to do all we can do; we owe God our diligent, faithful, service in return. If the farmer in the parable can expect the total commitment of his slave, how much more right has God to expect the service of his children? We are to do our duty to God. Duty sounds old fashioned to some people. This summer was the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in 1863. Before the battle, Union General George Meade gave the following command, “All commanders are authorized to order the instant death of any soldier that fails in his duty at this time.” This quote, like many others, implies that duty is something unpleasant, distasteful, unappealing, and in some cases even dangerous.
In his poem Ode to Duty, the poet William Wordsworth described duty as the ”Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!” William Neil writes that this passage in Luke 17 is a “corrective in our moods of self-pity. We feel that we are doing more than our share, in our jobs, in the home, in the work of the church. This point never comes, says Jesus, for you have only done your duty. It is also a cure for our pride, our feeling that in a variety of ways we are better Christians than our neighbors, more charitable, more sympathetic, more active in good causes. Not so, says Jesus, what you have done you have only done your duty. Yet if we take these apparently harsh words to heart and live by them, we find that by the strange alchemy of God’s providence his service turns out to be our perfect freedom.”[1]
As disciples we can do what God requires through faith, we may not need our faith to increase as much as we think, it may be that we need to exercise and use the faith we already have. When we do use the faith we have, we may find it increases. Faithfulness, forgiveness, and humility are required of those of us who follow Jesus, but no matter how much we may feel we’re doing for our Master, we may do our duty, but we can never do more than is required.
Prayer: Lord, increase our faith and help us use the faith we have. Help us to serve you and others humbly, gratefully, and to do our duty to the best of our ability, not as a burden, with gratitude. \
Blessing: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” Hebrews 11:6
Oswald Chambers wrote, “Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.”