Proper 22C                R Lundquist                           10/7/07

Luke 17:5-10     http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=58725937

“Lord, increase our faith!”

A story of someone else asking for an increase:  in Jesus’ time a man went to rabbi and complained, “Rabbi, my house is too small for my family and me.  Can you help me?  What should I do?”  The rabbi thought for a moment, and then said, “I want you to bring your all of your chickens into your house, and come see me in a week.”  “What a terrible idea, rabbi!  Why should I do that?”  But the rabbi said no more, so the man brought all his chickens into his home.

One week later the man came back, complaining bitterly, “Rabbi, my family is upset with me now.  What should I do?”  After a moment of thought, the rabbit told him, “Bring your sheep into your house, and come see me in a week.”  The man was speechless, but did as he was told.

The following week, he came to the rabbi and said, “This is intolerable.  The smell, the noise…  Please tell me what to do now?”  Again briefly pondering the question, the rabbi said, “Now bring all your oxen into your house, and don’t bother me for a week.”

The next week the man, looking bedraggled and smelling even worse, came to the rabbi, who told him, “Now put all the animals back into their pens and stalls.”  The very next day the man returned to the rabbi, exclaiming, “Rabbi, you’ve worked a miracle!  You’ve increased the size of my house tenfold!”

In the rabbinic tradition there is a common strategy of giving an unexpected answer.  Jesus, in his response to his disciples, is suggesting a change in perspective opens unexpected doors.

“Lord, increase our faith!”  It was Mark Twain who famously noted, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”  A bit cynical? Absolutely.  But what do we believe? What is faith?  Most simply:  your faith is your cooperation with God.  Your faith is your response to God’s action in the world.  Jesus said  “if you had faith the size of a mustard seed (or in our times I think he would have said, “an atom”), you would say to the tree, ‘be planted in the sea.’” A wondrous & amazing miracle, indeed.  But then – it is only doing what we ought to have done, being what we ought to be… We are called to be faithful as a matter of course, not as some extraordinary and praiseworthy act.

The Apostles already know they have faith – note that they please “Give us faith!”  They want to grow it the faith they already have.  Realize that faith is not same as belief.  Belief is head knowledge, a rational understanding, a thought process.  Faith is, ultimately, the willingness to throw yourself into the unknown.  To abandon yourself completely, wholly, trusting. Of course faith is broadly misunderstood and misused grammatically in our time and society.  Garrison Keillor once quipped about someone of his acquaintance, “The man was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he did not attend was Episcopal…”

And you know that man.  You know someone in whom the spark of faith has grown cold, in whom the ember has died.  That happens when faith is treated as a destination, something to be achieved.  Faith is a process, not a goal!

Don Armentrout, history professor at St Luke’s School of Theology at the University of the South (Sewanee), has written: “Faith increases as faith is exercised.  It is kind of like a muscle.  If one does not use it, it atrophies.  But using it causes it to strengthen.  Faith begets faith.”

So, get ready to go to JC’s Faith Gym & Health Club.  Four exercises your faith:

1                     Pray.  Include in your prayer a petition for renewal of faith.  Ask for it, as disciples did. 

2                     Abandon yourself to the community of faith – like the apostles, and as you did in your baptismal covenant.  “Will you continue in the apostle’s teach and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?”  Faith grows & flourishes in the collective, in the Body of Christ, in the midst of people who are also striving to live in faith.

3                     Demonstrate your faith – sacrifice for the people you love.  Uproot the stubborn & rebellious mulberry tree of your heart, and plant it into the sea of humanity which surrounds you.  Perhaps your faith merely needs repotting…

4                     Give back to God, as a steward.  For faith is found in giving not what you think you can afford, but what you deeply feel God is calling you to give.

Now that’s a workout.  Not for bigger biceps, but for increased faith.  Act your way into wider faith.  Have you ever caught yourself saying, “I’ll do that when my faith is stronger”?  As Armentrout says, faith grows when it is used.  Not relying on your faith will allow it to shrink and shrivel.

Theologian Paul Tillich (The New Being):  “Faith means being grasped by a power that is greater than we are, a power that shakes us and turns us and transforms us and heals us.  Surrender to this power is faith.”

That’s the stretch, isn’t it?  Surrender.  Increase of faith ultimately means “letting go.”  Would you be letting go to something you know “ain’t so?”  Or letting go into what you deeply know?  Lord, increase our faith.

Using a prayer composed by Soren Kierkegaard, let us pray:

God in heaven, I thank you that you have not required that humans comprehend Christianity; for if that were required, I should be of all people the most miserable.  The more I seek to comprehend, the more incomprehensible it appears to me, and the more I discover merely the possibility of offense.  Therefore I thank you that you only require faith, and I pray that you increase it more and more.  Amen