IF ONLY I H
AD MORE FAITH
Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Prospect United Methodist Church
Bristol, Connecticut
September 5, 2010
Luke 17: 5-10
A father serving ice cream to his youngest daughter asked her how much she would like. Her response? “Too much.” You can imagine her reasoning: what her parents always identified as “too much” sounded just about right to her. Someday, no doubt, she’ll discover what her elders already know: a modest portion of a really good thing turns out to be just fine.
This truth applies also to faith. In the gospel lesson just read, Jesus’ disciples reveal that they’re about to give up on this disciple-thing. Jesus has given one very hard command after another. Who could ever have enough faith to follow this Jesus they wondered?
For example, in the passage preceding the one read they’ve just been told that even if someone sins against them 7 times a day, every day and then asks for forgiveness they have to forgive. No wonder they said, “Lord, this is hard stuff. Please, please, please if you want any followers at all, please increase our faith!”
Jesus responds with his famous saying referencing a mustard seed, a seed so small you can hardly even see it. He says, “My dear friends. If you had faith only the size of a mustard seed you could move that mulberry tree over there and cause it to take root in the sea.” As you can tell, Jesus used exaggeration often to make his point.
Basically, what he’s saying to the disciples is you don’t need more faith. You really have all the faith you need. You don’t need “too much.” The modest portion you have is sufficient. And he would say the same to us.
Well thanks, Jesus, but I’m not sure I understand. What do you do when it seems lack of faith is what’s holding you back? What do you do when life keeps throwing you curve balls? What do you do when life is just one disappointment after another? What do you do when you pray and pray and still you’re filled with anxiety about your job or your health or your finances or a relationship with spouse or child and things aren’t getting any better? What do you do when you find yourself falling off the wagon? When old habits, addictions, compulsions that you thought were in your past, come again with as much strength as ever and you just feel so defeated?
And then some preacher says something like you really do have to forgive even ornery, mean people and bang! It’s just quite more than you can accept. It’s more than faith can bear! You’re not even sure if you have the strength to try any more. Maybe not even sure you want to try.
For the disciples’ and our consolation Jesus then tells a parable. It’s a parable about a master and slave. It’s a simple parable, but its meaning isn’t obvious. The gist of the parable is simply that employees are supposed to do what they’re asked. And when they do, like any person who does what they’re paid to do, there is no particular need to thank them.
It’s not immediately obvious, but what’s going on in the parable is that in response to the disciples’ request for more faith, Jesus is giving them instead some tough love.
The disciples, you see, are wanting something easy. They want Jesus to provide them with a magic kind of faith that will make it easier for them to forgive, to live a life of discipleship. But Jesus knows nothing about easy anything. Instead, he says, they have all the faith they need. Exercising it, however, takes some guts. That’s the tough love part: Jesus is saying, men, faith isn’t your problem: it’s lack of guts to act on the faith you have!
For those of us, who would also like some extra help to live up to Jesus’ high expectations, he would say that no matter what challenges life may throw at us, we shouldn’t expect special consideration from God. Like the first disciples, we shouldn’t expect God to make things easy for us either. Which is not to say that exercising the faith we do have will not win the day.
A theologian was asked whether he had faith in God. “Sure,” he answered, “it’s like believing in my wife. When I say that I have faith in my wife, I don’t mean that I believe that I have a wife. I know that I have a wife. What I mean is that I have faith that my wife will be my wife, that she will be the person she is as my wife, and that I can trust her to be my wife.
When I say that I have faith in God, I mean that I believe that God will be God, that God will be the Person God is as God, and that I can trust God to be my God.”
So, hear Jesus again. What Jesus is saying with his mustard seed metaphor is that if we trust God to be God – if we step out in faith knowing God goes with us – then in this very action we are giving expression to all the faith that is needed. Jesus is telling his disciples that acting on the faith they already have would bring about more than they ever imagined they were capable of.
And, of course, that’s what the disciples did. Because, think about it: were it not for their willingness to plug along, acting on their fragile and tentative faith, taking the good news about this Jesus into the uttermost parts of the world, we would not know the gospel of Jesus Christ. I mean, despite their worries and doubts -- they did it! By faith they moved the proverbial mulberry tree into the sea!
Pastors often are privileged to sit with persons who ask how to have more faith because life is becoming too much to bear. We long for magic words. We envy physicians who can write a prescription and take away pain and even anxiety. But we don’t have magic pills or magic words.
We do, however, have something very powerful. It’s the reminder that God can be counted on to be God. That God will take even a small step in faith and reward it.
According to Jesus, we really don’t need more faith. After all, you can’t fill up a glass after it is overflowing. We already have all the faith we need. We just need the guts to act on the faith that we have, however tiny it might be.
And as we do, we will learn in our looking back on our lives, on all the obstacles overcome, that, by golly, that mulberry tree got planted in the sea after all.
