What Sort Of Faith?
THE SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4 • 2 Timothy 1:1-14 • Luke 17:5-10
Lord, increase our faith! We could all use a little bit more. Just a tiny bit more faith and then we wouldn’t worry so much. If we had more faith, we wouldn’t worry about the economy and the stock market and whether we will have enough in retirement. We wouldn’t worry about politics or elections or Supreme Court rulings. We wouldn’t worry about our spouse or our children or our neighbors or our pets.
If Jesus gave us more faith, we wouldn’t have such a hard time making our lives look the way God wants them to look. With more faith, we wouldn’t struggle to find the time and energy and money we wish we had to give freely to God’s work in the world. We wouldn’t find ourselves wanting the world to be a better place but not quite caring enough to do something about it. We wouldn’t feel pulled so sharply between the demands of this world and the demands of God’s vision for it.
Lord, increase our faith! With a little bit more faith, temptation wouldn’t be so hard. Sin wouldn’t be so stubbornly difficult. And, when we fell, we wouldn’t fall so far, and we’d always have the confidence to get up and repent and return to the Lord. If only we had a little bit more faith. If only Jesus would give it to us.
For several weeks now, Jesus has been on a tear about what it means to belong to God and God’s reign. He’s told us that, if we want to follow him, we will have to hate our families and carry our cross. He’s made it clear that we will have to give up our claim on earthly wealth in order to partake in heavenly treasure. He’s reminded religious folks like us that our traditions and status don’t count for much and that it’s those who suffer the most who understand what it means to belong to God. No wonder the disciples are asking for more faith! If our entrance into the kingdom of God is as narrow and difficult as Jesus has made it out to be, we had better find some more faith, or else this isn’t going to go well for any of us.
But, as Jesus says, if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, we could say to one of those giant sycamores outside the church, “Be uprooted and planted in Lake Fayetteville,” and it would obey us. We don’t need more faith, Jesus tells us; we need true faith, deep faith, real faith. If we had even the tiniest speck of that sort of faith, it would be enough for God to work through us in mighty ways. Like a pinhole opening or the smallest crack under a door, faith like that—no matter how small it is—gives God an opening through which God can show up in powerful ways. If we want to belong to God and God’s reign—if we want our lives to be an image of what God is doing in the world—we should stop wishing for more faith and start looking for the kind of faith that transforms us.
And the best way to find that faith is to take a good, hard look at our spiritual posture. How are we approaching God? Are we looking for ways to make God’s kingdom come, or are we looking for ways to belong to the kingdom that God has already brought to the world in Jesus Christ? Do we seek a life that manifests our faith in God, or do we dream of inheriting whatever life God is calling us to? On the surface, the differences between those two kinds of faithful lives aren’t that significant. They sound a little like distinctions in faithfulness by degree. But, if we are to have the sort of faith that Jesus envisions for his followers—the kind of faith that moves mountains—we need to find that narrowest of sweet spots of believing in God in a way that lets God take over our lives and use us in ways more powerful that we could imagine all on our own.
I think that’s why Jesus responded to the disciples’ request for more faith with the provocative and problematic image of a slave coming in from the field. We can’t encounter this analogy without remembering the horrors of human bondage and acknowledging its legacies, which are still a reality today. We cannot hear Jesus hold up the identity of a slave as one we are supposed to pursue without also admitting that there is nothing good or right or holy about one human being owning another as property.
Many English translations choose the word “servant” instead of “slave,” perhaps rightly implying that that role in ancient Palestine was more like that of an indentured servant than the chattel slave more familiar in the American context, but the human being in Jesus’ analogy clearly didn’t have the freedom to decide how to spend his evening, nor was he likely to receive any gratitude for the work he did. Part of me wishes that we could translate Jesus’ mini-parable into our contemporary context by making it a story about parent and a child or an officer and a soldier, but I don’t think that would convey the real point Jesus is making.
The issue isn’t being treated poorly or doing thankless work. That isn’t what it means to have the right kind of faith. In order to get across what it means to believe in God wholeheartedly and belong to God’s reign fully, Jesus must push the boundaries of what it means to belong to God’s kingdom out beyond where we are comfortable because there is nothing comfortable about belonging to God. No matter how hard we try, no matter how lofty our ambitions, we cannot belong to God on our own terms. We must give ourselves completely and unreservedly over to the vision God has for lives. And thanks be to God that, when we stop trying to fit God’s kingdom into our own understandings and allow God’s reign to remake our expectations completely, real faith takes control of our lives, and good things start to happen. That’s the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This whole, long series of challenging teachings about what it means to be a disciple and what it looks like to belong to God’s reign has been Jesus’ attempt to get us to forget our place in this world in order to find our place in God. When Jesus tells us that we must forsake our families and that we cannot serve God and wealth, he is not saying that only orphans and poor people get into heaven. He’s showing us that our attachments to this world must dissolve completely if we are to develop a new way of being united with God.
To answer that call, we don’t need more faith; we need the right kind of faith. And even the tiniest amount is enough. We need to find ways to believe that God’s will for our lives and for the world is the only thing that matters, and that’s not easy. No one said it would be easy, least of all Jesus. But, once even the tiniest seed of that faith begins to sprout in our lives and we catch a glimpse of the power of God manifest through us, that crack begins to widen, and that pinhole starts to open up. Pretty soon, God is using us to move mountains, and the things that once felt like they were standing in the way of God’s vision for our lives crumble away. That’s what happens when faith takes over. That’s what it means to belong to God.
Faith like that takes over when we let go. That sort of faith moves in when we get out of the way. When we stop telling God what we think God is supposed to be doing in the world, God will start showing us how God’s transformation is already taking hold. When we stop looking for the kind of faith that enables us to do what we think is best and start asking God to give us the sort of faith that trusts in God with our whole being, we will see just how powerfully God is at work in our lives and all around us. We don’t need any more faith than we already have. In Jesus Christ, God has already given us more than enough. We just need God to help us see it.
© 2022 The Rev. Evan D. Garner
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas