The Church of the Ascension
October 7, 2007
Luke 17:5-10

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

“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.”  In another gospel passage, Jesus makes an equally extraordinary claim: faith, the size of a mustard seed, is enough to move a mountain.

Faith: there is no bigger question.  The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews neatly defines if for us: “Faith,” he writes, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”   I guess that helps some, but I still have some questions.

I have been thinking about, wondering about, asking questions about faith all my life.  Although my results in the practice of faith have always been a little less dramatic than a floating mulberry tree or a relocating mountain, for some reason I have always taken great heart in Jesus’ saying that faith the size of a mustard seed (which by the way is exceedingly small) is enough.  I take comfort in this claim because it suggests to me that the size of my faith matters less than the fact of it.

In the wonderful collect for our liturgy this morning, we pray, “Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray.”  Isn’t that wonderful - the Almighty God eager, so claims this collect, to hear our prayer.  The image comforts me:  God sitting, however and wherever God sits, hoping that we will exercise whatever little bit of faith we have enough to pray.

Like most of you probably, I can recall people in my past who had great faith, who lived lives of great faithfulness.  A few people in my knowing lived through extraordinarily horrific circumstances with unwavering faith, leaving me gaping at how they could do it and wondering about the source of their strength.  Others lived their faith in quiet steadiness that to a less knowing observer might look boring.  Still others seemed to use their faith at times to get what they wanted.  My minister grandfather for example, not to speak ill of the dead, had great faith – faith that we would all eventually, through whatever amount of pressure he had to place on us, come to see things as he did.  My grandmother, his wife, by all counts a woman of great faithfulness and even greater patience, seemed to have a different kind of faith – less flashy, less temperamental, and infinitely gentler.

I have seen people, who appeared to have very little faith suddenly have a lot of it when things got rough.  I also take heart in that.  Once again God is more ready to hear than we are to pray.  God never seems to say, “Oh, for my sake, you only show up when there is trouble.”   Particularly when evaluating how faithful others are or are not, we take a harder line than God does.  Odd, isn’t it?  God seems to accept and even rejoice in our faith in whatever way and whatever size we can package it.

In various 12 step groups, the recovery community often uses slogans to reflect good life lessons, lessons that are helpful not only for those in the groups but for the rest of us as well.  “Easy does it, let go and let God, one day at a time.”  Not bad ideas for healthy living.  One of the more lighthearted ones is the admonition to “Fake It Till You Make It,” which is another way of saying “Act As If.”  Sometimes in our lives of faith, we “fake it till we make it” and “act as if,” and sometimes because that is the best we can do, it really is ok.  An advantage of living in community with other Christians is that when our faith is mustard seed small or even less than that, our brothers and sisters are faithful for us.  We gather out of the desire to have faith as much as we do to bear witness to the fact that we have it.  So…whether we feel like it or not, sometimes we act as if; and for that moment, that is enough.

Non-church people sometimes look at us and think, “Oh, they must be people of deep faith.”  Maybe…but not always.  Sometimes we are people hanging on by a thread, drawing strength from others who at the moment are more tightly tethered than we are.  In this passage, Jesus assures us that it doesn’t take much, that what we have, even if it is as little as an unimportant seed, is enough.

A little bit goes a long way it seems – at least in matters of faith.  In our all or nothing kind of world, we love to categorize things, even ourselves.  Either we are faithful or we are not.  Well…again…God seems to accept what we offer more generously and more readily than we would for one another.  It is such a relief that God is God and that we are not!  Recently in a conversation about the war, a friend said to me, “Sometimes I wish I had the faith to just stop everything else I am doing so that I could devote all my time to the cause of peace.”  The instant image I had of him in his Gucci loafers making a march on Washington could have led to a really tacky retort on my lips.  Fortunately, though, I had the good sense and touch of grace to hold my tongue!   While I share his sentiment and the sense of impotence under it, I am struck by the fact that faithfulness need not be quite so dramatic.  Perhaps a more faithful – and probably more effective response, albeit a less flashy one, is to pray and pray and pray and to talk to all who will listen about the desire for peace and to live as peacefully in every aspect of our lives as we can.  Faithfulness is not about demanding a particular outcome so much as it is about living a life from which goodness and mercy naturally flow.   A little bit of faith really can do a great deal.

So the next time we are feeling a little low on the faith quotient, it would serve us well to take the lead of our apostolic forebears.  “Increase our faith,” they cried.  It still is a worthy prayer.