October 5, 2025
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
Luke 17:5-10
Increase our faith. It seems like a good thing to ask as a Christian, as a disciple of Jesus. Increase our faith. Any sensible faith leader would applaud someone’s efforts to deepen their devotion.
So… why didn’t Jesus?
As Francisco J. Garcia writes at Working Preacher, “Jesus’ loaded response to the disciple’s request for more faith—telling them that all they required was the faith of a tiny mustard seed to do the impossible—tells us that they are asking for the wrong thing.”
We’ve seen this happen with the disciples before. It’s one of the ways in which they stand in for us in the Gospels. How often do we, after all, ask God or Jesus for the wrong thing?
You don’t need to answer that.
But let’s think for a moment about what gets described as faith by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. “Faith manifests itself in many ways, by a variety of people,” writes Audrey West at Working Preacher. “Faith is persistence in reaching out to Jesus (Luke 5:17-26) and trusting in Jesus’ power and authority (7:1-10). Faith is responding with love to forgiveness received (7:44-50), not letting fear get the upper hand (8:22-25), and being willing to take risks that challenge the status quo (8:43-48). Faith is giving praise to God (17:11-19), having confidence in God’s desire for justice (18:1-8), and being willing to ask Jesus for what we need (18:35-43).”
What do these actions have in common? A couple of things: First, they are actions. They are things that people do. You might recall that in the letter of James we read that “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Jesus and Luke might put it differently. They might say that faith without action isn’t faith.
I can’t see why Jesus would be irritated to be asked how to increase faith based on its connection to action, though. Ask me what you can do to have a more active faith and believe me, I’ll come up with a good long list!
But remember, there was something else that those actions of faith have in common. They are actions that we take. That we take. That we, ourselves, take.
They’re not something that Jesus can do for us. They’re not something that the Holy Spirit does for us. They’re not something that God does for us.
They asked Jesus to increase their faith. But Jesus doesn’t increase our faith.
We increase our own faith.
OK. Just believe harder. Right?
Well, no. We go back to that first principle. Faith is action.
As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “What if faith was not believing hard, but rather placing our tiny selves—in the cosmic sense, no more than the tiniest seeds—in alignment with the love of the cosmos? Just as in nature, the seed surrenders to the ground (John 12:24), so we, also of the same stuff as the seed, surrender to this work of creative love.”
Jesus followed up on the comparison with the mustard seed – our tiny selves, our tiny powers – with the troubling story of being the unthanked, unhappy, and pretty much unfed slaves of a demanding master. If that’s what faith and following Jesus is like, most of us would say, “You can take that away and toss it out.” But Jesus, routinely, overturned the relationship of master and slave in his stories and his sayings. He even did it in this short example. It starts by inviting us to understand ourselves as the master, and ends by equating us with the slaves.
What did the slaves do in the story? They set the table. They prepared the food. They served.
That, dear friends, is how to increase your faith.
Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “I believe the invitation in this lection is for us to go forth and live in light of what we already see, sense, hear, and know. In other words, the invitation is to do faith. To do the loving, forgiving thing we consider so banal we ignore it. Why? Because the life of faith is as straightforward as a slave serving his master dinner. As ordinary as a hired worker fulfilling the terms of his contract. Faith isn’t fireworks; it’s not meant to dazzle. Faith is simply recognizing our tiny place in relation to God’s enormous, creative love, and then filling that place with our whole lives.”
When I think about the most faithful people I’ve known, I don’t think of the showy ones. I don’t think of the powerful ones. I don’t think of the well-known ones. Mind you, I’ve known (or known of) faithful people who could be described in all of those categories.
It’s just that the most faithful people I’ve known spread love about them wherever they went, and as you may have noticed, that’s not something that makes people famous. It doesn’t get them into positions of power. It doesn’t get them noticed – except by a fortunate few who recognize that greatness comes from love and compassion, not from might and mayhem.
We are great not when we are the demanding masters, but when we are the dedicated servants. We are great not when we exercise power and coercion, but when we exercise diligence and compassion. We are great not when we are fed, but when those around us are fed.
Histories, I have to say, tend to glorify the glory hounds. They give people names like William the Conqueror, Frederick the Great, based on success as warriors.
We are the people of Jesus, however, and Jesus didn’t lead armies, didn’t conquer nations, didn’t even evict the occupiers of his land. What he did was teach and gather and heal.
He taught us to set the table.
He taught us to see that everybody gets fed.
As we come to the table on the World Communion Sunday, remember that it is set for us by the God who serves. It is our model of faith.
Let us set the table.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
We regret that we continue to have audio problems with our live video stream, so a recording of the sermon is not available.
The image is “The Parable of the Mustard Seed” an etching by Jan Luyken found in the Bowyer Bible (ca. 1791 – 1795) – Harry Kossuth photo. Electronic image created by Phillip Medhurst 10 August 2009., FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7549966.
