Increase our Faith!

This week I have been thinking about faith. Like the disciples, our prayer is often “increase our faith!”

But these same disciples had left their workplace and home to follow Jesus, how much faith do they want! The picture we have of the disciples from the gospels shows us they didn’t always understand what Jesus was talking about, they were often confused by his actions, but they still followed.

“Faith is not believing that certain claims or statements about God are true. Genuine faith presumes a relationship with God. It implies a radical trust in God, faithfulness in one’s relationship with God, and a way of seeing the world as life-giving and nourishing rather than as hostile and threatening. “ [i]

Faith allows us to join Habakkuk in saying: For crying out loud, LORD! – What is going on in the world, or why is my life such a mess.

Faith is waiting for God, listening for God.

Faith is trusting that what God says will come true, even if not in my lifetime.

Without faith in God, we wouldn’t be so open and honest with God about how we feel,
about how we feel about injustice in the world,
about we feel about the pain in our lives
about how we feel about evil.

Faith isn’t a magic wand that we wave and everything is suddenly OK.

Faith is trusting that God is present when things are going against us, when we are in pain, when we are confused.

Sometimes we think about the so called giants of faith, the people who seem to have been given a double dose of faith.  Faith “is simply and humbly doing what needs to be done, big or small, great or mundane, just because it needs doing.” [ii] Faith is simply the willingness to do what needs to be done, to respond to the call of the Spirit in our lives. It isn’t a commodity to be hoarded, it isn’t a scarce resource.[iii]

The rest of the Luke reading is a story about a slave and master, this is an image that might not resonate with us.

But if I said, you go to work for 8 hours a day, you come home and do some housework, look after children etc. That is life. You don’t get a medal for doing your job. Same deal with being a disciple, offering hope and love and grace, living in faith, that is what a disciple of Jesus Christ does, so what do you expect, a Parade! 

I wonder what it really means when we pray Lord, increase our faith.

What is it we are looking for?
- a bigger God?
- courage?
- recognition?
- a way out?

Biblical Scholar Tom Wright comments that this is not so much about having a big enough faith in God, but faith in a big enough God.[iv]

There is a wonderful story, “Mister God this is Anna”. One story Anna tells her friend is why she won’t go to Sunday school anymore. She has sensed that the Sunday School teacher tries to make God small, because Sunday School teacher is scared of God.

Are there ways in which we try and make God smaller, easier to understand?

In the letter to Timothy we read:  “God’s Spirit doesn’t make cowards out of us. The Spirit gives us power, love, and self-control.”

Maybe rather than praying for more faith, we need to recognise the faith we have, and live out that faith.

That doesn’t mean doing something major and heroic.
It means being honest with God and ourselves.

In response to the request for more faith, Jesus tells the disciples that faith the size of a mustard seed – which is small - is enough to uproot a tree and plant it in the sea. This isn’t literal, I mean why would you uproot a tree and plant it in the sea except to show off, and faith isn’t about showing off.

I think Jesus is saying that we have enough faith, enough faith to live as the people of God.

Faith is an action, it isn’t being able to recite the Ten Commandments or knowing the Apostles Creed of by heart.

Faith is not measured in the quantity that we hold for ourselves, faith is not something that we can store away for a rainy day. Faith, enough faith, is when we act.

Faith is living out the love, the forgiveness and the mercy that God shows us. Faith is trusting that God is God. And that will show up in a myriad of ways in our lives.

I encourage you to think about when you acted in faith this week.

- have you listened when someone needed to talk?
- have you volunteered at a local charity
- have you written a thank you note to someone who has done a kindness
- have you cooked dinner
- have you prayed for a neighbour who is having a hard time.
- have you spoken a word of encouragement to someone who needed it

None of these is any big deal, and yet it is just these kinds of acts that occupy so much of our lives. They are acts of faith.[v]

And faith means sharing in bread and juice and allowing that something happens when we eat this bread and drink from this cup. Not something magical, but something significant.
Somehow we grow close to God, somehow we connect on a different level with God and each other and Christians around the world.

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[i] Br. David Vryhof Society of Saint John the Evangelist email 1/10/2106

[ii] In The Meantime , David Lose

[iii] In The Meantime , David Lose

[iv] Spill the Beans

[v] In The Meantime , David Lose

Faith is ...

The book of Hebrews is considered to have been written to Jewish Christians encouraging them to hold to their confession of Christ as Saviour and Lord, rather than lapsing back into Judaism, because they were being persecuted. [NRSV, Zondervan, intro to Hebrews]

In the passage from Hebrews ‘faith’ is mentioned 6 times in 9 verses, so I guess it might be important.

What do you think of when you hear or read the word faith? Certainly people of faith are not perfect, look at Abraham, this hero of faith, he doubted God’s promise, he passed his wife off as his sister, and he slept with his wife’s servant because he didn’t believe God’s promise. Abraham doesn’t sound like much of a hero to me.

What do we mean when we talk about faith?

If you had to define or describe faith in a phrase or sentence, what would you include?

[Responses?]

Here is a dictionary definition:

A strong belief or trust in someone or something

A belief in the existence of God: strong religious feelings or beliefs

A system of religious beliefs

[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith]

Then there are lots of quotes about faith.

Slide 1:	Trapeze – no words
Slide 2:	Faith is acting like it is so, even when it is not so, so that it might be so, simply because God said so.
Slide 3:	I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will only makes sense in reverse.
Slide 4:	Faith is like Wi-Fi, it’s invisible but it has power to connect you to what you need
Slide 5:	Faith tells me that no matter what lies ahead of me, God is already there.
Slide 6:	Faith is knowing one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught to fly.
Slide 7:	Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.  Martin Luther King Junior
Slide 8:	Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  Hebrews 11:1

While the dictionary has faith as a noun, I like to think of it as a verb. After all, I was taught that verbs are doing words. Surely faith is a doing word, faith moves us to action.

And action is what Jesus is talking about in the Luke reading.

“Be ready for whatever comes, dressed for action and with your lamps lit,”

This is about being ready to respond when God calls you to action. Being ready to respond to an opportunity to share the good news. It is like a car engine, you need always have petrol in the tank or the car won’t travel very far.

We need to be ready to respond to the call of God to live gospel values and actions: healing, justice, love, grace, peace, etc Erick J. Thompson working preacher

We say we live by faith, how does this show in our lives?

By faith Abel offered an acceptable sacrifice

By faith Enoch was taken so that he did not experience death

By faith Noah,… respected the warning and built an ark

By faith Abraham obeyed

By faith Isaac invoked blessings

By faith Jacob blessed each of the sons of Joseph

By faith Moses was hidden by his parents

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea

Bu faith the walls of Jericho fell

And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. NRSVA 11: 32-34

Living by faith, doesn’t mean being perfect.

It means hearing the call of God

Offering hope to the disillusioned

Peace to the heartbroken

Being ready to speak and live the good news of life in Christ Jesus.

This morning we meet around the table sharing in the good news of God’s love.

Where do you need God’s healing?

What will you take out into the world this morning?

measuring faith

Another week, and more news of violence and destruction.

Another week, and more news of corruption by politicians and others

another week, and it seems like life is just getting stranger all the time.

And on a personal level there are people who are ill, grieving, lonely and in pain.

 

And yet we meet each week, we are here again this morning.

 

Often in looking at the Matthew passage I think about the social context and the religious context. Today I want us to think what it would be like to be this woman. As a parent, grandparent, and friend what would you be prepared to do to help a child in need? And not just any child, for those of you with children and grandchildren what would you do for your child, for your grandchild?

 

The current events in the USA, where another young black man has been killed by a police officer, some of the comments that I have been reading have surprised me. One person, who has black skin,  talks about how she was taught by her parents to always have her hands out in the open while they were shopping, so people would not accuse her of stealing. Always have receipts in view so people knew that you had paid for what you had in your hand. Growing up in the United States with black or brown skin meant being constantly on guard.

 

And mother of a white child writes of all the things she didn't have to tell her son, to keep him out of trouble, the way black mothers have had to.

 

And I think of the situation with surrogacy and the baby Gammie.

And stories of women in detention centres, thinking that if they let their children be adopted by Australians then their child will be safe.

 

Parents and grandparents  would do almost anything for their child to be healed, to be safe, to be free. And the woman we hear about in Matthews gospel is doing exactly that. Somehow or other she has heard about Jesus and she is not going to take no for an answer.

 

This woman talks of only wanting the crumbs, yet she is talking to Jesus, who is the one who fed over 5000 people and had food leftover. She is willing to accept a scrap, knowing that just the tiniest piece of God's grace can heal her daughter.

We are told that this woman's faith is great enough for her daughter to be healed. Yet just last week we were hearing about how little faith the disciples had.

 

I wonder how do we measure faith?

Having been a science student I am familiar with metres and gallons, light years, and nanometres, amps, and decibels. We know how to measure noise and distance, volume and light intensity; but how do you measure faith?

 

How much faith is enough? What does that mean that she is a person of great faith?

What is it about her faith, that it would be described as great faith?

She is persistent, she is honest about her situation, she asks for help, she recognises who Jesus is. Are these the things that make for having a great faith?

This woman does not accept Jesus initial response, she answers back, she does not let the standard boundaries stop her from getting what she wants, and she gets Jesus to act. Maybe this is what makes her faith great.

 

The woman wanted her daughter healed.

I wonder, what is it that we want?

Do we have enough faith?

 

What is enough faith?

the disciples are told they have little faith.

Peter had enough faith to get out of the boat, but not enough to stay on top of the water.

The woman had enough faith that her daughter was healed.

 

 

With all the bad news we see each night on the TV, with the pain and brokenness in our own lives, still we come together to hear God's Word, to confess our brokenness, to sing praise to God, to pray for ourselves and others. One of the ways we talk about the church is as a community of faith, a community that comes together so that we are reminded of who we are and to whom we belong. We are a community of faith that cares for each other, that seeks to follow in the way of Jesus.

Do we have faith that the world can change?

Do we have faith that people will no longer be oppressed?

Do we have faith that people can change?

 

It seems to me that faith is not measured in the quantity that we hold for ourselves, faith is not something that we can store away for a rainy day. Faith, enough faith, is when we act.

 

Where is God calling you to put your faith into action today?