5 The apostles said to the Lord, \u201cIncrease our faith!\u201d 6 And the Lord said, \u201cIf you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, \u2018Be uprooted and planted in the sea,\u2019 and it would obey you. 7 \u201cWill any one of you who has a servant[a] plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, \u2018Come at once and recline at table\u2019? 8 Will he not rather say to him, \u2018Prepare supper for me, and dress properly,[b] and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink\u2019? 9 Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, \u2018We are unworthy servants;[c] we have only done what was our duty.\u2019\u201d (Luke 17.5-10, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe apostles said to the Lord, \u2018Increase our faith!\u2019\u201d Could there be any prayer that rings more clearly with us\u2014us, who find ourselves so often faltering, so often doubting when we want to believe. \u201cIncrease our faith!\u201d If we could think of nothing else to pray, that would be enough, for it is indeed the cry of a heart that longs for God and yet feels still incomplete, still distant from him.<\/p>\n What would it mean for us if God answered that prayer? What would it mean if we, indeed, had more faith? This morning\u2019s text suggests some things that may be surprising; come along with me and let\u2019s see where it leads us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Letting go of ourselves<\/strong><\/p>\n Let me suggest, first of all, that having more faith would mean being able to let go of ourselves, our image of ourselves. It would mean we could stop pretending that we are someone we are not. Wouldn\u2019t that be something? To be able simply to be who you are!<\/p>\n This funny little parable or saying about worthless slaves is a little obscure to us. If you have a slave, Jesus says, you wouldn\u2019t thank him for waiting on you; that, after all, is just his job. Now leaving aside the harshness of this saying, and its difficulty in an age where we value affirmation and expressions of gratitude, there is still a point here that has to do with faith! If you have faith, Jesus is saying, then you are free to serve. You do not require, nor do you expect reward or payment. You understand who you are, and you are content to be who you are, to do the task given to you, without pretension or arrogance. We find this an uncomfortable illustration because we dislike the idea of being a servant; but what Jesus is getting at here is that happiness and contentment comes from accepting your place in the universe and doing what you\u2019ve been called to do. Our place in the universe is to be God\u2019s servants, and having more faith means to accept that place with gratitude and gladness.<\/p>\n Brother Juniper once asked St. Francis, \u201cTeach me to preach as eloquently as you.\u201d Francis replied, \u201cMeet me tomorrow, and I shall teach you to preach.\u201d Brother Juniper dutifully met Francis the next morning, and they began to walk. They walked through the marketplace, smiling at the workers, the merchants, playing with the children. They helped an old woman carry her wash up the stairs. After some time, an exasperated Brother Juniper said, \u201cFrancis, when will you teach me to preach?\u201d Francis replied, \u201cWhy, we are preaching!\u201d<\/p>\n Having more faith means accepting the tasks given to us, however humble they may be, however unlike our visions of how important we are and what we would like to be doing! Having more faith means letting go of our pretensions and learning to serve.<\/p>\n Letting go of the hurts<\/strong><\/p>\n Having more faith also would mean learning to let go of the hurts and the bumps that life brings us. It wasn\u2019t part of our reading this morning, but in Luke\u2019s gospel this request, \u201cIncrease our faith,\u201d comes right after Jesus has told the twelve that they must learn to forgive, again and again and again\u2014that they must not hold grudges and bear ill feelings toward even those who have sinned against them. It looks to me as if the disciples understand that forgiving like that is going to require more faith! And it works the other way, too: increasing our faith would mean that we would forgive more easily and freely.<\/p>\n Florence Nightengale, the saintly nurse who touched so many lives in the Crimean War, was once heard to say something very kind about a person who had hurt her very deeply some time before. A friend was shocked. \u201cFlorence,\u201d she said, \u201cdon\u2019t you remember what that person did to you?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d the nurse said quietly. \u201cI distinctly remember forgetting all about that.\u201d That is faith! Having more faith means learning more and more to let go of things that hurt us.<\/p>\n Letting go of \u201ccan\u2019t do\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Then there is something else here. Jesus says this strange thing about faith the size of a mustard seed. If you have it, he says, you could say to a tree, \u201cBe uprooted and planted in the sea.\u201d It\u2019s not as dramatic as the saying about faith moving mountains, but the point is the same: Increased faith means letting go of the attitude which says, \u201cThat\u2019s impossible! It can\u2019t be done!\u201d<\/p>\n Some years ago I took some young people to confirmation camp. At our camp, they had a high ropes course. They also had what they called a \u201clow ropes course,\u201d though why they called it that I have no clue, since many of the stations have no ropes involved. On one of them, a group of five or six people stood on a wooden platform, just a couple of inches off the ground. There were two more wooden platforms nearby, but not near enough to step or jump from one to the other. The group would be handed a couple of two by fours, but they were short\u2014not long enough to stretch from one platform to the next. The challenge was to figure out how to get the entire group to the second platform, and then to the third, without ever touching the ground. It appeared, at first blush, to be utterly impossible. But if you believe it can be done, then you figure out a way. And sure enough, we learned that it could be done.<\/p>\n Faith is like that, you see. Faith doesn\u2019t assume that something is impossible, but it believes that it can be done. Having more faith would mean letting go of our \u201ccan\u2019t do\u201d attitudes about so many things. It would mean trusting. It would mean stepping out, like Abraham, not knowing where we\u2019re going, but knowing that God will lead us. A tree, uprooted and planted in the sea? Not possible! But faith says, \u201cI can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.\u201d<\/p>\n Not adding, but letting go<\/strong><\/p>\n Now maybe you\u2019ve noticed that these three things I\u2019ve mentioned\u2014letting go of our pretentions and learning to serve, letting go of the things others do that hurt us, and letting go of our \u201ccan\u2019t do\u201d attitude\u2014they all have one thing in common: \u201cletting go!\u201d That\u2019s a remarkable thing! I suspect the disciples, when they asked for increased faith, had in mind taking on something, adding to what they already have\u2014indeed, one translation of the Greek here would be, \u201cAdd to our faith.\u201d But they\u2019ve got it just wrong! Faith means letting go, giving up, putting things in God\u2019s hands, relinquishing things to God. Oh, but that is hard to do! \u201cIncrease our faith\u201d means \u201ctake away from us our holding on to things, take away our jealous guarding of our rights and privileges, take away our preoccupations with self.\u201d Do we really want that?<\/p>\n Maybe not. Maybe we\u2019d rather stay in control. Maybe we\u2019d rather hang on to things. I read a story the other day about a woman who was moving to a new house. She hired the movers to come in, and she told them that everything was to be packed up and moved. She got to the<\/p>\n new house and found that they had even packed up and moved her garbage! Maybe that\u2019s us! Maybe we don\u2019t want to let ANYTHING go\u2014our self-image, the resentments we enjoy nursing, the complaints we enjoy making, the fears we like to roll around in our minds\u2014all these faithless things that clutter up the spirit and make a barrier between ourselves and God. Maybe we\u2019re so comfortable with all this garbage we need to cling to it.<\/p>\n But if you want to pray it \u2026 If you want to pray, \u201cIncrease my faith\u201d \u2026 then be ready for the answer. Be ready to give things up. Be ready to come to the altar, claiming \u201cNothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling\u201d and singing, \u201cMy hope is build on nothing less than Jesus.\u201d Be ready to come, not clinging to your exalted self-image, not holding on to your hurts and resentments, not thinking about how hopeless your life is. But come with open hands, open hearts, ready to receive, content to serve. Come taste and see that the Lord is good, and that what you lack will be freely given. Come and pray, \u201cIncrease my faith\u201d\u2014and then let go of all the garbage.<\/p>\n Pastor Richard O. Johnson The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost | 05.10.2025 | Luke 17.5-10 | Richard O. Johnson | 5 The apostles said to the Lord, \u201cIncrease our faith!\u201d 6 And the Lord said, \u201cIf you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, \u2018Be uprooted and planted in the sea,\u2019 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,514,727,157,853,108,110,560,603,349,3,109,285],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-25490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lukas","category-16-so-n-trinitatis","category-archiv","category-beitragende","category-bibel","category-current","category-engl","category-erntedank","category-kapitel-17-chapter-17-lukas","category-kasus","category-nt","category-predigten","category-richard-o-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25491,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25490\/revisions\/25491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25490"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=25490"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=25490"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=25490"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=25490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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