“Increase Our Faith!”

Every week at our St. John’s Church staff meeting we start by reading the coming Sunday’s Gospel reading. Before we could even read Luke 17:5-10 I started to chuckle. A thought ran through my head that was too funny not to laugh out loud.

 

The passage for Sunday recounts the Apostles imploring Jesus as they said, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied with famous words of a faith the size of a mustard seed, but I thought of him saying something different. Instead, what if Jesus had just replied to the Apostles request by saying, “Okay.”? When I shared this insight with the rest of the staff we all snickered for a moment, but now I keep thinking why is having even a little faith so tough? Why can’t Our Lord just grant our request? Why do we have to slowly build up our faith like a seed blossoming into a bush? Simply put, I think it is because having faith is tough stuff.

There are a lot of things that come easy to some of us. Each of us has different talents. That is one of the great things about our human race and Christ’s Body, we possess different skills that we may share with one another and with all Creation. Faith though seems a little bit trickier. Of all the spiritual gifts it feels like one that is both hard to come by and hard to sustain. How is this essential part of developing a deeper relationship with God so difficult to develop? Mostly, I believe it is difficult because it goes against some pretty primal instincts that we have developed as a species.

Faith is believing in the unseen. Faith requires having hope even in the face of fear. Faith means trusting even when there is no evidence or even evidence to the contrary. We say that we have an immortal God, but our invisible God who may even be in our midst can feel so hard to find. Often this may be because we are so focused on the trees that we cannot see the forest. Or, as I recently heard Father Carl Arico put it, “We are too busy focusing on a tiny chalk mark to see the entire blackboard,” which is God’s reality or the Ultimate Reality. 

I believe many of us want our faith to increase, just like the Apostles did; however, this process--because of our human nature--requires a lot to develop. This is not unlike a mustard seed taking time, water, light, and good soil to grow. Having faith is not as simple as God saying, “Okay!” instead we must daily relinquish our own control to God. This means that if we really yearn for a faith growth we must give the time, nourishment, energy, and environment for that to actually happen.

Relationships with loved ones and friends (just like our relationships with God) often start with a spark, but they take years of shared experiences, conversations, time, energy, and so much more to blossom into relationships that we give our entire trust. God loves us regardless of the time that we put into our relationship with God; however, what we get when we work on trusting God is a more fruitful existence that can navigate the ups and downs, the twists and turns of life. 

When we take time out of our day to put away other distractions, intentionally focus on God, sit in silence, say the Daily Office, read a devotional, rest in God through Centering Prayer, spend time serving others, or so many other disciplines we practice having faith in God by relinquishing our own control. Even one of these small practices can grow over time into something much larger, such that we trust that our entire lives are lived in the Ultimate Reality of God’s loving embrace. We may want Jesus to simply say, “Okay!” to our request of increasing our faith. And yet, the life-long journey of faithfully letting go of what we desire and consenting to God’s will that encompasses what we yearn for and what God dreams for us bears much more fruit... It is even more fruit than a mustard bush!