Recorded
Version Do We Have Faith, or Does Faith Have Us?

David Orendorff · Luke 17:5-10 · October 7^th, 2007

When I was in High School I was chosen to speak for the band at a pep rally.  I led a cheer in which I would shout, “Do you believe?” and the rally would respond, “We believe!”  It was meant to increase the faith of the student body and thus to increase the faith of the football team.

Our football team needed an increase in faith.  The previous year they had not won a single game and had scored only one touchdown off a broken play.  Our center and quarterback fumbled the hike. And our guard recovering the fumble tripped and fell backwards into the end zone.  Life is like that.  We face challenges for which we are ill prepared and miraculously make a touchdown.

It is in the face of great challenges that the apostles, those called by Jesus to a special ministry of spreading the good news of God’s everlasting love and aid, ask Jesus to increase their faith.  It is really more of a demand than a polite asking since the tense of the verb used is imperative commanding Jesus to “Increase our faith!”  The disciples don’t know what they are demanding.

What is this “faith” they want increased?

Faith, John Wesley maintained from his Biblical studies, is of three parts; belief, trust and experience.  For the 120 folks who have completed the Amazing Grace class this is review.  But I think it is worth reviewing.

Faith as belief is an act of the mind.  Belief means to hold as true that God is the sovereign creator and constant sustainer of life.  To believe in God is like believing that a tight rope walker can walk a cable stretched between two cliffs over Niagara Falls.  With some thought and the witness of others we come to the conclusion that there is a God.

Faith as trust is an act of the heart.  It is more than believing in the tight rope walker, faith causes us to climb into the arms of the walker, trusting that we will be carried over the great falls.  In spite of our fears we trust God to carry us.

Faith as experience is neither belief nor trust, but supports both.  Experience is noticing when we have been carried by grace and love.  It is realizing that when we didn’t know how to get to the other side, God carried us.  Faith as experience is the theme of that often quoted poem called “Footprints in the Sand.”

One night a man had a dream. He dreamed
he was walking along the beach with the LORD.
Across the sky flashed scenes from his life.
For each scene he noticed two sets of
footprints in the sand: one belonging
to him, and the other to the LORD.
When the last scene of his life flashed before him,
he looked back at the footprints in the sand.
He noticed that many times along the path of
his life there was only one set of footprints.
He also noticed that it happened at the very
lowest and saddest times in his life.
This really bothered him and he
questioned the LORD about it:
“LORD, you said that once I decided to follow
you, you’d walk with me all the way.
But I have noticed that during the most
troublesome times in my life,
there is only one set of footprints.
I don’t understand why when
I needed you most you would leave me.”
The LORD replied:
“My son, my precious child,
I love you and I would never leave you.
During your times of trial and suffering,
when you see only one set of footprints,
it was then that I carried you.”1 By Mary Stevenson, go to www.footprints-inthe-sand.com for why what was an anonymous poem for years now indicates Mary Stevenson to be its author. 

The apostles believe that if they are to succeed in proclaiming the love of God in the face of Roman tyranny and oppression, in the face of religious bigotry and warring, in the face of poverty and violence, then they must have more faith in all of its forms.  They must believe more fully, trust more deeply, and experience more completely faith in God.  We latter day apostles, in light of our world’s attitudes and difficulties and our frailties and wounds might also reasonably demand, “Increase our faith!”

Jesus’ response is strange and confusing.  I repeat it for you.

If you had faith as a mustard seed then you would say to the mulberry tree be rooted up and be planted in the sea.  And it would obey you.

Jesus’ response implies that the apostles have not even the smallest of faith.  The mustard seed is very small indeed, about the size of the point of a pin and barely visible.  If only the apostles had the tiniest of faith they could command mulberry trees, but they can’t command mulberry trees and so, by Jesus estimation, their faith is virtually invisible.  They have the smallest belief in God as creator and sustainer, the minutest trust of God for carrying their lives, and very little awareness of when God has loved them beyond expectation or reason.

But then, I can’t command mulberry trees either and so it must also be true for me that I have almost no faith.  It is true that I daily struggle with faith.  I tend to have faith in things other than God such as my own intelligence, my own power to earn a living, my own will and desire, my money, my status, my goodness,my love.  Every morning, because of my very small faith, I greet the day with a prayer of submission to God.  I remind myself that God alone is my hope and salvation.  I have been doing this since 1968 and still I can’t command mulberry trees.  Then it came to me.  I call it an epiphany, a revelation.  I don’t have faith, faith has me.  I don’t command faith, faith commands me.  I am not the master of faith as if I possessed but its servant possessed by it.

Think about it.  When the traveler across the sand observed the single footprints he did not know that God had carried him, but God had carried him.  In his times of need, faith had come to him, loved him, kept him, guided him, and brought him to safety.

The same is true for me.  God has brought me safe thus far and God will lead me home.  Faith is a gift that has come when I needed it as a husband, as a father, as a friend, as a pastor, as a person.

As a servant of faith I have had all the faith I needed when I needed it.  I don’t need to have more faith; I need to be grateful for the faith that has me.  I give you a couple of examples from my pastoral life.

Early in my ordained ministry I thought that I was to have faith so that I could increase faith in others.  And so when I visited a family whose 18 year old son had suddenly died while pitching hay, and whose autopsy showed no reason why, I thought it was my responsibility to bring comfort and affirm faith in the God with whom they were very angry.  But I had no comfort to bring and they didn’t want to hear God defended.

They wanted reasons why this would happen.  I had no reasons to offer.  They wanted to feel better.  I had nothing better to give.  But I went to see them because it was my job to do so, I was their pastor.  I learned that though I had no faith to give, somehow, miraculously, my ineffective listening, my poor prayer, and my sad efforts to care in the midst of tragedy, faith came and carried this family through.  I had no faith, faith had me, had all of us.

Years later I was called by the county sheriff to the home of a family in which the father had been building a dirt bike track for his 8 year old son.  It was a happy project of father and son.  Using a back hoe dad was making curves and raising mounds to ride over.  The son was excited and joyful, riding on the fender of the back hoe.  But then he fell and landed so the wheel ran over him.  He was crushed and died.  While driving to the home, not an hour after the accident, I knew I did not have the faith necessary to care for this family, especially the father.  I thought of my own children who were the same age.  I thought of how guilty I would feel.  But I went anyway because I had been called and it is what pastors do.

When I arrived I listened, we prayed, and a moment of peace descended upon us all.  Later we planned the funeral together.  I had not increased my faith or theirs.  There were tears, God came and faith had us.

A friend of mine reported to me of his sister’s death.  She was young with a loving husband and two small children when she contracted cancer.  She fought bravely.  Her doctors did all in their power, but she died.  My friend, her brother, was with her in the hospital on her last day and to her last breath.  He was angry with God for taking her life in such an untimely and difficult way.  But at the moment of her death, he told me, faith came.  He felt his sister’s love and through it the love of God.  It changed his life.  He did not have faith, but faith had him and carried him to peace.

I have a hundred stories of when faith came and carried the broken and wounded.  It is one of the real perks of being a pastor. Though we don’t have the faith of a mustard faith has us, cares for us, strengthens us to do what we must do and cannot do alone.  Faith carries us over the hard times of life.

Is it not true that God has carried you through sorrow and grief, joy and celebration?  Is it not true that though you cannot command mulberry trees, still God works love in you?  And so, as usual, Jesus is right.  We are not the masters but the servants just doing what we are called to do.  We don’t have faith.  Faith has us.  By grace, faith is increased just when we need it most.  Thanks be to God. 

Amen and Shalom.