“Increase Our Faith”
Sermon — October 5, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” (Luke 17:5)
The great Saint Francis of Assisi, whose memory we celebrated yesterday by blessing cats and dogs, was said to have possessed a faith so moving that he inspired the birds to sing in praise of God, a faith so strong that he eventually came to bear the marks of the cross in his own hands. In isolated churches in the small hill towns of Appalachia, certain preachers show their faith in God by handling poisonous vipers, trusting that God will protect them from harm. Many a Pentecostal preacher has displayed a pile of crutches or of walkers or of wheelchairs that their faithful followers no longer needed due to the power of their prayers.
But I’ve never once heard a story of a Christian whose faith so strong that she could uproot a mulberry tree and plant it in the sea.
So, maybe Jesus is wrong: although he predicted that the Holy Spirit would manifest itself in mulberry-tree replanting, it opted instead for the gifts of faith, hope, and love. Or maybe it’s just a very-specific kind of hyperbole: Jesus just means that people with faith will do extraordinary things.
Or maybe—just maybe—when Jesus says this to the apostles, he’s being a little sarcastic.
To understand his reply, I think, we have to understand their question. And to understand their question, we actually need to consider a few verses that the lectionary skipped in this chapter. Last week, we had the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16. And then we skipped over Luke 17:1-4, and went straight to verse 5, with the apostles’ demand: “Increase our faith!” When we start at verse 5, this sounds like it comes out of nowhere. But in verses 1–4, Jesus just told the disciples that if someone sins against them and then comes and apologizes, they must forgive—not just once or twice; not once a week, or every day; but seven times a day, they must be ready to forgive.
And the apostles—looking around, we might imagine, at the people around them, who can be a lot to handle, especially before they’ve had their coffee—“said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith.’” (Luke 17:5) You want us to forgive each other seven times a day? We’re going to need some help with that.
To which Jesus responds, “Oh yeah, if only you had enough faith, you’d be out there launching trees through the air with your minds like bearded Matildas!” Let me just increase your faith. I’m sure then you’ll start working miracles.
The disciples seem to think of faith as a substance, a kind of fuel for extraordinary things. I could forgive my friends and neighbors seven times a day, if only I had enough gas in the spiritual tank. So top me up, Jesus! Increase my faith.
And Jesus responds by saying that forgiveness doesn’t actually need extraordinary fuel. Forgiveness is an ordinary thing. This image of the slave serving at the table is a challenging one. It’s especially uncomfortable, I think, because Jesus doesn’t have anything to say about the institution of slavery itself, he simply takes it for granted as an illustration. He doesn’t challenge it. To be fair, he also doesn’t quite validate it—he makes observations about how “you,” the people around him, actually behave. In any case, the point he’s making is about duty—about whether you deserve extraordinary praise for doing what you’re supposed to do. And this connects back to the verses on forgiveness that we skipped. Forgiveness, Jesus says, is not an extraordinary act that requires extra faith, a form of heroism for which we should be praised. Forgiveness is table stakes for Christian life.
Faith is different. Faith is for extraordinary things. Faith is for launching mulberry trees.
People sometimes think of faith in terms of belief, as the cognitive assent to certain ideas. To have more faith would mean to believe more deeply in what Christianity says about God and the world. Others suggest that faith is more about trust. To increase one’s faith doesn’t mean to believe even more strongly in the truth of even more lines of the Nicene Creed. To increase one’s faith means to trust ever more deeply in the God who loves you.
But there’s another kind of faith, as well. A faith that cannot be increased or decreased. A faith that’s simply the last desperate act that comes when you reach the end of your rope.
That idea of faith would look much more like the words of the prophet Habakkuk than the words of the apostles. The faith of Habakkuk is the faith that cries out to God, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?” (Hab. 1:1–2) That isn’t an statement of cognitive belief in the underlying philosophical truth of monotheism. It’s a question born of anger and frustration with God. “Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.” (Hab. 1:3) That isn’t a deep trust in the God who loves you, that’s an accusation—God, you’re supposed to be better than this. You’re supposed to do something! Helloooo! Wake up!
The faith of Habakkuk is a faith that wrestles and questions and yells—and then waits, standing at the watchpost, demanding a response. (Hab. 2:1)
And the answer, when it comes, is sometimes a frustrating one. “There is still a vision for the appointed time… if it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come.” (Hab 2:3) Okay. But could it come soon, please?
The faith of Habakkuk in this moment is like the faith of Job, who rages against God after suffering incredible loss. In chapter after chapter of elaborate verse, his so-called friends try to comfort him with pious platitudes, but Job accepts none of it. He rants and raves and waits for an answer from God, and when the answer comes, it’s actually not that satisfying; but it’s true. The faith of Habakkuk is like the faith of Jesus, who weeps in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest, praying that God would take this cup from him, but nevertheless goes to the Cross. The answer for him is that the appointed time when he’ll be vindicated will come, not before he dies, but on the other side of death.
The faith of Habakkuk is like the faith of every one of us, who has ever received news of a difficult diagnosis, and asked God, “How long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?” It’s the faith of every one of us who has picked up a newspaper or scrolled through whatever, and said, “Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble?” It’s the faith of every one of us who’s been treated unfairly, in a small way or a big one, and said, “So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.” It’s the faith of every one of us who has endured these things and asked these things and then—and this is the really important part—has stood at the watchpost and waited for an answer from God.
This faith is not belief, or even trust, per se. This faith is simply to stand there in the silence that comes when the world leaves us speechless, and we cannot even find the words to pray, and to wait.
This faith is to cry out, as Jesus did, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and sometimes to receive, after interminable silence, the frustrating response that Resurrection comes only after death; that the only way out of the situation is to go even deeper in.
This kind of faith is not a miracle fuel that enables us to do extraordinary things. But it may be the only way to endure extraordinary things. And in a world that’s full of suffering, in which our hunger for miracles is rarely satisfied, this kind of faith, at times, is all that we have: the chance to cry out to God, and to wait in the silence that comes next, not so much holding fast to as held fast by the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus, (2 Tim. 1:13) who sees and knows our deepest pain, and has opened for us a new life of joy and light.
