Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost: October 5, 2025 | The Rev. Nat Johnson

Readings: Lamentations 1:1-6 | Lamentations 3:19-26 | 2 Timothy 1:1-14 | Luke 17:5-10

In the way our lectionary is presented to us, the Gospel reading seems a bit strange. It begins with the disciples’ request to increase their faith, which leads to a bizarre response from Jesus about a mulberry bush, and then ends with an analogy of obedience. To keep these verses in isolation, without reference to the larger narrative, we risk a great deal of misunderstanding – with regard to both the disciples’ request and to Jesus’ response. In the larger narrative context, Jesus has been teaching about the nature of discipleship, about the kind of life demanded of us when we choose to follow him. Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has told his followers that there would be a cost: following Jesus would put them at odds with the world – even the most basic of human relationships, the family, would be disrupted. This, Jesus told them, is the cross they must carry as they follow him on the Way. And if that wasn’t enough, he told the disciples that the life they live was to be characterized by mercy and grace, embodied in their practice of forgiving without limit, restraint, or condition.

And so, perhaps it becomes a little easier to understand the disciples’ request. And, if you’re anything like me, perhaps you see this as a laudable request. Afterall, the disciples didn’t ask for their lives to be made easier, for the demands of discipleship to be made less. They heard Jesus’ words about what it would cost them to follow him, and they didn’t back down. They recognized that faith was not something born of their own volition or mustered up within themselves, that faith is nothing less than gift and so in the face of the difficult demands of this life of discipleship, they asked for more. I wonder if you resonate at all with the disciples’ longing embodied in their request. Perhaps you’ve had moments in your own life of discipleship that has led you to make the same request: in response to the great social evils of the world; in response to difficult, maybe even impossible, family dynamics; in response to betrayal and harm; in response to a devastating medical diagnosis.

So often, in our culture of “more is better,” we’re told that if we “just had a little more faith,” things would be better – or, at the very least, we might better navigate the difficulties even if we didn’t overcome them. We speak about faith as if it were a substance we might possess, something quantifiable that can be kept or lost. But here, Jesus seems to counter that notion, suggesting that quantity is the wrong category to apply to faith: “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you would be able to command the mulberry bush to be uprooted and replanted in the sea.” Jesus picks the most bizarre analogy to underscore that the disciples’ request exposes their misunderstanding of what faith is. Faith is not a quantifiable substance that Jesus dishes out according to one’s merit or request. It’s not an additive to our own efforts to live according to the pattern of life Jesus demands from those who would count themselves his disciples.

In other words, living as faithful disciples doesn’t require some supernatural strength infused in our otherwise weak human hearts. Instead, faith is something that is demonstrated, embodied, and tangible. This is, it seems, the meaning of Jesus’ use of the slave analogy. I admit this analogy lands pretty clumsily in our modern ears. In the context of U.S. America, where the institution of slavery is the stain of national sin we just can’t seem to wash away in our collective consciousness, behaviors, and ways of being in the world, we do well to resist the use of such analogies to define true faith. But we also mustn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater by neglecting the heart of what Jesus is getting at here: faith is something that is lived, it is something that is embodied in our obedience to all that he commands us to do.  

In his second letter to Timothy, Paul remembers his companion’s “sincere faith,” a faith that was passed down through his grandmother Lois, to his mother Eunice, and then onto Timothy himself. Timothy’s faith was formed by his mother’s and grandmother’s example, by their teaching and guidance. For Paul, faith is a way of life oriented toward Jesus Christ and his gospel invitation to abundant life. Moreover, faith is not some substance that exists outside of us, independent from us, but instead exists within the very relationships that nurture us and point us to the gift God has given us in Christ. Paul encourages Timothy to rekindle that faith and take courage that “more” is not necessary, because the very Spirit who animates us according to the faith given us is not one of cowardice but of power and love and self-discipline.

The path of discipleship is not easy. It will inevitably cost us something to follow Jesus. The suffering we encounter when our allegiance to Christ and to his gospel put us at odds with the world around us does not require an increase in our faith. This is perhaps difficult for us Western Christians, particularly in the U.S., to grasp. It’s easy, in our day and age, in the face of so much suffering in our world, so much seemingly insurmountable division, so much hateful rhetoric encouraging violence, to sympathize with the disciples in our gospel story today. If only we had more faith, if only we had stronger faith, then perhaps we could make better sense of the world around us and our place within it. Perhaps an increase in our faith would lead to an increase in our understanding, strengthen us in our convictions, and protect us from feeling the sting of suffering.

But Paul’s words to Timothy remind us that faith isn’t about chutzpa, it’s not about grit, and it’s not about being protected from suffering. Faith is an orientation and a relationship. Faith is a life oriented toward the power and love of God, grounded in the presence of the Holy Spirit within us, who unites us with one another. The “strength” and “power” of faith is found in our relationships with one another, in the love we share and offer to those around us. If we can speak of “increased faith” at all, it can only be in terms of ever-expanding and deepening of relationships oriented toward the One who brings healing and wholeness, liberation and restoration.

I wonder how we would describe our faith as the people of St Peter’s. Where is our strength found when we encounter resistance and suffering on account of the gospel? What gifts of God are we guarding and what sound teachings guide us in the Way? Over the last six years, our parish has understood ourselves to be a fearless community that practices welcome and inclusion as a way to embody Christ’s ministry of reconciliation and transformation. Even as we have evolved as a community, as we’ve encountered loss of loved ones and gain of newly beloved, the values espoused in our mission remain true to who we are, who we believe God is calling us to be in this present moment. We have an incredible charism of hospitality – food, meals, fellowship, friendship are at the core of the gifts we guard, and we are guided by Jesus’ teaching about, and his own practice of, radical inclusivity and hospitality. What might it look like for us to rekindle this gift of God, to explore ways of increasing our own practice of fearless welcome and inclusive hospitality in the face of the horrors of our present moment and the demands of discipleship Jesus places on us?

Discipleship is not easy, as Jesus (and his first followers) understood. He asks us to live faithfully and obediently, acknowledging that this will often mean a call to live counter-culturally, sacrificially, and generously in a world that operates with a singular will to power oriented squarely toward the self. Faith moves us away from that orientation, turning toward God and toward others in Christ. But the power and strength required to live as Jesus calls us to live is not something that we muster up within ourselves. Rather, it comes from the Holy Spirit through the community of God’s people to whom we belong.

This truth is embodied in our liturgy for baptism every time we, as the people of God, covenant to support the newly baptized and ritually welcome them into the faith, into the household and family of God. There is no such thing as a lone Christian with a private faith. Such a person and such a faith are antithetical to what Jesus and Paul describe about faith and discipleship. We cannot go this road alone. We are dependent upon God and upon one another to live the kind of faith that Jesus invites us into. Yes, it is a difficult road. And, relationships in this world – and even in the Church – are messy and can be difficult to navigate faithfully. But, living this kind of faith is not impossible. We can live it, we can embody it, we can pass it on to new believers as our family continually expands and grows. And we can do this not because we have some kind of substance we call faith, but because God offers us the help of the Spirit and the support of this community. So, let us join together “in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling” – because it is this God, whom we worship and follow – who makes possible the impossible and who empowers us to live faithfully as disciples of Jesus. Amen.