Saint Luke's Lutheran Church

In this sermon series on St. Luke's Mission Statement, To know Christ and to make him known, I am using three verbs to flesh out our mission: Reach! Grow! and Send! The word for today is Grow! and I invite you to think about growing in your faith.

In Luke 17 Jesus' disciples offer up a plea and a prayer when they say, "Lord, increase our faith." Having been instructed to not cause others to sin by leading them into temptation and to forgive those who wrong them, over and over again, these disciples realize that if they are going to follow Jesus' instructions they will need to be men of faith. They also figure that if a little faith is a good thing; then more faith is even better.

So asking for more faith seems like a good prayer, but Jesus does not commend his disciples for that. Instead, he says, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you." Jesus says that you don't need a big faith to do great things. Even a little faith is able to do great things in the Kingdom of God. I don't think, however, that Jesus is suggesting that we should be satisfied with a little faith. I think Jesus is saying that whatever faith we have must be a living faith and an active faith.

In 1975, Gary Dahl, an advertising man from California, became national celebrity by selling Pet Rocks. He promoted Pet Rocks as the ideal pet because they did not need to be trained, fed, watered, or walked. They never chewed up your slippers or shredded your couch or pottied on your carpet. For a while Pet Rocks were all the craze, and Dahl became a millionaire selling 2.5 tons of them for $3.95 a piece. The craze did not last much past Christmas, however, and in 1976 Pet Rocks were last year's fad. I'm sure that it had a lot to do with the fact that Rocks just don't make very satisfying pets.

After all, the whole idea behind having a pet is to have a relationship with another critter. You want something that will respond to you and interact with you. You can't have a real relationship with a rock. You cannot have a real relationship with something that is not living.

Some people want a Pet Rock kind of faith - a faith that is cheap and easy, that does not make demands or come with responsibilities, a faith that will meet their spiritual needs on their own terms. The problem is that such a faith has no life. It gives no meaning. It offers no hope. It has no power. In other words, it is no more useful and no more satisfying than having a pet rock.

One of the best synonyms for faith is trust. Faith and trust are listed in the dictionary as nouns, but in some ways they are more like verbs, for they describe something that is active, something that is alive and growing. It is not important whether you have a big faith or a little faith. What is important is that your faith, whatever its size, is growing. When faith stops growing, it begins to die, and a dead faith offers no real relationship with God.

There are those who think that faith is just believing certain things to be true. These are the folks who say things like, "I believe in God, I just don't go to church." What does that mean? Usually it means that they believe God exists. They may even believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that he died on a cross and rose from the dead three days later. But that kind of faith is all head and no heart. That kind of faith is not a living faith, and it does not lead us into a real relationship with a living God.

There is an old story about a tightrope walker with the stage name of Charles Blondin that illustrates the difference better than story I know. I have told this story often over the years, but as Pastor Allen's barber says, "If you've heard it before, don't stop me because I so enjoy telling it." On June 30, 1859 Blondin became the first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope. He walked a wire that was 1,100 feet long and 160 feet above the water in only five minutes and then he crossed back again blindfolded. The crowd was ecstatic. Next he got out a wheelbarrow and asked the crowd whether they believed that he could push it across the tightrope. They cheered him on with shouts of "Yes, yes. You can do it." After he pushed the wheelbarrow to the other side, Blondin turned to the crowd again and asked if they thought he could push it back with someone sitting in the wheelbarrow. Again, the crowd cheered him on and shouted, "Yes, yes. You can do it." But when he turned toward one of the cheering men and asked him to get into the wheelbarrow, the man refused.

That is the difference between a head faith and a heart faith. One believes that God exists; the other is willing to put his life into God's hands. One is a living faith; the other is a dead faith. One is the kind of faith that gives meaning and hope and joy to people; it is the kind of faith that gives us the power to transplant mulberry trees and even move mountains.

The question is, "Where do you get this kind of faith?" The disciples were right to pray, "Lord, increase our faith." For faith - true faith, living faith - does not come from deep down inside of us. It comes from outside of us. Faith is not something that we need to do; it is something that we receive. Paul makes this perfectly clear in Ephesians, where he says that faith is not our own doing, it is the gift of God.

If faith comes from God, then how do we get it and how does it grow? Let's turn to Paul again. In Romans 10:17, Paul says that "faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ." Here Paul reminds us of the importance of hearing the Word of God, the importance of Bible study and Christian education. It is God's word of love, God's promise of forgiveness and new life, God's invitation to put our lives in God's hands that stirs faith in our hearts. It is learning more and more about the stories of salvation that nourishes and strengthens our faith. If you want your faith to be alive and growing, you need to be listening to the Word of God.

Since faith is more a matter of the heart than of the head, Christian education is not just about knowing facts - it's about knowing God. It's not about having the right answers - it's about having the right relationship. But that relationship grows as our understanding and knowledge grows. The more we learn about God, the more we grow to love and trust in God. The more we know about what God has done for us in Christ Jesus, the more we will be willing to put our lives in God's hands.

One of the principles of Child in Our Hands is that faith is caught more than taught. Our lesson from 2 Timothy reflects the importance of other people in the catching of faith. Paul reminds Timothy of the faith that he caught from his grandmother Lois and from his mother Eunice. This reminds us of how important parents are in the process of faith formation for their children. If you have children or grandchildren, you have an opportunity, you have the responsibility to pass on the gift of faith to them - by the things that you do and by the things that you share. It is not enough to take them to church and to send them to Sunday School and Confirmation. Parents pass on the faith when they have caring conversations and talk about their faith, when they have home devotions and listen to God's word together, when they do service projects with the family, and when they develop and maintain meaningful traditions and rituals. Children catch the faith not just in the classroom at church but in the laboratory of life as well.

Paul also reminds Timothy of the influence their relationship has had on his faith. Paul was a mentor to Timothy - modeling a living faith and encouraging Timothy in living out his own faith. This reminds us of the importance of other caring adults who take an interest in the spiritual life and health of young people in the church. Whether you have children or grandchildren of your own or not, you have a chance to form the faith of the children and youth here at St. Luke's. It is not enough to hold on to your personal faith in God. You have a responsibility to pass that faith on through caring conversations, by modeling a life of devotion, by participating in cross-generational service projects, and by encouraging meaningful traditions and rituals. Whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not, you are being watch - not just by God, but by God's children.

It is our mission to know Christ and to make him known. One of the ways that we do that is by growing in our own faith and by encouraging others to grow in their faith as well. Amen.