Pentecost 20 [Luke 17:5-10] (6 October 2013)

This sermon was preached at Trinity Lutheran, Tailem Bend (11 am).  

 
In a sense, telling someone, “you have to have faith” is like telling someone “you have to have liquid”. Okay, that's great, but tell me more about this liquid. What type of liquid? Why do I have to have liquid? How do I get liquid? Faith is never far from the conversation when it comes to the Christian Church, so when no less than the apostles of our Lord cry out “Add to us faith!”, which is literally what they say, that's a good opportunity to preach Jesus. (Ah, you thought I was going to say a good opportunity to preach faith.) Well,

Your faith is never as big as your Savior. At least the apostles were paying attention to what Jesus was saying in the verses leading up to today's reading. He was saying, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! ² It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. ³ Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, ⁴ and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, 'I repent,' you must forgive him.” Notice their reaction, because they are honest enough to hear Jesus' words and say “We're not up to the task. Our faith isn't strong enough for that”. He had said these words to the disciples, which is the word that Luke uses for the 12 and the 72 and all the rest of Jesus' disciples. But it's just the twelve, as Luke calls them, the apostles, that respond back that they have recognized that they don't think their faith is strong enough to give limitless forgiveness or to keep from leading others into temptation. And it's very common today to hear, “I don't think my faith is strong enough; I don't think I have enough faith.”

And Jesus tells them that there is no such thing as enough faith, which is quite surprising. What he says is, “If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.” He points them away from questions of size of faith and the like. Jesus is clear enough to show his disciples that if they were to look at the strength of their faith they would despair, but the person who gave them the faith that they do have is at the same time the person they believe in, he's bigger than their faith, and he is up to the task. This person is Jesus. They believe in him, and they have already been sent to preach the words of Jesus himself that are the very things that will keep Christians from stumbling. He's up to the task to save you. He's up to the task to give you a heavenly Father to whom you can pray, and to send you his Holy Spirit who works faith in your heart.

Transition: So trusting in your own faith then is like trying to jump off a building into a thimble of water.

This is especially true because the more faith you have, the more you lament your sin, and the more you do that the more you look at what you have done in faith and say “it is sin” and “I am an unworthy servant of God”. You see all the more that the poison in your heart is sin, and it breaks out with its fruit, which is sin. The more faith you have the more you see that faith isn't a work that can save! Even though you have faith, your heart at the same time is still full of this poison, so how can this heart do anything that you can ask God to praise?

So your only righteousness is the blood of Jesus, and faith receives this like empty hands receive a coin. Faith says, “I cannot trust my heart, but I can trust the One whose heart stopped, the One who died on the cross and was buried for my sake. Whether I am strong or weak doesn't matter, only his cross matters for the forgiveness of all my sins.”

Transition: So Jesus didn't bring up the topic of faith, his apostles did, so that when Jesus explains faith he does it in such a way that points them away from their faith to himself as the object of faith, the one who they and you believe in.

Your Savior who gives faith knows that faith receives great big gifts. And in order that the Gospel may be believed in its full comfort, we actually do go and define faith according to how it is taught in Scripture. Faith is the means and instrument through which we lay hold of Christ so that we trust in him as our Redeemer, because faith looks at Christ alone. Faith only receives the gifts. That's the type of faith that Scripture teaches. And why does it teach this? Because you are saved by grace through faith (note the prepositions; they matter). How do I get this faith? “This is not your own doing [the grace or the faith]; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” - that's Ephesians 2.

Transition: For sure there is no boasting. So if someone says, “Why should God save you?”, you can't say “Because I have faith”. Faith isn't the reason why God saves you; faith is the way that God saves you – through faith.

But your sinful heart wants to look at faith. Your sinful heart wants to redefine faith so it can do what it does: look at yourself and not Christ. You look at yourself rather than Christ when you want the Scripture to tell you what you want to hear, which is usually how good you are. But, and here's a good quote, “Faith will stagger if the authority of Scripture staggers” because Scripture doesn't say what your sinful heart wants but exposes your sin and brings the forgiveness of sins which it speaks. When you do not want to listen to the Scriptures, you mistrust the God who uses them to speak you to eternal life in Jesus, as a free gift.

You look at yourself rather than Christ when you say that this reading can't be addressing the apostles as pastors. But it does. The apostles are the ones who brought faith up, so Jesus answers them according to their specific calling as apostles and pastors. “Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, 'Come at once and recline at table'? ⁸ Will he not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink'? ⁹ Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? ¹⁰ So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.”. As apostles and pastors they will plow. And those who have the vocation of farmer know that there would be no plowing if there was no good land and no hope of sun and rain. These are from God. Same for shepherding. So to keep them from the pride in the great things they will do, Christ says these words to them, to remind them that they are the slaves and he is the good Master.

This reading then defines the gifts of pastors. When you don't want to define the gift of a pastor according to God's Word, you'll find some other way to define it. When you do that there is only one outcome: you mistrust the God who defines you as the one who receives God's holy gifts through the unworthy service of pastors who are sent by God and work by the authority of God.

You look at yourself rather than Christ when you define faith as your contribution to God for your salvation. Faith doesn't do; faith receives. Just like salvation isn't earned, it's a free gift of God through Christ Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit (and no other power). [Aside: Now when faith receives, we confess that we are saved through faith alone. But guess what, faith is never alone because when eternal life is already yours in Christ, you are then able to say “now what does my neighbor need?” - which results in good works. But that shows]

Faith doesn't look at yourself. Faith looks at the Word as reliable, holy, and active to save you. Faith receives, so it loves the means by which our Lord gives the gifts. Faith says with joy, “I am baptized. I have heard the Word of life read from the Bible and unpacked in preaching. I have been admitted to the Lord's Supper. All these deliver the forgiveness of sins to me. All these deliver the gifts of the cross to me. These continually work faith in my heart.”

Faith looks at pastors as men who are worthy of the love that they serve with*. Pastors serve both the Lord of the banquet and the invited guests, but their service is stamped with the cross. They are loved, not because they themselves are worthy, but because of the love of Christ which Christians share according to their vocations.

And just to be clear, this faith is impossible without the cross of Jesus Christ, because it is your greatest gift, that his blood covers your sins in the sight of the Father. The Scriptures are never separate from the cross, as 17:11 says, “On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.”, giving a reminder of Jesus' journey to his cross. For,

Christ provides the faith that receives marvelous though hidden gifts from him.

Conclusion: Where Christians cry for faith, there is where Christ must be preached. He must be preached because he, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the only God you can believe in for eternal life. And that believing is nothing you do, but is itself a gift of God. And that gift of God is given through the Word and Sacraments. These create faith and are received by faith. And faith looks to Jesus, and your heart needs Jesus, even more than liquid. Amen.