II Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10

Lord of light - shine upon us. God of love fill our hearts with your wisdom. Holy Spirit, bring yourself closer to us in my words and how we hear them, in our thoughts and how we think them. Use this time - and use us to accomplish your good will. Amen

There is a legend from the Orient about a traveller making his way to a large city. One night he meets two other travellers along the road - Fear and Plague.

Plague explains to the traveller that, once they arrived at their destination, they are expected to kill 10,000 people in the city.

The traveller asks Plague if Plague would do all the killing.

Oh, no. I shall kill only a few hundred. My friend Fear will kill the others.

Fear, whether real or imagined, can discourage us, overwhelm us, strangle us. And fear is widespread in our society, from the personal - fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of not being loved, to the social - fear that war and disasters will gone on forever, fear that society will collapse, fear that the pollution will kill us, and so on and on.

And in the church too there is fear. The personal fears. The social fears. And the spiritual fears.

There a lot of people who feel

- that they are not able to do anything important
- that they can not and do not make a difference to anyone,
- that they are unable even to do even a part of what it is that God asks them to do,
- and that the great work that obviously needs to be done will never be done, and that they will let God down, and that God will let them down.

Many Christians are in a mess, they have forgotten what their faith is all about, they have forgotten what it is that God can accomplish.

Do these feelings describe your life - fear, despair, a sense of futility, a sense of hopelessness?

Do you feel unexcited by your worship of the Lord? Unsure of just what the good news of the Gospel is? Burdened by life and by what is that God asks of you? And yet wanting to believe - wanting to do what is right - wanting to have the life that God has promised us even in the here and now?

Wanting, and yet...

How can I feed the hungry?
How can I clothe the naked?
How can I bring peace to those around me?
How can I spread the gospel of Jesus Christ?
How can I forgive the people who have hurt me so badly?
How can I even experience the joy that is supposed to be part of life with?
God, let alone help bring it to others?

The disciples experienced these feelings. In our Gospel reading today we heard them cry out to Jesus a cry that perhaps you have made at one time or another.

They felt that what they faced in life, let alone what they faced as ones who wanted to follow Jesus, was too much for them, too much for their small faith to handle and so they cry out to the Lord- "Lord - increase our faith"

"Lord, help us believe enough so that we can do what it is that you have commanded us to do - help us trust enough so that we can live as you say we should be living. Lord, take away our fear."

And what does Jesus do - how does he answer their prayer?

Does he lay his hands upon them and pray and give them more faith as they asked?

Does he snap his fingers and grant them a double dose of his Spirit and his Faith?

No my friends - he does not - instead he says to them

"if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'be uprooted up and planted in the sea", and it would obey you".

A strange answer - but really the best answer that could be made because you see the issue for us all is not: "how much faith do we have?" but rather: "do we have any faith at all?"

Let me tell you a story:

Many years ago shoe company sent one of its sales people to a far away country to start a business. After a few months he sent back the message: "Coming home, nobody wears shoes here."

The same company sent another sales person to the same backward company in his place. After a few months she wrote the home office this note: "Send more order forms - nobody wears shoes here."

The second salesperson saw the opportunity in her situation - not the difficulty - and more - she believed in her product - and because of that she succeeded where the first salesperson failed.

Faith is somewhat like pregnancy. You simply can't make a valid distinction between having a little faith and a lot of faith anymore than you can claim that someone is a little bit pregnant but not really a lot pregnant.

If we believe - even a little - even the smallest amount - then my friends we are on the right track.

And I believe all of you here today are on the right track, all of you asking - like the disciples asked - "increase our faith"

Having said that and having understood the distinction between having faith and not having faith - the question becomes for us not one of how much faith we have, but what we have faith in.

Too many of us look at ourselves instead of God.

We look at ourselves and we say - I can't do it. I am not strong enough, wise enough, loving enough, giving enough, I do not have the money, the power, or the faith to succeed at what I am doing.

And that my friends is completely true - we are not able! We do not have what it takes when it comes to dealing with what is truly important.

But my brothers and sisters in Christ - God has it - God is able, and when we take hold of Him and believe in him, even a very little, his power is able to flow through us - and he will work through us what is his will to do.

We have all met people who have lived through very difficult times, and no doubt many of us have thought about them that they must have had great faith to come out of their tribulations as well as they have.

We may even have said to them - with respect and admiration: "I don't think I could have faced what you have faced. Your faith must be very great."

I have heard this said to people, and I have heard the answer that they normally make. They reply almost always with words like these:

"My faith is no greater than anyone else's. I just didn't know what I had until I needed it. God helped me, if it wasn't for him I wouldn't have made it."

Haven't you heard this kind of thing yourselves? Isn't it one of those occasions when we may have said to ourselves: "I wish I had a faith like theirs"?

You know those people of faith that we admire are so right in what they say. We so often do not realize just what we have. We let it lie dormant in us - asleep in us - and we go out looking for something else. While all the while - God is there - and our faith in God is there - doing very little.

The good news of Jesus Christ covers all areas of human life, it speaks of forgiveness and peace and eternal life, it addresses the problems of poverty and of war, it provides solutions to despair and answers to human distress.

But most of all my friends it tells us that alone we can do nothing, that we are, as many of us think, incapable, inadequate, sinners lost in a dark world, and then it tells us that we are not alone, that God cares, that God works in the lives of those who believe in him, that God's good purposes can't be thwarted, that his word does not return to him empty, that he desires to transform not just the human heart - but the world in which we live, and that all we need to do is reach down to that little kernel, that little seed within us and begin to do what it is that we have been called to do and God will do the rest..

God will do the rest - that is his promise.
God will work in us and through us and bring his word to pass.
He will pluck up the mountains and fill in the valleys.
He will bring about the kingdom that we pray for.

What I am saying to you today is not - "have more faith" - but rather - "work with the faith that you already have".

My friends, when we start acting in faith the very first thing we discover is that a little is a lot.

The Chinese proverb tells us that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

I am saying - take the step; follow the commands of God - heed his advice found throughout the scriptures and believe - that what God has promised will come about.

Remember - no matter how small the step the step you take you are get closer to your destination when take it. But you have to take the step, you have to start claiming God's word as your own if you are to receive what God has promised and do what God has called you to do.

When you practice the faith, when you pray, when you believe and when you do, then, in the language of the story that I began with, you will overcome - God will overcome - plague and his far more dangerous companion - fear, and the blessings of life will be more completely yours, yours and the world's.

Praise be to God, day by day - AMEN!