Increase Our Faith
When I was a child growing up, we had chores.
Everyone in the house had chores.
You can imagine a house full of 12 children,
there was a lot of work that happened.
On top of that, we ran a bed and breakfast house with 9 guest rooms.
Certainly, during the summertime,
we would have 20 plus guests in the house,
each of them requiring breakfast and
the rooms would need to be cleaned.
We called them charges not chores.
Charges because you were in charge of that
or I was in charge of this.
I had Mondays as my charge or chore.
I always thought I had the short end of the stick
because on the weekend, all the pots and pans would be used
but we would have leftovers in them.
There would be most of Sunday’s pots as well as all of Monday.
I always felt that was unfair but being the youngest,
you have really no say in it, right?
The point here was that I didn’t realize,
until much later in life, how important those chores were
and how they formed me as a young man.
We all understood there was nobody
who got away without having chores to do.
At the end of doing the chores,
like on Monday nobody said,
“Oh look, Brendan did his chores.
Let’s give him a round of applause,
‘Well done, Brendan. You did your chores.’”
No. We didn’t get anything.
And we most certainly didn’t get paid to do our chores.
There were no participation awards here.
There was no little merit, saying, “Good job, Brendan”
because everyone did their part.
It was just understood, this is what you did.
This is your part in the greater part of the household.
Sometimes we pay our kids to do the chores;
and we have participation awards in schools.
I don’t want to get into any of that.
But my understanding of family life and indeed community life
is an expectation that we all chip in;
and that we don’t expect everyone to go,
“Oh well done. Well done. Good job. Well done!”
I know that sounds harsh but when it comes to liturgy,
I have an expectation that we all chip in and do stuff.
Some do this and some do that and we are just doing our job.
I admit there is something to saying thank you
but for the regular work of the home and community
we just need to do our part and accept that role.
In today’s reading, there is an odd set of readings from this scripture.
The disciples say, “Increase our faith.”
Jesus goes on about bushes and seeds
and then tells them they are unprofitable servants.
There seems to be two passing answers
until we break it open a little bit;
until we see more because Jesus on the one hand is saying,
look just do what you are called to do.
Don’t be worrying about yourself.
That is what you are called to do.
We know the single command that Jesus
has been saying repeatedly is this command to love:
love your God with all your heart; all your mind; and all your soul.
In this portion of Luke’s gospel, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem.
Here we are in Galilee now ourselves,
we can understand Jesus was here for 3 years
but now heads to Jerusalem and he is preparing his disciples.
He keeps on telling them:
“Look, love your God with all your heart; all your mind;
and all your soul.
Love with every part of who you are.
Just do that and then everything else will work out.”
But it is worth breaking open this passage just a little bit
because it tells us something deeper of who Jesus was.
First, we all know the mustard seed is tiny
so the idea here is that the size doesn’t exactly matter.
That plant grows from that seed.
It’s the potentiality that everything is enough.
There is nothing needed outside of the mustard seed for it is enough.
Jesus is saying is that we have enough already.
Whatever you have is enough.
No matter how small it is, it is enough.
Then the second part is the mulberry tree.
Most of us wouldn’t notice but mulberry trees are interesting.
They are a tree that its root system goes down into the soil,
and mingles with the other ones and locks in with other trees.
While it looks the same as other trees
underground it is knotted below to other trees.
To pull out a mulberry tree would
have been known to be next to impossible.
You do not pull out a mulberry tree because they are complicated.
It is sort of impossible.
The Lord is reminding us that if you have the faith of a mustard seed,
we will tell a mulberry tree, we will do the impossible;
whatever we’ve have is enough to do all that is necessary.
That is what the Lord is saying.
It is also important for us to understand that by coming to the table,
the Lord is reminding us that to increase our faith by using our faith.
Faith is like a muscle.
When you use it, it grows.
When you do not use our faith, it doesn’t grow.
Let’s just take this moment and break open faith:
what is faith in biblical terms,
in the time when Jesus was here?
First, we ask what the opposite of faith is?
To most people, it is doubt or fear.
In that case, to increase our faith would be to remove all doubt.
Right? That’s the way we think.
But in biblical times that is not the understanding.
The opposite of faith was to worry.
If you didn’t have faith, you worried a lot.
More particularly if you lacked faith in God,
you worried if God knew you;
worried if God remembered you.
But Jesus was constantly saying was that
God always will remember you.
God will never break his covenant;
He has never broken his covenant.
Not only does God remember us but God remembers us by name.
That may not seem like that big of a deal
but if we are a people who tend to worry,
then it builds up inside of us and push that onto God.
We all have little things to worry about.
We get caught up in the pettiness.
Do I look right?
Do I have the right shoes?
Do I have the right garments on?
Do I say the right things?
Did I impress somebody today?
Or am I good looking enough?
Or do I have this or that?
And all those little things that consume a lot of our time,
and take us away from the true God.
If we remember the answer to that question of does God know us,
that every single time God knows us,
and loves us, and will never forget us.
And there is nothing that will ever take away that.
Nothing. No matter what we say or do,
it will never take away that God still loves us.
In that context, to “Increase our faith,”
is to increase that confidence in us
that I am known and that I am loved by God.
In that line of thought, Jesus says:
“Go about doing your job;
doing what you are called to do.”
If you are a mother or a father,
then be a mother or a father and love your children.
If you are a schoolteacher, then be a good schoolteacher.
If you are a CEO, be a good CEO
and be it mindful that God is here;
and that God loves us by name.
That is powerful and he is there for us.
That is the muscle we are trying to exercise on this pilgrimage;
it is to allow that message in
because if we are honest,
there are times that we do find that hard to believe.
If often think that God couldn’t know me, I mean c’mon!
He might know the Bishop.
He might know somebody else but he’s not going to know me.
We sort of think it is implausible
but that is Jesus’ ultimate message to us.
And when he walked here, that is what he said.
He said it to Mary Magdala, who was a sinner
and who believed she was worthless.
And Jesus said to her, “No, God loves you just where you are.”
Yesterday, in the universal church,
we celebrated the feast day of St. Therese Lisieux,
who was a little nun in northern France;
and who suffered terrible psychological problems.
She had neurosis about one thing or another
but the one thing she understood was
she knew God loved her and that God knew her completely.
She didn’t believe she was a beautiful lily of the field
but she believed she was just a little daisy, a little flower.
That is why we call her the Little Flower.
And she knew that she didn’t need to be any more than that daisy.
And what she was going to be was the best daisy in the world.
That is all she wanted.
She wasn’t trying to be a lily.
She was just the best daisy; and she shined; and she shined.
And here 150 years later, we are still using her text
to learn how to live the simple way of the Little Flower.
We can make discipleship so complicated.
And it doesn’t need to be.
It is doing the simple, little things well.
Mother Theresa would have said this
“God doesn’t expect extraordinary things of us.”
What he wants and expects of us is to do the ordinary things
and he is the one who will make them extraordinary.
As we ponder what we do here today, and on this pilgrimage,
let’s not over complicate it in our own lives.
Let’s not set up a long list of things that we are going to do;
just be who you are but be so to the best of what you can do.
Allow God’s grace to flow through you in the little things;
in the way you treat your children;
the way you love your spouse;
the way you treat your friends;
the way you treat the stranger.
Jesus says the best way to increase your faith is
to do those ordinary things and
to help those who worry a lot:
the broken; the wounded; the disenfranchised;
the houseless or those who are experiencing homelessness.
What happens if they do not believe that God could know them?
They cannot fathom the idea that a God would know them by name.
We play that role.
We will call them by name.
And we will love them where they are at;
and eventually, if they get that enough from enough of us Christians
then they will start to believe in God and their faith will increase.
The only way our faith can increase is
if we do what we are called to do the ordinary things
and the Lord is who makes them extraordinary.
Increase our faith;
do not worry;
do what we are called to do;
and let the Lord do the rest.
