Sermon – Luke 17:5-10 – Called to Faith

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard
Pitts Creek and Beaver Dam Presbyterian Churches
Sermon – Luke 17:5-10 – Called to Faith
World Communion Sunday
October 3, 2010

I am continuing this morning with my series of sermons on our calls from God. We are called to discipleship and its costs. We are called to repentance and can expect great joy in heaven and on earth when we respond to that call. And we are called to service with special concern for our neighbors in need. Today we will look at God's call to faith which is even now growing within us. But first please pray with me.

Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen. (Calvin)

Luke 17:5-10 5 The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" 6 He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you. 7 "Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? 8 Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? 9 Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.'"

A Mustard Seed Faith

The disciples of Jesus Christ were aware of God's call to faith. They hungered for even greater faith than they already had. Jesus told them that they had just a beginner's faith. They had just begun to have a faith that would grow for an entire lifetime. Their faith had to be nurtured and so Jesus, their teacher, taught to them ways to increase their faith.

In our old testament reading from Psalm 137 the Jewish exiles in Babylon longed for greater faith to sustain them until they could go home to Jerusalem. Their faith had been shattered with the destruction of Jerusalem and King Solomon’s temple. But now their faith was growing again. And that faith would sustain them in their years of exile.

According to Jesus, faith is like a small seed, a mustard seed, which grows over a lifetime provided that it is properly nurtured with regular worship, prayer, Sabbath keeping, Bible study and other spiritual practices. And as faith grows in us we are shape into the image of Jesus Christ, just as we were created to be.

Several years ago a couple of researchers interviewed 3000 American teenagers to see what they believe. These teenagers, from many different religious traditions, reported that they had faith in God. But their faith has just begun to take root. They had mustard seed faith which must be nurtured for the fullness of faith to develop in their lives. Let's start by taking a look at the mustard seed faith held by American teenagers today.

The researchers put together a mustard seed creed which summarizes what American teenagers believe today. This creed is as follows (http://www.scribd.com/doc/7699752/Moralistic-Therapudic-Deism-by-Christian-Smith)

1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, fair and nice to each other, as taught in the Bible and most world religions.
3. The central goal in life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularity involved in one's life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

My guess is that many if not most of the people in churches today believe this and that it accurately reflects the faith that most Christians have today. But this faith pales when compare to the mature faith that grows in our hearts as we spend lifetimes in relationship with Jesus Christ. The authors of the study summarized their findings and described the basic faith of American teenagers as Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism. I think that Jesus would have called this a mustard seed faith.

A mustard seed faith is “moralistic”. It teaches us to be good people and obey God's law. This is a good place to start. It is a good thing to do what God wants us to do. One teenager said, “I believe in, well, my whole religion is where you try to be good, and if you are not good you try to be better, that's all.” If American teenagers believe that obeying the 10 commandments is a good thing to do then churches in America have done a great job. But we must remember that this is just a mustard seed faith. Teenagers need much more faith to sustain them throughout their lives. Their mustard seed faith needs to grow.

As our faith grows we begin to realize that God's law does more than just help us to be nice people and lead good lives. God's law begins to convict us of our own sin. We begin to realize that no matter how good we try to be we still fall short of what God wants. And this causes us to fall on our knees, confess our sins, and ask for forgiveness which only Jesus Christ can give us. So our faith grows into repentance as we turn from sin and turn to Christ by whose grace we are forgiven.

But the growth of our faith does not stop there. It continues to grow into our call to service and to love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. We are transformed by this growing faith into people who love the poor just a Jesus did. So our mustard seed faith which teaches us to be good people grows into mature faith that causes us to turn to Jesus and be transformed into loving people.

A mustard seed faith is also “therapeutic” in that it makes us feel good. We come to church to feel better. We look for church to be a sanctuary from the problems of the world. We are bombarded with financial problems, job insecurity, health issues, and concern for our parents. And we come to church to feel better by getting away from all of that for an hour or so each week. We love praying and singing because it gets our mind off the things that trouble us. And we hope that through prayer and worship the Holy Spirit will remove our concerns and solve our problems. All of this makes church a wonderful place to be. A teenage girl said, “God is like someone who is always there for you. I don't know it's just that God is God. He's just like someone who is always there to help whatever it is you're going through. When I became a Christian, I was just praying and it always made me feel better.”
But sometimes our troubles are so great that when we bring them with us into church our faith cannot make us happy unless it has grown into greater maturity.

As we grow older we begin to realize that we experience intense emotions. A loved one dies. Your doctor orders a test for cancer. You hear that another 10% cut in staffing has been ordered by your employer. You come to church and yet you still grieve, you are still afraid. You need a growing faith where you realize that God is there with you no matter what happens. The cross is so important here. It reminds us that God has already experienced our pain and our grief with his own son's death and therefore can empathize with our pain and our grief.

So we have seen that as our faith grows we grow from trying to be good people, into repentant sinners and disciples of Jesus Christ. And even though we usually feel good coming to church a maturing faith helps us to be comforted even when the world seem upside down. And these are very good reasons to nurture our mustard seed faith with worship, prayer and Bible study so that it will grow into mature faith.

Finally, let’s look at what the study authors were saying when they called the faith of our teenagers as a form of “deism”. With a mustard seed faith we believe in a creator God. And we believe that when we really need God, God will be there. But ordinarily, God is resting in heaven and not active in the world. This is deism. It is as if the world was like a clock which God made, set and wound up. It continues to run without God's involvement or interest. But when the clock runs down and stops then God intervenes by rewinding it. For a deist, with a mustard seed faith, this is what the world is like. God created the world and got it going, but God has little to do day to day unless problems pop up. A fourteen year old boy said, “I believe that there is a God, so sometimes when I am in trouble or in danger, then I'll start thinking about that.” Deist can essentially ignore God until trouble happens and then they turn to their long forgotten God for help.

But as we nurture our mustard seed faith we become aware of God's activity in the world around us. We begin to acknowledge that God is the source of all of our blessings. We realize that God provides the rain and the sunshine and the soil and the seed that provides us with an abundance of food. We experience God's presence in worship and prayer. And so we begin to see God at work in the world around us. But our growing faith does not stop here. We not only see God at work in the world around but we begin to experience a Trinitarian God. We experience God as a Father who loves us, as a Son who redeems us and as a Holy Spirit who comforts us. A mature faith ties us to our triune God bound with cords of love.

So we begin with a mustard seed faith. We believe that God calls us to be good people. We believe that God will make us happy. And we believe that God will leave us alone until we really need him. But as we grow in faith we are convicted of our own sin and turn to God in repentance. We begin to follow Christ and share in his concern for the poor. And we begin to see God continually at work in the world around us and loving us every moment.

We have been given a mustard seed faith. We are called to nurture this seed so that it grows into a mature faith. The church is like a mustard seed faith farm. And we are mustard seed faith farmers. We need to plant our mustard seed faith with worship on Sunday mornings. We need to water the mustard seed faith every morning with our Sunrise Prayer Service. We need to fertilize this mustard seed faith with our Bible Studies on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. We need to weed our mustard seed faith with our small groups for men, women and youth. We need to created new mustard seed faith plants in our children and grandchildren. And we need to harvest our mature mustard seed faith at our memorial services.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for the faith you have given us. We ask that you help us to nurture that faith so that it will sustain throughout this life and prepare us for the life ahead. Amen.