Increase Our Faith
Luke 17:5-10; Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
In the 1960s, Albany, Georgia was a town where civil rights activists met, where they joined up with protest movements and coordinated plans around dining room tables and in church halls. Albany reminds me of stories I’ve heard about Marion, Alabama – not the main site of marches like Montgomery and Selma, but a hub of activity and activism that happened in living rooms, over cups of coffee.
In Albany, a woman named Katie B. Harris stayed close to home, but she supported the movement by feeding the young men and women in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She cooked meals of sweet potatoes, collards, and cornbread that were the sustenance of voter registration campaigns and freedom singers who traveled the country raising awareness of the divides in the deep south. “What women” like Katie did “in kitchens and gardens wasn’t as obvious as what happened on the streets and in the courtrooms,”[1] but it was more than “tangential – it was bedrock to the Albany movement.”[2]
What happened around tables like these during the civil rights movement nurtured hope in young activists. Warm kitchens, welcoming tables with full plates of food embodied faith in a group of people who needed reminding that a morsel of faith could move a mountain.
Today’s scripture reading begins with the apostles’ appeal to Jesus to “Increase our faith!” Someone said, doesn’t this sound like a title for an evangelical conference: “Maximize Your Faith!”
“Turbo-charge Your Faith!” Is that really what they meant?
To understand why the disciples said this, we need to look at the first four verses of chapter 17. I would call this a driveway conversation… As you're about to leave your parents or your grown children’s house after a visit, they’ve had all day to tell you these things, but always when you’re ready to leave the most important things get said at the end. With Jesus and his disciples, we see this happen randomly when Jesus seems to be hyper aware that his days with them are numbered and certain things MUST BE SAID.
People are going to stumble and sin, but don’t you be the cause of it! …Watch yourselves! Rebuke a brother when you need to, but forgive them when they ask and I mean forgive them even if they ask you seven times a day.
Well, no wonder they say, “increase our faith!” Who wouldn’t? That kind of forgiveness takes more than the average human can do on their own. What’s the saying? To err is human, to forgive is divine.[3] Are you up on your biblical numerology? Then you’ll “recognize seven as a number of completion and perfection.” Jesus is not asking them to forgive begrudgingly, “but completely and wholeheartedly.”[4] That kind of forgiveness asks more of us than is humanly possible. And that is the point of this text.
What is this faith the disciples are asking for? Let’s give the disciples some credit for admitting they don’t have what it takes. Jesus is saying, if you only had this much, this smaller-than-a-freckle amount of faith, you could transplant this tree into the sea – a feat of spiritual hydroponics (one person called it).[5]
Perhaps the disciples don’t have the power to move trees into the sea because if they did, they would be out there doing stupid stuff like moving trees into the sea. It’s not power he wants them to have, it’s trust and reliance on God.
The disciples are worried about having enough faith to forgive [others] the way Jesus is demanding. If they have more faith, maybe then they’ll be able to live up to these demands, “perform this feat of humility and generosity and compassion.”.[6] Jesus is redirecting the request. He’s not chastising them. He needs them to understand that what they are asking for is not something they manufacture on their own. This faith doesn’t rise up inside them. It’s not human. It’s not something we do. It’s not even something we believe. It’s not really positive thinking that results in something good happening. He’s reframing what they understand faith to be.
Don’t you think asking for more faith is like asking for patience? In asking for faith, we’ll be presented with more opportunities to need faith – to trust God completely; to rely on God wholeheartedly. More faith comes with more responsibility, more obedience, and more consequences. Jesus would say: You may not always like it because it might look like picking up your cross and carrying it to follow him; or staying awake in the garden to pray, or not running away when things get really scary.
What is this faith the disciples need? Perhaps, when the lectionary presents us with the one and only time to hear from the prophet Habakkuk, we should.
Habakkuk, after all, is the best book to demonstrate what faith is.
The prophet complains about how much Israelite society wreaks; even in the courts justice doesn’t happen. The prophet says, I’m going to go stand at my watchpost and see what God says. And the Lord’s answer is, there will be a vision to come, but until it comes, the just will live by faith. Habakkuk’s generation endures turmoil and suffering to the tune of today’s headlines. So, what is the living word we can take away from his ancient text? They are trusting that in the midst of the chaos and crumbling of society, that the Lord will have a vision for the future, and God does. [7]
The gulch between the faith this Christ-following-life requires and the faith we actually have is one only God can scale.
When Jesus employs this master - servant dynamic to make his point, it sounds “harsh to us. But Jesus is reminding the disciples of the proper relationship between God and humanity, between creator and creation.”[8] Don’t let the verbiage trip you up. The point is best summed up by Eugene Peterson in The Message: “When you’ve done everything expected of you, be matter-of-fact and say, ‘The work is done. What we were told to do, we did.’”[9] That’s all we can do. God must do the rest. The distance between the faith that is asked of us and the faith we have is made up only by God.
The world feels unhinged. The news headlines take my breath away. We understand the disciples’ desire to have enough faith to meet the moment.
That is all women like Katie B. Harris did in Albany. She opened her home to civil rights workers. It wasn’t like black folks in Albany could simply go get a room at the Holiday Inn or go to any restaurant in town and be served. Ms. Harris housed them and fed them. When homes like this were targeted for bombs in Birmingham, it was a brave thing to do in Albany, Georgia.
Our call today is not to ask God to increase our faith, but our willingness to be used by God, to respond to the hurts we see, the injustice we encounter, to set welcome tables. Faith the size of a mustard seed is enough, more than enough, to do all that is needed.
These tables have been set for you, today. Wherever you are on this journey of faith, these gifts belong to you. Jesus makes himself known to us in the practice of communion. In it we are reunited, we are re-membered one to another as members of Christ’s body.
[1] https://www.southernfoodways.org/hostesses-of-the-movement-2/ Rosalind Bentley
[2] Pitman, Jasmin, Christian Century email
[3] Fairless and Chilton, The Lectionary Lab Commentary Year C
[4] Dana, Maryann McKibbin, Christian Century, In the Lectionary, Luke 17:5-10
[5] ibid.
[6] Fairless and Chilton
[7] Sermon Brainwave Podcast for October 5, 2025
[8] Fairless and Chilton
[9] Dana