Increase our Faith!

This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost on Sunday, October 5, 2025.

Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

How big is your faith?

Let me ask you a question before that: How do you even measure faith? To be able to compare it to the size of a tiny mustard seed, you have to have some sort of concept of how we measure how much faith we have.

How do you measure faith in terms of an amount? Is faith even something that you can measure? Is it something that you have or you don't? Is it something that you have a little bit of or a lot of? Can you compare it to something, especially something as tangible, as physical as a mustard seed?

How much faith do you have? It's a good question. It's not an easy question to consider (and perhaps it's missing the point) because it's only visible when we put that faith into action, when we actually do something with that faith.

Saying that you trust someone is one thing, but putting that trust into action is another. How many of you have ever done a trust fall? You ever done a trust fall where you line up behind somebody and they cross their arms across their chest? I'm going to do it right now. Wait, there's nobody waiting for me, is there? No, maybe not. But you lean back and then they catch you, so that you don't fall and hit the ground, because that's going to hurt.

It takes a lot of trust to do that. See, faith has to be operationalized. It has to be put into action in order for it to be measurable.

So my question maybe instead is, faith enough in what? Faith enough for what?

The Challenge of Forgiveness

Do you have faith in God large enough to forgive someone who has wronged you? Forgiveness is one of the most difficult things, spiritually speaking, that human beings have to do.

To let go of something which, in fact, quite honestly, often is righteous anger. To let go of something that you're holding against somebody else, quite often for very good reason. To let that go, to forgive.

Not to forget, let's get that straight. We're not saying forgive and forget and act like it's never happened, but at least to forgive and not hold it against that person anymore.

It's an incredibly difficult thing. And the more pain that that person has caused you, the more wrong that that person has done against you, the more difficult it is. Perhaps the more faith it takes?

But what happens when that becomes something that happens over and over and over again? To forgive somebody once is something that we can do magnanimously out of our hearts. We can say, "Ah yes, I forgive you."

But then take it a step further. The person does the same thing again. And they come to you and they're sorry. They repent. They wish they had not done that thing. Can you forgive them again? Will they have learned their lesson? Were they really sorry the first time?

And then it happens again a third time. And you think to yourself, I don't think they were really sorry. They keep doing it! And a fourth time and a fifth time and a sixth time. And a seventh time.

And suddenly, we start wondering, perhaps even judging, the repentance of another. But Jesus takes it even a step further than that. How about forgiving someone seven times in one day? Is it too much? Is it more than we can do?

I mean, maybe on my most generous day, I could do that. I could forgive somebody for the same thing that they did seven times. Repented seven times. Asked for my forgiveness seven times. And I gave them out of the kindness of my heart, as a forgiving Christian, I'm going to pass along the forgiveness which God has given me to them.

But then what about tomorrow? And the day after that? To keep that up over and over and over again? This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?

The Disciples' Plea

The disciples immediately recognize the problem. That is why they say to Jesus, "Increase our faith!" Because they look at their own faith and they realize that their faith can't do it. Not on its own. They struggle with this.

And then Jesus takes it a step further. He says, if you had even the tiniest amount of faith, a mustard seed, one of the smallest of seeds, you could say to this mulberry tree, a full-sized tree, "be uprooted and planted in the sea!" and it would obey you.

Now, I don't know how many of you go around walking in the woods, talking to trees, much alone giving them commands. (In fact, if you're doing that, I think the men in the white coats with the long-sleeved jacket would like to have a word.)

But maybe what Jesus is telling us is that our own ability to forgive is the difficulty here. Maybe I don't have enough faith even at all! Because Jesus says, if I even had that much faith on my own, that much trust in God on my own, that I could speak to the trees or in another telling of the same idea, the same parable, to say, I could say to the mountains, "be uprooted and planted in the sea."

If a tree is something you feel like you might be able to do, a mountain certainly isn't. And the disciples say to Jesus, "Increase my faith!"

Well, let me go a step further than that: Maybe I should be asking God to grant me faith in the first place, because if that's what faith looks like, I don't know that I can do it. And honestly, I don't think I'm alone in that.

I think we all struggle at times to believe. Doubt is a part of the process of faith. The difficulty of saying, "Lord, I hear you commanding me to forgive, and not just once or twice, but over and over and over again, being forbearing with other people as you have forgiven me."

Maybe this is as much a picture of God's attitude toward us as it is a picture of how we ought to live toward others. And I do struggle to believe, and I know many of you do too, struggling with the big questions of life, like does God, the God who created the universe and everything that's in it, really love me?

That there's something about little old me that's actually valuable to the Almighty God who created the universe. That God is actually in control of things in this world. That God will make things work out for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purposes.

That is a difficult thing sometimes for me to grasp. Maybe I'm not alone in this. Maybe this is you too?

Or in considering the vastness of the universe, billions of galaxies, each with tens or hundreds of billions of stars, and each of those stars with planets. And yet here in this one galaxy among billions, and this one star among hundreds of billions, at this planet there's a person whom the God who created everything cares about. For whom he sent his only son to die and rise. It's amazing! And it calls us to faith.

My prayer so often is, "Lord, increase my faith! Give me faith! Grant me faith! Add faith to me!" Because it's hard sometimes to believe. And I think that we're in good company with that struggle.

The Disciples' Struggles

Because the disciples, the original twelve, they struggled too. Take the original twelve disciples. Subtract one, Judas, who betrayed him. Take those eleven. Of those men standing there, they're starting to wonder if they have any faith at all. They say to Jesus, "Lord, increase our faith!"

And of course, that's not where their struggles end. Because their faith is found lacking. They abandon Jesus as he is arrested, put on trial, and crucified. Every single one of them flee rather than taking their stand beside him.

Jesus told them to take up their cross and follow him. And yet all of the disciples failed to do that in his darkest hour. And it's even more troubling because, frankly, they struggle and fail as Jesus tells them plainly that he's going to die on the cross. He's going to rise from the dead.

He tells them this openly! He says, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinners and be crucified and die and must on the third day rise again. And they still don't hang in there.

But that's not where God leaves them. Because as Jesus commands us to forgive and forgive, he sets the example for us. When they repent, he still comes to them.

And it comes to them as a moment of holy surprise when Jesus appears to them alive after the resurrection. Yes, they were faithless at times. But God is faithful in Jesus Christ.

Mary goes to the tomb expecting to find in it the decaying corpse of Jesus Christ. And when she doesn't find him, she doesn't think, "Oh, but he promised he would rise." She thinks someone has taken his body away.

And when she encounters Jesus face to face in the garden, she supposes he's the gardener because he couldn't possibly have risen from the dead. But even in that moment, Jesus looks at her and loves her and calls her by name.

The disciples doubt the resurrection. And he struggles with it. But he still appears among them in the upper room where they're hiding for fear of the Jewish people.

And not only that, but then he comes to them and Thomas, who doubts it because he's not there the first time, he comes back and he appears to Thomas and says, "Thomas, look, I know that you aren't going to believe this unless you see it. So look, see my wounds. Put your hand in my wounds. Put your hand in my side. Do not doubt, but believe."

And he says, "My Lord and my God!"

And then he sends them out to do impossible things. He sends them out as his witnesses to do what would be impossible for any ordinary man. He sends them out to forgive sins. To give people the body and blood of Jesus Christ so that they can be reconciled to a holy God.

God's Perspective on Forgiveness

In the preceding weeks here at church, we've had Jesus talking to and oftentimes very harshly critiquing the Pharisees. But now Jesus has turned and he's talking to his disciples and he's giving them, yes, a command to forgive, but he's also showing them, what it looks like from God's perspective.

Because we sin and we turn back to God and repent. And he forgives us.

So the prayer of a disciple, then, is not, "Thank you, Lord, for making me a finished product. I am now a believing Christian and I've got everything under control. I'll take it from here, Lord. Amen."

The prayer of a Christian is not, "Lord, I walked the aisle, I prayed the prayer, I made the decision, and now I've got it from here."

The prayer of a Christian is, "God, I hear you speaking to me in your word. And I hear you commanding me to forgive repeatedly, generously, extravagantly, more than I personally can. My heart is in rebellion against this idea. And so, Lord, increase my faith. Because on my own, I don't think I can do it. I can't forgive like that. I can't bear up in that way. I can't carry the cross that you carried, not by myself, not with my own powers, but with your hand guiding me, Lord. I will follow you. With your spirit increasing my faith, I can, in your timing, in your will, I can forgive."

Sometimes people ask me, why don't we see a lot of miracles now, like there were in Jesus' earthly ministry recorded in the Gospel. And part of the reason is that Jesus' earthly miracles were done not to give us an example of what Jesus is going to do all of the time, but to testify to God's presence. And Jesus himself is God's son, who's immediately present to them and demonstrating that by his miracles.

Miracles of Grace

But the other part of the answer is this: Miracles still happen all the time. Not necessarily always flashy. And the supernatural miracles of the Gospel that we see here is something that seems to us to be mundane, but it's actually extraordinary! It's amazing and powerful!

Forgiveness offered by one sinner to another in Jesus' name. And another miracle is like it. That people today, hearing the message of Jesus and believing it, have forgiveness of sins and life in his name.

You see, because God's word creates the reality it declares. When God says, you will forgive, he makes it possible for you to forgive. When God says that you are clean, you are healed, you are forgiven, you are forgiven.

When God's word comes to us to create faith, when he baptizes us by water and his word, when he feeds us with the word of God, his own son, Jesus Christ, on the altar, these are miracles of God's grace and forgiveness.

Lean into those miracles. Trust God. Forgive the sins of others as you have been forgiven your sins by your Father in heaven on account of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, your Savior. Amen.