Devotional:

Luke 17.5-6

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea.’ And it would obey you.”

We are a people consumed and captured by the power of instant gratification. We want the greatest reward for the smallest effort. We post a picture online and we expect people to like it right away. We show up to church on Sundays and we want to be rewarded for our effort. We pray and we assume that God will answer us quickly.

But we, if we are anything, are slaves to God’s will and that requires patience and hardwork.

We have a church member at St. John’s who wears just about every hat you can think of; Dianne Wright is the lay leader and so much more. On Sunday afternoons she walks across the front lawn with a bunch of letters from the alphabet under her arm to change the marquee. On any given day she is writing cards to, and off visiting, the shut-ins from the church community. And she is forever on the look out for “churchy” objects and images that will help others grow in faith.

A couple months ago Dianne brought a sign over to the church and hung it against the refrigerator in the kitchen. She does things like this all the time but from the moment I saw this sign, the words have percolated in my mind: “Faith can move mountains, but don’t be surprised if God hands you a shovel.”

Faith and discipleship is hard work. The disciples once asked Jesus to increase their faith, as if he could snap his fingers and it would just happen. But Jesus responds by telling them that faith the size of a mustard seed could pull a mulberry bush out of the ground move it to the sea. Have you ever tried to move a mulberry bush? The roots go deep down into the earth and make the work of replanting quite difficult.

Being a slave in God’s kingdom, yielding to God’s will, means that we have to do the right kind of work to increase our faith. We can’t just ask for it and expect everything to change immediately. It takes the habits of prayer, scripture reading, and communal worship to increase our faith. When we work to follow the commands of Jesus, difficult though they may be, our faith will increase.

God owes us nothing, and yet we are still loved. God’s invites us back into the realm of grace over and over even when we do not deserve it. Christ still loved us while we were yet sinners. And God gives us the power to move mountains and uproot mulberry bushes, but only if we’re willing to work for it.