Year C
 Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
 Psalm 37:1-10
 2 Timothy 1:1-14
 Luke 17:5-10
 May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

Every year…  on the first Sunday in October…  Christians around the globe celebrate World Communion Sunday…  which is a day to remember that Jesus is the Head of the Church…  and on this day…  people draw faith and inspiration from seeing that they’re part of a community with millions of believers and worshippers…  and that every Christian Church…  and any denomination which promotes Christian Unity…  are One…  in fact…  my former bishop in southern Ohio used to say that the divisions between us…  are lies…

We are One…  what happened here last Sunday evening…  the break-in…  and the damage…  and the theft…  has affected all of us…  and what just happened in Florida and the southeastern part of our country…  has affected all of us…  each and every one of us…  certainly not in exactly the same ways…  but in some way…  every one of us…  especially those with homes…  or relatives…  in the storm’s path…  a priest in the diocese had family members trapped on Sanibel Island when the eye made landfall…  their home was raised ten feet off the ground…  and still had a foot of mud in it…  and they had to be airlifted off the island Friday morning…  but they’re safe…  and the widespread damage…  which looks like the result of mass bombings…  is lamentable…

Lutheran Pastor Diane Roth wrote…  to lament is to name the devastation…  to hear the stories without talking back…  lament lets us name the pain and grief…  it opens up a space for us to hear stories that are true…  even if we don’t want to hear them…

The Book of Lamentations 1:1 says…  How lonely sits the city that once was full of people…  and in our context…  this could apply to Ft. Meyers and many other cities on the west coast of Florida and beyond…  which also used to be full of people…  and the prophet Habakkuk lamented…  O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. Why do you make me see wrong-doing…  and look at trouble? Then the Lord answered and said: Write down my vision; make it plain on tablets, so that even a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end of these things, and does not lie… 

And we are hearing not only the stories of individuals…  but the experiences of a people…  of a community…  because the hurricane’s devastation and damage happened to a collective us…  and the break-in happened to us too…  [ even those of us here at Holy Trinity…  because I bring some remnant of it here with me… ] and those in the synod or diocese who hear about it…  may wonder…  will it happen to us too…  but we lay it all before God…  and are silent…  and listen…  and whether we hear something or not…  lament is a faith-filled process…  it is a holy process…  but often…  the lament is…  I don’t know if I’m up for this…  this is not going to be easy… and it’s going to take a long time…  and we may wonder about our faith…

Hebrews 11:1 says that…  faith is the assurance of things hoped for…  the conviction of things not seen…  and the apostles asked Jesus to increase their faith…  this request is a cry for help…  because it comes on the heels of Jesus telling them that the “little ones”…  those who have just begun their spiritual development…  ought not be made to stumble…  and of Jesus telling them that they must be endlessly ready to forgive whoever offends them…  and we can imagine them…  or the people of Two Churches…  and the people of Florida…  saying…  I don’t know if I’m up for this…  this is not going to be easy… and it’s going to take a long time…  maybe if I had more faith…  I could do this…  so it’s easy for us to understand why they thought that more faith is better…  Fr. John Meulendyk writes…  for the disciples…  faith was like money…  if you can increase your position in the world by having more money…  then you can certainly increase your position with God by having more faith…  but having faith doesn’t mean that everything will go the way we want it to…  or that the more faith we have…  the more effective our prayers will be…  and faith is not static…  faith is surrendering and leaning forward… and acknowledging that God’s plan is bigger than we can see…  that having faith doesn’t mean that we will never have doubt…  and faith is about losing your position in life all together…  and then finding out how to deal with it…  faith results from people opening to…  and responding to God’s initiating action… faith is contending with God…  and being renamed as Jacob was… this allows us to bring about the world that God envisions…  so faith is not about unaided human powers…  it’s about human abilities which are in league with divine intentions and activity…  and it is a choice…

In Matthew 17:20… Jesus says…  For truly I tell you…  if you have faith the size of a mustard seed…  you will say to this mountain…  move from here to there…  and it will move…  and nothing will be impossible for you…  and in response to the apostle’s request for more faith…  Jesus says that if they had faith the size of a mustard seed…  they could say to this mulberry tree…  be uprooted and planted in the sea…  and it would obey you…  you see…  Jesus is telling us that even just a little bit of faith is enough…  because it’s not all up to us…  because as we know…  a mountain is pretty much intransigent…  it’s not going anywhere…  it’s been rooted in bedrock for millions of years…  and the deciduous mulberry tree grows an extensive root structure that spreads out horizontally from the trunk…  at least as far as the tree’s canopy…  and remains within the first 24″ of soil…  where it searches for air…  nutrients…  and water…  and it too is entrenched where it stands…  and as John Shea writes…  in the image that’s meant to reveal and convey faith to the apostles…  the mulberry tree is uprooted from where it has always been planted…  and replanted in a place where it has never been…  a place where no one would ever suspect it could grow…  the impossible has suddenly become possible…

The Rt. Rev. Frank Logue wrote…  there’s no getting around the fact that the Bible knows nothing of professional clergy serving a congregation…  the Bible teaches that all Christians are ministers by virtue of their baptism…  so to help us understand Jesus’ story about the master and slave…  when you come in from doing something for God… don’t expect a reward…  only more work…  and we know how thankless some of these tasks are…  because we have the same issues at home…  do you get thanked every time you do the dishes…  or cut the grass…  or do the laundry…  probably not…  but allow enough time to pass without doing them…  and you’re sure to hear about it…  these are thankless tasks and you take them on with no thought to getting praise for doing them…  parents do…  what parents do…  for their families…  it’s what’s expected of them…  we do not serve others for the thanks we get…  we don’t get more for doing more…  we’re to serve others as though we were serving Jesus…  because that’s the life God calls us to…  knowing that we will benefit more than the people we help…  with increased faith and increased love…

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann has said that the prophetic tasks of the church…  are to tell the truth in a society that lives in illusion…  to grieve in a society that practices denial…  and to express hope in a society that lives in despair…  the truth will set us free…  lament will help us perceive God’s ever-present embrace…  and hope will light our way in the darkness…  we are One…  we are united in ways we can only begin to imagine… Holy God…help us to not only see our interdependence…  but to acknowledge and foster it…  with mustard seed faith…  which is truly enough…  Amen…