... 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."

Honestly, now, I don't think Jesus gave his beloved disciples a very satisfying answer, do you? I mean, they asked for help! "Lord, increase our faith!" And what does Jesus have to say: Well, if you had enough faith, you could do anything, even the supernatural ­ even the ridiculous!" How pastoral is that? Thanks, a lot, Jesus. I mean, we're asking for help here ­ I don't think we deserve to be told how inadequate we are. And the next verses of our letter this morning do not help us out, or cast Jesus in an any more helpful light.

Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, 'Come here at once and take your place at the table' Would you not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink'? DO you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, 'We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'

So... first, it sounds as if Jesus is accepting, if not approving, of slavery; so much for our Christian history of social justice struggle. Second, who's Jesus calling "worthless" here? Again, not too pastoral on Jesus' part. And finally, think about it, these two exchanges don't even go together! What does the speech about slaves and thanks and worthlessness have to do with increasing faith!

Don't you wonder about the Bible sometimes? There are moments when I do... Well, now you've heard my first reactions to this morning's text. Obviously, I didn't have the option of stopping there. So let me think some more out loud with you about our need to increase our faith, and how, perhaps, Jesus just might help us to be more faithful. Thank "faith-full" ­ F-A-I-T-H (hyphen) F-U-L-L ­ as in "full of faith."

Increase our faith! A couple of years ago, a clergywoman colleague who's a pediatric hospital chaplain told me the painful story of a family gathered in desperate prayer around the incubator of a tiny newborn baby who was not going to make it. The infant, a few days old, born with a fatal congenital defect, had been airlifted in from a rural hospital into a pediatric specialty unit ­ and the specialists had done all they could. In fact, the hospital staff were basically just keeping the baby warm, so that all the family members could arrive to offer support, so they could look at her, perhaps cuddle her a little and love her ­ and so that the shocked parents could have a chance to say goodbye to their firstborn child, and let the terrible loss sink in.

My friend, of course, rushed to neonatal intensive care in response to her page, and the anxious family members, plus church family who were gathered in a circle of prayer turned to her and said, "Pray with us Reverend, pray hard as you can, because we know God doesn't want this little girl to die. God will give her back to us, but we just have to believe enough!" My friend found herself in a theological and pastoral quandary. She knew this baby wouldn't live. She knew that, for however long the infant's little life was going to be, it wouldn't be pretty. She knew‹or at least she feared‹that when the inevitable death happened, the family was going to feel guilty‹had they somehow not trusted God enough? Were they being punished for inadequate faith? And so all my friend could do was pray that these people‹parents, grandparents, other family members, and loving church family, and the infant herself‹would know God's presence and love, whatever happened. "Please, dear God, remind these people, your beloved children, that you do not leave them desolate. Give them comfort, and courage, and hope, even in terrible tragedy and sadness." What is the real miracle? A reversal of the laws of nature? (Sometimes it does happen, and we have no explanation, other than God's action.) Or is the miracle the trust that we can get through what we thought we never could get through ­ what we even prayed fervently that we would never have to face? Oh God, increase our faith for those frightening times. Bring us the comfort of your Spirit, and bring us the comfort of spiritual friends, who will let us weep, or rage, or sit in grim silence, or go around in complete denial ­ and still know the depth of our broken hearts, and just love us anyway. It's amazing what a little community can do for our faith.

Increase our faith in a time of fear, with a sense that the world is a dangerous place that we cannot control, and that we are hated for reasons that we cannot understand. In my most recent job in the Ohio Conference of the United Church of Christ, one of the congregations that was part of my territory was a small church in a rural county seat. This is farming country ­ people come into church from miles around. The vast majority of the members have been in the church, and on the land around the town, for at least three or four generations, if not more. Many of the families are related to one another ­ the congregation is truly "one big nearly-always-happy family." They all know everything about each other ­ they know who will bring what specialty dish to which pot luck; they knew who will contribute what to the Christmas sale; they know when Mrs. So-and-so won't be in church because her rheumatism will surely get to her joints in this kind of weather; and they all send homemade gifts for every birth, and casseroles for every funeral. You're an "outsider" in this congregation if they haven't known your grandfather. This is a tight group! You get out of town in two ways ­ you go way to college, or you join the military. Even then, you're not likely to stay away for long.

Well, Marsha, the daughter of the town's fifth grade teacher and the town CPA, up and went out of state to college. And there she met ­ a boy from Algeria. She dated him. They fell in love. And she married him. She married a Muslim.

Now, this little county seat in southwest Ohio is one of those many tiny towns and villages across the country from which local volunteer firefighters rushed to the aid of their New York comrades after September 11. The only Muslims most members of this church had ever heard of, were the September 11 hijackers. I was in touch with most of our churches in my territory after September 11, just seeing how people were doing, finding out if anyone had lost loved ones on that horrible day, trying to find out how we, as churches, could support each other in a time of challenge to our faith, and to our understanding of who we are as a people. It happened that the fifth grade teacher was the Moderator of that particular congregation, so I'd had quite a lot of dealings with her, and I knew that her daughter was married to a Muslim. So I made a point of asking her "How are your daughter and son-in-law doing?" I was delightfully surprised to hear her say that her fellow church members had said to her, "Thank goodness we know Marsha's husband! We know more about Muslims than others do in our town, because we know that he's no killer."

Friends, I do not want to oversimplify the ugly reality of terrorism. But terrorism ultimately is the result of knowing and caring so little about each other as human beings, that we can define each other as expendable. Only by knowing each other, only by understanding each others' circumstances, can we begin to overcome the awful polarities and divisions that lead us to thus dehumanize other persons. Marsha's church family had an attitude that, in her town, was little short of miraculous. A little community can do a lot for our faith.

Oh Lord, increase our faith! Our church is divided. We argue about big things, and about little things, and we don't know what to do. We don't know if we can raise our budget. Increase our faith!

Well, I believe that prayer helps. We can pray for a successful stewardship campaign, and more dollars may well be generated! But I don't think that's what Jesus is pointing us to here. In fact, as I frowned over this lesson from Luke this morning, I began to wonder if maybe the first exchange ­ Increase our faith! If you had enough faith...and the second ­ about not thanking the servant for just doing his job ­ might not have some relationship after all.

So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say 'We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.' Now, this is a little hard to hear, especially for those of us who attend church faithfully, participate in activities and volunteer when called on, and fulfill our pledges. Jesus is saying, so... you're just being a church, big deal. In other words, I think Jesus is asking us to do more. I think Jesus is suggesting that we increase our faith.

To the hearers of these words in Jesus' time and place and culture, his words probably were a prick with a sharper needle than we realize now. Jesus was asking those who were owners of property, content and successful in life, to identify with the servant class. What a reversal! And by so doing, Jesus may just be suggesting that we'll see things differently, and want the world to be different. We may find out that going through the motions of being a solid citizen or an appreciated church member may be OK ­ nothing wrong ­ but may fall short of the Gospel. The Gospel calls us to build God's new world, where there are no divisions between owner and owned, rich and poor, privileged and underprivileged. The Gospel community is called, not to be a successful institution, but a place where different values are modeled, because we are all one people. We accept. We support. We include. We forgive. Can we be that community? Oh Jesus, increase our faith. We, in fact, model that community every time we come to the table of communion. (No coincidence ­ those words have the same root.) The Rev. Dr. John Thomas is the General Minister and President of our United Church of Christ, the head of our national UCC staff. At a meeting I attended a few years ago, Dr. Thomas was talking with people about the nature of our life together as the United Church of Christ, about how our unity and diversity inform our faith, and at one moment he turned and pointed to the communion table in the sanctuary of the church where we were meeting, and he said, "We come to this table, not because we are alike ­ certainly not because we look alike, or act alike; not because we think alike; not even because we believe alike ­ and not even because we like each other. We come because God invites us."