3 October
Dear Friends
In our reading for Sunday from Luke 17:5-10, we hear the disciples ask a question that seems entirely reasonable: “Lord, give us more faith.”
There will be no spoilers for Sunday’s sermon in this newsletter. For now, I simply want to share a small thought that came up during our Bible study.
When I heard this question, I immediately thought of a sermon written in 1983 by the South African theologian Flip Theron. He focuses on this word faith—the faith the disciples are asking for. He observes that, sadly, the word faith can be like a piece of clothing: through overuse and misuse, it sometimes loses its shape and becomes worn out.
For Theron, faith is first and foremost a verb. In Afrikaans as in Dutch, glo (to believe) is closely related to geloof (faith). But it is an awkward verb. It is awkward because it describes both something we ought to do and something we ought to stop doing.
On the first point, what we ought to do, he notes that it is a wonderful gift that we can believe. That we have the capacity to reach out to Christ in faith, to rely on God, and to place our trust in God’s presence. Faith, in this sense, is an active doing word, which is largely how we tend to understand it.
But faith is also about to stop our constant doing. He illustrates this with the image of a person lost at sea: if they continue spattering and struggling, they will achieve little. To survive, they must surrender. They must stop striving, simply breathe, float, and wait.
In this way, faith, and its close companion, belief, is as much a doing word as “rest” or “sleep.” Faith is to surrender reliance on our own efforts, to embrace uncertainty, to trust in the unknown, and to surrender to God.
So, the disciples ask Jesus, “Give us more faith.” Perhaps they imagine that with greater faith, more will become possible. We can do more, achieve more, even be a bit more important. But this misunderstands faith: it is not about doing more, but in fact about doing less.
See you on Sunday!
Rev. Marius Louwe