16th Sunday after Trinity 2022 St Andrew’s Milngavie
Dear All
Today we celebrated the 16 Sunday after Trinity.
Thank you so much for all who helped with the garden tidy up yesterday despite the rain – the garden is now ready for winter.
Notices for this week:
Tuesday 10am Prayer Group in the Garden Room.
Thursday 10am Said Eucharist followed by coffee in Friendship House
Sunday 16th October – AGM – in church after the service – please do support. Please send any reports to Helen. We need new vestry members, please let me know if you would be interested.
Readings for next Sunday – 17th Sunday after Trinity – 2 Kings 5:1-3,7-15 2 Timothy 2:8-15 Luke 17:11-19
Today’s readings – Habakkuk 1:1-4,2:1-4 2 Timothy 1:1-14 Luke 17:5-10,
“Increase our faith” the apostles ask the Lord. Faith is a word that we often use and particularly we use it in a spiritual context. We talk about having faith, we talk about living by faith. We pray about our faith.
Jesus often uses the word faith in the gospels. In Mark’s gospel he says to the women who had been haemorrhaging for 12 years “Daughter your faith has healed you go in peace…..”
In chapter 10 he says to Bartimaeus as he restores his sight “Go, your faith has healed you” And in Matthew 15 he says to the Canaanite woman “women, you have great faith”
Today in the gospel we heard the apostles cry “increase our faith” How many times have we all prayed for that? “If I just had more faith….” I think most of us struggle with this issue at various times.
If I just had more faith, I wouldn’t have so many questions or doubts.
If I just had more faith, God would answer my prayers.
If I just had more faith, I would be more involved in the church.
If I just had more faith, I would be a better person.
If I just had more faith, life would be different.
It is the same angst that many have shared throughout the ages even the apostles. And it is the theme of today’s gospel. “Increase our faith,” they ask Jesus. Jesus has just warned them in the previous passage not to become stumbling blocks to others, and to forgive as often as an offender repents even if it is seven times in one day. That is difficult! It’s a challenge to live that way.
So “Increase our faith,” is their response and it seems like a reasonable request – if a little is good a lot must be better. But the request to increase our faith, the belief that if I had more faith things would be different is misguided.
Jesus is very clear that faithfulness is not about size or quantity “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed,” he says, “you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
Faith is something we decide upon and once decided upon, act on. If we sat around waiting to feel love for our enemies, we would never do it. Likewise, with faith if we sit in our pews pleading with God to increase our faith sufficiently for us to revive his church, to take up our 21st century crosses and live the gospel life, we will wait for ever because when it comes down to it, we either believe it or we don’t. We either believe that God has called us to be his church and that he will make our yoke easy, if we are prepared to shoulder it, or we don’t.
And this can apply to many other aspects of our lives. Put simply, when sitting in plane about to taxi down the runway we either trust he pilot knows what he is doing, or we don’t fly. Faith in our relationships is about trust and love. It means opening ourselves to receive another’s life and giving our life to another. That other one in this case is Jesus – that one relationship which influences who we are and how we live.
Faith will not, however, change the circumstances of our lives. Instead, it changes us. Living in faith does not shield us from the pain and difficulties of life, it does not undo the past, and it will not guarantee a particular future. Rather, faith is how we face and deal with the circumstances of life – the difficulties and losses, the joys and successes, the opportunities and possibilities.
Faith is simply the way in which we live, move and have our being so that, at the end of the day, we can say “We have lived in openness to, trust in, and love for Christ. We have allowed him to guide our decisions, our words, and our actions. We have been sustained by him in both life and death.”
Faith, however, is not lived out in the abstract. It is practiced day after day in the ordinary everyday circumstances. There may be days when we do feel powerless, lost, and do not know the way forward, by faith we sit in silence and wait. Faith, then, is how we live; the lens through which we see ourselves, others, and the world; the criterion by which we act and speak.
We live by faith, not because we have enough faith but because we have faith, any faith, even mustard seed sized faith. That is all we need. Jesus believes that, he encouraged his disciples to believe that …..so, then should we!
Amen