HABAK’KUK 1:1-13,2:1-4

PSALM 37:3-10

2 TIMOTHY 1:1-14

LUKE 17:5-10

Sermon – October 3, 2004

“Increase our faith”

Rookie football player says to his coach, “Coach, increase my strength!” Coach says, “Kid, you have no idea how much potential you have. Right now, you’re hardly using any of it. So, the weight room is – right over there. Here’s a daily and weekly workout regime for you for the rest of the season, here’s another one for the off season, and to make sure you’re properly warmed up, give me two laps around the stadium before you go into the weight room. (Pause.) What, you thought I was going to give you a pill?”

“The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith.’” (Pause.)

Did they think Jesus was going to give them some kind of “spiritual steroids”? No way. And besides, no such thing exists. Jesus’ response to the apostles in today’s Gospel basically was “You guys haven’t even gotten started yet. You have the potential to move mountains. To get there, you have to exercise your faith, practice having trust in God and follow God’s commandments, and when you’ve done so, don’t think you’re a big deal just because you followed orders. Or in Jesus’ exact words “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’”.

Really gets you pumped up, doesn’t it?

The point is that there is no pill we can take, no quick fixes, no magical, effortless way to increase our faith, any more than a deep and lasting marriage can be achieved by a one-shot injection or five minutes of effort a week. Faith is a relationship with God, one initiated by God to whom we respond and which can transform our lives and even, by the grace of God, profoundly touch the lives of others.

Faith is not just a memorized bunch of theological jargon one can recite without understanding it or living it. Faith is not a theological decoration one keeps in a glass case and brings out once or twice a year or for familial occasions. Faith is a living relationship with God in which trust in God, hope and love grow and hatred, fear and anxiety shrink. I believe that full transformation may take a lifetime (or perhaps even longer), but a living faith makes a profound difference in a person’s life, even as it did in the life of the Old Testament prophet Habak’kuk, who in the midst of a very fear-filled time was promised by God that “the righteous live by their faith.”

Bold words. Anybody do it nowadays, in the midst of all of today’s troubles? Let me share with you three examples, two from people I’ve met and heard and one from someone I will meet and hear in a week, all of whom have experienced faith and grown in faith in very fearful times. All of them will be speaking nearby this month.

The first person is Nigel Mumford, who in the early 1970’s at the age of 18 enlisted in Britain’s Royal Marines as a Green Beret Commando specializing in guerilla warfare for street policing in Northern Ireland, where he served three terms of duty during his seven years in the Corps. He writes, “Officially, I was part of a peacekeeping force, but in actuality, I felt I was there as cannon fodder, a human target. Fear of injury and death were never far from my mind.”

On the eve of his first deployment, fully trained and also fully aware of the risks he would be facing, he had a couple of hours to wait for a train for a weekend leave home. As it got dark and despite the kind of steady drizzle in which England specializes, he wandered out of the station and up a hill, somehow led to walk into the first building he came to – a YMCA, which was holding some sort of youth revival meeting.

He writes, “They were playing music. There was an awful din. I was obviously out of place... I marvel at what happened next. A sixteen-year-old boy, barely two years younger than me in years, but in calculably younger in experience, came up to me and tried to start a conversation. I ignored him, thinking myself too mature and worldly to spend time with such a child. Finally, he said, ‘Do you want to meet Jesus?’

“At that point, he got my attention. I looked him right in the eye and said sarcastically, ‘I thought they killed him two thousand years ago.’ I had not heard the message that Christ is alive today. I marvel at this sixteen-year-old approaching a man, a much bigger, much older marine with such a question. Then, strangely enough, I said, ‘Yes, I would like to meet Jesus.’ My words were part challenge, part embarrassed agreement... The kid said ‘Follow me.’

“I did as he said, feeling like a fool. But thinking at the same time, ‘Hey, I could be dead this time next week. Why not? I’ll take anything at this point. Whatever happens, I don’t care.’

“We walked into a small, softly lit chapel... This boy, this child, sat me down. He said, ‘Nigel, what I’m going to do is pray”... The boy prayed, but the only thing in my mind was, ‘What am I doing?... Then suddenly there was silence [after a time] my mind went blank and a sort of peace came over me, a wonderful feeling, almost like I was washed in peace, showered in peace... The fear had gone...

Suddenly, Jesus had become real and my heart started to fill with joy... I was given the faith that I did not myself have (emphasis added).”

Faith is a relationship with God, to whom we respond and which can transform our lives and even, by the grace of God, profoundly touch the lives of others. That 16 year-old boy had the faith and, let’s say the chutzpah to ask this Marine if he wanted to meet Jesus, and then to introduce them.

The seed of faith was planted in Nigel, too, although Nigel admits that he lost sight of it during his subsequent tour of duty, though the memory and the seed was still within him. His living relationship with Jesus Christ was reawakened during a scuba diving accident in which he had a near-death experience which left him wondering for what purpose his life had been spared. And then a few years after that, he found out.

Nigel Mumford, who had spent his whole early adult life (18-25 years old) as what he calls “a lean, mean fighting machine” – discovered a few years later that God had called him to be an instrument of God’s healing touch through prayer and the laying on of hands – Nigel’s own hands. The seed of faith planted in him so unexpectedly transformed him in a way he likewise did not expect. He is today a lay preacher, teacher and retreat leader in the Christian healing ministry. On the last Friday and Saturday in October he will be leading the annual Healing Mission at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Helmetta, New Jersey, 10 miles from here. The words I have quoted come from his book, Hand to Hand: A Marine’s Journey from Combat to Healing. Nigel served in the Royal Marines with honor and skill in a very difficult and ambiguous situation, but he was mustered out broken by post-traumatic stress disorder – shell shock, combat fatigue. God not only healed him but enabled him to become a healer of others. His faith has grown and with God’s love has transformed him from a veteran disabled with post-traumatic stress syndrome to someone who can lead others to Christ’s healing power.

I wonder if that faith-filled boy from the YMCA over 30 years ago has any idea. Maybe he knew then that he could tell a mulberry tree “Be uprooted and planted in the sea.”

Another story. What does it take to eat, sleep and breathe commitment to peace with justice in a situation which, to all rational observers, is “obviously hopeless”, a situation in which one’s own entire nation is in the grip of a vicious dictatorship, threatened with violent rebels and seemingly “inevitably” headed for a blood bath?

It takes a living relationship with Someone who is always strong, always tells the truth, always offers love while not mincing words when it comes to denouncing oppression, with Someone who is committed to the best interest of all humanity completely and forever. A living relationship, that is, with God. In the storms this country in question experienced, there was no other anchor, no other compass, no other boat or captain who could even come close.

I think we need Steven Spielberg to make a movie out of this experience to help people in this country understand how huge this is, and God knows we need to learn and remember good news stories. This isn’t just conventional good news, it’s The Good News capital “G” capital “N”, faith in the hearts of hundreds of thousands becoming a lived reality on the ground which transformed a desperate and disastrous situation profoundly.

Let me quote the man who a week from today will be preaching at Trinity Cathedral in Trenton and thereafter leading the Diocese of New Jersey’s Clergy Retreat, the Rt. Rev. Desmond Tutu, retired Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, and winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.

“Elections are usually just secular political events in most parts of the world. Our elections [in 1994] turned out to be a spiritual, even a religious experience. We won’t so quickly forget the images of those long queues snaking their way slowly into the polling booths. People waited a very long time. John Allen, my media secretary, said there was a new status symbol at the time in South Africa. Someone would say, 'I stood for two hours before I could vote!’ and someone else would say, ‘Oh, that’s nothing – I waited four hours...’ There was chaos in many places, not enough ballot papers or ink or whatever. It was a catastrophe about to take place. It never did. After I had cast my vote, having waited all of sixty-two years to do so for the first time, I toured some of the voting stations. The people had come out in droves and they looked so utterly vulnerable. It would have taken just two or three people with AK-47s to sow the most awful mayhem. It did not happen. What took place can only be described as a miracle. People stood in those long lines, people of all races in South Africa that had known separation and apartheid for so long – black and white, colored and Indian, farmer, laborer, educated, unschooled, poor, rich – they stood in those lines and the scales fell from their eyes. South Africans made an earth-shattering discovery – hey, we are all fellow South Africans. We are compatriots. People shared newspapers, picnic lunches, stories – and they were human together and that they actually seemed to want much the same things – a nice house in a secure safe neighborhood, a steady job, good schools for the children, and, yes, skin color and race were indeed thoroughly irrelevant.

...”Yes, our first election turned out to be a deeply spiritual event, a religious experience, a transfiguration experience, a mountaintop experience. We had won a spectacular victory over injustice, oppression and evil.”

Of course, South Africa still has major problems, including poverty, unemployment and the A.I.D.S. epidemic. Maybe millions of people – in South Africa and here and elsewhere as well – living their faith can, by the grace of God, help create more miracles.

The third person I’d like to mention is not famous. He’s just a guy who did a job, strengthened by his faith in a way that significantly changed his approach to his job and how he related to others and the country he was working in, a country filled with violence and in which miracles seem in very short supply. It’s at times like that when faith is most needed and the risks that living by faith sometimes involves seem most obvious – but those who live by faith weigh them against the risks of not living by faith.

This person is a retired Major in the US Army with 20 years of service in the infantry who has matter-of-factly told me he was, at retirement, an expert in every weapons system the infantry had. Now he’s a civilian, who worked ardently for the safety and security of people he had never met before. He made a decision: not to carry any weapon on his person.

In Baghdad. As an American, supervising the construction of barracks for the new Iraqi Army.

Yes, he did have guards, so no, he’s not crazy, and yes, he designed the security plan for his company – a good one, too. But lots of civilians have guards and still are dripping with personal weapons. Steve Skinner just decided he wasn’t going to do things that way. That being a Christian for him in that place this year was all about peace and faith. He has great respect for our soldiers there who are doing their best in incredibly difficult circumstances, but decided that he personally was called to walk a different path.

He’ll be reflecting on his experiences as one participant in tomorrow evening’s Forum in the Bolmer Room, and also with the Men’s Spiritual Growth Group on October 13.

And he’d probably be embarrassed to hear himself mentioned in a sermon, but my point is this: we don’t learn about faith just from famous people. Desmond Tutu’s faith would not have carried the day in South Africa if there weren’t millions of others willing to make a leap of faith too. Nigel Mumford would be a different man today without the faith of that kid in the YMCA.

And sometimes, we can learn about faith from someone in the next pew or from ourselves. Because it’s all about all of us being invited by God to have a living relationship with the living God, who aims to transform our lives and through us the lives of others as part of the beginning of the transfiguration of the world.

The “weight room” to work out in and get stronger is right here – and wherever we go. If we, like the apostles, are willing to ask our faith to be increased, our divine “coach” is willing to work with us, anytime, any place.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church