Just Faith (Luke 17 • HAB. 1)

“Yellow Mustard” © Astrid Dao

This was the final sermon I preached at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN, on October 5 2025. As my last service with Gethsemane, this service also included my release from call. The full livestream of the service may be viewed here.  
Scripture texts:  
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4 
​Luke 17:1-5

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Good morning. I have spent much of this week with one question in mind which is this: how the heck do you preach one last sermon? Do I try to encapsulate every word of counsel or encouragement I’ve ever offered, or summarize all that I hope and pray for you as you continue to bloom and become long after I’m gone. I considered doing one more deep-dive word nerd study just for funsies. I also considered trying out a Greatest Hits type sermon where I lay out one more time all the things you’ve heard me preach during our two years together. That would be fun, right!?! Rattling off sermon points like one of those hit mash-up songs from a decade ago — a decade ago!?! — a decade ago. I’m aging myself, I know. 

But I ended up doing what I always try to do, which was to listen for Spirit’s whisper through the cacophony of All the Things happening in and around me and let me tell you what a cacophony it has been and remains: from prepping a house for sale to donating bags and bags of our life to thrift stores, to attending one last Bishop’s Theological Conference with pastors John and Lydia and other clergy from our Synod, to attending a vigil in Appleton in solidarity with and for the protection of our immigrant siblings, to my last rehearsal ever with my beloved Simple Gifts family (one of whom is playing violin today — thank you so much, Nate), to commending our beloved Wes Lindstrom’s life to God’s eternal rest and Bishop Yeheil Curry to his new call as our Churchwide presiding bishop, this week has been loud.

And Spirit is often too quiet to hear until I hunker down and feel for Her breath, but as I did, the Word She gave me to give to you, to us, on this brutiful day, is as simple and obvious as it is profound. Faith. Just: Faith. 

Of course, there is no “just” to Faith. That word alone feels at once full to overflowing with infinite meaning and possibility, and conversely, emptied, drained, utterly flattened by overuse, misuse, and abuse. Which is unfortunate for us Lutherans who confess as our most fundamental identity that We are God’s Alone by Faith Alone through Grace Alone, by nothing but the power of Christ Alone, lest any of us should boast.

And what a bold and brave proclamation that is, especially at a time when Faith is being weaponized as both shield and sword against our most vulnerable neighbors — immigrants, Trans folks, the poor, homeless, the sick, the starved, occupied, exploited, bombed, and slaughtered, all across the world —with so-called faith underpinning it all. 

And so, given that today’s Gospel revolves around this messy word Faith and its unmatched power in the lives of the beloved, I want us to dwell not on what Faith is but what Jesus tells us true Faith Does. Because it’s not any of that.

In fact, what Jesus begins with in today’s gospel is a weird and uncomfortable promise to his disciples: “The way before you will not be clear. There will at various turns be boulders to climb, chasms to cross, waters to part, storms to calm, and always, always, roots at your feet threatening to twist your ankles and break your hearts. You live in time and space. Here, the powers & principalities are always present, always plotting, through circumstances ever-evolving, to trip and entrap us in sin.” 

And although we humans are often tempted to pray, “Lord come quickly, take us home,” Jesus’s prayer for us has only ever been the opposite: Nowhere is this truth more clear than in John 17 when, just after he’s promised his disciples the peace they will need to endure the persecution, hatred, and suffering that awaits them, and just before Judas betrays him to the empire, he lifts these words the Father:  “I am not asking you to take them out of this world, but protect them from the evil one.” Which is to say, beloved, we do not belong to this world, but so long as Spirit breath is in us, we do belong in it.

So. "What are we to do with this one wild and precious life?"  

Well for starters, Jesus says, don’t go throwing stones or laying traps for others to fall into, and don’t be party to the ruin of “these little ones.” Who, by the way, according to the Greek are not just little children, but all those who are dismissed, diminished, and otherwise made small by systems, circumstances, status, or station. These little ones are to be protected above all else. Those who do cause such ruin would be better off drowned at the bottom of the sea. Better than what? I don’t know and I don’t need to ask. All I need to know is this is the faith foundation Jesus lays: It is a basic morality, a general ethic of life, right? This is where we start: Do no harm.

As Jesus goes on to tell his disciples exactly what Faith does with skin on, it is all about — you guessed it —  Beloved Community. 

At this week’s Bishop’s Theological Conference, we got to sit at the feet of Pastor Leila Ortiz, former bishop of the Metro D.C. synod. And she described this baptismal community Jesus calls us into as an estuary or a bog — the muddy, smelly, weird in-between place where fresh river waters run into the salty ocean: Where neither river nor ocean is entirely itself but is redefined and reshaped by its relationship to the other; Where the two come together to create a whole new and unique ecosystem, birthed of the in-between, and so become the only place on earth where certain lifeforms can live and thrive — like pink dolphins. 

Which is to say, the community Christ imagined, established, and modeled for us is not all harmony among a homogenous body of like-minded folk. It’s the nitty gritty mess and mud of real life with real people with the power to both hold us together when we’re broken and shred our very last nerve to pieces. A community made of people who both sin and serve each other, where we hurt and heal, comfort and confront one another, where we dive into difficult conversations, and confess and repent and forgive one another, over and over and over — seven times in a day when it comes to that, Jesus says. 

So of course — of course — the disciples reaction is to cry out in chorus, “Lord increase our faith!” the way parents cry out “Lord increase my patience” when their three year old asks “Why” for the 300th time in as many seconds. Right? And as every parent knows, that’s not a great question to ask because God will provide, not by magic, but with more opportunities to practice patience, usually by trying it. Right? Be careful what you wish for. 

Similarly, Jesus’s irritated response — as indicated by the Greek syntax — tells us theirs is again precisely the wrong question to ask. 

By responding with exaggerated imagery of mustard seeds producing earth-shaking disruptions, Jesus tells them they don’t need more faith. They’re asking for quantity when Jesus is talking about kind and quality, saying they already have all the faith they need to uproot trees and replant them in the sea, so the question is, “what kind of trees will they choose to uproot? And which will they plant?” How will they practice faith?

Now, what Jesus says next is arguably the most important, albeit confusing, portion of this text, but its slave-master imagery can also be deeply problematic to us modern readers so we have to be careful. 

Because, as Dr. Lois Malcolm underscores, “a slave, in ancient times, was not only a socioeconomic entity, but also one who was wholly devoted to another” — which we see when Simeon enslaves himself to God in Luke 2, in Jesus’s warning in Luke 16 that you cannot serve both God and Money and so much choose whose slave you’ll be, and even in Paul’s appeal to the Galatians that they who’ve been liberated in Christ ought never again submit to the yoke of slavery but instead enslave themselves to one another in love. That’s the kind of enslavement Jesus is talking about.

Yet even within that ancient context, what Jesus says next neither defends nor legitimizes those socio-economic and political systems but, in fact, as always, calls us to reverse them.

His question in verse 7 — “Which of you who owns a slave will invite them to take their place at your table’” — is not rhetorical or figurative. Grammatically, this phrase, “Who will” isn’t about who may or can do a thing; anyone who owns something could or might do something with it. What He is asking is which of them — which of us — will take the concrete steps needed to transform and revolutionize our collective relationship so that the least are made greatest, the last are first, so that kings become servants, and servants become kin until everyone gathered at the table is family? Which of you, he asks, will do this.

And then, to put an exclamation on it, Jesus asks which of them would dare expect thanks or praise for doing this thing, which is no more or less than they are obliged to do as faithful servants in the Kin-dom of God come to earth. 

To quote Rev. Francisco J. Garcia, “Everything in this passage — even the troubling verses…that employ the master-slave motif to speak of the requirements of discipleship — as well as the overall tenor of Luke’s whole gospel, points to faith as a praxis, an ongoing spiral-like process of reflection, action, and grace [for and with each other] that only ‘increases’ as the process itself unfolds and expands in breadth and depth.”

At the radical center of this passage — that is, the the root and seed — is this: Faith cannot be measured or portioned, only cultivated and practiced; It cannot be earned or obtained, only, as Rev. Garcia writes, “felt and experienced within “the [kinship of the Beloved Community].” And this kinship, according to Jesus and the gospel articulated in Luke and Acts, “prioritizes the poor and the marginalized, critiques the rich and their wealth, and calls for a cooperative, egalitarian, and even utopian re-ordering of society.” The gospel of Christ commands a faith that wholly reverses the way things are, because “all our liberation is bound up with each other, none of us is free until [What?:] All of us are free, so we gotta get free together.” This is what faith does: It liberates.

The way Jesus’ brother James put it, faith is a living, breathing thing, and what we do in solidarity with the hungry, naked, poor, and needy is its flesh and blood. Without this breath and blood, it is dead.

Which brings us all the way back to where we began, to Jesus showing us what faith does to and in community: Injustice in our world is inevitable; our participation is not. Disagreement is unavoidable; disdain for one another is not. Sin is certain; resistance, repentance, repair, and forgiveness are not: They are deliberate acts of mutual love and submission we offer each other for the sake of the whole Body; and this, not in service not to ourselves but to the gospel of grace. We do this with confidence in their power to uproot and cast into the sea trees of systematic oppression, interpersonal resentment, brokenness, strife, and all manner of dis-ease, until radical love transforms and transfigures us, and “all is made well, and all is made well, and all manner of thing is made well.”

This is the muck and mud and miracle of faith, the Beloved Community to which you are called and the sacred mess in which you belong.

You are the baptismal bog, the marsh, the estuary where new life swarms and swims like pink dolphins, not because you are all the same or perfect or even alike, but because you are not.

May you, Gethsemane, Remember this baptism,
May you grow new forms of belonging,
May you never forsake this Beloved Community, but remain devoted to each other in mutual love.
To the Glory of God, by the power of Spirit, In the name of Christ, for the sake of His gospel,
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Amen. Amen. Thanks be to God, Amen.