Text: Luke 17:5-10

“Increase our faith”

• The cry of the disciples is our cry
• We earnestly desire to have faith
  • People are embarrassed to admit they have doubts
  • People decline to come to church until they have it sorted in their heads
  • Evangelical Mega-Churches and Traditionalist Shrines stifle questions and prevent debate because they are afraid to ask serious questions about Scripture, about morality, about sexuality, about the Church
    • Almost as though their faith wasn’t strong enough to be tested…
    • Faith is a gift from God,
    • Faith is a response to God, and it is not the only response available
    • Faith does not demand a blind unthinking response to what I, or the Church, or the Scriptures place before you.
    • Faith does not ask you to leave your brains at the door of this Church
    • Rather, you are called to ponder deeply these Scriptures, these Creeds, these teachings and to ask serious questions about them.
    • Serious Questions:
      • What is this writing? What genre or style
        • The Psalms were of a different purpose to the Histories or the Law, or the Pastoral Epistles
• What is it’s context?
  • Who was it written for and from whom?
  • What was the writer trying to prove?
• What was the culture of the time?
  • And how is our culture different?
    • Gender
    • Slavery
    • Geo-politics
• What is God trying to say to us through this writing?
• It is a long running joke of mine that I gave up theology about two weeks into my degree at Mirfield
  • And yet each time we enter into this sacred space…
  • Each time we partake of the sacraments
  • Each time we share prayer or fellowship
  • Each time we serve one another
  • Each time we open our hearts to the Scriptures
  • …we are doing theology
  • We are “speaking of God”
  • Theology is not some esoteric activity restricted to the ordained or those who aspire to holy orders
  • But rather theology is our work – all of us are theologians, all of us have a contribution to that dialogue with God.

• How should we increase our faith then?
  • Through engagement with Scripture
  • Through Prayer
    • I have been asked to consider restarting Sunday evening services with regular benediction of the blessed sacrament
• Through the sacramental life, lived together as a community
• Through pilgrimage and devotion.
• Do this, my friends, and God will work powerfully through you.

Amen