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Sufficient Faith                            Luke 17: 5-6                              October 7, 2007

The other day, I was in my car, driving to Marlton, or Mount Holly or Mount Laurel – one of the seemingly endless list of towns in this part of New Jersey that begin with the letter “M” that I can’t for the life of me keep straight in my head – and when I was halfway there, I realized that my mind had sufficiently wandered so that I had to pull over to the side of the road for a moment and focus my thoughts.  I was literally going through the motions of driving without thinking – to the point that I nearly forgot where I was.

Actually, that happens to me quite frequently.  When I’m driving in my familiar car on a familiar road, muscle memory sort of takes over.  I don’t actually think about changing lanes or following the speed limit or using my turn signals.  All of those things happen without my having to focus on them and so my mind heads off in one direction or another – to the meeting I will be having that evening or to the conversation I just had or to the third inning of the ballgame the night before.

Driving, you see, is so familiar, so comfortable, that I find that I can just “go through the motions.”

I should tell you, by the way, that this attitude toward driving makes Kris crazy.  “Where are you?” she often asks when we’re together in the car and I’m behind the wheel.  “You need to be in the left lane to make that turn.  Pay attention.  Please, pay attention.”

Actually, that is really good advice.  Good advice for a driver, and good advice for us this morning as well.  Let me tell you what I mean.

In a few moments, as you can see, we will gather around this table and share in a celebration of Holy Communion. 

Most of us have participated in Communion Services hundreds of times during our lives.  And, like anything else we do over and over again, my guess is that most of us share in this holy meal without giving it much thought. 

The words of institution are familiar:  “Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night he was betrayed, took bread…take, eat, this is my body…in the same way, after supper our Lord Jesus Christ took the cup…drink from this all of you… this is my blood…do this…in remembrance of me.”  We can recite them from memory.

So, if we’re not careful, the significance of Communion, the power of Communion, the mystery of Communion and the extent to which Communion lifts us into the presence of Holiness will be lost.  Lost, as we go through the motions and allow our minds to wander.

I’d like to suggest that we not allow that to happen today.  Rather, I’d like to propose that we follow the good advice that Kris often gives me when I’m behind the wheel: “Pay attention.  Please, pay attention.”

After all, my friends, something very special is about to happen, right here in our Sanctuary.  And it would be a shame if we missed it.

World Communion – actually, I prefer the old term, Worldwide Communion – is a reminder to us that we gather on this first Sunday in October along with tens of thousands of Christians from all over the world, laying aside all of the things that divide us, and celebrate the single thing that unites us all into the Body of Christ on Earth – our faith that Christ lived, Christ died, Christ rose again and that we share in the incredible power of that world-changing event through the eating of bread and the drinking of wine.  A meal that in a mysterious, magnificent way, through the power of the Holy Spirit, brings Christ into our midst in a way that happens only when we gather here and open ourselves to this matchless grace.

This feast is the ultimate expression of our common faith.  As the words of institution so beautifully express it, it is a proclamation of the Lord’s death, until he comes.

Powerful stuff. 

To get a sense of how powerful this faith can be, listen again to Jesus’ response to his disciples’ request for him to “increase our faith.” 

“If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,” Jesus tells them, “you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

Or, to put it a slightly different way, “If you have even a tiny bit of faith, you can accomplish great things.”

So often, I think, we worry that our faith may not be enough.  We struggle with our shortcomings and insufficiencies and end up with a faith that is weak and timid – nothing at all like the faith that Paul reveals when he writes to Timothy, in our Epistle Lesson for this morning.  “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice,” Paul writes, “but rather a spirit of power…”

Author and professor Walter Wink puts it well: “faith is not quantitative,” he says, “but qualitative. It is not a matter of how much you have, but of having any at all. Even the slightest amount can be overwhelmingly effective, because it is not faith in our own faith, but simply faith in God, faith that God is God, that God is able to act in the world. If we believe in God even just a little bit, it is enough.” 

“If,” Wink concludes, “we have even an inkling of trust in God and the brazenness to exercise it, that, says Jesus, will be enough to change the very face of reality.”

Brothers and sisters, look around you.  On your left and on your right sits a person of faith.  Try to feel the power of the collective faith that is in this Sanctuary at this moment.  We are not just one mustard seed, we are a whole room full of them.  And in a moment or two we will link this room full of mustard seeds together and gather around this table and call upon the power of God’s spirit to feed us and help us to unleash the collective power of that incredible, life-affirming, welcoming faith.

And as if that wasn’t enough, on this World Communion Sunday we do that with the knowledge that we are doing this special thing today in concert with people of faith around the world.

Church doesn’t get any better than that.

                                                                AMEN