If I Only Had the Faith

10-6-19"If I Only Had the Faith”GFUMC
I am a big baseball fan – in particular, an Atlanta Braves baseball fan! It’s a good year to be a Braves fan. This coming Thursday, we will play the first game of the playoffs against the St. Louis Cardinals. Hopefully, this will be the year for the Braves!
When you go to see a Braves game, you will notice that at different times throughout the game, there is a loud boom, boom, boom, and the Braves war-chant comes over the speakers, and everyone starts doing the tomahawk chop and going, “Ah…” well – you’d just have to hear it. Ask me the next time you see me and I’ll sing it for you…
Why do something so crazy? Because we need a little extra boost!! Maybe we are behind – need to “rally.” So we chop and sing. Sound silly? Well – baseball can be a silly game, and teams and fans will do some weird things to rally!
In June of 2000, a couple of video board operators for the Los Angeles Angels baseball team decided that their team needed some extra motivation. They were playing the San Francisco Giants and they were behind. So the guys on the video board threw up a video clip on the stadium’s giant video screen—a video clip from the movie “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.” It featured a few seconds of Ace's monkey, jumping up and down and screeching and acting, well . . . like a monkey. Superimposed over the clip were the words, “Rally Monkey.” The fans went wild for the rally monkey. They cheered and shouted and acted like monkeys themselves and got their energy back up.
And guess what? The Los Angeles Angels came from behind to win the game. Hey – whatever works…
So do followers of Jesus every need to “rally?” It seems like that’s what they are asking Jesus in the Gospel lesson for this week in Luke 17: 5-10…
5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
7 “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8 Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9 Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10 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!’” (Luke 17: 5-10 NRSV)
In the verses prior to this passage, Jesus had asked the disciples to do two really important, difficult things: (1) He asked them not to be a stumbling block to others. (vv. 1-2) (2) He asked them to forgive those who sin against them. (vv. 3-4)
Really important…and really difficult. I say from experience. Don’t cause someone else to stumble? I know I’ve done things that I would not want someone see and use as an example for their behavior. I certainly don’t want to make someone else stumble! And to forgive…when someone has hurt you really badly… That may be the hardest thing of all! Prompting us to say something like, “Lord, increase our faith. We’re going to need to rally here if you expect us to do this!!”
Jesus said (loosely translated), “You don’t need a tomahawk chop or a rally monkey. You don’t even need more faith. You just need to take the faith you have, and put it to work. Meet me at “home plate” this Sunday, and we’ll talk about it some more.

Pastor Sam