Increase our Faith
Luke 17:5–10: “Increase Our Faith”
Each of the four Gospels highlights a different aspect of the Christian journey. Matthew’s Gospel asks: “How do I face change?” Mark’s Gospel answers the question: “How do I move through suffering?” John’s Gospel proclaims the joy of union with God, when we can say with Christ, “The Father and I are one.” Luke-Acts offers a manual for how we mature in loving service.
Luke 17:5–10 is a vivid metaphor of maturing in loving service. A servant ploughs the field, tends the sheep, and then comes inside to serve at the table. Ploughing, shepherding, and table service epitomise how the early church understood the essence of Christian ministry as humble, self-giving love expressed in practical service.
The servanthood is not that of a reluctant slave oppressed and coerced into work. The image is service not slavery. When we experience the joy of union, of being loved moment by moment by the divine lover, and when we are caught up in the breath of God’s love our response is to fall on our knees and ask how we may be of service so that others might experience the depth of this joy, this love, this union with the divine.
A similar analogy might be found in any vocation of service. Once a doctor has finished a consultation with one patient, he or she does not ask to be congratulated; instead, they wash their hands and welcome the next patient. A teacher finishes teaching a grade 8 class mathematics; he or she doesn’t expect rest or medal but prepares the classroom to welcome the next cohort of students. Caring for family is the Gospel journey of maturing in loving service. Any caregiver who has lovingly prepared a meal and fed a dependent child does not ask to relax or for a reward; they continue the evening routine by bathing the child, readying them for bed and perhaps even telling them a bedtime story. The analogies here tell a story of continued care for another in self-sacrificing love when the false self or ego is subdued in any act of service.
The disciples cry out, “Increase our faith!” But Jesus gently redirects them. The issue is not the size of their faith; it is the focus of their lives. “Increase our faith” is an anxious prayer of those who have made the issue about themselves, their small, anxious selves. In focusing on their faith or the amount thereof they have lost sight of the broader mission: loving and serving God through loving and serving others. Faith matures when it flows outward in service, not when it spirals inward into self-concern. Here we are offered insight into the capriciousness of the ego, the false self, the small self; it will even use religious means to centre on self away from authentic love.
I find the Gospel lesson helpful; in moments when doubt or fear cause us to spiral inwards and focus on the small, individual self, a gentle invitation to turn outwards with love and the focus on light takes me back onto the road of loving service.
The “Scream” of Climate Anxiety
Edvard Munch, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Earlier this week, driving to work and listening to climate reports, I noticed school children waiting for the bus. I had what I might call an “Edvard Munch Scream moment”. I felt suddenly overwhelmed: What kind of world are these children preparing for? A world where education feels fragile; where governments flirt with authoritarianism; where climate change brings floods, droughts, and pandemics; where new gas and coal projects are approved even as ecosystems collapse.
Australia’s own National Climate Risk Assessment has laid out what is at stake: severe risks to defence and national security, very high risks to our food production and economy, and whole ecosystems – coral reefs, forests, river systems – showing signs of collapse. The Australia Institute warns that fossil fuel exports alone are fuelling global destruction, adding more emissions than nearly any other nation on earth.
Spiralling inwards and focusing on my existential dread, the horror of my complicity in damaging the earth and my fear for the future was paralysing and of little use to the world. The invitation to focus on the author of Faith, the Christ, and to spiral outwards in loving service to the type of world I want to live in helped me step out of Edvuard Munsch’s “Scream” and embrace the little faith, hope and love that I did have, even if it was very small, smaller than a mustard seed. Reading the Gospel hand in hand with Joanna Macy’s four step spiral empowered me out of the small, cramped self.
I find Joanna Macy’s wisdom deeply helpful. She describes a spiral of active hope that mirrors our gospel call: four movements that reconnect us to life and lead us outward in love. I share but one outline of Joanna Macy’s work in the hope that your curiosity might be stirred to explore her writings and wisdom further.
1. Coming from Gratitude
Macy says that we begin with gratitude. Sometimes when life is hard it is enough to be grateful for the breath in our lungs, for the beauty of dawn, for the kindness of a neighbour. Gratitude grounds us in what we love, and reminds us why we care. It steadies the heart and gives us resilience for the work ahead.
2. Honouring Our Pain for the World
From gratitude we move to grief. We name what is broken, the rising seas, burning forests, and unravelling climate systems. This is lament, a practice our Scriptures know well. As the reading from Lamentations models, to honour our pain is to tell the truth before God and one another. Shared grief breaks isolation and softens our hearts for compassion.
3. Seeing with New and Ancient Eyes
Gratitude and grief open us to a larger vision. We are invited to see, as Macy says, with new and ancient eyes remembering our kinship with all creation, and recognising that what happens to Earth happens to us. Indigenous wisdom, systems thinking, and our own biblical vision of shalom teach us that justice is ecological as well as social. This wider vision enlarges our belonging and calls us into deeper responsibility. We discover an ecological identity where we are a small part of the wider cosmos, not separate from creation.
4. Going Forth
Finally, we act. Going Forth means turning love into practical steps, however small. Each of us can ask: What is mine to do? Advocacy, community projects, daily choices, shared prayer all count, no act is wasted, faith can be smaller than a mustard seed and bring about transformation. The spiral continues, for each act of service brings us back to gratitude again.
In moments of dread when we cry out with the disciples, “Increase our faith,” Jesus reminds us that faith is not about magnitude but direction. Not inward into despair, but outward into love. Not paralysing self-focus, but humble service: ploughing the fields of justice, tending the sheep of God’s flock, serving at the table of community.
This is the path of Christian maturity. This is how faith grows. And this is how we, even in the face of the scream, live as people of faith, hope and love. Mary Oliver’s poem “Summer” can offer a structure for our meditation on spiralling outwards into love and service:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Joana Macy resources:Website: https://workthatreconnects.org/
Podcasts: https://www.soundstrue.com/a/resources/we-are-the-great-turning-podcast/ Books: https://www.joannamacy.net/main#books