The Righteous Shall Live by Faith

Text: Luke 17:1-10

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Among the Jews, who first received the Torah from God on Mount Sinai, there was often a question of how best to explain the Law of God. How does one prioritize passages? How could someone possibly organize it, distill it, explain it, when there was so much contained in those sacred pages? This was a discussion among the scholars and experts in the Scriptures. Finally, one rabbi said that King David in the Psalms had condensed all 613 commandments of God to eleven. Then the prophet Isaiah came and was able to fold them all into six. Then came the prophet Micah, who put them all under three commandments. Isaiah later would speak again and condense everything into two words. But, this scholar stated, it was the prophet Habakkuk who was able to distill all the Torah into one sentence, a sentence we have proclaimed to us this morning: “The righteous shall live by his faith.”

            This must be the key we use to understand all that our Lord teaches us, both in the Old Testament Torah and the Prophets, and in the New Testament writings of the Apostles and Evangelists. This is true of our reading today in the gospel of Luke as well. At first glance it would appear that we have a handful of different lessons about various and scattered topics: the nature of temptation in our lives in this world, not being the source of corrupting someone’s faith, knowing our proper place in the kingdom of God, forgiving others, mulberry trees, and throwing things into great bodies of water.

            But look at the very center of our text for today. In the very middle of all these challenging teachings, Jesus’ disciples can’t help but exclaim, “Increase our faith!” They know how much He’s revealing to them in sheer quantity. They also know how all the teachings He’s giving run contrary to our fallen human nature.    

            For we do not wish to forgive fully and freely. Jesus says, “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him,” and we immediately start to come up with “what if” scenarios. We start to look for reasons to not forgive someone who repeatedly sins against us. It could be fear that they’ll keep on doing it over and over. It could be anger that they’ve done something against us, and more than once. It could be that we want to maintain some sort of leverage or way to compare ourselves to them—a sort of backdoor self-righteousness that remembers the wrongs done to us but is a little more forgetful of the seventy times seven wrongs that we’ve done to others.

            Nor do we want to regard those of little esteem to be more important than us. “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin,” Jesus says. And we reply with “Whoa, that’s way too harsh.” Because we don’t like thinking of other people as the main characters in our stories. We don’t want to have to watch how we walk and talk and act around them, those little people, those unimportant ones, those who we want to stick all sorts of labels on in order to make them seem less—less important, less worthy, less valuable. “Other people should be mindful of me!” is what our fallen flesh cries out.

            Nor do we want to serve, at least not without some sort of recognition. But Jesus brings up how silly it would be for a servant whose job is to prepare supper and serve the master of house to want praise and applause for simply doing what was their job. Instead, Jesus says, “When you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have simply done what was our duty,’” and immediately our self-focused nature cringes.

            So the disciples, who know that Jesus is teaching heavenly wisdom, and who know well the desires and weaknesses of fallen human nature, cry out, “Increase our faith! Help us to believe that what you say is right and best for us! Help us to trust you enough to walk in this truth!” And we do too. We know that we need Jesus’ light and guidance and strength to lay down those impulses of our Old Adam and to walk in the challenging ways He sets before us. We know that we need to trust Him more, trust Him enough to believe that what He says really is for our good. It may not be in those exact words, but we ask Jesus for this every week. Kyrie eleison; Lord, have mercy. Hosanna in the highest. Lordyou’re your mercy, hear our prayer.

            “The righteous shall live by faith.” Yes and amen. We do believe that we receive forgiveness, grace, mercy, God’s favor, even eternal life through faith. Faith is the open hand that receives all that God has promised to us in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. We know this. It’s repeated to us from Scripture time and time again, especially this season of the Church year. But we also learn from Jesus that we live by our faith, that is, we live in this world by our faith. It shapes our words and thoughts and behaviors. The trust that we have in Jesus’ life and sacrifice shows us how we live our lives in this world. We learn where we fit in this kingdom of God, as servants who serve our Lord by serving one another. We learn to be mindful of the little ones—yes, our children who are still being formed in life and faith—and also those who would otherwise be labeled as small, unimportant, unworthy, not as valuable as someone else. We’re shown by Jesus how important it is that we not become a stumbling block to them as they walk in faith too. We learn, after we have done what we are to do in our callings as our Lord’s servants, to not try to leverage those good works for extra reward, but to say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what is our duty.” We learn to forgive others who sin against us, even as we have been forgiven, even as we pray to be able to do every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer.

            It is faith that makes this possible. We can forgive because we have been fully forgiven in Christ, we’re free from all that and from our fallen nature, so we don’t have to secretly hold on to someone else’s sins because God does not hold on to ours. We learn not to hold up our servant-works for reward, because the reward is already completely won and put into our hands in Baptism, in the body and blood of Jesus given to you at the Communion rail. We learn to put others, even little ones the world would count as unimportant—children, the sick, the weak, the unborn, the broken, the lost causes, the outsiders—ahead of ourselves because of the faith that holds on to the truth that Jesus already put us first, even before Himself, when He gave Himself as a sacrifice for us.

            Increase our faith, Lord. And so He does. He speaks His forgiving Word. He reminds you of your Baptism. He gives you Himself in His Holy Supper to strengthen and keep you in the true faith in body and soul to life everlasting. He hears your prayer and He grants it. He gives you faith to walk in, to live in, to grow in, to be resurrected in. In the name of Jesus, who increases our faith, Amen.