Pentecost 17C - "Doing Faith"

"Doing Faith"

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 and Saint Luke 17:5–10

On Thursday, April 30, 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City George Washington was sworn in as the first President of the United States.  As he took the oath of office, he placed his hand on a King James Version of Bible beginning what many believe is a noble tradition that is prescribed not only in custom but in law.

Custom yes. Law no. And even the custom didn’t last very long.

The website of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies lists no Bibles being used during the swearing-in ceremonies of several presidents who followed Washington, including John Adams, (1797 causing the custom to cease after only eight years) Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Quincy Adams.1

In John Quincy Adams case “the sixth president of the United States, asked not to be sworn in with a bible even though he was at the time the vice president of the American Bible Society.  He argued that the Bible was too holy to stand in as a prop for political use.”2  Would that were still the case.

In fact, Fortune Magazine reported in December 2024 While the book industry as a whole is flat so far this year, sales of Bibles are red-hot.  

A series of anxiety-inducing events, from the election to inflation to international conflict, have driven more and more people to buy the book that is at the center of Christianity. Many of those buyers are first-timers. One publisher of Bibles told the Wall Street Journal it has seen a surge of interest from Generation Z and younger Americans.3

This sudden surge in sales even inspired a song by country singer Walker Hayes, called “Bible Sales are Up.”

Bible sales are up People are searchin'

Lord I bet your ears are burnin' People are turnin' to turnin' His pages

Tired of lookin' for hope in hopeless places.

This American dream is more like a nightmare

We all agree we all feel alone While we're all looking down at our phones

But statistics have shown Bible sales are up!

As the editors of the news magazine The Week noted. “In or hyper-partisan era, each side portrays the other as not merely misguided but out to destroy our country. To some it’s just a ‘partisan game,’ but ‘disturbed listeners are less capable of separating rhetoric from reality.”4

So we have extremely mostly men, one of whom opened fire on “a Michigan church and killed four people while setting it ablaze long harbored hatred toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to longtime friends, and told a stranger who showed up at his door days before that attack that Mormons were the “antichrist.”5

Or the man behind the terror attack at a Synagogue in Manchester, England as worshippers gathered to celebrate Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.

We may wonder as we watch armed, masked men, some with weapons marching along the Magnificent Mile looking for someone, anyone, who might have crossed the boarder illegally.  I can’t imagine they really thought they would catch one of their suspects coming out of the Louis Vuitton store on Michigan Avenue.  

Bombers, shooters, masked men with guns, all make us want to cry out with the often overlooked and seldom read prophet: “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?"6

We live in a time when, the late Dr. Walter Bruggemann was quoted as saying, “Conservatives fear when they see their familiar, tried and true world they’ve known and loved crumbling around them – and progressives fear that the world they dream of will never become reality.”7  And so some cry out how long must we wait until things go back to way they used to be while other cry out wondering if their dream for a better, more just, more loving, world will ever come true?

The prophet Habekkuk describes a “situation of exile and estrangement where there is simply no reasonable or rational expectation for ... restoration.  Yet there is still the affirmation that “God is so much greater than our human hopes or expectations.”8

“How long shall I cry,” laments the prophet in the midst of the mess of his world. And the Almighty give a vision of what shall be.  It won’t come today. It may not come tomorrow but it will come.  There will be time when the vision of the proud and boastful will fail and fail miserably.  As one modern paraphrase puts it: “Wicked men trust themselves alone .. and fail; but the righteous man trusts in me and lives!”9  Or in the translation we Lutherans might prefer, “the righteous shall live by faith.”10

And Jesus tells us that our faith doesn’t have to be huge.  It doesn’t have to be the biggest faith in the whole known world of faithfulness.  It can be as small as ... well ... a mustard seed.  (Here’s a jar full of them.  From the back of this grand church, you might barely be able to see the jar and if I held a single seed up you certainly would be able to see it.)

The mustard seed and the mulberry tree ... were well known and understood by the disciples.  Although the mustard seed is minuscule it grows into something gigantic. The mulberry tree’s extraordinary deep root system and hard wood, {makes} it nearly impossible to uproot.11

Jesus’ listeners also know, like we do, that mustard seeds do not grow into something gigantic overnight.  We know, they knew, that by sure will-power mulberry trees don’t just move from here to there.  Things take time and takes faith.

As Dr. Fred B. Craddock once said.

Most of us will not this week christen a ship, write a book, win a war, dine with the queen, or convert a nation, or be burned at the stake.  More likely this week will present a chance to give a cup of cold water, write a note, visit a nursing home ... teach a Sunday school class, tell a child a story, and feed the neighbor's cat.12

It’s the mustard seedy things that churches do that witness to the world of what a life of faith can mean. 

It means that we slavishly follow Jesus.  We slavishly follow Jesus the way we are slavishly following the Cubs after, maybe not standing on the ramparts but at least sitting in the stands or at home, waiting.  It means we slavishly follow Jesus the way Taylor Swift’s fans are staying up at all hours, waiting in line to be a part of the release of her latest album.  

It’s devoting ourselves to a purpose or project because as one friend wrote in his acknowledgements for his doctoral dissertation his advisor told him, “anything less than a Ph.D. was a waste of my time.” 13

What we have certainly discovered that following anyone, or any idea, that is less than Jesus, does not speak of Jesus, is a waste of our time.

So like Habakkuk we man the ramparts and watch.  Like the disciples we plant our mustard seeds or chop away at the obstacles in our midst and wait trusting in the age old promise: “For there is still a vision for the appointed time... If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.”14

Until then will live in faith following Jesus inspired by his words and living out the words of Stephen Sondheim in Leonard Bernsteins Candide. “We'll do the best we know. We'll build our house and chop our wood. And make our garden grow... And make our garden grow.”

________________

1. Rob Boston, “Swear to God - or Not: Presidents Have a Habit of Swearing the Oath of Office on Bibles, but It Isn’t Required,” Americans United, April 29, 2025, https://www.au.org/the-latest/church-and-state/articles/swear-to-god-or-not-presidents-have-a/.

2. Scott Black Johnston, “Answers.” Sermon preached at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. September 28, 2025

3. Chris Morris, “Bible Sales Soar as Anxieties Spike,” Yahoo! Finance, December 2, 2024, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bible-sales-soar-anxieties-spike-162544117.html.

4. “Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Killer Charged with Murder...”  The Week. Vol. 25, Issue 11. p.4

5. Isabella Volmert, Mark Vancleave, and Ed White, “Friends of the Michigan Church Shooting Suspect Say He Long Carried Hatred toward Mormon Faith,” AP News, October 1, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/michigan-church-shooting-fire-mormon-7eb2c20baf1e1a1e069dc0160d8cdd6d.

6. Habbakuk 1:2. (NRSVUE) [NRSVUE=The New Revised Standard Version Updated edition.

7. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say October 5? 17th after Pentecost / World Communion,” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, January 1, 2025, https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

8. Dan R. Dick, “Habakkuk 1:1-4 & 2:-14. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year C, P 35, no. 3 (Louisville: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2025): 358–60.

9. Habakkuk 2:4. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. [(Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971)]

10. Habakkuk 2:4. (RSV) (RSV=The Revised Standard Version)

11. Nancy Lynn Westfield, “Luke 17:5-10.& Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year C, 3 (Louisville: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2025): 372–73.

12. Fred B Craddock, Luke: Interpretation Bible Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1990), 192.

13. Tyler Fortman, “A Longitudinal Study of the Stability of Hope in Late Adolescence ” (dissertation, 2011), v.

14. Habakkuk 2:4. (NRSVue)