Frankly, there are times when we get so aggravated with people or saddened by tragedies that we know exactly what we would do if we were God. 

However, since we are not God, we do not factor in the near-impossibility of reconciling the immense need for healing, for restoration, for giving a second chance, for making things right again—with human freedom. 

In our desire to play God, we would do away with human freedom to achieve our goal! 

I mention this because there are pictures which hit us so hard that we either change TV channel, turn to the next page of the newspaper, or risk being overwhelmed by what is stirred inside us. 

As believers, we wonder not so much what this nation or that nation should do, but why God allows these horrors to go on, apparently with no end in sight. 

However, if with the apostles we cry out “Increase our faith,” we discover a nexus that, too often, eludes us.  

Let us look at what prompted the first twelve to ask the Lord to increase their faith: He had just told them something that had left them speechless and bewildered: Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’ you should forgive him.” Luke 17:3-4 

We ought to ask God to increase our faith because with the amount of faith that we have in our hearts now, it is so hard for us to forgive—once—let alone seven times a day! 

Most other religions allow for revenge, for getting even, for retaliation. 

In many places in mission lands, barring miracles of God’s grace, missionaries might as well tear up those pages of the Gospel that deal with forgiveness.  

Even after so many centuries of exposure to Christianity in this country, we still hear a voice in our gut telling us what exactly we should do to those, for example, who commit unspeakable atrocities. 

Lord, increase our faith! As we repeat this prayer with a sincere heart, it should dawn on us that our misused freedom and our sins have caused pain and suffering to others, including innocent people.  

No human beings, however righteous and blameless they might consider themselves, should take the place of God. If thus far we have not done anything horrific and very harmful it must be attributed to God’s grace more than to our goodwill, which is itself a gift from God’s love for us. 

The redressing of the horrors and crimes affecting so many people, including innocent children, must flow from truly humble hearts which, painfully aware of their frailty, grant forgiveness and ask for forgiveness. 

Forgiveness requires faith the size of a mustard seed, according to Jesus’ standards. (Luke 17:5-10) 

However, because of our innate hubris, any wrong done to us is magnified and the hurts we cause to others are minimized or negated altogether.  

The faith we must ask the Lord to increase in us is the type designed to make us truly humble. 

As you can see, the Lord Jesus helps us reduce our hubris by offering us the extreme case of being his ideal servants.  

Even if we were the ideal, most responsible servants, we should consider ourselves unprofitable servants who have simply done what they were supposed to do. 

Thus, we must not look at the size of the wrong done to us but be viscerally troubled and distraught because our sins have offended the infinitude of God’s majesty.  

Then, our increased faith will tell us that we are always in need of God’s forgiveness and that forgiveness is conditioned and measured by our willingness to forgive others. (Matthew 6:12) 

Obviously, we are asking for a different type of faith unlike the easy, cheap, dime-a-dozen, convenient, warm feeling that we have passed as faith so far! 

There is nothing magic about this new type of faith. It requires a response that replaces our natural hubris with genuine humility and disposes us to be willing to do anything God asks of us. 

Hence, today, during Holy Communion with this mercy-driven God of ours, we shall ask him to increase our faith. We shall toss our old “magic” faith aside and ask him to replace it with this new type.  

A type that will enable us to work with his grace to silence the vengeful voice in our gut, to relinquish to him the right to retribution toward the ones who wronged us, and to hope, humbly, without pretenses, that his mercy will extend to us also—in all our wrongdoings.