[Sermon] Faith That Works Through Love

Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo

October 5, 2025 + Lectionary 27

Living Generously, Loving Boldy Week 1: Faith that Acts

Jesus reminds the disciples that even faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to move deep-rooted things. Faith, he teaches, is not about willpower or quantity, but about trust in the God whose power flows through us. Pastor Hector invites us to see faith not as something we possess, but as something that energizes love in action. When our faith is rooted in God, it becomes the channel through which grace, mercy, and healing reach a broken world. True faith acts—not by striving harder, but by allowing God’s love to work through us.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

Grace to you and peace from God—Abba, Father, Mother, Creator—and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

And we said, “Amen.”

I believe that we are living in times when we feel almost like the disciples, turning to Jesus and saying, “Lord, when I see everything around me—in our community, in my society, in my country, in the world—just increase my faith.”

Have you felt like that lately? Recently?

Yeah, things are going in ways that we are trying to figure out what faith means in our lives. And I think it’s hard, because sometimes faith is confused with our ability to believe, our capacity to believe, or simply the willpower that we have to believe something. We think that it’s something we just need to be intentional about—like, in that moment, I can say, “I have more faith right now.”

I say this because years ago I was in a conference, in a prayer—it was one of those prayer conferences with a congregation. And I’m going to share this with you not as a matter of criticism, but because it helps me in my discernment and reflection about what faith is.

I’ve shared this with some smaller groups here in the congregation. But we had these prayers, and everybody’s praying—intensely praying, praying fervently, and I would say faithfully. And there was this young man, about 30-some years old, the son of a pastor that I knew. He was lying on the floor, and he was surrounded by some people who were praying intensely, with faith. I mean, these were people who said, “I have a strong faith that you’re going to be healed.”

He had cancer. And the prayer went on and on—they were praying. The event ended, and a few weeks later, we learned that the young man died.

So the question is: did they have enough faith?

Did he have enough faith? Did the people praying not pray adequately?

Is God not fulfilling God’s promise?

Did they not know how to pray? Did they have enough faith?

I don’t think I can answer that question. But I think that I can see myself in situations like that, asking questions about—then, if faith doesn’t do anything, why bother? Why believe? Or should I be praying with the disciples, “Increase our faith”? How do we respond to that? How do we grow in our faith?

If a mustard seed of faith does not prevent things from happening in our lives—then what?

And the worst thing is that, after seeing this, we can feel that we are inadequate as Christians. Because, after all, if I believe that I have enough faith, but bad things still happen in my life, maybe I feel inadequate because I’m not a good Christian.

And I think that’s why this passage is sometimes interpreted in ways that lead us in that direction. Because sometimes we believe that what Jesus is saying is, “Just have more faith—use your willpower and just have more faith—and things are going to be good. Everything that you ask will be given. Everything that you need will be given to you.” But when it doesn’t happen…

What if the passage that we have in front of us is actually confronting us—as it confronted the disciples—with the impossibility of the demand, the nature of God’s power, and our tendency to seek validation?

The passage that we read today, verses 5–10, is actually part of a longer chapter that we need to read together to get a better sense of what Jesus is telling the disciples with these words. If you notice, in verses 1–4, Jesus is talking about forgiveness. “If a person offends you or sins against you seven times in a day,” guess what you need to do? What did Jesus say? When you’re offended, or when somebody sins against you, what do we need to do? Forgive, right?

Well, the disciples’ immediate response was, “Okay, Jesus—give us… increase our faith.” As if that was going to help them forgive. How many of us have asked God for faith, and we are still struggling—trying to forgive someone, or maybe to forgive ourselves?

I think that the message of this passage is more about faith—what faith is about—and about our identity as servants in a relationship with God, in Jesus. The Lord reorients them, and reorients us, in our understanding of faith: a faith that we cannot measure with any of the instruments that I brought; a faith that we cannot even describe.

As one of our young worshipers said, “It’s like we cannot even see it.” The disciples’ plea to “increase our faith” is a recognition of both the impossibility of relentless forgiveness, and the recognition that faith is a journey—it’s a process.

Jesus said, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed…” Faith enables God to work in us and in our lives in ways that defy ordinary human experience. It’s not a matter of willpower, but a reality-shifting trust in God through Jesus Christ, our Savior.

The image that Jesus uses is of this mulberry tree—a tree that is big and has deep roots. How much power do we need to uproot a tree? I mean, even some weeds!

Jesus is talking about the power of the gift that we have received in faith—a power that helps us become an extension, as I said earlier, of God’s divine compassion for the entire world. The mulberry tree perhaps reminds us that we need this faith to uproot our pride, and our desire for power, for control, and for certainty. And it also reminds us that we depend on a power that is beyond ourselves.

Today we are beginning a new chapter in the life of this congregation with this generosity initiative or emphasis. I believe that each one of you, in some way, has received information electronically or in the mail.

And with these materials, what we are doing is really asking God—perhaps not to increase our faith—but that the faith that has been given to us might flow through us, in a way that we become that extension of the divine compassion of our Lord.

The verse that this initiative is based on is Galatians 5:6, where St. Paul says, “Faith works through love.” As you can see, faith is not just a passive concept, or knowledge, or practices, or piety, or just strong will. And I think that’s where we get confused, because even in our vocabulary—even here at Trinity—sometimes we talk about faith as an object, right? As an object that you can just… learn more about the Bible and have more faith, or memorize some verses and have more faith, or come more often to church and have more faith, or do things the “right way” here at church on a Sunday—and then that means that you have more faith.

I think that this initiative is to remind us that faith is a force that drives our lives in ways that you and I become a tangible presence of the love, and mercy, and grace, and healing, and transformation that the Spirit brings to this community.

Two or three years ago, we started with this initiative—remember our first initiative? “Build up, branch out, generosity lived.” Right?

And then the next one was “Rooted… Rooted in Community.”

And these initiatives reminded us of that power that God has given to the Church—to be the extension, the channel, the means through which God continues to work in this world that is hurting, that is broken, and that is completely disoriented.

As I said in the beginning, many people continue to ask the question, or the plea: “Lord—give us more faith, because we do not know what to do with this mess that we have made with this world.”

“Faith works through love”—in Greek, it sounds like pistis di agapēs energeitai.

And if we translate it literally, it says, “Faith, through love, energizes.”

So faith is a force that is working, that energizes, and that is active. Faith is the engine, and love is the operative output of that faith. The power is not in the faith itself, but in God—in whom that faith is placed.

The mustard seed is powerful not because of its innate properties, but because it is connected to the life-giving soil and the creative power of God.

This seed that I have here in my pocket cannot do anything in this little bottle that I have here. You see, if I leave it there, it only produces and grows as it is in the soil, where the living presence of all the nutrients helps it to grow and to sprout and to bring fruit.

The point is, my siblings in Christ, it’s not “harness your inner faith force,” but rather—even the smallest and most pathetic-looking trust, when placed in God, is sufficient for the task that God sets before us.

Live generously—it reminds us that we are always on the receiving end of grace.

Love boldly—the disciples, and we ourselves, are being asked to extend the same scandalous, unearned grace they have received… we have received.

That is what shatters our pride and enables us to forgive others without keeping a record or measuring their faith, or measuring their love—but to be open to what God offers us through the lives of others, so that we are also instruments of that grace and mercy.

The Christian life is lived by a dynamic, God-dependent faith that inevitably manifests in acts of love—especially the difficult work of forgiving, of welcoming, of giving our lives, and, as we will be speaking about next Sunday, of living lives of sacrificial love.

In a few moments, you will hear our Moment of Generosity—Bill Rankin—putting some examples onto what I have said in this moment. When I was talking to him, I said, “Bill, I think that you already preached! Why should I prepare another sermon?”

But he will help us see how the seed that has been placed in this congregation is also producing, transmitting, and giving the blessing that God has given us.

May God guide us through this living generously, loving boldly, to reflect on how we are going to respond to God—to continue to be the people who are an extension of that mercy in this place.

Thanks be to God.

And take your seeds—I have more seeds if you need some more.

Amen.