Enough Faith to Forgive (17th Pentecost / Proper 22C)

A sermon by the Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda, written for and delivered at St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Rincon, GA, on Sunday, October 5, 2025, which is the 17th Sunday after Pentecost (RCL Proper 22, Year C).

Primary Bible Reading(s)

(Click on October 5, 2025, to see all of the Lectionary Texts)

Luke 17:5-10 (NRSVue)

5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. 7 “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8 Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me; put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9 Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”

Enough Faith to Forgive

By the Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda, Program Manager for New Starts, ELCA

[Content Warning: Violence, Self-Harm]

On October 2, 2006, 19 years ago this week, a horrible, unspeakable tragedy struck the Amish community in Bart Township, Pennsylvania. A 32-year old man entered West Nickel Mines School, a one-room Amish schoolhouse, and used a gun to hold the children and teachers hostage. He ultimately shot ten girls between the ages of 6 and 13, killing six of them, before shooting himself and taking his own life. 

There are no words to describe just how devastating and traumatizing this incident was for the victims, survivors, and their families. Though school shootings are shockingly common across American society, this was the first time such an attack had occurred in an Amish community. If you don’t know much about the Amish, they are a Christian denomination that chooses to “live simply” in farming villages without modern technology, like electricity, automobiles, or firearms. So on top of all the grief about losing their children, this community also experienced a cultural violation from an “outsider”. Many of the victims had never even seen a gun before that day.

What makes this tragedy stand out among so many others is how the Amish people in Bart responded. Within hours of the attack, members of that community publicly forgave their children’s murderer. They reached out to the killer’s family to extend condolences for their loss of a husband, father, and son. The Amish met with the perpetrator’s widow, children, parents, and parents-in-law to comfort them and mourn together. Thirty Amish members attended the gunman’s funeral. The Amish leaders met with the perpetrator’s widow and children, offering them hospitality and making them some of the only outsiders invited to the schoolchildren’s funerals.

How is this kind of forgiveness possible? How can people who ought to be overcome with grief still extend compassion to their enemies? Yes, Jesus tells us to love and to forgive, but in a scenario like this, it seems like too much. Who has that kind of faith?

That is the same challenge facing the apostles in our odd reading from the Gospel of Luke. I’m going to re-read the beginning of today’s passage, but back up to include two more verses (Luke 17:3-6) because the apostles’ words make more sense in the context of what Jesus had just told them. 

3 Be on your guard! If a brother or sister sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. 4 And if the same person sins against you seven times a day and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.”] 5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

The apostles ask for more faith because of Jesus’ teaching about sin and forgiveness. It starts out straightforwardly. Rebuking offenders sounds great. We are good at calling out people we think have done us wrong. The church tracks with Jesus really well in the first part of Luke 17:3. But then, Jesus adds that we must forgive those who repent. He continues that someone can sin against us and repent seven times per day and we are supposed to keep forgiving them. That is incredibly hard work! 

Repeatedly being hurt and forgiving can annoy us or anger us. It goes against our deepest instincts. I think about all the ways that I offend my wife, saying I’ll do better next time on the dishes or laundry or leaving a mess behind me in most rooms of the house. But the truth is that I rarely do better. And though I try her patience, she forgives (even seven times per day!). How much more does God forgive us? And how much more are we called to forgive one another when those sins pile up and when they hurt us much more deeply than neglected housework. 

So the apostles are thinking about the daily annoyances and the great offenses that come up in community life and in a pluralistic society. They are worried about how they could possibly forgive people who could hurt them the way that the Amish were hurt in 2006. So they ask Jesus to increase their faith. There is no way we could do it ourselves. But Jesus reminds us that even a little bit of faith can be enough. If we have just a tiny mustard seed’s worth of faith, that can be enough to work miracles. Maybe on the day that the Amish community lost their daughters, their faith felt small, but that little bit was enough to extend forgiveness and kindness to their attacker’s family. A lifetime of little bits of faith can prepare us to make miraculous, great gestures when the time of trial comes.

And very importantly, the forgiveness we saw from the Amish community in 2006 is biblical because it is active. They didn’t just say they forgave. They didn’t just have nice feelings (and in fact they probably had very negative feelings). But despite their feelings, they engaged in practices of mercy and forgiveness: visiting, hospitality, welcome, shared grief, and the like. Like Jesus, they didn’t just talk about forgiveness, but they lived it. They had built up habits of grace in their own community for years, working through conflict and forgiving one another for small and medium offenses, so that when faced with an enormous sin, they leaned on their habits and they forgave. They showed their faith through works of mercy (James 2:14-26). 

The Amish community’s mercy and grace might offend us. It might seem foolish or crazy. It might have exposed the community to further harm or abuse. But it’s also deeply faithful. It’s also the kind of difficult, counterintuitive forgiveness that Jesus preached about in his earthly ministry. It’s the divine kind of grace that Jesus showed us through his self-sacrificial death and his mission to save sinners. We might not be able to muster that kind of active grace ourselves, but Jesus can increase our tiny faith and Jesus can help us, like our Amish siblings, to practice forgiveness.

Let us pray…