As the gospel makes clear, faith is never an abstract notion, it’s how we live our lives. The apostles ask Jesus to ‘increase our faith’ as a specific response to what he has just said about forgiving one another.

Trust is central to the gospel and to our faith, which is to say our lives. And the faith that Jesus speaks of isn’t blind; it’s a way of seeing one another, as a woman reminded me recently when she spoke of coming to befriend a man sitting on the footpath outside Coles.

And as happened when Vinnies began its soup van service: On the first night they ran into Billy Morgan four times. On the fourth occasion a volunteer asked him if there was anything else they could give him or do and he replied, ‘Your friendship is enough’. He had told her – ever so clearly – what they were all about. It wasn’t simply that they had something to give him, but he had something to give them. 

Billy and the woman outside Coles remind us that faith isn’t something we have or don’t have. It’s not something we possess but is given to us in relationship. So, when Jesus speaks of a mulberry tree obeying you, there’s no magic formula involved; he’s simply speaking of the power of faith made real in our relationship with God.   

Yet it seems wherever we look these days, there’s a general loss of trust which undermines our trust in one another and ensures, perhaps, that the one thing binding us together is money. We give so we might get in return, and often this becomes our model for relationship. Where it exists, a society may begin to fragment, all the more so a church, because a church community is founded in the gift of relationship – it’s where we learn to trust one another and God.

As we do, we begin to see the connection between faith and service, which Jesus speaks of in the second part of today’s gospel. We’re invited to join a group, so we go along, and gradually our lives change. Our faith begins to deepen, almost unawares, as we practise what’s been called ‘the spirituality of turning up.’ 

Later, we may come to understand that it’s our trust in the person who asked us and in Jesus which brought us to live in this way, doing ‘all you have been told to do.’ It’s not that God is indebted to us for what we do, but we’re indebted to God for enabling this. Like the disciples we’re discovering that faith and service are inextricably linked.

This week’s first reading, the psalm and the second reading all speak of trusting in God, whatever happens in our lives. This is the precious gift we’re entrusted to look after, the gift of God’s self in Jesus, and we do this by giving it away. Trusting in Jesus enables us to do what God entrusts to us – it’s our duty and our life.  

Damian Coleridge

© Majellan Media 2025

We encourage you to share and use this material on your own website. However, when using materials from Majellan Media, please include the following in your citation: Sourced from www.majellan.media