How often have you said to yourself, as I do from time to time, "if only I had more faith?" That's a pretty typical response to life's difficult challenges, isn't it? When we come across God's calls to obedience that makes us think outside the box, takes us beyond our comfort zones, or challenges us to change our lifestyle, we might say, with the disciples "Lord, increase our faith."

That's how I felt on Friday afternoon. Several of us were at the One Great City Conference that CMBA sponsored. There may have been 200 pastors and church leaders there. The main speakers, Tom and Christine Sine challenged us to look at ourselves and our churches from the point of view of the future. You may remember that last Sunday's sermon was about looking at where we are from the point of view of God's end time vision. They challenged us to read the signs today, to try to understand what life will be like 10 years from now -- that is, when I am pushing 60. How old will you be? In order to do that, we need to understand the trends, and prepare now, so that 10 years from now our church will not be trying to catch up, but will be in the fore front of ministry. They told us a lot of things that's going to take some time to digest. But one of their main emphases had to do with cultural conversion. And I think this is very important for us to understand.

Its like a two legged stool, he said. Have any of you tried to milk a cow? You can't milk a cow on a two legged stool, he said. In fact, you need a three legged stool. Our calls to conversion are from a life of sin to salvation, from immorality to morality, but its not a call to cultural conversion, from a worldly lifestyle to a kingdom lifestyle. That's the third stool.

They impressed hard on us how we are losing our children to the values that are driven by our consumer culture. McDonalds is targeting children who are under 5 years old, so that they will have brand loyalty for a life-time. And MTV is not just marketing to teenagers, a high ranking leader of MTV once said, we don't market to 14 year olds, we own them. Tom Sine said, when kids watch TV for 30 hours a week and taking in those commercials, having them in Sunday School for one hour a week is not going to help them decode those messages.

We talked about church growth. If our church is growing by 2% it may feel like we are doing great. We have a lot of new visitors, some decide to return and continue to worship with us, some of them will end up becoming members and ministers of the church and we are thrilled. However, if the neighborhood is growing by 6% or 8% -- which probably what it is for Hyde Park -- are we really growing, or are we losing ground?

At one level, it was a "bad news" conference. I thought I should have counted the times when Tom Sine said, "The bad news is, folks!" But in fact it was a reality check. Unless we are able to face these kinds of realities we would not be able to take the right steps to move forward.

They also talked about how September 11 can be a defining moment in our nation's history. How it is defined, though, in many ways depends on what we do with it -- it depends on how churches act now to direct the ways in which people are responding and to influence public opinion. In my mind, whether the church can stand on the values of God's kingdom rather than be swayed by the attitudes that are prevalent in our culture will say a great deal, about our spiritual maturity and about our ability to provide spiritual leadership to our city.

Later in the evening Hill made an excellent presentation about Chicago its economy. But again, the slowing down of the economy has caused a lot of people to lose their jobs, and on top of that September 11 has caused a lot of people in the travel and entertainment industries to lose their jobs. Clearly we are headed for tough times. And at the end of his presentation, Hill spoke of the stress that people are under, not only in New York but also in Chicago. People are still afraid to go on planes or subways, and are re-evaluating their lives as a result of September 11.

I look at the enormity of the challenges that are before us, if the churches in Chicago become serious about reaching our city. "Lord, Increase our faith" I want to pray. Or, I want to intercede with Habakkuk: "O Lord, I have heard of your renown, and I stand in awe, O Lord, of your work. In our own time revive it; in our own time make it known; in wrath may you remember mercy."

Now, I know, few of us would go to a prophet like Habakkuk for inspiration, but this prophet came across to me forcefully several years ago, when I was doing a theological reflection on the violence that's been going on in Sri Lanka. This is a prophet who is really honest with God. Some commentators say that Habbakuk is the first place in our Bible -- that is in historical sequence and not in the way the books are arranged in the Bible -- where the ways of God are questioned, where someone dares to ask God, "Why do the good suffer and evil people have it easy?" If we consider ourselves a prophetic community in any sense of the word, we must know that asking honest and hard questions is a fundamentally important. How can we hear God if we are not willing to be deep down honest? And how can we speak God's word if we are not willing to tell the truth?

Habakkuk was writing about 600 years before the time of Jesus. Jerusalem was about to be invaded by Babylonians -- an ancient predecessor of the Saddam Hussein's army. In fact Judah may have received an initial attack from Babylonian forces. Perhaps it was no less horrifying than the attacks on our cities. Habakkuk sees that destruction and violence taking place in his community before his very eyes, and seemingly ignored by God. So, here's his lament-- no, in fact, it's his protest: "O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save?"

Not only that, the prophet is in despair, and even rebukes God: "Why do you look on faithless people," he prays, "Why are you silent while the evil swallows up those who do justice?" If Habakkuk was among the first in the Bible to ask it, lots of people have asked it since. Some of God's people asked it several centuries ago when other of God's people took four million Africans into slavery--they were God's people, too. We asked about God's silence while millions of Yahweh's Chosen People, along with Polish and Slavic people, gypsies, and gay people, were taken into concentration camps and extermination camps in the 1940's. We asked about God's silence when the nations of Eastern Europe suffered for decades under Soviet tyranny, and we asked about God's silence as Asia, Africa and Latin America suffered under western imperialism. With the prophet, we shouted "Violence!" at the heavens.

"Destruction and violence are before me, strife and contention arise." "How long shall I cry for help, O God, and you will not hear?" I ask this every time I hear of violence amidst the poverty in our neighborhoods. I ask it whenever I go to Sri Lanka. Surely, all of us asked that question together with the people of lower Manhattan on September 11. And we cry with the prophet, "What shall I do?" The question of the ancient prophet is as pertinent today as the day it was uttered. But we are also in solidarity with Habbakuk as he says, "I will take my stand to see if God answers my complaint."

So, I come away from my reflection on Friday, considering the state of the church and the state of the nation and the world, and hearing again the gospel's prompting to be pro-active about how to respond to our struggling world. And what can I say, other than "Lord, increase my faith -- increase our faith."

Jesus had just told the disciples a story about a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and feasted sumptuously everyday, and a poor man named Lazarus whose body was full of sores who sat at his gate and was content with whatever that fell from the rich man's table. You know the story, don't you -- about how these two died and the poor man went to Abraham's bosom and the rich man went to hell and was being tormented there? That's at the end of chapter 16. Then at the top of chapter 17, there are two sayings of Jesus. The first says, even though stumbling blocks come don't let them come from you. Be careful not to cause someone to stumble, if you were to cause one of the little ones to sin it is better for a millstone to be put around your neck and cast into the sea. And you may remember a previous time when we talked about "little ones." That's not only children, but those for whom God reserves a special place in God's heart, the poor and the dispossessed of this world. The second is about forgiveness. Jesus tells the disciples that they need to forgive their sisters and brothers, if they repent, but even if they continue to sin against you seven times a day, still you must forgive.

If you heard all that wouldn't you say, "Lord, increase our faith?" That's what the disciples did. They are in fact saying to him, "You know, Lord, we can't really do that, because you haven't given us enough faith. Now if you were to give us an increase in faith, we'll perhaps we will be able to live the way you tell us and forgive our errant sisters and brothers." Jesus' reply is very interesting. "I am not buying your excuse," he seems to be saying to them. "If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and be planted in the sea’; and it would obey you." "Oh, no," he is saying to them, "you already have more than enough faith. Why you only need a mustard seed of faith to do the impossible!"

After he expressed his frustration to God, Habakkuk waited for God's vision. He went up to a watchtower, a high retreat, the kind of place the prophets go to listen to God. It is a place or attitude of expectation, a place of listening to God. He is there waiting to receive from God a vision, an answer to these tough question he had raised, regarding the coming Babylonians. This is what prophets do, you see. Because of their love for God's people in their city and nation, they feel they must seek God about matters of national and political need. God gave him a vision that day. God gave him a very important message on behalf of the nation. It was so important that he felt that he had to write it out succinctly and plainly on a billboard in characters so large, that even a runner could read it. Listen: "The Lord answered me and said, write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. It if seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay." So, hang in there.

Its a simple vision. Like our "Celebrating Diversity, Building Community in Christ," it could be written in large letters on a billboard. And everyone can memorize it. It has just two parts. This is in verse 4. The first part reads " He whose spirit is not upright in him shall fail." And I read this to mean, that the nation -- since Habakkuk was speaking to the nation at this point -- the nation or person that proceeds upon a policy that is not just, upright, honest, moral all meaning according to God's covenant, will fail. The second part of that verse is this: "But the righteous shall live by faith." This is a vision that has been an inspiration to Christians through the generations from Paul who uses it in Rom. 1:17, and Galatians 3:11 and the writer to the Hebrews (10:38) to Martin Luther and John Wesley and countless others.

The righteous shall live by faith – what a succinct, poignant and powerful vision statement. The righteous do not live by good works. The righteous do not live through moral life styles. The righteous do not live even through the proper practice of religion. But the righteous do live by faith. The word there for faith is more properly translated faithfulness or fidelity. And that fidelity of course is to the covenant with God -- when God brought out a bunch of slaves to freedom and they met God at the holy mountain and God called them to be God's holy people. The covenant, that we made with God when we realized that we've been running away from the father's house and having to work in a pig farm, eating pig food, as we talked about last Sunday, and one day we came to our senses and returned to the father confessing our sin and seeking to be taken in as a servant. Remember how he received us -- and we to Jesus just like that and were baptized. That was a covenant to live in obedience to God's purposes and God's kingdom values. The righteous shall live by faith -- faithfulness to the covenant and not to the dictates of our culture.

"Lord, increase our faith" we pray. More faith? Is that request any different from, Lord, I want more money, more toys, more food? Too often we have thought of faith as a gasoline and church as the gas station. Increase our faith, is an excuse. And Jesus immediately calls the disciples on it. "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed -- you can do things that seem impossible -- you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you. So, why, aren't you putting to work the faith that is already in you?

Tom Sine is right. We are living in a time that is so different. And we need to ask some honest questions about that. We need to raise our voices to God in lament and in protest. We need to heed the vision given to Habakkuk to life faithfully to our covenant with God. Faithfulness to the gospel does require of us a cultural conversion. Now that may mean different things depending on where we are on our journey. But it’s a conversion that gives priority to our covenant with God, rather than to the messages of the media, rather than to our pursuits of wealth and military might -- therefore is fearless to critique the culture.

One of my favorite theologians Paul Tillich had this to say about faith. You can call it courage, he said. It is the courage to step out in obedience. You only need a mustard seed's size of faith for that -- and that's something you already have. So, I hope you understand this -- today, right now, you have enough faith to do the impossible -- to live faithfully to the values of God's kingdom. So step out in courage out of the box, out of your comfort zones, into new arenas of obedience to God's will.