"This Is How We Do Faith" | Shana McCauley | Sunday, October 5, 2025

I invite you to hold a moment of silence after the sermon today.

I have had the occasion to increase my prayer life lately — politics, life transition, yep — and also I am teaching my son to drive.

We went to the driver's ed orientation, and they told us that the things that we had learned in our time, some of them were correct because cars are cars, but some things have changed, and to please not correct our children.

So, do you know that we're not supposed to drive at 10 and 2 anymore?

There has been a big change since the 90s when I learned to drive, um, in the production of cars.

Do you all know what it is?

Airbags. Airbags. Yeah.

So, if you have your hands at 10 and 2 and your airbag goes off, your hands fly off, and that's not good.

Um, so now they tell kids to drive at 9 and 3.

Um, they have this, like, stationary object thing that I still don't understand.

Um, there are all these things that, um, they put mirrors in different places now.

They focus them in different places.

So, uh, like any other person driving your car, I do have to fix everything when I get back in the car.

But we are invited, or asked, as parents to drive with our children for at least an hour a week, and preferably two, um, in practice, in addition to the six hours a week that I pay for through driver's ed.

Last week at 60 minutes and 0 seconds, we pulled over the car and stopped.

After driving around a pretty abandoned office park, I realized that, um, every muscle in my body was tense.

And he's doing fine. He really is.

He's learning how to brake, and, uh, more or less he's staying in the middle of the, uh, the lane, although we did spend some time with me going, "Too far, too far, too far," um, in, uh, maybe not the calmest way.

Um, it has increased my faith and given me an opportunity to deepen my relationship with God.

Today the apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith.

"Increase my faith, Jesus."

We start the gospel in a strange place.

But if you back up — so we start at 17:5 — but if you start at 17 at the beginning of the chapter, you get what they're responding to.

So at the beginning of the chapter, Jesus says, "Don't sin. And if you do, at the very least, don't make someone else sin. Especially, especially someone who is new to the faith.

And if you see your friend sin, point it out to them.

And if they then repent, if they then apologize, forgive them — not once, but seven times. Seven times, right?"

So, uh, don't sin, don't cause anyone else to sin, apologize if you do sin, and forgive those who sin against you.

And the apostles’ response is, "Going to need more faith, Jesus," right?

"Give me more faith."

And I wonder which part of this sounds the hardest, but I suspect it's that seven-times-seven of forgiveness.

My mom has forgiven me for my driving in the beginning.

Um, don't listen too hard, kids. I hope you're falling asleep a little.

Um, I was not the best driver, uh, coming out of the gate.

I hit a lot of snowbanks.

Um, I learned to drive in Alaska, so that's a good excuse.

Um, in October. So, uh, yeah, I spent some time in snowbanks.

Um, I can tell you how to get your car out if it's stuck.

Uh, talk to me afterwards if you need that help.

Um, I one time borrowed my dad's Ford F-150 — this cherry-red, beautiful pickup truck — uh, and in a parking garage, I managed to rub the entire side against a pillar.

Now, that in and of itself was, um, probably bad enough, but then I quietly slipped my dad's keys back onto the hook and went to bed.

And, uh, the next morning I woke up to, "Shannarie, did you think I wouldn't see it?"

Um, yeah. I hoped that he wouldn't see it, but, um, he did.

Um, so also, um, see, this is how I talk you out of ever wanting to carpool with me.

Um, sometime later, um, still early in my driving days, I was driving 87 miles an hour, um, when the Alaska State Trooper took notice of my presence.

And, um, I had a dumb friend, because I was a teenager and teenagers have many dumb friends.

Um, I probably was a dumb friend as well.

Um, but my darling dumb friend told me, "Contest that ticket. Police never show up."

The policeman did show up.

Um, so there I am, standing in front of this judge in rural Alaska, trying to lie or explain what was happening — that I would go 87 miles an hour.

Um, he did not think that I was cute.

He did not believe me, and he let me leave with the full fine and 10 points on my license.

[Laughter]

My mom has some kind of bizarre amnesia about this.

Um, bless her. I'm so very glad.

Um, but we were talking the other day, and both my husband and I drive cars that have two seats in the front and three in the back.

And right now our growing children fit in the back seat kind of — um, if they leave the doors open and buckle their seat belts before they close the doors.

And at 8, 14, and 16, they are growing, and it won't be long before they don't actually fit in the back seat.

It's — it's real tight right now.

Um, it gets us from A to B, but not comfortably.

And so I told my mom, you know, I'm thinking about trading in my car for something a little bigger.

And she said, "Don't trade your car. Give it to Killian."

And I was like, "My car? I'm not going to give him my car."

"Do you remember? Do you remember how I drove at the beginning? Like, you — you don't do that. You don't give a teenager a nice-ish car. You give them a car that's at least as old as they are, with many, many, many thousands of miles. It's how you do," right?

But, um, as I said, my mom does not remember that time, and so she thinks that I should pass down my car.

And so I am currently keeping the car until she and I can come to some accord.

The disciples are recognizing that what they are trying to do is hard.

It's not a little bit hard — this is big hard. This is big stuff.

Forgiveness, being humble to hear what you've done wrong, is hard.

So it's not complicated; it is fairly simple, but it isn't easy.

And so the disciples are saying, "We're going to need more faith. We're going to need you to help us out, Jesus," right?

My kids are going to, in the next few years, be released into the world.

And this driving is the very first step in the way that my son becomes a citizen of this world.

And for the first time in his life, he really is responsible for the safety of the wider world.

And it's really important that he understands his place in that.

I have become a better driver, I would argue.

Um, State Farm says so too.

Because I understand my place — because I have more experience, obviously — um, but also because I understand my place in this world and about how dangerous it can be if I don't participate in the world in a way that is legal but also kind.

And I hope that through parenting and through education that I am able to teach that to all of my kids in their time — that pretty soon they will go off into the world as adults, and that they will have to go and be citizens of the world, not just as drivers, but as people.

I hope that that means that they will vote.

I hope that that means that they will pay attention.

I hope that that means that they will be kind and that they will be humble and that they will listen and be willing to be corrected, and also to forgive.

Jesus's response when the disciples ask for more faith is, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Jump into the water,' and it would."

It's a really strange response, but if we back up — if we back up and listen to how he started this — I think we probably get the road map for how to get there.

To try not to sin.

To be willing to hear it when someone else points it out to us.

To be willing to forgive when we do, when people ask for our forgiveness.

It is not easy, but it is fairly simple.

And it is through this — through one another, through our relationship with each other — that we will learn ever more about God, about our place in the kingdom.

This is how we do faith, and this is how we will increase our faith.

Let us pray.

Holy God and creator of the great mulberry tree,

bless us with your guiding spirit.

Help us to have grace for one another,

to in kindness identify when we have broken each other and relationship,

and to apologize and to forgive,

that we may grow in faith both as people and as a community.

In your holy name we pray. Amen.