The weight of a mustard seed
Luke 17.5-10
2 Timothy 1.1-14
Preached Canberra Baptist Church 7th October 2007
“Lord, increase our faith!” Whatever faith is, the disciples in Luke 17 wanted more of it. Have you ever felt the same – that your faith needed increasing or strengthening? Does something within you cry out, as it did in the father of that epileptic boy brought to Jesus: “I believe, help my unbelief”? Many of us we wonder whether our faith will be equal to what we might encounter in life.
But is faith is a matter of ‘more’ or ‘less’? Does it increase or diminish? Does it have quantity or dimension? Are there then ‘giants’ in faith - people who have more faith than others, or better faith, or stronger faith? Are believers like athletes who can be ranked? Paul uses the image of the athlete as an example to the person of faith but only in the sense of pressing forward toward the goal. All of these questions address the dynamics of what it means to have faith.
In the 1960’s and 70’s sociologists were trying to measure religious faith. The enterprising J. Milton Yinger developed his 7-scale Measure of Non-Doctrinal Religion. As a sociology student I tried to use Yinger’s 7 scale Measure of Non Doctrinal Religion. As I read widely as to how this measure worked and what it could tell us I came across two scholarly articles reporting on studies that tested whether Yinger’s questionnaire was reliable and what it was actually measuring. Using samples of thousands of respondents and the latest computer techniques of factor analysis these studies were rigorous and well done and completely contradicted each other. One study found that Yinger’s scale measured religion as a uni-dimensional reality: in other words there was such a thing as religion, but it had no internal differentiation or inner structure. You either were religious or you weren’t.
The second study used exactly the same methods concluded that Yinger’s scale was measuring all sorts of things. Not only did it measure religiosity, but it could measure 9 identifiable sub-dimensions of religious faith! For days I tried but failed to make any sense of these erudite and scholarly studies until I noticed buried in the footnotes that the first study was done among several thousand students at east-coast liberal arts colleges in the US, and the second had tested church-going Methodists in the Mid-west. In other words, all this elaborate sociological testing was telling us was that some teenage college students are religious and most aren’t and that’s about as much as you can tell. The other study proved that card-carrying Methodists do believe something and their religious faith actually has some structure about it! All this testing of Yinger’s 7 scale measure was like commissioning research into why drunken pedestrians are more likely to be hit by cars than sober ones: it is unlikely to tell you more than you already know.
So the question remains. Social science is unable to answer it for us. Is faith something that has dimension, that can be compared or increased? If so, is it like a commodity, a quality that we hold or develop? There are many who think so. They believe that faith exists on some kind of scale and if only we have enough of it, if it is strong enough, certain things believed in will happen. There is a secular version of this being marketed at the moment under the title of “The Secret”, the idea that if you really want something badly enough, it will come to you. Is this then what faith really is – a kind of desire or longing or expression of the will so strong that it influences reality?
There is teaching in the New Testament that at first blush seems to support such thinking. There is the notion that where two or more of you agree on earth, it will be done for you in heaven. And there is this saying of Jesus that if you have faith as much as a mustard seed, certain things will happen.
The lectionary text for the day in Luke 17.5-6 is one occurrence of a series of related sayings that come to us in Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul. As one scholar has said, it is a complicated and confused tradition. There are sayings about faith that seem to have some connection but are placed in very different contexts.
Matthew 17.20-21 (follows the healing of the epileptic boy and the disciples questioning of Jesus as to why they couldn’t heal him) He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there”, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’
Mark 11.23: (set here following the ‘cleansing’ of the Temple and the withering of the fig tree which Jesus has cursed). Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea”, and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you.
Luke 17.5-10: (following various sayings of Jesus about life within the community of believers) The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’ 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.
1 Corinthians 13.2 (opening of the famous chapter about love) And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.….
Just to make it quite clear:
Mt mustard seed mountain moved move here to there nothing impossible
Mk (do not doubt) mountain taken up cast into the sea come to pass
Lk mustard seed mulberry tree uprooted planted in the sea obey you
1 Cor faith mountains remove
What is being said about faith? The overall message of all these texts is that faith is powerful – faith even as small as a mustard seed, the smallest , lightest, most inconsequential thing, can achieve amazing outcomes.
1 Corinthians is the earliest and the most general. It is clear that there was a saying circulating widely in Christian circles about faith being able to move mountains. Paul, however, says that even such faith (‘all faith’ is the actual wording) is nothing without love. While the tradition Paul alludes to may value such wonder-working faith, Paul is more interested in love, which is a higher value.
This tradition of faith leading to dramatic actions comes not only through Paul but also through Mark, and through that elusive early Christian source that was relied upon by Matthew and Luke. In each of the gospels it is edited and altered and it is placed in different contexts employed to different ends.
Mark places the saying as a conclusion to the linked stories of the cursing of the fig tree and Jesus’ final confrontation with the Jerusalem Temple. The Temple has been condemned, just as the tree has been cursed. Even though the Temple authorities will shortly destroy him, Jesus says to his disciples, ‘if you have faith and keep believing, this mountain on which the temple is built, all of it will be picked up and thrown into the sea’. Here the statement has a very specific reference to the future of the Temple mount and the ending of the Jewish Temple cult.
Matthew has used the saying to emphasise the power of faith, but he also points to the ‘little faith’ of the disciples which has frustrated their attempts at healing. This saying is perhaps closest to Corinthians in that it refers to the power of faith to move mountains from one place to another. It engages with Matthew’s theology of faith which is more developmental .
And so we come to Luke. Luke’s version of the saying is patently nonsensical. Nobody plants trees in the sea. There may be some linkage to Mark 11 which also has a tree being withered (uprooted?) AND a mountain being ‘thrown into the sea’. If you go back 3 or 4 verses in Luke 17 you see that there are disciples being thrown into the sea – vs. 17.2. There are issues in the translation of the word for tree and it may be that Luke is meaning a sycamore tree (not mulberry). There is Rabbinic reference to a sycamore being very deep rooted and hard to tear up. Whatever the provenance of the story in Luke it suggests that if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can do amazing, even impossible things. These are not a function of how much faith you have, but simply that you have it. But what does this faith mean? What kinds of impossible things is Luke saying that people of faith will be able to do?
Well here we have to look at the flow of the passage and go back to the start of the chapter. Jesus speaks of the actions that are to characterize the internal life of the community of the disciples: be on your guard lest you damage one of these little ones. Rebuke and encourage one another. There is to be an honesty among you, a calling one another to account. You are to be a community of discipline helping one another to grow. And above all you are to be a community of forgiveness: forgive one another even seven times a day. It is at this point that the disciples say “Lord Increase our faith!” Forget about moving mountains! These are the hard tasks of Christian living – caring for, encouraging and forgiving one another. In response to this teaching the disciples say ‘Increase our faith! so that we can be this kind of community’.
Matthew might place the story of the mustard seed of faith in the context of the great and heroic healings. Mark might place the throwing of the mountain into the sea in the context of the great crisis of Jesus engaging and condemning the Temple. Luke places it squarely in the context of the faith that is needed for everyday life in the Christian community.
What closes the chapter is a reminder that the community should not feel that it is doing heroic things. Even thought faith might lead to mighty feats of forgiveness and mutual care equivalent to moving mountains or planting trees in the depths of the sea, all we are doing is living out the kind of common life that Jesus calls us to live. In the end this is nothing special. There is still much to be done. We have only done our job. This is a warning against the heroic reading of this matter of faith.
Christian faith is an amazing and mysterious adventure. The reading of 2 Tim 1 includes reference to the experience that many of us have had, that of faith being something that lives through our family. The writer says: ‘I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice, and now I am sure lives in you.’ Faith in the family is a wonderful thing, but it’s not enough. It has to be lived out by each one so the writer immediately goes on ‘For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and self-discipline.’
We’re not sure whether what is to be rekindled is Timothy’s faith or Timothy’s ministry - the outworking of that faith. But the sense is the same of something small and flickering or even dead, something that needs to be summoned into life and used. And they spirit that comes through that gift -small, struggling as it may be- is a spirit of power, and of love, and of self discipline.
Faith is not a commodity or a quality or a possession. It’s a relationship, a relationship of trust and belonging and holding onto someone and that someone is God. In some ways it’s like marriage – you’re either married or you’re not. There are things that flow out of marriage that can be very different but none of us are any more married than any other married person. Faith is like that. It’s a relationship of trust that we have formed with God and that we hold onto in all our doubting, and even when we act faithlessly that little mustard seed, that dimensionless, weightless dot keeps us connected to the power of God – that spirit of love and power and self discipline.
Because of that faith, all the legalistic temples that human beings build and the mountains we build them on, have been thrown into the sea and will be thrown into the sea. I don’t know if the new capital of Burma with its magnificent grand statues and fine homes for the generals is built on a mountain or not, but I have faith that it too will be cast down and not the slightest doubt that this will happen.
Because of that faith people find healing, healing and wholeness in deep and mysterious ways, and courage and power and love and self-discipline for the tasks of living.
Because of that faith the church finds the energy and the grace to be, against all reasonable expectations, a community of mutual support and correction, of unbounded forgiveness for our frailty and stupidity, of tender care for the weak and vulnerable.
May we be such disciples, who know that our faith is there to foster service and love and endurance. It’s not for glamour nor a basis of power, not a possession that grows or can be traded or shown off, just a quiet, tiny gift, something the weight of mustard seed, which outweighs all the mountainous threats and difficulties that we must journey through on our pilgrimage.