Matt Whitacre

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about faith. You know, the kind of faith where I do something crazy and wait to see if God pulls through. The kind where I’m praying and trying to muster some kind of feeling of extreme dependence or peace or enlightenment. Sometimes it works. I mean sometimes God “pulls through” like I thought he would…and sometimes I feel great about it.  In college I needed a certain amount of money one summer in order to finish practically debt-free and God provided. I still remember those prayers of dependency, of desperation, knowing only God could pull off something like this. It was awesome! I praise God for those times. And sometimes I pat myself on the back for mustering up and delivering such great faith.

But my other experiences tell me faith doesn’t always work like that. Nor does God. Faith isn’t always about a crisis or a big moment. Sometimes faith is mundane. That almost sounds like an oxymoron to me: mundane faith. Blah. But here’s what got me thinking about faith.

The parable of the mustard seed is found in three of the four Gospels…Matt. 13, Mark 4 and Luke 13. One general purpose of the parable is to show that the Kingdom of God is full of paradoxes…you wouldn’t expect that small of a seed to grow into such a large tree. But God is a God of the unexpected. He “chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”

Matthew and Luke record Jesus referring to the mustard seed again. This time he uses it in reference to faith. In Matthew, he rebukes the disciples for their lack of faith…they couldn’t drive out a demon. If only they had faith as small as a mustard seed…. Now, I’m thinking to myself, “Self, you have a hard enough time trusting God to provide money to fix your car, let alone casting out demons. That must mean you have faith as small as a molecule.”

What’s unique about Luke’s framing of the mustard seed saying are the stories he tells before and after. Whereas Matthew frames the mustard seed saying with a (failed) miraculous sign, Luke sets it up with a command to forgive whenever someone repents. I don’t know about you, but if someone continued to commit the same offense against me, it would take a whole lot of faith for me to continue to forgive him. No wonder the disciples cried out “Increase our faith!”

Then Luke throws a curve ball. In a parable found only in his Gospel, he tells the story of the unworthy servant. The story leaves the reader pondering a rhetorical question, “Is God required or even expected to pat us on the back for something we are commanded to do, namely act on our faith in him?” The implied answer is “No.” At the end of the day, even if our faith leads us to command a bush to uproot itself and jump in the sea–which by the way seems extraordinary to me since I’ve never seen it happen–even if we have that incredible amount of faith, it’s just our duty. We are unworthy servants. We deserve none of the glory, none of the encouragement, none of the benefits of “producing” such a miraculous sign…or for granting forgiveness to a repeat offender. We don’t even deserve to dine with the King. Yet it is an incredible privilege in and of itself to serve the living God.

So I got to thinking, maybe the mustard seed reference isn’t as much about size as it is about substance. Maybe it has less to do with comparing my measure of faith with other people and more to do with making sure I’m acting on what I believe. New Testament prof Darrel Bock put it this way: “Faith’s presence is more crucial than its quantity…it is not a moment, but a journey.” 150 years ago Hudson Taylor‘s friend John McCarthy penned these words, “But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the faithful one.”

Oh God, forgive me for praising myself for the work that you do through me. Increase my faith! May we all learn to trust not in our own faith, but in your faithfulness. Amen.