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October 3, 2004
Mustard Seed Faith
Luke 17:5-10
Our text this morning is relatively short—only six verses long—and yet, it still manages to contain two different thoughts, two different sayings of Jesus. First, there's the story about faith like a mustard seed, and then Jesus tells the parable about the master and the slave. Since Jesus says the first shall be last and the last shall be first, we're going to look at the parable before we talk about the story of faith the size of a mustard seed.
If you're like me, you need to look at the parable first because there's something about it that you resist. As I look at it, there are at least two mental roadblocks for us with this parable. First, I think there's something about our nation's history that makes the master and slave setting uncomfortable. Second, our culture is so focused on building self-esteem, self-worth, self-confidence that the parable's punchline of "We are only worthless slaves" really puts us off. Our modern sensibilities make the hermeneutical leap—that is, the leap from the meaning in the original setting to its meaning today—much more difficult.
But, of course, in Jesus' time, slavery was all too common, the bedrock of the Roman empire's economy. This parable made perfect sense two thousand years ago. The slave tends to the master's needs first, before taking care of his own. The slave works in the fields, then works in the house without ever expecting to hear a word of thanks, or appreciation, or even affirmation. The slave does it because it is the slave's duty, it is the very nature of who and what the slave is in relation to his or her master.
In this parable, we are the slaves, the servants. I tried to think of an analogy that was less offensive for us, but there really isn't a modern equivalent. Employer and employee certainly doesn't work; neither does the relationship between family members, because relationships that are so one-sided are never healthy.
Perhaps the best way to take the sting out of this parable is by remembering that while the analogy makes us the slaves, it also makes the master God—the one who loves and cares for us, wants what is best for us. That is good news! However, we can never lose sight of the fact that the God who loves each one of us beyond all reason is the same God who asks us for everything we are, everything we have. The ideal is that all of our service to God is done out of gratitude, with joy, a response to all God has done for us. And no matter what we do—no matter how large the gift, or how self-sacrificing the act—it is never "enough." We can never satisfy our indebtedness to God. We are called to serve God every minute, every hour of our lives, and at the end of each day to say, "we have done only what we ought to have done." (v. 10)
It is, to put it mildly, a daunting task. You may be feeling like the disciples did when they said to Jesus, "Increase our faith!" (v. 5) because faith is what we need for this task. The disciples' plea for help came after Jesus had laid some very heavy demands on them. One warned them not to be a stumbling block to the "little ones" (vv.1-2). The other commanded them to rebuke and forgive any sins among them, and that even if someone sinned against them seven times a day, as long as that person repented, the disciples had to forgive (vv.3-4).
The disciples were not fools. They knew that what Jesus was asking was virtually impossible. But amazingly, rather than throwing in the towel, the disciples turn to their Lord and say, "Help us. Help us to have faith enough to do what you ask of us."
Perhaps the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith rather than give up because they had had enough glimpses of God's power in their time with Jesus, that they know that kind of faith is possible. If they only knew how to get their hands on it.
Jesus responds by saying, "If you had faith…" The Greek here would be more literally translated, "If you had faith, and you do…"[1] Jesus assures them that the faith they want and need is already there, and that faith—even if it is the tiny size of a mustard seed—is enough to say to a tall tree with very deep roots, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea.' (v. 6) What Jesus suggests faith can do is both impossible and absurd. Uproot a tree to plant it in the ocean? He exaggerates to make a point—it isn't so much the size of your faith that counts, so much as it is the source of your faith. And the source of faith is God, for whom words like 'impossible' and 'absurd' do not exist[2].
Faith in western thought is often almost interchangeable with 'believe.' Perhaps you've heard the definition, "Faith is believing in spite of the evidence." It has come to mean a thought or a feeling, or an intellectual assent that something is true. And it is sometimes seen as an act of the will, convincing ourselves of the truth of something in spite of its unbelievability.
Those definitions may be valid, but they are not the kind of faith that Jesus is talking about here. In Greek, the word for faith is pistis, which interestingly has two verb forms, one "to have faith," the other "to believe." Pistis can be understood to mean "the social glue that binds one person to another, that is the social, externally manifested, emotional behavior of loyalty, commitment, and solidarity[3]."
Jesus here is not talking about an intellectual assent. He is not saying to the disciples, "Just believe in yourselves and you'll be able to do these things." Trust and belief are a part of this, but only a part. No, he is saying more along the lines of, plug yourself into the source, trust the connection to God that God has already given you. Align yourselves with God, adhere to God, and God can do anything through you, because ultimately, faith is about being in relationship with God. Stick with God like glue, and things will happen!
Now let's be honest here. The promise that things will happen is not entirely good news. Because God does not always take us places we would choose for ourselves. And God does not always demand the easiest things of us. Faith as loyalty and allegiance to God, first and foremost, always and in everything, is difficult, if not darned near impossible.
Fortunately, God does not only give us the gift of faith, God also gives us the gift of community. We don't have to struggle alone in our attempts to be faithful; we have others who struggle with us. Within the community of faith, we have companions with whom we make our attempts to do for God only what we ought to do. Each of us has our mustard seed of faith, with others around who will lend us theirs when we can't find our own[4].
But there is another gift, as well. In a few minutes we will gather at the Lord's table. This is where we find the glue that binds us to God and to one another. At this table, we remember Jesus Christ's self-sacrificing love, and how God raised him from the dead. We remember God's power to overcome impossibilities, and realign ourselves with that power.
And as we share the same loaf and the same cup, we remember that just as each of us belongs to Christ, so we also belong to each other.
At this table, may we find strength in the meal, in remembering, and in realigning ourselves, with God and with one another, and then go out, renewed, to do the work that is before us. Amen.
1 Craddock, Fred, Interpretation: Luke. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990. p. 200 go back
2 Ibid. go back
3 Malina, Bruce J. and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1992. p. 131 go back
4 From Dylan's lectionary blog, http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary-blog.html go back
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Church of Cedar Rapids
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Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org
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