I suspect that just about all of us have found
ourselves staring at difficult days ahead and prayed something like “Lord, I
believe. Help my unbelief.” We’ve needed to trust that things really are
in the good and loving hands of a faithful God.
The diagnosis came. There’s been
an accident. There’s been a death. It’s 2008 and I just watched my retirement
savings go to half what they were a month ago because of greedy bankers. This year I really am going to have to sell
the family farm because I just can’t do it anymore. Times come when it becomes brutally clear
that our lives are not our own, not in our control and as people of faith we
need some assurance.
Well, that’s not quite what’s going on here with the
disciples and their outright command to Jesus to increase their faith. What’s happened is that Jesus had led them to
the realization that being his disciples and leading his people was not going
to be easy. Faith and being faithful is
difficult matter.
In Luke’s Gospel in the few chapters prior to this
moment, Jesus has been doing an innuendoed compare and contrast between the
demands of true faithfulness in his Kingdom and the false faithfulness demanded
by the Pharisees. To give you a brief
recap, within the hearing of the most powerful vein of the religious
authorities of the Jewish people, the Pharisees, Jesus has told his disciples
that they cannot be slaves to both God and money. The Pharisees were “money-lovers” and they ridiculed Jesus for saying this. They were religious authorities who loved the
wealth, power, and prestige that they had garnered over God’s people by being
the brokers of the people’s relationship to God, the brokers of a “populist
religion” (Good morals, good values, good citizens, good nation upholding religion).
Jesus "called" disciples, people who would be students of his life, proclaiming "The Kingdom of God is at hand. Live accordingly and be faithful to this God-given Good News." The Pharisees, on the other hand, were quite aggressive about making
converts to their way of being a faithful Jew.
They proclaimed a powerful message also, a gospel of fear that made
converts. “The Messiah’s coming to
establish the Kingdom of God and if you want to be a part of his Kingdom and
not have happen to you what he’s going to do to the Romans, the tax collectors,
and the sinners, then you had better follow us.
Obey our interpretation of the Law of Moses to the jot and tittle like
we do. Give handsomely to us because we
are the experts. Without our judgements
and expertise you are lost sheep doomed to damnation.”
Ask any TV preacher or any big-church or mega-church
preacher, there’s money in “populist religion”, which is religious beliefs that
strike a chord with the cultural roots of a people and becomes popular. It is quite lucrative to tell fearful, anxious
people how to get and keep an almighty God on their good side. It’s also easy to be seduced by the power and
prestige that comes along with being a broker of “populist religion”. The problem is that it causes leaders to
mislead people into a religion based in magic and superstition rather than
faithfulness.
This is the topic around which we find Jesus in
conversation with his disciples in todays’ reading. Jesus tells his disciples that people will
stumble, but woe to those who cause people to stumble as the Pharisees were doing. The way in Jesus’ Kingdom would not be that
of the strict Law observance the Pharisees were demanding. But rather, in Jesus’ Kingdom it is holding
one another accountable to God’s demands of justice, fairness, and above all,
unconditional love. Theirs would be the
way of forgiving, which is bearing with and walking with one another in our
sins, rather than judging and abandoning one another because of sins.
In “populist religion” it is very easy to scapegoat
and crucify those who challenge your power over people. But in Jesus’ Kingdom, we have to accept
people as persons, as “little ones”, as children of God and in humility serve
them (not rule over them) by exercising accountability that leads to repentance
and being forgiving, even to those who sin against us personally. Dress codes and food rules are easy. Judging and ostracising are easy. But, Jesus’ way is difficult and necessitates
faith, a slow-growing relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit in the sphere of reality that the writers of the New Testament called "in him" or "with him" or "in Christ".
Jesus’ demands we serve others like slaves by bearing
with one another in mutual and unconditional love; that we keep one another accountable
to a cross-formed way of life, to sacrificial generosity, unbounded compassion,
and striving to be wealthy in the ways of the Kingdom of Heaven rather than
wealthy on money. The Lord of all
creation demands we be forgiving…and need I say it again…forgiving. These demands are difficult. It’s in realization of the enormity of Jesus’
difficult demands of faithfulness rooted in his kind of love that the
disciples’ outright order Jesus, “Increase our faith.”
Jesus answered them with a very unusual answer: “If
you had faith like a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be
uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you.” Jesus is not telling them that if they could
tap into some sort of power called faith, they could do miraculous things or
pray it and really believe you already have what you asked for and God will do
it for you. This is the sort of nonsense that you hear from the preachers and
teachers of “populist religion”. This
passage says nothing like that. It is a very cryptic allegory telling the
disciples that they already have the faith that they need to avoid the traps of
the “populist religion” of the Pharisees.
Let me run this through for you.
First, here is this mornings’ Greek lesson. This is a conditional sentence meaning should
the conditions of the “if” be true, the “then” is true. In Greek there are several different kinds of
conditional sentences to clue us in on meanings that don’t easily come across in
a simple literal translation. The way
Jesus words the “if” part here in Greek clues us in that the “if” part is indeed
true which means that his disciples are indeed able to do what he says in the
“then” part. It should read: “if you
had faith like a mustard seed (and it is true that you do), it is a fact that you
are able to say to this mulberry tree ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea’ and
it will indeed obey you.” Translators
leave ambiguity in the sentence for the obvious reasons that mulberry trees
don’t do what we command them to because we have some magic power called faith.
Like I said, this statement is an allegory and this
means that the mustard seed and the mulberry tree represent something that we
need to know to get what Jesus is saying. A mustard seed is very small, about
the size of a celery seed. It grows into
a very robust plant that can grow just about anywhere. You can plant fields of it and grow it like a
crop or you can let one plant grow and it will grow to the size of a large
ornamental tree. Either way, one tiny
mustard seed in the end yields a bazillion more mustard seeds. The mustard seed is representative of Jesus
and the Kingdom of God.
With respect to the mulberry tree, there is some
debate as to whether it is a mulberry tree or a sycamore fig tree that has
leaves that look like mulberry leaves.
If it is a true mulberry tree, it is a poor analogy. If you’ve had a Mulberry tree you know they
are messy. They are quite prolific in
the berry department and the berries are quite messy. In Jesus day they made a black dye out of the
juice because it stains so well. Birds
love the berries also and will flock to a mulberry and gorge themselves and
poop black poo everywhere. It’s just a
messy tree.
It is more likely to be the sycamore fig tree that
Luke is referring to here. Fig trees
were very important in Jesus day as a food staple. Jesus often used the fig tree as a metaphor
for Israel as the fruitful people of God.
But, the sycamore fig is a different kind of fig. Its looks are impressive. It is much larger than the ornamental size
fig tree and has a stronger trunk and branches.
They actually grew this tree for its wood rather than its figs because
the figs it produces are of less quality.
They referred to its fruit as moria
from which we get our word moron which
means foolish. This tree represents the
Pharisees and the foolish fruit of their “populist religion”. It looks like a big sturdy tree but the fruit
it produces is inferior.
The meaning of this little metaphor to his disciples
is that they have mustard seed faith.
They have Jesus with them in the power of the Holy Spirit and so they
are able to keep the demands of the faith.
Yet, they have to be careful and ever mindful of the temptation to the
foolish fruit of the “populist religion” and controlling fear mongering that
the Pharisees had succumbed to. If they
do as he commands, if they are faithful, if they love and serve as he has loved
and served them, if they practise accountability and forgiveness, then the foolishly
fruited tree of “populist religion” will indeed be uprooted from among them and
planted in the sea. The disciples do not
need their faith increased. They just
need to live according to the faith they have been given and the kingdom will
grow. Jesus, the mustard seed, in the
power of the Holy Spirit will grow in them and through them albeit slowly and
according to season.
So it is with us this small congregation of disciples
of Jesus out here at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere in Grey County,
Ontario. We do not need a magical zap of
faith from which some magical gimmick will bring forth miraculous church
growth. We just need to live according
to the faith, the mustard seed of himself, that Jesus has given us and by the
power of Holy Spirit a crop of people who live cross-formed, love of God filled
lives that look like Jesus rather than the moronic fruit of “populist religion”.
And PS, when those times come when it becomes
brutally clear that our lives are not our own, not in our control and as people
of faith we need some assurance, have no doubt that Jesus, the Giver of the
mustard seed, is with you. He loves you
very much and will see you through.
Amen.
