word-sept-30-27oweb

‘The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’” What’s the equation for increasing 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’.” What sort of answer is this?

Jesus uses this image of the tiny mustard seed to allow us to conceive both of his kingdom and the faith required by his followers. I have always thought it a sign that we need “more” faith but only have a “little” faith, so little that we cannot produce the faith necessary for great things. The Rev. Tomas Halik, a Czech priest and intellectual, undercuts this understanding in Night of the Confessor:

Suddenly this text spoke to me in a way that differed from the usual interpretation. Isn’t Jesus saying to us with these words: Why are you asking me for lots of faith? Maybe your faith is “far too big”? Only if it decreases, until it is as small as a mustard seed, will it give forth its fruit and display its strength.

Faith, says Halik, might need to be little, to be unencumbered by that which seems solid, necessary and essential but is brittle, sharp and rigid, protecting our human endeavors and not our divine faith. Halik sees, at least in the West, easy certainties about religion and ideology that have replaced willingness to suffer for one’s faith, a replacement of mystery with easy answers. “Big faith” offers no help against the paradoxes and complexities of life; it seeks safety in numbers and certainty from the past.

But what about what Halik calls the “impossibly absurd” promise that if we had a “little faith” we could move a mulberry tree to the sea? Halik does not believe Jesus is encouraging us to ask for and expect the equivalent of spiritual “superpowers,” which might simply play into our “covert narcissism, megalomania, Messiah complex” (25) or that Jesus is encouraging a form of “autosuggestion,” by which we replace faith in Christ with “self-affirmation, self-assertiveness, and the ‘extension of one’s potential’” (26).

Instead, he associates this radical expression of faith with behavior deemed foolish by the world, like “forgiving when I could take vengeance, and even ‘loving my neighbor,’ and ‘turning the other cheek’ when I have been done wrong to…” (26). This absurd little faith of forgiveness and turning the other cheek is in fact living out a life of love in the midst of a world that desires power and vengeance, and seeks always to protect “what’s mine.” Are not these little acts of love more absurd in our world than moving a mulberry tree into the sea? Do they not require continual little acts of faith in the face of violence, mockery, rejection and the loss of the things of this world?

So, how do we increase our faith? What Jesus says in the verses that follow comprise a surprising answer, which fits with Halik’s focus on the positive nature of “little” faith. In these enigmatic verses, Jesus speaks of master-slave relations, a key aspect of ancient society that every hearer in antiquity would have understood. The language of human slavery properly sounds harsh to modern ears, but in Jesus’ day a slave would do what his master required and would not be unduly rewarded or praised for it. Jesus’ focus, though, is on the spiritual implications for his followers: “So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.’”

This is not precisely the language of “self-affirmation, self-assertiveness, and the ‘extension of one’s potential.’” Faith, Jesus says, is the practice of doing what we ought to do as his followers, however bizarre and absurd it might seem to a world that demands more. It is the image of Paul in prison, “a prisoner for his sake,” bearing his “share of hardship for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God.” It is the prophet Habakkuk, crying out regarding the “destruction and violence” that surround him and hearing God’s voice say, “The vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.” How do you increase your faith? Practice letting it grow small.

This article appears in September 30 2013.

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.