All We Need!
Matthew 5:17-20
Luke 17:1-10
Jesus’ teaching on discipleship (on what it means to be an actual follower of Christ) can be really tough! I suppose, if it were easier, more people would be disciples! We’re even told in the Bible that many “walked away” from Jesus because they found his teachings too difficult to follow (John 6:66). Christ challenges us… He pushes us... stretches us… to be more than we think we could possibly be... which is the norm for Jesus.
It’s been said that Jesus’ words “comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”. And I think we could all attest to that.
In our scripture for today, Jesus offers us teachings and instructions about faithful living… About how critically important our faith is… and how our calling should affect every area of our lives. Our calling is to follow Christ, to be Christlike, or Christ-centered in our thinking, and in our speaking and in our doing.
Of course, Jesus’ disciples reacted in a familiar way… They asked Jesus to give them more faith in order to do the things He was calling them to do. I say that’s familiar because not only are we familiar with this story, we’re familiar with the request! How many of us have ever felt that we needed more faith? Have you ever prayed to God to give you more faith? Of course we have!
The disciples had just heard Jesus say that it would “be better for them if a Millstone was hung around their necks and they were thrown into the sea, than for them to cause someone to stumble.” This is, no doubt, one of those teachings that was designed by Jesus, intended by Jesus to grab our attention! Which it certainly does! And maybe our initial reaction… Is to respond just like the disciples did… “You’ve got to be kidding me… There’s no way… You’ve got to give me more faith if I’m going to be able to live up to this standard.” Seems an impossible standard to tell you the truth.
But Jesus doesn’t stop there… He piles on! Jesus also stressed the importance of forgiveness, calling his disciples to forgive the person who sins against them as many times as the person makes offense. If a person sins against you seven times, JESUS says, seven times you must forgive! Lord knows that’s tough.
I don’t care how you carve it, forgiveness is most always a difficult thing to do… but the degree of difficulty is compounded exponentially when the offending behavior is repeated! To forgive under such circumstances is something that you and I can’t “in and of our own power“ accomplish.
It’s kinda like a friend of mind once said: “I’ll forgive people up three times (3-strikes and you’re out), maybe… But after that, it’s eye for eye, and tooth for tooth!” Jesus is challenging us here to be more than we can possibly be in our own strength. And the challenge certainly seems too big … So Jesus’ disciples, including his modern day disciples, cry out for more faith. Sounds reasonable.
Except, for Jesus’ response… “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.”
We’re all familiar with the analogy of the mustard seed. Mustard seeds being the smallest seed imaginable, I suppose. Jesus was saying it only takes this minuscule amount of faith in order for you to live into the calling of Christ!
Only you and I can immediately sense a problem here… because experience is a teacher, and we know from experience, that we’ve never uprooted a tree on verbal command. I’ve certainly never uprooted anything on command, weed or tree… Have you?
Of course, I know I can grab a shovel, and start digging and uproot a tree… And I can trust… I can have faith… that God to give me the strength that I need in order to complete the task. I don’t have a problem with any of that, I certainly believe it all to be true. But that’s not what Jesus is saying here. And that leaves us with a few options: either Jesus didn’t know what he was talking about… Or he didn’t mean what he said, at least literally… Or I don’t even have a minute amount of faith.
Now, let’s break that down… Of course, the fact of the matter is, Jesus always knows what he is talking about. And he always means what he said; Even if you and I might find his words challenging, and difficult to hear. So we can scratch that choice right off the bat!
So maybe it’s true that I don’t even possess faith the size of a mustard seed. Certainly possible, I suppose, except for the fact that I know myself. I don’t want to imply for a single second that my faith is anything special because it’s not. However, I think I can say with a certain degree of accuracy, that my faith may even be the size of an apple seed. I have faith… I believe… I trust in Jesus Christ. In fact, I have more faith in Christ than anything or anybody in this life. And that being the case… we’re back to square one.
But maybe, just maybe, Jesus was trying to help us understand something that we are so often reluctant to believe: could Jesus be saying that we are already equipped, already gifted… With everything we need in order to follow Christ fully… Jesus is saying, without doubt, “your faith is big enough. You already have all the faith you need to do whatever it is, that I have called you to do! And if you’re not doing something because you don’t think your faith is big enough… You are simply making excuses.”
Do you have any faith at all? Do you have any relationship with God whatsoever? Why in the world, are we here this morning? If you have any faith… then you’re blessed and challenged to live by faith! You have enough faith to do the things of Christ! And you have enough faith to have no excuse whatsoever, when it comes to doing those things.
You know we like to tell ourselves that preachers and teachers and evangelist, Billy Graham, have so much faith that there’s somehow different. They’re different than we are. They’re special. Uniquely equipped… Incomparably qualified to do the things that God has called them to do.
Jesus message to his disciples, and to us: you have been called, you have been equipped, stop making excuses! You and I have all the faith that we need, or that we will ever need, simply because Christ has chosen us.
Soren Kierkegaard wrote about this a long time ago. He said, “the matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand the scriptures, because we know very well that the minute we understand it, we are obligated to act accordingly. [And] Here lies the wheel of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Do you and I really want to possess the faith, to exercise the faith, to live the faith that Jesus has called us to? If our answer to that question is yes… then we simply need to stop making excuses. We need to know the word of God, we need to live the word of God… Thus we exercise our faith, in the living God. And when we do that, they’ll be no stopping what the Church of Christ can accomplish. Even if our faith is tiny... and even if our congregations, our preachers all possess the most infinitesimal amount of faith imaginable, we have what we need, to follow and serve our Lord and Savior. After all, it’s not about how much we have, but how much Christ gives us! May it be so in the powerful name of Jesus! Amen.
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