Luke17:6 “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,” the Lord said, “you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”
There are those who don’t think that faith makes a significant difference in our lives, at least not a positive one. You may be aware of the criticism that “thoughts and prayers” has come under in some circles. A tragedy takes place, like a deadly storm or a mass shooting. Celebrities, politicians, and ordinary concerned citizens express their concern by offering their thoughts and prayers for those who have been affected. But some condemn that faith-based response. “It doesn’t help,” they claim. It’s a form of inaction. It prevents people from taking the tragedy seriously, the claim.
Our own devaluing of faith may be more subtle, but it can be just as real. Do we feel secure because we have a healthy bank account, sound investments, and a steady job? Or is it because God has promised to give us our daily bread? Do we feel safe because we live in a good neighborhood, we have installed a security system, or we carry a firearm? Or are we comforted in knowing that the Lord will give his angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways?
Jesus promises that faith enables some powerful things to happen. But let’s not misunderstand the source of that power. He does not say, “Your faith will uproot this mulberry tree and plant it in the sea.” It won’t. That’s not how faith works. Faith is a receiving thing, in many ways a passive thing. It looks away from ourselves to someone else’s power. And in this case, that power is God’s.
Let me illustrate with an incident from my son’s life. When he was ten, he was diagnosed with stage four cancer. We took him to child cancer specialists. They proposed a treatment plan involving chemotherapy. We trusted their expertise. It wasn’t our faith in the doctors that ate up the cancer and healed my son’s body. Frankly, that faith was a wobbly thing, full of uncertainties and fears.
No, the power that destroyed the cancer was in the medicines injected into his body (at least humanly speaking. I don’t deny a divine role in all of this as well). If we hadn’t trusted the doctors, we would not have accepted their medicine. But that’s where the power was. We didn’t need to be convinced they were the greatest doctors who ever lived. We didn’t need to be 100 percent certain their plan was going to work. We needed to trust them just enough to let them do their work, a little mustard seed faith, if you will.
Faith clearly works this way for our salvation. It is not our own act of believing that cleanses the sin from our souls. The human attitude of trust is not the spiritual soap that washed the guilt away. “It is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast,” Paul writes the Ephesians. Faith turns to Jesus, and he comes in with the perfect life he lived and the payment he made for sin on the cross. He scrubs and cleanses our guilty record until not a spot remains.
Now Jesus wants us to know that faith has access to the same love and power of God for just about anything we might truly need. Uprooting a tree is a bigger job than I could ever do. I once spent a couple of days with a spade trying to dig out some shrubs at our first home. That was back-breaking work. No one I ever knew who wanted to get rid of a tree uprooted the thing. They sawed it off and ground out the stump. Uproot an adult tree? Good luck! Unless God is involved with his power. Then it’s like pulling onions or carrots out of a sandy-soiled garden.
Just don’t think Jesus is suggesting that faith makes God our personal genie with unlimited “Your wish is my command” privileges. There has to be a clear and urgent need for trees to be uprooted before they move. And the Lord himself is the one who judges that need. Former major league pitcher Dave Dravecky developed cancer on a bone in his throwing arm. He had the cancer removed, rehabbed the arm, and made it back to the pitching mound. In his first game back the bone snapped in two. His arm had to be amputated. In looking back at his experience, this was one of the things he learned: “In our culture,” he said, “we ask for God to take the problem away. In other cultures they ask God to make them stronger to bear their burdens.” That’s a gift for which our faith can trust God: strength to bear our burdens.
Just a little faith receives great things. Jesus promises.
