How much faith does it take?

When I was a student at University there were a lot of groups that were pentecostal. These groups believed in speaking in tongues, miraculous healings, prophecies about the end times, and exciting miracles happening in exciting worship services.

We were tempted to think that these groups were so much more spiritual than us. Beside them we felt our faith was no bigger than a mustard seed. It didn’t take long to realise that they had their problems too. But even knowing that, I have always admired those with enough faith to put themselves out there and expect miracles while everyone is looking on. The potential for failure and public embarrassment is huge! I wasn’t willing to do that and so thought I had ‘little faith’.

This verse used to make me feel the same way.

“If a brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. 4 Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”
5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
6 He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”
Luke 17 TNIV

How could anyone have the faith to do that to the tree! (it’s a mountain in Matthew’s Gospel) My faith must be even smaller that a mustard seed. I thought sarcastically, “Thank you Jesus for pointing that out to me!”
But I had it all backwards. Jesus doesn’t buy into the whole big faith/small faith thing.

Jesus was ’sending up’ the idea by saying the smallest amount of faith would be able to get a tree to uproot itself and plant itself in the sea. In other words, ‘you either have faith or you don’t, there are no quantities of faith’. It was the disciples who introduced the idea of quantities when they said “increase our faith”; meaning if they had more then they would be able to obey Jesus and always forgive their continually sinning brother.

What I missed as a student when I read this passage was this: Jesus was passionately interested in his followers obeying him and totally disinterested in thrilling people with miracles such as flying trees.
And that is why Jesus refuses to talk about big faith or small faith. Because if faith is about obedience then there are only two ways of responding. You either obey or you don’t obey.

It takes faith to obey. The person who does not obey has no faith in Jesus and his teaching.
In the example in the reading, you either forgive your brother continually or you do not. You either trust Jesus knows what he is talking about or you don’t trust him.

Faith is about trusting Jesus and obeying him. He tells us to forgive continually, to love without conditions, to deny the self seeking side of our nature and follow him. You either do or you don’t. You obey or you don’t. You have faith in him or you don’t.

Now you can examine your own life and see where you have faith, and where you don’t.
And rejoice because the one who asks you to continually forgive your brother when he repents applies the same standards to Himself!

Graeme