“Lord, increase our faith.” At first glance this seems like a noble and worthwhile plea. But, given all that we have seen of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, should it be a surprise that he turns even this request around?
This request by the disciples is one which many of us still struggle with today. It is as though faith were a quantifiable commodity, one that we could determine exactly how much we have relative to how much we desire.
During times of distress and crisis we hear comments like, “I don’t know if I have enough faith to get through this” or “It really tested her faith” or “I wish I had as much faith as he does.”
Jesus takes us to a strong visual image – “if you had faith the size of a mustard seed” you could do great things. A mustard seed is a small almost colorless seed which is easily overlooked. It was true at that time that the mustard bush was the biggest bush that grew in the area around Jerusalem. The imagery, then, offers clear contrasts for the listeners to grasp.
Jesus’ remarks, though, focus our attention on the folly of the question and the futility of the perceived struggle that we have with the amount of faith we have.
Faith simply is a gift. We either have it or we don’t. Sure, we can wrestle with faith. We try to live out the demands of our faith. While we might envy the faith of others, we cannot simply define our experiences in life by either comparing our situation with others through some psychological theory about why we respond in certain ways. Psychologists who have attempted to define and faith and discuss the cognitive abilities and stages of faith-filled people have only provided some anecdotal conclusions.
Jesus treats the question of faith as he does the experiences of wealth and power – less is better than more. We can see why Jesus takes that attitude regarding wealth and power, but why faith? Should faith not be something that we would want to have in abundance? For essentially the same reasons that Jesus decries wealth and power, he also safeguards us against “too much” faith. An excess of each of these can lead to hubris and a sense that we are in this on our own. We have the inclination towards total self-sufficiency and to losing our sense of reliance upon God. We can use faith, wealth and power to subdue and mistreat other people, it can become a matter of our personal egos being inflated and it causes those who perceive that they are lacking to become jealous and fall into the sin of covetousness.
Faith, like all gifts from God, is given to us freely to benefit, not ourselves, but the whole people of God. As such, we take the faith that we have and live it to the fullest.
The point that Jesus makes is clear – it is not the “amount” of faith that we have that is important – even the person whose faith is little can do miraculous deeds, IF he or she is living out the faith that he or she has.
A difficulty that the modern reader has with this story is that we have never seen any mountains being cast into the sea through the power of a person’s faith. In the secular commentaries surrounding the canonization of the now St. Teresa of Kolkata there was much talk of the miracles attributed to her intercession. Much of the conversation elicited more doubt than faith. We don’t believe in miracles.
When we see people of faith, we tend to marginalize them and treat them as either fanatics or as superstitious.
While it is our obligation to pray for the gift of faith, both for ourselves and for others, we cannot allow that faith to become an object of hubris, jealousy or contention. Instead, we exercise the faith that we have, living it to the greatest potential possible, and in that way, we indeed do move the mountains of skepticism, hatred, and lack of justice and peace that pollutes our world.
Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.