The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our 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.
Luke 17:5-6
Why is it that human beings always want more? If we hadn’t wanted more, we might not have taken that forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden…If we hadn’t wanted more, we might not have fallen from God. And even after that fatal mistake, we still want more. Just look at the latest advertisements, our entire American culture is built on the premise that we want more, that we need more, that more is better and better is more. If only we could say when enough is enough. If only we were satisfied. If only we knew how to be thankful with what God has given us.
The disciples wanted more. More faith. But they had no idea what they were
talking about. There is no such thing as more faith. Faith is something that you cannot measure.
I have a friend whose daughter died while he was in Seminary. She was five years old. She died of leukemia. And people would come up to him and say, “Thank God for your faith.” Or they would say, “Just hold on to your faith.” And he had no idea what they were talking about. Was he supposed to own something that would make this blackness better? Was he supposed to lean on this thing called faith? If it was something to possess or to lean on, then he must be missing it. Because all he felt was despair.
When the disciples ask for more faith, Jesus gives them a strange answer. If you had faith as tiny as a mustard seed (you know how small those seeds are, they blow away with the wind), you could make a tree jump in the water. You do not know what you are asking. You do not know what faith is.
If faith can make trees jump in the water, it must be God. Because only God can do things like that. Nothing that a person could create or own or hold onto could make a tree jump in the water. Jesus must have been talking about God. Faith must be none other than God inside of us.
Maybe that’s what it is, faith. Maybe it is, quite simply, the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us. That glimmer of mystery that yearns to return to God, that sliver of hope that nudges us, calls us, presses us to be better people, to seek heaven itself.
My friend Brad tried to hold onto his faith when his daughter died, but that didn’t seem to work for him. After a year of trying, he gave up and let the darkness come. He missed his little girl so much. The worst pain came when he thought of how she would never experience so much of live, her first kiss, her prom, her wedding, children. When he thought of all that she was deprived of in death, his despair seemed to swallow him whole.
But when he stopped trying so hard to have faith, something else came with the darkness. He had a dream. In the dream, Jesus took his little girl by the hand and together they experienced everything. She had her first kiss, she got married, she had children, she did everything. And when he woke up, Brad knew that she was alive with God, really alive, and experiencing all that is life and love. He knew that she was alive.
