Believing for the impossible

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 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 17:5-6

Jesus liked to surprise his hearers - even, sometimes, to shock them. (His seeming tetchiness with the Syrophoenician woman, Matthew 15:21-28, is a classic case.) He knew that we often need to be jolted out of our spiritual sluggishness and laziness and forced to think (something that many of us, sadly, aren’t used to!). We find ourselves sitting bolt upright and saying, “What did he say!”

This little passage is a case in point.

The apostles ask Jesus to “increase our faith”, and his reply, taken literally, contains more than one absurdity. In essence, he tells them that the tiniest faith imaginable (“as small as a mustard seed”) can achieve the utterly impossible (transplanting a mulberry tree into the sea). Matthew 17 gives us a different version of the same saying except that in that case it’s not a tree that is moved but a mountain! - which is, if anything, even more impossible. (It seems Jesus wasn’t afraid to repeat the same lesson in differing forms.)

How odd!

Sticking with Luke’s version, the commentaries tell us that the tree in question (literally the “sycamine” tree) was thought of by the Jews as the deepest-rooted of all trees (think, perhaps of Japanese knotweed, only infinitely worse), so the parable contains two impossibilities: first the uprooting and then the replanting.

Once we have allowed the strangeness of the saying to sink in we find that the meaning isn’t in fact so hard to pin down; we only have to recognise that Jesus, like all teachers across all time and throughout the world, enjoyed using non-literal, metaphorical language. Here he is using a figure of speech called hyperbole (deliberate exaggeration) to make a simple point. Two clear messages emerge…

First, what matters is not so much great faith, though that, of course, is good, but faith in a great God. There is a big difference. We refer to God as “almighty”, meaning that he can do anything. But do we really believe it? In theory, probably yes, but what about in answer to our prayers?

The message is: We may feel our faith is pathetically feeble, and no doubt we’re right, but let’s bring it to God anyway: simple faith expressed with humility fills him with delight.

Faith isn’t, after all, something we can conjure up, so to speak, by sheer willpower; we can only bring what we have and lay it at God’s feet. Our job is to bring it; what he does with it is up to him.

Second, radical change really is possible. True, it may not take quite the same form as Jesus’ dramatic illustrations, but with time and perseverance (and no doubt lots of hard work), the very landscape around us can be reshaped. The poet Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of” – and indeed we will never know what changes in our world and in our personal circumstances are the result of the simple faith of a friend - or a stranger - expressed in prayer.

The alternative to praying is obvious: not praying. But if we have any kind of confidence in the Bible, that is simply unthinkable; from beginning to end it shows us men and women talking with God and listening to him. As Christians we belong in that great tradition.

I wonder if anyone reading this is faltering a bit in your prayer life? It can easily happen, especially when the novelty of being a Christian has worn off, or the way seems particularly hard. Or, of course, when after much prayer mountains haven’t been moved and trees haven’t been transplanted. The temptation is to give up, but that is a temptation we must resist.

And if we are finding that kind of perseverance beyond our strength, that’s the time to share with friends and recruit their prayers on our behalf.

Do it! Don’t put it off! – they will feel it a privilege, and your request will refresh their faith.

Lord God, I’m afraid my faith is often terribly feeble. Please help me when I feel my prayers may be in vain. Help me, even in the next few days, to prove that my tiny faith really can transplant trees and move mountains! Amen.