Mustard Seed Faith

 “Mustard Seed Faith” // Luke 17:5-10

Sunday, Feb 24, 2013 @ Jericho Ridge Community Church

Series: Red Letters

Good morning everyone!  My name is Brad Sumner, I’m part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho Ridge and it’s so good to have you with us today as we begin a brand new teaching series that will carry us through Lent into and beyond Easter. 

One of our key emphasis this year around Jericho Ridge is Scripture intake – allowing God to speak to you as an individual and to us corporately as we hear from Him in the Bible.  But one of the challenges that can happen in this process is that as you are reading through the Bible, you come across something that makes you go “what the?!” “Huh?” “No way!”  Have you had that experience?  I have.  Now some of these things are issues of cultural distance.  After all, the world of the ancient near east into which the original text of the Bible was written is vastly, vastly different than suburban metro Vancouver in 2013! Some of them are issues of our interpretative lens.  As Anabaptists, our primary lens through which we look at the Scriptures is the person and work of Jesus.  So when you come across something confusing in say, the Old Testament, it can be helpful to think “well maybe this will sort itself out as we get into the New Testament – I mean Jesus, he’s clear on stuff isn’t He?”  And there is an element of truth to that…  In our confession of faith, we articulate that “The person, teaching and life of Jesus Christ bring continuity and clarity to both the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament bears witness to Christ, and Christ is the one whom the New Testament proclaims”. 

But there’s also something that we need to tell ourselves the truth about…  And that is the fact that Jesus, while He certainly brings clarity and continuity, is sometimes difficult to understand.  Sometimes Jesus is difficult to understand because of use of metaphor or story but sometimes, dare I say often, reading the words of Jesus can be difficult not because I don’t understand something but because the demands that He makes on me are all too clear.  And despite the people in the intro video and all the people in our culture today – both religious and irreligious - who talk about how they revere and respect Jesus, Jesus said some pretty intense and controversial things.  Things that are hard for us to swallow. So in this teaching series, we are going to explore the hard sayings of Jesus and we’re going to ask the challenging question: What if Jesus really meant what he said?

We’re calling this series Red Letters, which comes from the notion that in many versions of the Bible, it is common to print the words of Jesus in red.  Just listen to revered theologians Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber explain it in their own extended version of the popular children’s song the B-I-B-L-E.

[Sound cue – Play CD clip]

“The red words are the coolest they’re the words that Jesus said”.  Now, red letter bibles have become so common that it could be easy to assume that the Bible has just always been printed with the words of Jesus in red.  Not so.  In fact, the idea is little more than 100 years old.  It originated with a man by the name of Lous Klopsch, editor of the Christian Herald magazine.  He was a good friend of Chicago-based evangelist D.L. Moody at the turn of the 20^th century and raised over 3 billion dollars for global missions in his lifetime.  One of his favorite projects was raising money for Scripture printing.  One day he was reading Luke 22:20 where Jesus says to his disciples “this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” and the idea came to him of printing all of Jesus’ words in red, the literal colour of His blood.  Here’s a quote from the introductory note to the first edition which Lous published in 1899 under the pretty self-evident title: The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ With All the Words Recorded Therein, as Having Been Spoken by Our Lord, Printed in Color.

“Modern Christianity is striving zealously to draw nearer to the great Founder of the Faith. Setting aside mere human doctrines and theories regarding Him, it presses close to the Divine Presence, to gather from His own lips the definition of His mission to the world and His own revelation of the Father… The Red Letter Bible has been prepared and issued in the full conviction that it will meet the needs of the student, the worker, and the searchers after truth everywhere... In the Red Letter Bible, more clearly than in any other edition of the Holy Scriptures,” continues Klopsch, “it becomes plain that from beginning to end, the central figure upon which all lines of law, history, poetry and prophecy converge is Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world. He expounded in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself and the Divine plan for man’s redemption, and the Red Letter Bible indicates and emphasizes this Divine exposition and personal revelation at each successive stage, making them so clear that even the simplest may understand.”

That is our heart in this teaching series.  We want to hear from Jesus’ own lips, the definition of His mission to the world and our call to participate in it.  Let’s pray as we begin. 

If you want to find a section of the gospels that has red letters all over it, you can’t do much better than Luke chapters 15, 16 and 17.  If I open my Bible to this page, almost all of it is written in red.  Jesus is doing a lot of talking and teaching, in other words.  And the letters in black are really only introductory comments or questions or narrative information.  For example, in Luke 17:5 Jesus’ disciples come to him and ask an excellent question that I think most followers of Jesus will want to ask at one point or another in their lives: “Lord, show us How to increase our faith” And in his red letter response, Jesus doesn’t quite answer their question. Look at the red letters which begin in Luke 17:6 [read]

What in the world is Jesus saying here?  Is he suggesting that we go around praying for mulberry trees to be uprooted and thrown into the sea?  The mulberry tree, this one painted by Vincent Van Gogh, I mean, these trees live up to 600 years and require vast root networks to draw up nutrients.  How the heck are you going to get rid of a 600 year old tree?

Well, let’s look at the components of Jesus response.  First of all, Jesus is responding to a question on forgiveness.  The disciples are asking for more faith because they don’t think they have what it takes to forgive a person who wrongs them over and over again. I get this.  I have people in my life who push my buttons.  Who do the same stupid things over and over again.  Some people do things that just aggravate me, but sometimes, its much deeper than that.  Sometimes people around me deeply wound me.  And as we talked about two weeks ago, my response as a person who is living a transformed life when they come and ask is to offer forgiveness.  But this is hard work and takes what the disciples and I perceive to be HUGE amounts of faith.  Sometimes my anger and my bitterness at people who hurt me can have deep roots. And it can feel like its 600 years old – how in the world am I supposed to get rid of that kind of anger and fear and frustration and hurt? 

This is where Jesus introduces the notion of faith the size of a mustard seed.  You see, the mustard seed was one of the smallest seeds in ancient Palestine.  But it’s not its size that makes powerful.  Shane Clairborne is his book “Red Letter Revolution” notes that “Mustard grew like a wild and invasive weed.  Jews had laws against growing mustard in their gardens because it would take over the whole garden, leaving them with only mustard.  Mustard is a humble plant though – it didn’t grow huge like the cedars of Lebanon, or the giant redwoods in California. Mature mustard only stands only 8-10 feet high, a modest little bush.  What a beautiful garden image of how the kingdom of God takes over the world, a small, subtle humble invasions of goodness and grace.” (104)

To the disciple’s question “Show Us How to Increase Our Faith” Jesus gives a metaphoric answer.  In effect He says The crucial issue is not the quantity but the object of our faith.  It’s not how big or how small your faith is, it’s that you have any faith at all.  Even the tiniest bit of faith planted in your heart can grow, slowly and invasively until it begins to take over more and more and more real estate in your heart and in your life.  But it almost always has the tiniest possible starting point. 

This is where I get encouraged.  Because sometimes I look at people whom I perceive to have significant faith and confident trust in God.  And we sometimes tell ourselves “oh, I could never have faith like that!”  “I could never pray with that kind of confidence!” “I don’t know if I could believe God for that!”  But the crucial issue in the lives and experiences of each of these people is that at one point in their lives, their faith was miniscule as a mustard seed. But they chose to plant it and let it grow. And it grew. And grew. And grew, until it went to seed and became a small patch of mustard plants, then a little garden, then a whole field!  But faith always begins in small and humble and seemingly insignificant ways.  

If you are asking God to increase your faith, he may just put you in situations where it will be tested.  Where you have to forgive a person who has wronged you deeply.  Where you have to exercise inordinate amounts of patience.  Or where you have to trust him for provision of strength or finances or relationship or work or whatever it may be.  The message of these red letters is that faith often starts infantismaly small but if you plant it in the soil of God’s grace, it can grow into something incredibly significant.  As a disciple, our main responsibility is to trust God.  That’s one of the reasons why we’re doing prayer training next weekend – to ask God to build and grow our faith as we pray. 

I don’t know where you are at my friend, but it may feel to you like the obstacles you are dealing with seem like their roots go down into the very core of who we are.  The character flaws you bumped up against this week – the tendency to put someone else down to make yourself look better; the little ethical shortcuts you took in business; the substance abuse or sexual addiction that you work so hard to keep so neatly hidden; the insecurities you wrestle with.  All of the things that are wrong in our lives can seem like they are 600 years old and completely intractable. But one of the things Jesus is saying here is that the crucial issue is not how much faith you and I have that these things can change.  The critical issue is how much power God has.  When God is invited to get involved, things happen.  600 yr old mulberry trees are uprooted and move.  And it does not depend on me mustering up more faith.  It depends on God’s love for me and His desire. 

I think this helps us make sense of the second seemingly strange story that Jesus moves right into to make his point.  It’s a story about a labourer or a servant who gets no thanks.  Let me read for you from Luke 17:7-10.

On first brush, these red letters don’t seem to make a lot of sense, do they?  What in the world is Jesus driving at here?  We have a hard working servant who gets no thanks for their duty.  So what are we supposed to learn?  Well, let’s start by asking who plays which roles in this story.  We get a sense of the characters in the story from verse 10 – that Jesus is the master and we are the servants.

I wonder if Jesus isn’t driving at two things here.  The first is a reminder against pride that can so easily seep into our lives as our faith begins to grow.  As we begin to take steps of faith and see God respond and as we see the authority and power of God work in our hearts and through our lives, there is a not-so-small temptation that comes our way and that is to think that faith is growing in our hearts because we deserve it.  That our church is seeing new people come because we’re awesome.  That people are coming to faith in Guatemala during wheelchair distributions because we are just that good.  That we increased our budget this year because we totally nailed it last year. Mustard seed faith? Oh I have that and more!

To curb this kind of pride, Jesus tells a very short story to remind us that no matter how much amazing work we do, not matter how deeply we follow him or how closely we obey him, or how much good work we get done for him, we are still just humble servants who have simply done our duty.  Pastor John Piper in his assessment of this story says that “the gist of it is that the owner of a slave does not become a debtor to the slave no matter how much work the slave does. The meaning is that God is never our debtor. Verse 10 sums it up: "So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say, 'We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.'" We are always his debtor. And we will never be able to pay this debt, nor are we ever meant to. We will always be dependent on grace. We will never work our way up out of debt to a place where God is in our debt. "Who has ever given a gift to him that he should be repaid?" (Romans 11:35)…

The reason the owner does not thank the slave is that the servant is not giving the owner more than what the owner deserves. He is not treating the owner with grace. Grace is being treated better than you deserve. So it is with us in relation to God. We never treat God with grace. We never give him more than he deserves. Which means that he never owes us thanks. God never says "Thank you" to us. Instead he is always giving us more than what we deserve and we are always owing him thanks.” (Taste & See Articles, Aug 21, 2001)   

What’s so amazing about grace?  God’s lavish and amazing grace, when rightly understood, ought to curb our pride because since “we are "unworthy" slaves before we have done what we should, and "unworthy" slaves afterwards as well, it is only grace that would prompt God to help us.”  We will never be able to come to God on the merits of good behavior.  Even if we knock it out of the park and do an awesome job of plowing the field or taking care of the sheep or preparing a meal or serving it, we don’t come to God and say “hey, God – look what an awesome job I am doing serving in children’s ministry, God.  Hey God, look what a generous person I am being, God.  Hey God, look how what an awesome parent I have been this month!”  Even the most hard working and righteous person is still just an unworthy servant who has simply done our duty.  We can’t work ourselves into God’s good graces – the only way we come in by faith in the finished work of Jesus, who mediates God’s grace into our lives.      

So why is the fact that you and I are unworthy servants good news?  Well, it not only curbs our pride but it also means that God is just as free to bless us before we get our act together as he is after we do so. For me, this is a great incentive to trust God for help when I feel like my act is not together.  I hear so many people say things like “Oh, I would come to church but I feel like I’ve got to clean myself up a bit first” or “I’m not sure that if God really know all about me and the circumstances of my life, that he would love me”.  That’s the amazing thing about God’s grace – NONE of us deserve it.  We never move beyond the need for grace because we have somehow arrived because of how good we are or how much we have done recently for Jesus.  As a disciple or follower of Jesus, this story reminds me that I am always radically dependent on grace.  Keith and Melissa dedicating Hailey today is an act of planting a mustard seed of faith and asking God to continue to give them grace to be the parents that they want to be.  For everyone on the team going to Guatemala in a few short weeks, that’s an act of faith that reminds you of your need for God’s grace.  Even worship is an act of radical dependence on God because in that place, I remind myself again that I am not in charge – that I am an unworthy servant simply doing the bidding of my master.         

Dustin and the team are going to come and lead us in a time of response in worship.  The first song is one that we are just learning but it reminds us powerfully that from beginning to end, with all of the pieces of your life, you can trust God.  Perhaps you have something that you are struggling with trusting God about and you want someone to stand alongside you and help the mustard seed of faith grow into something more.  Our prayer team would love to do that with you today.  It doesn’t have to be for something huge, it can be to say thank you to God for something that He has done or is doing in your life.  The prayer team is here to serve you in this way.

Perhaps you’re here today and you’ve never expressed your dependence on God’s forgives and grace.  Maybe you’ve been doing life on your own and when it comes to relating to God, you’ve always feel unworthy.  There’s incredibly good news friend: we are all in the same boat.  We are all unworthy servants who need God, not as some kind of religious crutch to get us through the tough times in our lives, but to get to the very core of who we are and to change us from the inside out.  If that’s you today, don’t leave here without talking and praying with someone, myself or one of the prayer team or a trusted friend whom you came with or know here.  God’s deepest desire is to pour His grace into your heart but you need to acknowledge your position as an unworthy servant who needs it.  What if Jesus really meant what he said that you and I don’t need to have our act all together or all the faith in the world, but that I do need to start where we are at today asking Him to grow and nurture our faith and confidence in His grace and His work.    

I am going to invite you to stand with me as we pray and move into a time where we invite God to continue to plant those mustard seeds of faith in our hearts and trust that in his sovereign grace and timing, that they will grow and grow and grow until they take over ever increasing parts of my heart, my relationships, of our Willoughby and Clayton, and of the world that God has called us to reach. 

Let’s pray together as we worship.