John Lennox, a professor of mathematics at Oxford University, argues that everyone has “faith” in something—even atheists. Lennox notes that the word faith isn’t just a religious word. It comes from the Latin word fides, which means “trust” or “reliance”. Lennox writes, “The irony is that atheism is a ‘faith position,’ and science itself cannot do without faith.”
Lennox backs up his case by quoting the famous 20th century scientist Albert Einstein who once said, “I cannot imagine a scientist without that profound faith [that the universe is comprehensible to our reason].” The contemporary atheist Richard Dawkins once wrote, “An atheist … is someone who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe …” Notice that the atheist believes there is nothing beyond the natural world because he or she can’t actually prove it. The physicist Paul Davies, who is not a Christian, says, “Even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith the existence of law-like order in nature that is at least in part comprehensible to us.” The physicist John Polkinghorne agrees, arguing that the entire study of physics depends on “its faith in the mathematical intelligibility of the universe.”[1]
So, what about us? The question is not whether we have faith. The question is: what is our faith in, what is it directed toward?
In our Gospel reading for today from Luke 17:5-10 Jesus teaches us about faith. Listen for God’s word to you…
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.
“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”
As we have accompanied Jesus on his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, we have heard him say a number of challenging things. Those difficult sayings continue in Luke 17. Jesus has just told his disciples that:
- They need to beware of putting stumbling blocks in the way of others.
- If another disciple sins, they need to rebuke the offender, and if he repents, they must forgive him.
- In fact, if someone sins against you seven times a day and turns back and simply says, “I repent,” then you must forgive.
These are challenging sayings because none of us are perfect people. We all, perhaps at one time or another, have put stumbling blocks in the way of others and their progress along a spiritual pathway. And we all struggle with forgiveness, both receiving it and giving it.
No wonder the disciples said to Jesus: “Increase our faith!”
It has been said that the Christian life is not difficult; it is impossible! That is to say: none of us can live out the ideal of the Christian life unless Christ is living in and through us.
I have heard many people say: “I wish I had more faith.” Or, “I wish I had a faith like yours.” “But,” they say, “faith is a gift and I just don’t have it, or I just don’t have enough of it.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
So, to those who say they don’t have enough faith, I say: “Just take the first step!”
Here is Jesus’ response to those who say they don’t have enough faith: “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.
Do you know how big a mustard seed is? It is only one to two millimeters in diameter. Faith the size of a mustard seed is not very big faith at all.
The philosopher William James once said,
I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man’s pride.[2]
As Betty Reese once said, “If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.”[3]
Returning to Jesus’ statement in Luke 17, the word translated “mulberry tree” probably refers to a sycamore which was believed to have especially deep roots. So, Jesus is stressing the extraordinary power of God when accessed even by apparently tiny faith. As Tom Wright puts it, “You don’t need great faith; you need faith in a great God.”
Faith is just a conduit. Faith is like an empty straw through which we receive the gifts of God. And if you ask God, he will give you the gift of faith. All you have to do is ask. The New Testament assures us of this over and over again. (Matthew 18:19; 21:22; Mark 11:24; John 14:13; 15:7,16; 16:23-24; James 1:5-6, 17; 1 John 3:22; 5:14-15) I love what Jesus says in Luke 11:9-13,
So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!
Does Jesus literally mean that if we have faith we can say to a tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it will happen? Well, I have never heard of such a thing happening exactly like that, but I suppose that if such an act was necessary to the furtherance of God’s kingdom, God could accomplish such an act. There is nothing impossible for the creator of the universe.
In recent days, we have seen massive trees uprooted by hurricane Dorian. So, God uproots trees all the time, and he throws some of them into the sea. Could God do such a thing through a word of faith spoken by one of his children? Of course, he could. But remember the key thing is not the word of faith, but the God who can do the impossible.
So, amazing things can be accomplished through faith. But the little story that Jesus tells here reminds us that the amazing things we seem to accomplish by faith do not ever obligate God to do anything for us. The God of the universe does not owe us anything, no matter what we do in this life. Nothing we can do can establish a claim on God or put him in our debt.
That is hard for us prideful human beings to really take in and believe. Most of us can probably identify with the story of the man who wrote the book, “Humility and How I Achieved It”.
We are far too proud of our accomplishments, even those things we seem to achieve in the spiritual realm. C. S. Lewis reminds us of our true position when he says in Mere Christianity…
Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, ‘Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.’ Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction.[4]
We all know the old saw: “Life is God’s gift to you. What you do with your life is your gift to God.” That statement is true. But we do not enrich God, we do not put God in our debt, by any gift we give to him.
I believe Isaac Watts got it right when he wrote this for the final verse of his great hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” …
Were the whole realm of Nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
As William Barclay says, “It may be possible to satisfy the claims of law; but every lover knows that nothing can ever satisfy the claims of love.” And the love of God expressed through his Son Jesus Christ lays the greatest claim ever to the heart of every person who has ever lived or ever will live.
So, does God or Jesus in the end view each of us as nothing but worthless slaves? No, I do not believe so. Notice that Jesus’ story refers to human beings saying, “We are worthless slaves.” In Jesus’ story that is not what God says about us. But that is sometimes how we feel, we sometimes feel worthless, in comparison to the greatness and the holiness of God.
I remember a time in my life when I was feeling particularly worthless. I happened to be visiting Belfast, Northern Ireland at the time, and I decided to attend a Sunday evening service at C. S. Lewis’ childhood church, St. Mark’s Dundela. That night there was a healing service at the church. After communion the rector of the church invited anyone wanting healing for themselves or a loved one (physical, emotional, or spiritual healing) to come forward and kneel at the altar rail. I went forward and knelt, and as the rector laid his hand on my head, he prayed that God would keep me as the apple of his eye.
That prayer transformed my whole perspective on myself at that moment. The words of the rector reminded me of God’s love for me—a love that I very much needed to remember and receive just then.
The rector’s prayer came from Psalm 17:8 in the King James Version where the psalmist prays to God and asks God, “Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings.”
And in Deuteronomy 32:10 it says that God found Israel “in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.”
Isn’t that a beautiful expression? Of course, the phrase “the apple of the eye” refers to the pupil. We have all probably had the experience of staring into someone’s eyes and seeing our own face reflected in their pupil. That’s what the King James Version of the Bible means when it talks about us being the apple of God’s eye. It means that God has his eye upon us at all times because he loves us; he cherishes us. If you will simply accept that truth today, that you are the apple of God’s eye, then by faith you will accomplish great things for Christ and for his kingdom, because the love of God for us in Christ is the most powerful force in the world.
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