Jesus is responding to the apostles’ anxious reactions about a fear of not having enough faith. They weren’t hiding from Jesus like on the night of His trial. They weren’t denying that they had doubts about their own faith. But they were anxiously trying to control Jesus as the source of their faith like a herd of servants asking their master to serve them with some more of that “faith thing.” Where’s the “evidence of things not seen” or “substance of things hoped for” here (Heb. 11:1)? And Christ’s non-anxious presence was teaching them Christian community, just as we confer right now in worship. The “means of grace” (a John Wesley doctrine) increases the evidence of faith and the substance of things hoped for. A faith relationship with Christ is ours for the sharing – according to our God given “measure of faith.”
What did it take for you to show up at church this morning? Did you want more faith? Was there a hunger in your soul’s belly for God’s grace? Longfellow Deeds says, “People here are funny. They work so hard at living they forget how to live.” One way to understand how Jesus responds to our request for “more faith” is to take “Mr. Deeds’ approach” – maybe we’re working so hard at faith that we forget how to have it. And maybe we work so hard at church that we forget to be church.
After reducing the necessary amount or quantity of faith to something as small as a mustard seed, Jesus goes to the absurd extreme of our imagination and takes our minds eye to the possibility of plucking up a grown tree “roots and all” – then “planting” it in the watery sea – as if it would continue to grow there.
Quite a stretch, right? Not in today’s practical “faith in action.” Aeronautical engineers and horticulturists use helicopters to landscape golf courses and real estate development my relocating fully grown trees. And look massive hydroponic farming in the driest places on earth. Plant roots (and sometimes those of grown trees) are immersed in an aerated solution (water and plant food) with no soil. Epcot Center in Orlando has been demonstrating this technique for more than 25 years. Major irrigation farms pump even desalinated ocean water to artificial shallow seas or watery growth beds containing vegetables and fruit trees (like the mulberry tree in this parable).
Our technological history suggests that we are moving somewhat toward a greater faith in our ability to feed and heal others and ourselves. This is the “substance of things hoped for,” because we children of God have allowed His will to work through us and in spite of us “with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Romans 12:3b). Jesus immediately starts comparing the exercise of faith with the behavior of servants to a master. Faith is the servant of the believer and does not push or drive the one who accepts the responsibility of being served by faith. If we try to serve our faith instead of allowing faith to serve us, then we are not allowing God’s creative power to flow through us in service to others.
Like grace, faith comes to each one of us according to the measure God gives us. This “measure of faith” is sufficient for our needs. It is freely given like the “means of grace” that inform us through experience about what grace really is.
John Wesley said that the “means of grace” are ways in which God works invisibly in disciples, by quickening, strengthening and confirming our faith. As true believers we use them to open their hearts and lives to God's work in our shared lives. We are no longer mere feeling individuals standing alone like a mustard seed or a fruit tree. Examples of these “means of grace” experience “Works of Piety,” such as: Prayer, Searching the Scriptures, Holy Communion, Fasting, Christian Conferencing (or "community"), and Healthy Living. We also experience “means of grace” while doing “Works of Mercy,” such as: Doing Good, Visiting the Sick, Visiting the Imprisoned, Feeding & Clothing those in need, “Earning, Saving, & Giving all one can,” the Seeking of Justice, and Opposing any form of Slavery.
If we pay careful attention to these “means of grace” then we are “more likely”, “more faithfully” seeking sanctification and “Christian Perfection.” Your “measure of faith” doesn’t need to be great, if God’s grace covers a multitude of our sins by simple faith, without more. Then let God’s loving sanctifying grace bring you to the next process of living the abundant life in service to Him and to others with the mind of Christ in the Holy Spirit.
The disciples didn’t ask Jesus to explain “faith” to them. They asked for the substance of those experiences and changes that they hoped for. They knew they had some faith because they were following Him all over the country side, leaving their families, enduring isolation from the established Judaic leaders, getting ready for something bigger and better. But what was it. The apostles (those having already been sent out to witness for Jesus) asked for more of where that “evidence of things not seen and substance of things hoped for” came from.
Our measure of faith isn’t just a sum total of good deeds under one or more of these “means of grace.” Jesus uses parables so that we will get back in touch with what God originally planted in our hearts and minds – what God calls us to be while walking in the Spirit. We are both spirit and flesh. When the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, then we need each other to help us practice these means of grace and overcome our reptilian and animal anxiety within us and around us.
We can lovingly respond instead of merely react. The Holy Spirit visits us with individual measure of faith, while God the Father has provided His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to show us the sanctified life by practicing the “means of grace” in our lives together as His chosen body. I’m not preaching to the wrong choir, because we can consciously agree and affirm our church vision etched in the corner stone of this church and emblazoned at the base of one of our sanctuary stain-glass windows: “The love of Christ constrains (controls) us” and the rest of 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 explains how Christ controls us: “because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”
When you were kids did you dream about becoming a stuffy church member who knew how to say the most savvy and spiritual things one day... ...who would think with his wallet instead of his heart? Come on, I know I didn't. I wanted to be a guy other people called on, if they were in trouble or needed help with something: like a pastor, a teacher, an advocate – even a carpenter or mechanic, because they fix things for people. I wanted to help people. I didn’t question whether I had enough faith to do it.
But as I grew I realized that my “measure of faith” even smaller than the mustard seed. I needed Jesus Christ to teach me with His Holy Spirit what God the Father wanted me to do and how to keep on doing it.
Dear Heavenly Father, each one of us thank You for our measure of faith and Your means of grace that leads us away from our anxious reactions and brings us toward a healthy congregation full of Your grace with unmeasured faith in Christ’s name, Amen.
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