Thomas finds himself wondering:

Well, that’s not the answer I was expecting!

When we asked Jesus to increase our faith, we were looking for something to inspire us.  Instead, we got a put down and a dismissive instruction to just get on with it.  “It’s nothing more than your duty. Don’t expect any great thanks” 

Uh?  Do you think he misheard what we were saying?!

We’d asked him to give us more faith, because we recognised our need of help.  It all feels beyond us.  His demands seem overwhelming.  I mean, even the basic task of forgiving someone, as he says we should, is difficult.  To say we should always do that, many times over, feels impossible!   We don’t have it within us.  We need help.  We need more faith.  Surely, it’s not unreasonable to ask him to give it?

But, instead, we get a put down.  “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed…”   Harsh that!  Is he implying our faith is so small?  Or that we don’t have any faith worth talking about at all?    At times in the past, I confess, he has been quite right in berating us for our lack of faith.  But why now, when, for once, we were the ones admitting our need to him.  Did we really deserve this knock back?

And then, to tell us we have no right to expect anything from our master is like really rubbing salt into the wounds!  It’s as though he’s saying we should know our place and just get on with our job; no help, no recognition, no reward.  He can’t possibly be serious, can he?

Or maybe I am the one who did the mishearing? 

To be honest, I’m confused.  This doesn’t fit at all well with everything he’s been teaching us so far.  For a start, he’s told us time and time again that we are not servants, we are friends. More than that, we are family. He really wants us to have the assurance that we are God’s children, with all the privileges that entails.  It’s hard to take in.  Almost too good to be true.  Now he has set our tiny fragile egos in panic again. Did we get him wrong?  I really don’t think so.

Maybe I’ve been a bit paranoid?  Perhaps he wasn’t actually saying we didn’t have enough faith – but just the opposite?  That faith is such a powerful thing that you only need the tiniest amount of it to make a huge difference?  Or, even, that it doesn’t matter how much faith you have, so long as you put your faith in the right thing? 

Thinking about it, Jesus’ answer really was quite ridiculous!  Who on earth would want to tell a mulberry tree to get up and plant itself in the ocean?  It may be a cool trick, but it’s pointless.  You don’t get a new delicacy called salted mulberries; I tell you!   I’ve seen trees that have been washed into the sea by a storm or landslide.  Sometimes, with a big enough root ball, they stay standing for a while.  Then the salt seeps in and slowly kills them, bleaching their wood a colourless grey until all they have left is a decaying trunk, waiting to be taken by the tide.  

Was he at it again – subtly poking fun at our silliness?   Maybe.

And was Jesus, once more, reading our motives more clearly than we do ourselves?  Quite likely.  He doesn’t want us performing grand gestures that make us look and feel good.  He simply wants us to get on with doing the things he asks of us.

He doesn’t want us doing things in order to convince ourselves or others that we are alright with God.  He simply wants us to realise that God loves us as his own, and then to live as God’s beloved children, loving him in return.   We need no reward. It’s given as a gift already.

And most of all, he doesn’t want us waiting and begging for more faith all the time.  He simply wants us to put whatever faith we have into practice.

Perhaps, it’s not so much how much faith we have that is important, but who we have faith in?   Maybe, we don’t need greater faith in God, only some faith in a great God?   That’s what gets things moving (mulberries, mountains and perhaps even me)!

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P.S.

If you are interested in how hard it is to move a mulberry tree, see this video from Wellcome Trust https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8u_FkD_NDQ