Mustard Seed of Faith

 

Sermon prepared for Grace Lutheran Church, Scarsdale, N.Y., on July 30, 2023.

Today we observe the awesome power of the littlest things.

This is not a new thing for me. Most of you know my wife, Martha, who is such an enormous presence in my life. She fills my days with unconditional love, support, and – on occasion – constructive criticism. It’s only when I see her from a distance that I’m a bit surprised how petite she is, a small thing with a titanic aura.

Our youngest daughter, Victoria, now a business executive in Atlanta, is even smaller than her mother. Her self-description on Facebook quotes Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” (act 3, scene 2.) 

There is power in little things. 

In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus’ disciples ask him to make their faith bigger. They think this is a logical request because they know Jesus can do anything he wants and they are eager to increase their faith. They know that their does faith not necessarily grow just because they walk, eat, and sleep with Jesus. Faith is not contagious, and Jesus has been known to criticize them for having too little of it. They no doubt remember watching him sleep serenely on a boat being swamped by a storm, and they shout at him to wake up because “we are perishing.” Jesus awakes, calms the storm, and chides the disciples: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” So it's not unreasonable that they think they need Jesus’ intervention to increase their faith. (Mark 4:37-40)

But again Jesus seems to chide them. Faith is not measured by its quantity but by its quality.

“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.” (Luke 17:5-8)

Jesus could have used examples other than mustard seeds. Poppy seeds are smaller. Orchid seeds are smaller. Microscopic spores grow into spritely ferns. In a later era Jesus might have mentioned the tiny atom and it’s incalculable potential for power.

But his point is clear: Faith, even when it is little, is fierce. 

But there is a codicil to this treatise on faith that makes it clear why we are often desperate for more faith. That is the fact that most of us go through life plagued by doubts. And we are eager for a faith strong enough to counter the doubts.

Faith, we tell ourselves, is good. Doubt is bad.

But just as Martin Luther advised us to “love God and sin boldly,” there are also times when we find ourselves struggling to love God as we doubt boldly.

But doubt is not antithetical to faith. As the late great Presbyterian author Frederick Buechner observed, “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

I’ve known some serious doubters in my time and quite often I’ve been one of them.

I’ve also known some frivolous doubters who simply wish to distinguish themselves from silly simpletons of faith. They think Christians view God as a white bearded misogynist who sits on a cloud behind pearly gates, glaring at Muslims and grumbling ominously about same sex marriages. 

Those who don’t believe this god exists are welcome to their atheism, and they would include most church attenders.

Some doubters, however, are merely intellectual posers. They find it cool to be an agnostic or atheist. It makes them look smarter than their church going friends and it declares their emancipation from pious, controlling parents.

And there are doubters who doubt out of laziness, either because they don’t wish to trouble themselves with deep questions about the meaning of life, or because it gives them an excuse to stay in bed on Sunday mornings.

But I’m not thinking about bush league doubters. I’m thinking about persons whose doubt is on steroids, mounting daily, cramping the synapses of their frontal cortex, torturing them with illusions of insight while shrinking their cerebral testicles.

Doubt is not a trifling thing. Doubt is pain. Doubt is facing the fact that we can never have what we want most, what we need most. Doubt is the ultimate darkness. It’s ironic that we have been raised to think of Thomas as a man of little faith, when in fact his doubts were logical. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side,” he said, “I will not believe.” It was a cry of agony, not arrogance.

In 2008, the National Council of Churches was observing the 100th anniversary of the founding of its predecessor organization, the Federal Council of Churches in the USA.

As webpage editor, I was assigned to develop a monthly series of “ecumenical moments” that highlighted special events in the history of the Council. 

I looked for leaders and events that called attention to the special ministries of the Council. There was Arthur Flemming, a Republican member of President Eisenhower’s cabinet who was an eloquent advocate for Civil Rights; Harold Stassen and J. Irwin Miller, often touted as men who should have been president of the United States; Cynthia Wedel, a pioneering advocate for women’s rights and a member of President Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women; Eugene Carson Blake, who linked arms with Martin Luther King, Jr., on the 1963 “I have a dream” march with Washington.

All were persons of great faith and all were activists for peace, equal rights, and justice.

But as I leafed through the pages of Outlook, a magazine published by the Council from 1950 to 1953, I realized I was missing an important ministry not always associated with the National Council of Churches: evangelism.

I was surprised to discover the Council had a director of evangelism in the early fifties. He was a fiery, energetic preacher named Charles Templeton, who happened to be a good friend of Billy Graham. A long article in Outlook described Templeton’s homiletical zeal and remarkable success in winning souls for Jesus.

Yes! I thought. Perfect! What better example of the Council’s little known evangelical side? Was Templeton still alive? Was he still in the evangelism biz? I jumped on my computer and began searching for him.

I didn’t find Charles, but I found his son and gave him a call.

“I was just reading an old article about your dad’s years as evangelist for the National Council of Churches,” I said.

“Oh,” he replied, sounding interested.

“Is your dad still around?”

“He died in 2001.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“You knew, right?”

“What?”

“You knew he became an atheist and left the Council?”

Whoops.

So much for the NCC evangelism story.

Digging a little further, I discovered Templeton had written a book in 1996, Farewell to God, My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith.

The book includes an account of his encounter with his old pal, Billy Graham.

In the course of our conversation I said, “But, Billy, it’s simply not possible any longer to believe, for instance, the biblical account of creation. The world was not created over a period of days a few thousand years ago; it has evolved over millions of years. It’s not a matter of speculation; it’s a demonstrable fact.” 

“I don’t accept that,” Billy replied.

Charles Templeton had become a man of doubt. And he was no facile doubter. He was a doubter on steroids.

And, like Thomas, his doubts brought him pain.

Lee Strobel, the Christian journalist and author of The Case for Faith, recounts an interview he had with Templeton when he was in his 80s.

Strobel asked the aging atheist to update his thoughts about Jesus. Templeton’s response surprised him.

“He was,” Templeton began, “the greatest human being who has ever lived. He was a moral genius. His ethical sense was unique. He was the intrinsically wisest person that I’ve ever encountered in my life or in my readings. His commitment was total and led to his own death, much to the detriment of the world. What could one say about him except that this was a form of greatness?... And if I may put it this way,” he said as his voice began to crack, “I miss him!”

What happens to the doubters when they near the end of their lives?

The Apostle Thomas does not reappear in the canonical bible after his encounter with Jesus, but tradition says he sailed to India to found some of the world’s oldest Christian churches. It shows what a doubter can do when his faith is renewed.

But – and one might sigh, Alas! – Jesus never appeared to Charles Templeton to invite him to feel his wounds. Templeton remained in doubt to the end of his life.

At the end of his life, Charles Templeton did not retract his doubt. But his words suggest he never lost the ants in his pants, either.

And whatever state his faith was in when he died, it is evident he never lost his fascination – or adoration – for Jesus, “the most important human being who ever existed.”

Jesus has that way of grabbing hold of one, even one who has never encountered his resurrected body or touched his wounds.

What does Thomas have in common with Charles the Doubter and all the other doubters-on-steroids who struggle to understand the secrets of the world?

I think the answer is this:

We may have periods in our lives – long periods, endless periods, when we lose touch with God or Jesus.

But if we have faith the size of a mustard seed – or an Atom - God’s Holy Spirit never lets go of us.

And whether we are able to speak the words or not, whether we know it or not, there will never be a time we are out of the loving presence of our Lord and our God.

That is the fierce power of the tiniest amount of faith. The miracle is, we don’t have to ask Jesus for that faith because grace has already lodged it in our hearts.

Amen.