Is more really better?

More is better, so we tell ourselves.  More money, more power, more prestige!  (More time – who couldn’t use that.)  Bigger cars.  Bigger houses.  Bigger computers.  Somehow, built in our collective American (and perhaps human) psyche, is this notion that more is better.  Jesus didn’t seem to think so. 

When his disciples buy into the lie of ‘more’ – when they ask Jesus to increase their faith, to make it bigger, stronger, better – Jesus responds simply:  You don’t need much.  Only a mustard seed of faith is enough.  Only a tiny amount of faith, when put into action, is profound enough to move any obstacle that seems to get in our way.  You don’t need more faith.  Rather, you simply need to put into practice what is already there.  Paul echoes that truth when he invites Timothy to “stir into flame the gift of God that you have…”  It’s not about more, in the area of faith.  It is about using it.  There is enough faith in our world and community to transform it into the kingdom.  All it takes is the commitment to use what we have. 

In so speaking, Jesus throws down the gauntlet before the disciples.  “Don’t go excusing yourselves from the work that faith involves.  You don’t need more to wait until you have more training, more faith, more education, and more…whatever, before God will use you to do his will.  With only a mustard seed of faith, it is enough to change the shape of the world…” 

In our own day, if you have read anything about the diaries of Mother Theresa of Calcutta, you see how true it is.  Here is a woman who struggled mightily with faith, who seldom if ever felt the consolations of God.  In her own writings, you saw revealed the soul a woman who felt like she had NO faith.  God was absent for the majority of her adult life.  Yet, you know what she did, how tirelessly she worked, what that little mustard seed of faith within her was able to do all around the world.  She didn’t let a little thing like God abandoning her get in the way of doing what she knew God was asking of her.  When her heart felt like there was no God, her head acted as if there was.  Because Jesus died for all of us, I will treat everyone, starting with the poorest of the poor, with that same love.  And even if my faith is so small, so tiny, like that mustard seed – I’ll do what my faith tells me to do.

And then to punctuate the point, as Jesus was in the habit of doing –to make sure his thick headed disciples got it – he tells the second story.  “When you are living your faith, don’t expect much from it.  It is simply who you are and what you are supposed to do.  So when you show up for work, don’t expect the manager to sweep the floors that you are to sweep, clean the windows in your place, write the computer program waiting on your desk. When you come home don’t expect your sister to take out the trash, your roommate to do your dishes, your brother to clean your room.  Do your job.  It is what is expected of you.”  Discipleship is not about entitlement, it is about service.  Discipleship is not about privilege.  It is not about waiting for the church to reach out to you, your family to take care of you – but for you to DO WHAT IS YOURS TO DO.  “When you are done, say: ‘We are unprofitable servants.  We’ve done what we are obliged to do…” 

So this week, don’t waste another moment asking “do I have ENOUGH FAITH.”  You do.  Even if it is the size of a mustard seed!  Instead of praying for more faith, more warm fuzzies, more of the consolation of God – pray out of the sense of today’s gospel, for the willingness to put the faith you have into action.  Ask these questions:  How can I help?  Where can I serve? And who among us has needs that, with God’s help, I can meet?”