The Mustard Seed Conundrum

And Another Thing . . . Mustard Seed

Matt 17:20 “. . . Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

I am not a farmer. I am not very agricultural—or mechanical, or handy, or any number of other helpful life skills. When Jesus says, “. . . if you have faith as small as a mustard seed” I have no real context for it. I used to pull the weeds in my mother’s garden, and I think I planted something in a Styrofoam cup once for school, but I have no deep well of “seed” knowledge to draw from when reading this scripture. I just read the word “small”, and then read “as a mustard seed” which for me translates into “really small.” In studying this passage I learned that while there are even smaller seeds in the east, in Jesus’ time the “mustard seed” was proverbial for tiny. So what Jesus was saying is that faith is incredibly potent. Faith is turbo-charged potency on steroids. It doesn’t take much of the stuff to make a big things happen.

Encountering this verse makes me think that my faith must be comparable to one of those even smaller seeds, because the idea of moving a mountain seems impossible. It seems the tiny amount of potency required to accomplish this enormous task is way beyond my reach. Which I think is the correct conclusion and part of the point that Jesus is making. It feels impossible because it is impossible for me. I look at it (the mountain), and then at me (my assessment of my own ability) and conclude that in the battle between the mountain and me, the mountain will win. Jesus says in Luke 18:27, “What is impossible with men is possible with God." The essence of faith is getting out of your own head and into the mind of God. Jesus is saying (at least in my opinion), “If you could just see the world the way I do you could accomplish anything.” 

The trouble is I do not see the world the way he does. I see it with my fallen, practical eyes and my faithless, semi-reasonable mind. I tend to be a matter-of-fact, cautious, and self-protective person who is afraid to explore the necessarily ambiguous regions of faith. Jesus says that my idea of “possible” and his are vastly different. I have to accept this by faith because his idea is in conflict with my own. I find that my “smaller seed” sized faith is still trying to apply reason to a truth that is larger than me. My reasoning becomes a limit. My theoretical construct conceives an explanation which must necessarily be a miscarriage of the truth I hope to understand.

So how am I supposed to embrace this thing that is outside of my ability to comprehend? The simple answer is to trust God with it. Proverbs 3:5-6 says to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; (and) do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.”

The secret to getting our faith up to “mustard seed” status is to trust God. I can hear the groans as I uncork this Christian platitude. Trust feels intellectually lazy and is emotionally unsatisfying. It is a theological sound-bite that is mouthed by many and seemingly understood by few. It is the thing that is said when nothing else makes sense. Trust is a catch-all. It is also the truth. When we depend on our own understanding we mess things up. When we are faced with impossibility, we must trust God. The only way to step into the improbable is to trust the person who is asking you to take the improbable step.

This is a difficult idea to discuss and an even more difficult one to live out. Paul settled this conundrum in his own life by saying, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” (Phil: 4:13). God’s strength moves in us to do things we know we could never do on our own. His strength makes everything possible—including moving our “smaller seed” size faith up to the size of a “mustard seed.” As faith increases, mountains get wobbly.

And that is all I have to say about that . . . for now.