If you had faith the size of a mustard seed (you'd get up and get to serving others)
Luke 17:5-10
Luke 17:5-10
A mustard seed is small in size, but mighty in its ability to be used as a metaphor. This week’s passage comes from the same scene in Luke’s gospel that we’ve been talking about for the last few weeks. Jesus is talking to the disciples within earshot of the Pharisees. He tells them the Rich man and Lazarus story from last week, and then he starts giving them some off the cuff words of wisdom.
‘Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table”?
The lectionary passage begins with verse 5 of the chapter, with the disciples reacting to what Jesus said in verses 1-4, so it’s worth talking about what Jesus said first. He tells them that there will be things that make them stumble in following him, and they shouldn’t make someone else stumble. Then he tells them that they need to forgive people who repent, even if they do it over and over and over. In reaction to that, they ask Jesus to increase their faith, which makes some sense, because you’d need some faith to let someone smack you in the face, ask to be forgiven, and then smack you in the face again seven times.
Jesus then gives the famous “faith of a mustard seed” line, telling the disciples, “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.” In other words if you only had a little bit of faith you could do amazing things. As we discussed a few months ago, the disciples are almost always the stand in for the reader. This is the case here, too. This should definitely read this as, “Yes, YOU, dear reader, can do things that seem impossible if you have faith.”
After telling the disciples that they could do so much with faith, Jesus answers my favorite theological question, “What does that look like in practice?” The example that Jesus gives comes off to a modern reader as somewhere between obtuse and enraging as it assumes that the reader has a person that they are keeping against their will as a slave. That’s not an easy place to put your brain, especially in a story that has nothing actually to say about the practice of slavery.
Jesus says, essentially, that when you have faith and follow God you must cook dinner for the person who you enslave. This image is really weird, but what Jesus is doing is using a relationship that would be familiar to the reader at the time to check three major theological boxes. First it’s Luke’s gospel’s classic theme of reversal of fortune. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. The relationship of enslaver and enslaved person is swapped in an example of that reversal of fortune that God’s beloved community requires.
Second this echos all the places in Luke’s Gospel that explain that serving God means serving others. (Also, why this whole thing is called www.radicalservanthood.com) Later in Luke’s gospel Jesus says about himself, “I am among you as one who serves” in relation to who is the greatest. (Luke 22:27) In Jesus’s worldview the greatest is the one who serves. This is the case here as well.
Finally, this example paints an interesting picture about the difference between doing what is required and following God’s will. In both the character of the enslaved person and the enslaver, they are shown as failing to meet God’s call if they only do what is required of them in their situation. If the enslaver asks the enslaved person to make food for him, then he does not live up to the standards that God requires. But, If the enslaved person only does the work that is required, that person does not live up to God’s standards either. This seems like an odd juxtaposition, but the point is that no matter your life circumstances, God calls you to do more than society requires of you.
This reminds me of the famous line from Google’s code of conduct “Don’t be evil.” (Which has since been changed) Jesus is saying that being a good person and doing what is required of you is not good enough. It is not enough to just not be evil. You must actively work for good to follow Jesus. I think this could be a pretty troubling teaching in a capitalist society that calls you get your paid job done and head home for netflix and labels it as good. Did you harm anyone today? If not, awesome. Jesus requires much more. We must actively try to do good. Who did you help today? Did you serve others? What did you do to help bring about the beloved community? These are the questions God calls us to ask, and the standard by which we should live.