Mortal Remains
The Mustard Seed
The Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you. —Luke 17:6
The interpretation of this I have heard most often is basically that if one wallops up enough of a certain kind of attitude ("faith"), he'll be able to accomplish surprisingly great things, and that, to make the point, the Lord is using exaggeration, florid hyperbole typical of the Semite that he was, to tell us something about the believer's worldly endeavors, beginning with the critical importance of the walloping-up. Motivational speakers and certain kinds of popular preachers have found this idea useful in their trade, but for the rest of us, it's simply a reminder of how disappointing dealing with Jesus is, and how, because he exaggerates, much of what he says isn't just difficult, but can't be believed.
This interpretation, I believe, is wrong. Instead, what we have here is a teaching on faith in the economy of God as it relates to the Lord himself and to his people in light of the Father's will. It is a teaching about the nature of things that contains no exaggeration at all, only an arresting illustration. The Lord never exaggerates, and when one thinks that is what he is doing, it is a sign he is not being understood.
God's Will
The Lord is using the mustard seed as an example of perfect faith, of a life that entertains no doubt as to what it should do. I will venture that he chooses a seed because in its nature it cannot doubt, and so it can serve as an apt illustration for the perfection of faith's entelechy. Mustard seeds do what mustard seeds do, which is in perfect accord with the will of God for the mustard seed as expressed in its creation.
The man for whom this is also true will most assuredly perform the impossible, not because he has managed to will the unnatural, but because his command of nature accords perfectly with the will of nature's God, who might command, for unfathomable reasons of his own, a tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea—just as he might, against nature as we experience it normally, raise the dead or still the storm or walk upon the sea, and enable his disciples to do the same simply because that is as the Father would have it. The Lord is describing himself and those who are his co-operatives, who do his acts because they are with him and in him. He says the same many times in other places and ways:
And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will take up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not harm them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will be made well. (Mark 16:17–18)
When the Lord says "in my name," he is never making a mere reference to the recitation of it, but means "in my person," that is, in accordance with his perfect attunement and obedience to the will of the Father. If the Father is interested in planting sycamine trees in the sea, he shall find the faithful ready to give him any cooperation he desires, and he is pleased to work through them. These are not statements of what is possible by a certain kind of effort or the development of a certain mindset by the faith-adept. The Lord is referring to what is accomplished by those who are obedient because they act in and for him in what Cotton Mather called the magnalia Christi.
God's Ideal
It is wicked to teach people that what the Lord said refers to a power that is resident in themselves apart from submission to the active and permissive will of God—to make them think, for example, that if their faith were greater, their loved one would not have died or some other tragedy might not have happened, when they must be taught to humble themselves to accept the will of the One who has the power to plant trees in the midst of the sea, and who can, and will, extinguish evil in good in his own time and way. This is the Christian faith.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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