HAVE YOU EVER criticized yourself for not having enough faith? Or perhaps you’ve been part of a congregational culture in which people taught that God will grant any request if you just pray hard enough, if you just believe strongly enough. The implicit or explicit expectation may be that the “truly faithful” give more sacrificially to the building program, volunteer more, and never question church leadership.

And in such an environment, it’s easy to internalize the corresponding negative and judgmental messages. The treatment’s not working and I still have cancer; I guess I don’t have enough faith. I’ve been looking for a job for six months, and still nothing; it must be because I don’t really trust God. My kids have distanced themselves from me and from the church. I’ve been praying and praying for their return, but nothing’s happening and I feel like giving up. I just don’t have enough faith.

Against the background of such punishing thoughts, it can be hard to hear Jesus calling people “little-faiths,” as if he were criticizing them for not measuring up to the minimum standards for discipleship. Yeah, that’s what I thought, Jesus might seem to say. You’re just a spiritual lightweight. Sorry, you didn’t make the cut.

But is that what he means? Let’s take a closer look.

In Matthew 6, Jesus tells his hearers not to worry about basic necessities like food and clothing. He uses the birds and flowers as examples of the loving providence of God; why worry when you have a Father like that? Referring to the splendor of the wildflowers, therefore, he asks a pointed question:

If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? (Matt 6:30, NIV)

Again, the phrase “you of little faith” is one word in the Greek, an adjective that can be translated literally as “little-faiths.” This is the first of six uses of the word in the New Testament. A second can be found in a parallel passage in Luke 12. In both cases, Jesus is speaking before a large crowd of would-be followers.

But the other four uses are all directed specifically toward the Twelve. In Matthew 8, for example, Jesus and the disciples are out in a boat when a sudden storm appears, creating massive waves that threaten to swamp the boat. The disciples are terrified; but Jesus is asleep after a long day of healing the sick. They wake him, shouting, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” (vs. 25). Jesus calls them “little-faiths,” then rebukes and calms the storm (vs. 26).

In Matthew 14, the disciples are again in a boat on a stormy sea, but this time, Jesus isn’t with them. Just before dawn, he comes to them, walking on the surface of the water. At first, they think it’s a ghost, but Jesus reassures them that it’s just him. Then Peter, inexplicably, asks to walk on water too. He does fine at first, but falters as he begins thinking too much of the wind and waves. “Lord, save me!” he cries out as he sinks. Jesus catches him before he goes under, and says, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (vss. 30-31).

In Matthew 16:8, he again calls them little-faiths when they wrongly think he’s criticizing them for forgetting to bring bread. Don’t you get it? he says. You’ve seen me feed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread, and 4,000 people with seven loaves. So why would you think I’m worried about not having any bread?

Finally, in Matthew 17, a desperate father comes to Jesus seeking healing for his son, who has been suffering dangerous seizures. He had already asked the disciples to heal him, but they could not. Jesus heals the boy in an instant, and the embarrassed disciples later ask him in private why they had been unable to do it themselves. Jesus replies:

Because you have so little faith. 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. (vs. 20)

Verses like these lead some to think that Jesus is teaching that believers can do anything at all if they just have enough faith. All it takes is just a tiny bit, a grain of faith as small as a mustard seed.

But hang on. Do you notice the tension between those statements? If Jesus is telling the disciples that they couldn’t do it because they needed more faith, why would he illustrate this by choosing something as tiny as a mustard seed? It seems awkward, to me at least, to read him as saying, “You actually have less faith than a mustard seed — I just can’t think of anything smaller right now.”

It makes more sense, I think, to take Jesus as saying that those would follow him are suffering from a failure of vision, from an inability to appreciate the full truth about the God in whom they should put their trust. The people are so concerned about what they think they need to survive that they can’t see the providence of God all around them. The disciples are terrified of drowning because they still haven’t fully realized who’s in the boat with them. Peter begins to sink because he takes his eyes off Jesus and looks at the storm instead. The Twelve misunderstand Jesus because the full import of two miraculous feedings of thousands of people at once still hasn’t sunk in.

And the lesson about the mustard seed? It’s not that you need to have more faith. If anything, it’s the opposite: what God can accomplish through a person of faith is completely out of proportion to the size of that person’s faith. It’s mountains versus mustard seeds. Moreover, it’s not about what the person wants, but what God wants, what demonstrates and builds God’s kingdom.

“WILL HE NOT much more clothe you — you of little faith?” Jesus asks his worried hearers. He’s not saying that God would feed and clothe them if they just had more faith. He is graciously inviting them to trust their heavenly Father and let go of the concerns that get in the way of their discipleship. Can they learn the lessons taught by the birds, by the wildflowers? Can they join the psalmists and hear the testimony of creation to its Creator?

Jesus isn’t scolding the crowd; he’s inviting them into a new and non-anxious quality of life. And as we’ll see, what’s at the center of this new life is a wholehearted pursuit of God’s kingdom.