“Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here immediately and take your place at table’? ⁸ Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished’? ⁹ Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? ¹⁰ So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” (Luke 17)

This parable presents an opposite picture of the master and slaves given in Luke 12:37. There the master has been out traveling and when he returns home, he has the slaves sit down to eat and he serves them. There one hears the theme of the great reversals so prevalent in that portion of Luke. Here, Alan Culpepper expresses the meaning of this parable very succinctly: “The disciples can do what God requires – through faith – but disciples never do more than is required” (324).

“If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to (this) mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. (Luke 17) One might expect Jesus to well receive the request for more faith, but the response seems to imply that the disciples do not (yet) understand the real nature of faith. The saying is grammatically complex in Greek.  The first part of verse 6 is a construct that implies the disciples do have faith, but the second part of the verse contradicts that positive assessment with the implication that the disciples have not yet scratched the surface of the real nature of faith.

The disciples assume that they have faith and they will need more to accomplish what Jesus has taught in vv.1-5.  Jesus seems to be saying they don’t even have faith is the smallest quantity (hence the reference to the mustard seed). The point is not that they need more faith, but that they need to understand that faith allows God to work in a person’s life in ways that defy ordinary human experience.  This saying is not about performing extraordinary miracles, but that with even the smallest of faith, God can help them to live by his teachings on discipleship.

[Note: other commentaries suggest that Jesus is affirming their faith – in other words, they do not need more. If they believe and act on the faith that they already have, then they can rebuke and repent and forgive within the community. In essence, he seems to imply that they don’t need more faith, but to make use of the faith that they already have.  Why the difference?  It depends on how one assesses the conditional primary and secondary clauses present in the verse.]

Image credit: The Exhortation to the Apostles | James Tissot | ca. 1890 | Brooklyn Museum NYC | PD-US

Why do the apostles make the request: “Increase our faith”? Does their request indicate that one can have more or less faith? If one remembers that pístis (“faith”) is also translated as “trust” then our own experience shows us that we trust, but in different and varying degrees. But what was it that indicated their faith was somehow lacking?  Jesus commissioned them and sent them out with power over demons and diseases (9:1-6). They preached and healed; went about without any supplies of their own. They had trusted God for their necessities. They trusted God to heal the sick and cast out demons. They trusted God and proclaimed the coming Kingdom of God. Why do they now ask for more faith? Did they need more faith to stand up to temptations to sin? To cease from causing others to sin? To rebuke those who had sinned against them? To forgive one another? Perhaps moving mulberry trees (or mountains as in the parallels) into the sea is an easier act of faith than moving us to “rebuke” and “forgive” people who have sinned against us.

Culpepper (Luke, 322) writes on this verse:

The disciples’ plea in this context conveys the recognition that on the one hand faith is a dynamic process and one can grow in faith. On the other hand, the disciples ask that the Lord add to or strengthen their faith, thereby recognizing that faith is not just a matter of their own strength. In both of these aspects, Luke’s concept of faith is similar to Paul’s who writes of righteousness as being revealed “through faith for faith” (Rom 1:17) and declares that we have been saved by grace through faith and that this it not of our own doing (Eph 2:8). 

I think that our growth in Christ is nearly always a movement from faith to faith (rather than only from unbelief to faith). While the faith I have today is similar to the faith given at baptism, it is also different. As we grow in our intellectual and physical skills and abilities yet remain the same person, so too, who we are today is both spiritually the same and different from who we were as an infant. Either way we are loved by God.

Image credit: The Exhortation to the Apostles | James Tissot | ca. 1890 | Brooklyn Museum NYC | PD-US

³ Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. ⁴ And if he wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’ you should forgive him.” (Luke 17)

The disciples are warned to be on guard lest they become like the Pharisees. Several translations take the term adelphos as “disciple” but our translation does well to let it be literal as “brothers” [and sisters], retaining the communal kinship brought about by their common faith and service. Jesus is stressing that even individual sin has a communal element in that the sin of one may lead others astray. This sense of community is made clear in the Matthean parallel:

¹⁵ “If your brother sins (against you), go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. ¹⁶ If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ ¹⁷ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church.  If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector” (Mt 18:15–17). 

¹ He said to his disciples, “Things that cause sin will inevitably occur, but woe to the person through whom they occur. ² It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. (Luke 17)

These two sayings are connected by the words skandala (v. 1) and skandalizo (v. 2). The original meaning of this word group skandal- was “trap;” or, more specifically a trap’s tripping mechanism. The word group is used to translate the Hebrew próskomma, meaning both “trap”, “stumbling block” or, “cause of ruin.”  In the latter sense, this transferred to the religious setting to mean “cause of sin.” But is “cause of sin” the best translation here?  Paul says that “Christ crucified is a stumbling block (skándalon) to the Jews” (1 Cor 1:23) and also describes the cross as a stumbling block (skándalon) (Galatians 5:11).  Consider three other modern gospel translations, all noted for faithful adherence to translation.