Faith Like a Hobbit - Luke 17:5-10

I never got around to reading the Lord of the Rings books as a child.  And even though I went to a college that proudly possesses the very desk on which Tolkien penned the epic classic, made it to adulthood without reading his masterwork.  But one of the gifts of parenting is an opportunity for second chances.  So it is that my daughter Lily and I recently finished The Fellowship of the Ring, the first in the trilogy, and we’re on to The Two Towers now.

If you missed out on The Lord of the Rings, or perhaps have it as some faded memory, I won’t try to summarize the 480-page first volume just now, much less the whole trilogy.  Just know that there is a magical ring of power that wants to return to its evil maker.  If he gets it, all is doomed for the land of Middle Earth. So it is that a band of creatures including furry footed hobbits, a dwarf, an immortal elf, noble humans, and a powerful wizard set out to destroy the ring in a fiery mountain.

The surprising thing about the story is that it isn’t the mighty warrior Aragorn, or the immortal and magical elf Legolas, or even the great wizard Gandalf who carry the ring.  Instead, the one who bares it, the only one who can really handle carrying its power, is a young hobbit named Frodo Baggins.

Hobbits, if you are unfamiliar, are not great warriors or adventurers.  They are peaceful creatures who enjoy the domestic pleasures of their cozy hovels, tea with biscuits, and a good fire in the fireplace.  And yet as Middle Earth moves into a time of unsettling darkness, its fate rests on the shoulders of a hobbit. 

Hobbits, I think, are a little like mustard seeds.  But to explain what I mean I need to clear up a possible confusion on how we should hear our Gospel lesson.  It would be easy, given the way it is translated in English, to think that Jesus means that all we need is a tiny bit of faith.  But in the Greek text Jesus tells the disciples that they must have faith like a grain of mustard seed, not as small as one.  In fact, through the early church up until the Reformation, few interpreters thought Jesus meant we could accomplish amazing things if we have only a little bit of faith.  Instead they understood Jesus saying that faith, like a mustard seed, may seem small but is in reality powerful.

This opens a different possibility, a new orientation.  The disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith, but Jesus is calling them to see that faith isn’t the kind of thing that can be measured in quantities and accumulation.  Faith’s strength, like a mustard seed, isn’t in its size but in its nature.

Which brings me back to hobbits.  At one point early in the story, the wizard Gandalf, wonders aloud at the strange strength of these furry footed creatures.  “You can learn everything about hobbits and their ways in a month,” he tells Frodo, “and yet after a hundred years they will surprise you in a pinch.”  While humans and elves and even wizards are tempted at various points by the power of the ring, it is Frodo in his quiet and continuous faithfulness who is able to carry it bravely through the horrors of a world gone mad in order to destroy the ring once and for all. 

To have faith like a hobbit, to have faith like a mustard seed, is to live not through the strength of our own powers, but instead to join in the energies of love.  It is an obedient faith, doing what love demands in the time in which we find ourselves. 

What Jesus is calling his disciples to is not an increase of their own personal faith, their spiritual prowess, but rather a joining through faith in the power of God.  Such faith may not look like much from the outside.  It may be a simple and quiet life of prayer, a domestic life of caring for neighbors and teaching children and loving well those around us.  And yet it is people who live in this little way of faith, a way like a mustard seed that is so seemingly small, so seemingly insignificant, that can grow and multiply and add vital spice to the life of the world.

I wonder who are the bearers of such seeds in our community?  I wonder who are the hobbits in our congregation?  Who is it that by small acts of faithfulness have joined their lives into the flows of God’s power?  It is a possibility open to any and all of us, but we won’t find it by seeking power and status in any visible ways.  We shouldn’t ask to have our faith increased, but simply to be faithful servants.  And with that faithfulness, God will use us to carry the light of love in a world that seems overwhelmed by darkness.

There’s one moment in the Fellowship of the Rings in which Frodo laments the dark realities transforming his world.  “I wish it need not have happened in my time," says Frodo. "So do I," Gandalf responds, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”  Ours is a challenging time, as was Tolkien’s in the war years, as was the world of Roman occupied Palestine in which Jesus taught his disciples.  And the temptation is to gain as much power as possible, to ask that Jesus increase our faith so that we can overcome such trials.

But what we need is not a bigger faith, but an obedient one.  Our call is to simply join the work of love and the hope to which God has called us.  From the outside, from the Big Way of power this faith will look insignificant and weak.  It will look small and thus without value.  But like a mustard seed it will spread in the margins and grow, it will blossom with God’s peace and love for the life to the world.

So, let’s not ask for more faith, but instead to have faith like a mustard seed, humility like a hobbit.  As the authors of the beautiful book of Ignatian meditations, Love: A Guide for Prayer, express it: “we, as human creatures, are frail and live for only a brief time, the fullness of our existence is realized within the faithfulness of God’s love for us. We need only surrender ourselves in trust.”  This surrender in trust is what faith is all about. With such faith we can trust that God will accomplish the unthinkable through our lives, be it uprooting deep rooted trees and moving mountains, or simply forgiving those who have wronged us and loving a difficult neighbor.  Trust like that will be the seeds of something new, seeds that will fit in the cracks of a world bent toward power and take root, breaking open with new life. Amen.