Tossing Mountains

Read Mark 11:20-25.

I love mountains. The first time I was in Austria, I just stared out the windows at the Alps as we traveled from place to place. My grandparents used to live in Colorado, on the side of a mountain, and I loved being at their house, right in the middle of the Rockies. I would love to live on a mountain—you know, as long as I had wifi. And as long as there was a Starbucks on the same mountain. Nearby.

I love the beauty of mountains, their stateliness (for lack of a better term), and their permanence. I always get the feeling that, if mountains could talk, they would have quite the story to tell. They have witnessed generation after generation. Many things in the world change, but mountains, it seems, stand forever.

Unless we could just summon up a little faith. Then, as we usually understand Jesus, we could just toss any old mountain we want into the sea. Now, I'm not sure why you would do that. And think of the ridiculousness of it. Let's say every Christian in the world "gets that much faith" and begins tossing mountains. Pretty soon, we'd have a wrecked world with mountains flying every which way. We'd have no more Pike's Peak or Mount Rushmore or Mount Everest. Is Jesus really advocating tossing mountains? Or is he using hyperbole to try to tell us something else?

Just as in Luke 17, where he talks about tossing trees, Jesus is pointing out a fact that we often forget: our problem is never a lack of faith. Our problem is that our faith is misplaced. We have faith in ourselves (as our world tells us to have) while Jesus calls us to have faith in God. It's not that we have too little faith; we have all the faith we need. But we must place it in someone bigger than ourselves. What we really need is faith in a big God.

And if we would place our faith in that God, then, according to Jesus, we could toss a mountain around. He's not telling us to do that, nor does he expect us to work on that as "proof" of our faith. Rather, he wants us to see the contrast. What Jesus is really pointing us toward is forgiveness. If the faith we have could allow us to toss a mountain (hyperbole), then shouldn't we be able to do something as "easy" (in contrast) as forgiving someone else? Jesus, in this passage, says if we ask for the ability to forgive someone, we will receive it. Simple as that.

Except we know it's not as simple as that. God will certainly give us the ability but "we" get in the way. It's hard to forgive. God can do it in an instant to us, but we sometimes spend a lifetime forgiving others, or forgiving ourselves. (Yet more proof that we are not God.) Thank God that he has infinite patience with us, and never quits working with us, helping us, standing by us, leading us toward forgiveness. We are a work in progress. And he who began that work in us will be with us until the day Jesus returns (see Philippians 1:6).

Got an urge to toss some mountains around? Jesus says work on forgiveness first. When you've got that mastered, and when your faith in placed fully in your big God, then we'll talk about doing some terrestrial remodeling.