Small, but Powerful,
"Three-Word-Theologies" from the NT
The Cottage
A Weekly Sunday Observance
October 2, 2022
Luke 17:5-6The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" The Lord replied, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, `Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.
What caught my attention this week were the three words at the beginning of the text: Increase our faith!
Three words carry emotional and spiritual weight — you can feel the disciples’s longing to trust deeply, to believe more fervently. Sometimes three words are all that are needed.
Three word theologies in the New Testament:
- God is love
- Love your neighbor
- Here am I
- Be not afraid
- Peace on earth
- Love one another
- Do unto others
- Faith, hope, love
- Pray like this
- Go, do likewise
- God will provide
- Love is patient
- Love your enemies
- Seventy times seven
- Thy Kingdom come
- Love never fails
- Increase our faith
- Mustard seed faith
Honestly, who needs tomes of systematic doctrine when we have such concise wisdom at hand? Three word theology is deceptively simple, but it isn’t shallow. One could live a lifetime with this list and never grasp its full beauty or practice its teachings consistently. But these uncomplicated phrases beckon, holding our hearts and hopes, and offering a vision of love and mercy. The way is often found in the smallest things, the fewest words. Maybe all we need is mustard seed faith.
INSPIRATION
Lord of the growing seed,
you reach to the roots of our being
and quench our sea-deep thirst:
help us to know ourselves
through the eyes of the other
who calls us to answer and serve
and, in the end, be filled.
— Steven Shakespeare
Love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places
yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds
— e.e. cummings, “Love is a Place”
On Sundays, the preacher gives everyone a chance
to repent their sins. Miss Edna makes me go
to church. She wears a bright hat
I wear my suit. Babies dress in lace.
Girls my age, some pretty, some not so
pretty. Old ladies and men nodding.
Miss Edna every now and then throwing her hand
in the air. Saying Yes, Lord and Preach!
I sneak a pen from my back pocket,
bend down low like I dropped something.
The chorus marches up behind the preacher
clapping and humming and getting ready to sing.
I write the word HOPE on my hand.
to repent their sins. Miss Edna makes me go
to church. She wears a bright hat
I wear my suit. Babies dress in lace.
Girls my age, some pretty, some not so
pretty. Old ladies and men nodding.
Miss Edna every now and then throwing her hand
in the air. Saying Yes, Lord and Preach!
I sneak a pen from my back pocket,
bend down low like I dropped something.
The chorus marches up behind the preacher
clapping and humming and getting ready to sing.
I write the word HOPE on my hand.
— Jacqueline Woodson
Who ever saw the mustard-plant,
wayside weed or tended crop,
grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree, a treeful
of shade and nests and songs?
Acres of yellow,
not a bird of the air in sight.
No, He who knew
the west wind brings
the rain, the south wind
thunder, who walked the field-paths
running His hand along wheatstems to glean
those intimate milky kernels, good
to break on the tongue,
was talking of miracle, the seed
within us, so small
we take it for worthless, a mustard-seed, dust,
nothing.
Glib generations mistake
the metaphor, not looking at fields and trees,
not noticing paradox. Mountains
remain unmoved.
Faith is rare, He must have been saying,
prodigious, unique —
one infinitesimal grain divided
like loaves and fishes,
as if from a mustard-seed
a great shade-tree grew. That rare,
that strange: the kingdom
a tree. The soul
a bird. A great concourse of birds
at home there, wings among yellow flowers.
The waiting
kingdom of faith, the seed
waiting to be sown.
— Denise Levertov
