Superpowers

I was fascinated by a TV program called The Tomorrow People when I was a kid. Every afternoon at 4:30, I’d tune in to Nickelodeon—yes, they had Nickelodeon twenty-five years ago—and watch this really low budget science fiction show. What the program lacked in production values it more than made up for in the imagination department. Get this premise: some painfully average school kids wake up one day with superpowers. They can appear and disappear. They can read minds. They can lift objects just by thinking about it. So they do what any other kids in their situation would do—defend planet earth against alien invaders and robots!

It came on the air the same week I started junior high. It was a big transition for me because not only was I leaving elementary school, I was also leaving behind all of my friends because I had enrolled in a private school. It was a time in my life when I felt particularly vulnerable and maybe that’s why The Tomorrow People fascinated me so. Even though adults and classmates treated them with indifference, The Tomorrow People were still special. After all, they had superpowers.

Who hasn’t daydreamed at one time or another about having superpowers? After all, it would be really handy to be faster than a speeding bullet on a morning when I wake up late for work. Carrying in the groceries all by myself would be a snap if I were stronger than a locomotive. And leaping tall buildings in a single bound could be exploited for cleaning my gutters.

This kind of daydreaming isn’t confined to kids who spend too much time browsing the comic rack. Isn’t attending a Tony Robbins seminar or the buying into the latest diet fad just a grown-up version of wishing for “powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men”? We all crave a shortcut, a secret, that extra push to help us accomplish things that we feel are beyond our capabilities.

We can’t really blame the disciples a bit for wanting an extra boost in the faith department. Who wouldn’t after spending months traveling with Jesus? I can imagine the disciples lying awake at night pondering forgiving enemies seventy times seven or what it could possibly mean to take up a cross. How could they ever hope to live out such a high calling?

The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" (Luke 17:5)

It was a simple enough request to ask of a man who had made lame men walk and blind people see. What better solution to the question of their inadequacy than an instant increase of faith? But Jesus doesn’t respond the way they expect at all. Instead of wiggling his nose like the lady on Bewitched and zapping them with a quick fix, he says something to them that may at first have sounded to their sensitive ears as a stinging rebuke:

He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you. (Luke 17:6)

What an odd thing to say. A mustard seed is so small it could be easily confused for a speck of dust; mulberry trees grow to be huge and have deep roots. And what possible benefit could be gained by telling a tree to relocate itself in the ocean? But Jesus isn’t talking about parlor tricks. He’s giving them an important lesson about the nature of faith.

What the disciples were asking for wasn’t faith at all. What they were really wanted a boost of power that would make them self-sufficient and capable. But faith is rooted an individual’s dependence on Christ. There’s no need to have his faith super-sized, because the person who is intimate with God already possess all he needs to accomplish great things.

This is good news for us modern-day disciples, too. We don’t have to wait until we become as “spiritual giants”—whatever that means—before we allow ourselves to be used for God’s purposes. At times we will scarcely believe that we have the courage, brains or heart to face the road in front of us, but just like in The Wizard of Oz, we’ll discover that we possessed everything we needed to finish the journey. We need to hold onto that kind of faith, because we’re needed to perform seemingly impossible tasks everyday.

A crisis hotline worker has to have faith to believe that the battered woman on the other end of the line will someday live a violence free life. A quarreling husband and wife have to have faith that the storm will eventually pass and they will once again embrace. A single mom has to have faith that her meager paycheck will stretch far enough to buy groceries and shoes for her young child. We all have our mulberry trees that make us feel inadequate and small, and that’s OK, because I’ve discovered that when we get to the end of ourselves, God begins. Viewed in that light, mustard seed faith isn’t a stinging rebuke—it’s an encouragement!

"Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' " (Luke 17: 7 – 9)

Christ made it clear to the disciples that faith in him would be enough to accomplish his work. Now he seems to be saying, get on with it! So often we buy into the idea that people with the greatest faith are these “superchristians” who spend all their time floating on a cloud. We’re wrong. The greatest faith is demonstrated by the confused and insecure who have just enough of a mustard seed to reach out in service to others.

Dorothy Day is one of my heroes. She founded the Catholic Worker Movement during the depression and spent the rest of her life working on behalf of the poor, the discriminated and the addicted. She was a very outspoken person and hated it when people referred to her as a saint. One time she snapped at someone and said:

"Don't say that. Don't make it too easy for yourself. Don't escape this way. I know why you are saying, 'she is a saint.' You say it to convince yourself that you are different from me, that I am different from you. I am not a saint. I am like you. You could easily do what I do. You don't need any more than you have; get kicking, please.”

Get kicking, please. Amen.