It’s been a minute (or more precisely, about a month) since I’ve posted a reflection on the “do not worry” passage in Matthew 6:25-34, but I know you’ve missed them. So here’s another!

(30) And if God so enrobes the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is thrown into a furnace, (will he) not much more y’all, little-faith-ones? -Jesus (Matthew 6:30, my translation)

As far as I can tell, ὀλιγόπιστος—the Greek word often translated as “you of little faith”—is a word Jesus made up. It’s only used five times in the New Testament, and each of these times it’s spoken by Jesus. (Two of these uses—Matthew 6:30 and Luke 12:28—are the same teaching of Jesus in different gospels.)

Just because it’s fun—and by fun, I mean potentially helpful in terms of seeing familiar texts in fresh ways—to offer alternative translations that are a little different from the norm, I’m going to refer to this word (ὀλιγόπιστος) as little-faith-ones. 

When we hear Jesus say “you of little faith”—or y’all little-faith-ones, if you will—we might hear this as a bit of an insult, or at least a chastisement. Y’all don’t have enough faith. Why don’t you have more faith? I can’t believe you don’t have more faith. Bad, bad, bad.

I want to challenge that. For one thing, there’s another Greek word (ἄπιστος: “without faith”) that means something more like “faithless.” When Jesus uses ὀλιγόπιστος, then, he isn’t calling people faithless. He isn’t saying that the people he’s talking to have no faith. He’s just saying they have little faith. It’s much gentler. 

What I really like, though—even more than the fact that little-faith-ones sounds nicer than faithless ones—is the pattern I see throughout the gospels when Jesus calls people little-faith-ones. I’m looking at what Jesus does right after he uses this word. 

In Matthew 8:26, Jesus is with some disciples in a boat, and a storm comes up. Jesus is obliviously sleeping through the storm while the boat looks like it’s about to sink. The disciples wake Jesus, saying “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”—to which Jesus replies, “Little-faith-ones, why are you so afraid?”

But Jesus doesn’t just stop there. He gets right up, rebukes the winds and waves, and makes the formerly-stormy sea completely calm. 

In Matthew 14:31, then, the disciples are in a boat again (this time without Jesus), and in the wee pre-dawn hours of the morning Jesus comes walking across the lake to meet them. At Jesus’ invitation, Peter hops out of the boat and briefly walks on water himself—before realizing that this is absolutely terrifying, at which point he starts to sink. Jesus says to Peter, “You little-faith-one, why did you doubt?”

And as he says this, Jesus is also reaching out his hand and catching Peter. He doesn’t let Peter keep sinking. He helps him make it back to the boat and climb back in. 

In Matthew 16:8—the third and final time little-faith-ones is used outside of the “God enrobes the grass” teaching—the disciples misunderstand something Jesus says about the yeast of the Pharisees. They start talking instead about how they didn’t bring any bread. Jesus says, “Little-faith-ones, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread?” 

And then he reminds them about that one time when he fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread, and that other time when he fed four thousand people with seven loaves.

It turns out that Jesus doesn’t just call people little-faith-ones and then leave them there in their little-faith-ness. He calls them that, and then he immediately does something that just might increase their faith. He calms the storm. He lifts Peter out of the water. He reminds everyone that he can feed multitudes with just a few small loaves of bread.

Maybe little-faith-ones isn’t so much a chastisement as an invitation to a more expansive faith. An invitation to watch God do something that seemed impossible. An invitation to remember what God has done in the past that amazed and inspired us. 

After all, this same Jesus tells the disciples, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move” (Matthew 17:20, NIV). Jesus isn’t looking for big flashy faith. He’s looking for little mustard-seed-sized bits of faith, with an openness to more. 

I like that, because it seems doable. I could be a little-faith-one. I am a little-faith-one. And that seems to be cool with Jesus. God can work with that.

God enrobes the grass of the field, and God takes care of the little-faith-ones like you and me. 

This is part of what Jesus means when he invites us not to worry (Matt 6:25). This is Jesus’ invitation to a brave and expansive faith that can’t help but start out the size of a mustard seed. God loves us little-faith-ones and moves in response to the little faith that we have. 

Thoughts about being a little-faith-one? Do you find it freeing? Inviting? Insulting? Intriguing? Holler in the comments, via email, or otherwise!