"Mustard Seed Faith"

October 3, 2004

Scripture Reading:  Luke 17:5-10

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr

Blue Point Congregational Church, United Church of Christ

The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost  

  Once upon a time there was a holy person who didn’t know he was because nobody ever told him.  He had lots of imperfections.  He smoked.  He played megabucks once a week.  He had a temper.  He wasn’t all bad, for instance, he did plant flowers in his garden thinking of his wife.  If anyone had told him he was holy he would have laughed.  “Sure!”  He thought holy people had to have special powers sort of like magicians, only better.  They did things like heal the sick.

  He waited in traffic jams and grocery store lines, and paid property taxes.  He changed the oil in his car and did simple repairs.  He could pay things and fix things, not heal them.    Also, he vaguely thought holy people had to live in far away countries where fables are made such as Jerusalem and India .  The man in this story lived not far from here, let’s say, just off of Route #1, our national road that winds past a lot of humanity, good and bad, down the eastern seaboard of the United States .

  This man lived his life with a very small piece of faith.  That is what made him holy.  It was so small that most of the time he thought it was a funny sentimental quirk.  He didn’t realize that it was a seed.

  This small seed of faith first showed up when he was a boy.  His neighbor picked him up on their way to church.  He liked the soft worn cushions on the pews.  He liked the way the old churched creaked on windy days.  When the place prayed he imagined he was listening to lots of whispered secrets.  Even though church was sort of boring to him it felt a lot more peaceful than home where his father drank and mother yelled.  The best part was when it was his turn to go up front and light the candles before the service.  He would wear a blue robe and white cassock which made him feel like he was floating when he walked quickly down the aisle.  He remembered the flame jumping up from a little dark and shriveled wick.  He would feel too warm.  It would be like he had just run around all three bases to home plate in little league.  Or it felt like he was standing in front of the space heater his uncle had at his workbench.  He couldn’t decide which.  The flame would burn the whole service while the choir was singing and the minister was preaching.  He would watch it.

  One summer the neighbor who took him to church moved.  He walked a few times by himself.  Once a Sunday school teacher gave him a ride.  Attendance was spotty.  Eventually he became a teenager.  For a long long time he forgot about church mostly.  Except when he’d have some quirky sentimental feelings.  For instance, on the way to work he would drive by a Catholic Cathedral.  Sometimes the doors were open and he’d slow up to catch a peek at the stain glass on the inside and if the candles were still lit. Quirky.   Other things like he loved watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” during Christmas.  It made him ache inside wondering what an angel would tell him.  He never grew out of the movie.   Silly.  There were other things like how he would be struck by pictures of innocent children.  Their very innocence made him sad all afternoon.  Corny.    

  There is not much more to say about this holy man who didn’t know it.  He was ordinary.  He lived an ordinary life.  He minded his business.  He worked pretty hard.  He was good to his family.  Like I said he planted flowers in the garden thinking of his wife.  He thought he was pretty ordinary himself.  At a Fourth of July party is wife said to some friends he was a big Teddy bear inside.  He thought he was overly sentimental. Really it was that little piece of faith, that seed.

  When his children were grown and his wife died he started going back to church.  Her funeral did it for him.  It reminded him of his church days when he was a boy.  Those prayers still seemed like lovely secrets.  There was the smell of old wood and creaking.  It got to be such a habit that if he didn’t go he felt like he was missing something at the end of the week.  One day the church asked him to take a look at the furnace which he ended up fixing.  Then they put him on the trustees for years.  This was o.k. with him.   If anyone had asked him why he went to church, which they didn’t, and if they had let him ramble for a while, which they never had,  he would have eventually gotten round to talking about lighting the church candle when he was a kid, the too warm feeling, and watching it the whole service.  At that point if they had then asked him how was his faith, he would have said good, very good.   At that point his faith would start acting like the seed it was.  A growing would happen inside him and the possibilities of life would to expand before him.  But, like I said, no one asked.  

  The minister of his church would sometimes preach about how it was important to have faith.  The minister would say the word “faith” in low loud tones.  You have to have “F-A-I-T-H.”  Truly the minister felt faith was the big heavy preponderance of the religious life.  It seemed to the holy man (who still didn’t know he was holy) that the faith he was suppose to get was elephant like.  It had to be this big enough thing.  The problem was there was never a time when the minister said when enough was enough.  

  When he died it was an ordinary sort of death.  The minister gave a nice funeral talk.  The minister thought he had been a nice member of church.  The minister read from a prayer out of a black book that thanked God for the man’s “faithfulness.”  That was what the man often mistakenly thought was his  quirky sentimental streak.  This was that small piece of something which was really a seed. 

  Sometime after the holy man who didn’t know he was holy died, one of his children had a dream.  She dreamed she discovered a box he kept under the bed.  When she opened it, doves flew out.  There were yards of rainbow color ribbons.  Laughing children from refugee camps came out of the box and started jumping on the bed.  She woke up. A candle flared somewhere on earth.  

  Jesus said, “If you have the faith of a mustard seed you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea.’ And it would obey you.”  (Luke 17:7)  In the Greek, which is the language the earliest Bible is written in, there are two types of “if” clauses.  One is an expression of a condition that is contrary to the fact.  Such as, “If I were you….”  The other expresses a condition that is according to the fact.  Such as, “If you have two legs then you can walk to town.”  When Jesus says, “If you have the faith of a mustard seed…”  it is the second kind of “if.”  That is to say, Jesus was not challenging his disciples.  He was not suggesting that they didn’t have enough faith.  Or, that they had such a pathetic amount of faith that it didn’t even add up to a mustard seed.  Rather, Jesus was saying to his disciples that they had enough faith.  Even if the faith they had was as small as the size of a mustard seed they could do great things with it.  This surprised the disciples.  The disciples assumed that they didn’t have enough faith.  They wanted Jesus to give them more faith.  They were waiting for Jesus to come along and do his thing with them so abracadabra magic would happen and they would become holy.  Instead, Jesus said you have enough faith already.  Work with it.  Tap into it.  Find the potential that is in your faith.  Jesus message was for his disciples to actively engage with their faith and thereby lay hold of God with whom nothing is impossible.  Even a little faith has tremendous potential.  You don’t need to search outside.  It is inside and it is powerful.  It is like the person who searches for treasure the world over and discovers it buried in his own backyard.  

  The man in my once upon a time story who lived just off of Route #1 didn’t need any bigger faith than the little mustard seed he had.  His holiness didn’t get anywhere because he didn’t access the small amount of faith he had.  Holy people are no different than you and me except that they have tapped into what Jesus was talking about.  They take the little piece of faith they have and use it for all its’ worth.  It will go a long long way.   

  Let me tell you a true story about a woman named Hanley Denning.  She is a graduate of Bowdoin College .  She is very preppy looking, like a Bowdoin graduate would be.   She has nice blond hair and is clean cut.  She grew up in Cumberland .  After she graduated she took a year to work for Head Start in Appalachia .  She was working with a lot of immigrants and needed more Spanish.  So she went to Antigua for 6 months in a language immersion program.  There someone told her to go see the Guatemala city dump.  At the dump she saw hundreds of young children picking through the debris.  They were scavenging for things their family needed or for things they could sell.  There was human waste, medical waste, and filth everywhere.  Hanley Denning from Cumberland Maine , just off Route #1 couldn’t stand it.  So, she sold everything and started a luncheon program for those kids.  They would go to school in the morning, have lunch and they would get tutoring or sports in the afternoon.  The kids get points for being there which they can then use to buy clothes and food.  She is 35 years old now.  She is still there.   They love her.  Her organizations is called “Safe Passage.”  She is getting the kids off the dump in Guatemala .  She is a holy person and everyone knows it.  Although I don’t know that she would say that of herself.  She is like Mother Teresa of Calcutta – just like her.  She started with just a small piece of faith which was in fact a seed.  She believed in it, she used it, it grew and now she moves mountains.  The big point I want to make here at the end is simply this:  She is no different than you or me.  Even if our faith is the size of a mustard seed, we have is enough to make us holy too.