“The Faith of a Mustard Seed"

October 7, 2007

Scripture Reading:  Luke 17:5-10

Rev. Dr. Carol  L. Kerr

 Blue Point Congregational Church

I have taped a mustard seed to the top of each of your bulletins.  It is little – tiny.  Feel it.  There are many seeds much bigger like an avocado pit, or watermelon seed, or even black apple seeds.  But, mustard seeds are like little pale specks of dirt, slightly round.  However small, Jesus says in the bible, “If you have the faith of a mustard seed you could say to this tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea.’  And it would obey you.  (Luke 17:7)”

Once upon a time there was an old woman named Prudence Black.  She lived in a white and black large Victorian house on twenty next to a Baptist church.  Her husband had died in WWII and she never remarried.    She had one son, Brad,  who lived three states away.  He rarely called her – she always called him.  She called to say her arthritis hurt when it was cold outside.   She called to say she couldn’t breathe in the summer heat.  She called to say in the fall the neighbors leaves blew into her yard.  Her son listened without saying much.  Lately she had complained about the roof leaking on Monday and called again on Wed and Thursday to tell him the roof was leaking.  He said, “Do you remember you called me Monday and Tues?”  She why did he ask those kinds of questions?

The thing she loved about her son was that he was a lawyer.  This fact made her feel vigorous.   

There had been a long standing dispute about a long line bushes the church had planted separating her yard from theirs.  She felt the bushes were on her yard.  The trustees insisted they were on their yard.  She had called her local town councilman about it, she had called her State representative about it.  She had call the Governor’s office about it.  The trustees received letters from her.

When the church got a new minister, Rev. Soul, one trustee suggested he go meet Mrs. Black saying something vague about her not liking the bushes.  Later that afternoon,  Rev. Soul rang the door bell.  He rang it twice.  She answered the door.  He said, ‘Hello, I’m Pastor Reed from the Baptist church next door.  I am just getting to know the neighborhood and thought I might say hello.  She said, “Yes.”  He said, could I come in for a visit.  She said, “Yes.”  She spent the rest of the time talking about the bushes.  He said, “I am so sorry to hear there has been a problem.”  She said, “Yes, my son’s a lawyer you know.”  And then after some silence, he left.

The trustees of the church were unnerved and harassed until one of the trustees when to a school reunion met her son, Brad, and brought up the bushes.  He had heard about them, but knew nothing about a suit.   

One unusually hot global warming Spring day the town had sent a road crew to fix a pot hole outside her house which she had called to complain about.  She had large damp rings under her arms and down her back.  She was worried about  her breathing.  So against her better judgment she opened the window.   A bee got in.  She took off her shoe and went around the room trying to kill it.  Finally it flew out the window.  She about to call the town to complain about the noise, when she noticed a small speck on her window sill.  It was pale and round and hard.  At first she thought it might be a tick, maybe with lymes disease.  But then she used her shoe to brush it off t the grass below and slammed the window shut. 

Six weeks later she was sitting in front of the window daydreaming her favorite daydream.  It consisted of bringing her case before a judge.   Her son was advocating for her.  There were many things that would blend together.  The church bushes, the town road crew, her doctor who charged her $25 for an x-ray, the fact that she was a widow of a WWII vet, car repairs.  Right at the moment in her daydream when the judge was going rule in favor of her whole life, that she noticed outside her window the weed.

 It was long and spindly with a few rather large leaves at its base.  She immediately thought how the neighbor boy, Sam, had missed mowing there.  Determined that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself she went out to pull it herself.  When she got close, she noticed that there were little yellow buds on the weed.  She picked one, peeled open the soft tender pedals and rubbed the yellow between her fingers.  It reminded her of her grandmother’s garden.   She and her brother would play in the garden hours on end.  Her brother died when he was 10 and she had quit playing in the garden.  In fact, she grew up and hadn’t thought about it for years.

  Now she remembered her grandmother’s garden had an herb that was like this.  What was it?  She couldn’t remember the name.   She ran in to her encyclopedia and looked it up, and It was a mustard plant.  How on earth did a mustard seed get on my yard and plant itself?  Then she remembered that her grandmother had other herbs in her garden.  But she couldn’t remember what they were.  She then drove 15 miles per hour across town to the garden store.  As the clerk held up each plant she remembered.  The sharp tough leaves of rosemary, the large lettuce type of basel, the long tongue shaped one of thyme.  She asked the names over several times, until the clerk showed her how to read the tag.  Then she bought the rosemary, basel, thyme, lemon mint and chocolate mint, chives for eggs, and dill.  She took them all home and planted them next to the mustard. 

Later that week she noticed that the bushes from the church were throwing too much shade on her newly planted herb garden, so she decided to take the matter into her own hands.  She drove 15 miles per hour to the garden store and bought  some large  clippers.  She cut three of the bushes and dragged them to her woods.  “There!  That issue is solved.  Let them sue me!”  She spent most of the morning lying on the couch in a darkened room watching her breathing.  But, really happy.    She spent the next morning watching the morning sun  radiate upon her mustard plant and all the other herbs. 

A week later she at her kitchen table  looking at a catalog she got in the mail at a cedar bench to put next to her herbs when the phone rang.  It was her son.

  “Hi Mom, it’s Brad.”

 “What is it dear?  Did you get a call from the church trustees already?”

  “What?  No.  Mom did you know you sent me four checks for my birthday?” 

“I did?”

“All on the same day, Mom.”

“That’s strange.”

“Yes Mom.  I’m coming out to visit.  We need to have a talk.”  When her son came three weeks later.  He looked around.    Her blood pressure medication empty and unfilled.   Her clothes were stained.  Social Security checks were scattered on the kitchen table under old magazines and dirty dishes. 

 She said that she had been busy gardening and took him outside to sit on her bench and look at her herbs.

“This is a strange place to put a garden Mom?”

“You don’t like it?”

“No it is just a strange place.  I mean it is just stuck here in your front yard three feet out from window and about 10 feet from that big old maple tree that you probably should have cut down. “

“Well, there was a mustard plant growing here and I thought why not plant some more.  It just started to happen practically on its own.” 

“Mom.  I’ve talked to some realtors.  They say your 20 acres in the back woods can be subdivided.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“It would pay for the nursing home, Mom.” 

“Oh for goodness sake.  I don’t need to go to a nursing home.  Foolishness.”

“Mom you are forgetting things.  Lot’s of things.”

“Like what!”

“Like the birthday checks, Mom.”

“What birthday checks!”

“Remember the four checks you sent me?  Mom, I want you to sign these papers and give me power of attorney.” 

“I know you are an attorney.”

“No you don’t’ understand Mom.  You can’t take care of yourself anymore.”

“Are you trying to take advantage of me?  My own son?  I need you to help me with the church and those bushes!”    He left soon after.  But, he was a lawyer after all, and knew things could be done.  He started checking with investors and land developers.  It was very valuable land, his mother was sitting on. 

Prudence went about once a week at 15 miles per hour to the garden store  to look at herbs.  She didn’t exactly make friends  with the clerk at the garden store but they got to know each other.  The bench she mail ordered arrived and she had Sam, the boy who mowed her lawn, place it next to the herbs.    She was sitting on her bench and remembered that next to the herbs her grandmother had had a fruit tree.  She remembers as a girl plucking the fruit and how sweet the sun warmed juice was.   She couldn’t remember if it was an apple tree or a pear tree.  So she drove 15 miles an hour to the garden store.  She bought two trees a liberty apple tree and a golden pear tree.  She paid Sam $10 to plant the trees. 

Then the following spring  while she held the first tender pink apple bud between her fingers when she remembered her grandmother had a rabbit in the garden.  So, she drove 15 miles per hour to the animal shelter with Sam.  He helped her pick out a rabbit.  Then she drove 15 miles an hour to the pet store and bought a wildly expensive rabbit hutch.  Sam built the hutch and put the rabbit in it under the apple tree.    

She was calling her son to say that the woman he hired to take care of her  check book was probably stealing from her when she looked out the window and saw some kids from the Sunday school in her garden.   With three bushes missing the kids had no idea where the church’s lawn ended and hers began.   They were gathered around the hutch and saying, “Look an Easter bunny!”   Mrs. Partidge the Sunday school teacher whose husband was a trustee was mortified.  She was yelling at them to get off Mrs. Black property.   Prudence called out.  Then she saw Sam.  He said it was ok and that he knew Mrs. Black.     

Sam introduced Prudence to a boy with a bald head. 

“This is Edward.”  Prudence recognized the boy from the local hospital where she had gone the previous summer when she had had strange fainting feelings which the dreadfully young looking doctors could never pin point.    As much as she felt she was being neglected at the hospital, when she saw the boy she  knew he had cancer.  She admitted that he had worse problems that she did.  After all she was getting on in years and her condition made some sense.  The boy’s didn’t make any sense to her. 

 Prudence reached into the hutch and pulled out the rabbit and let the bald boy, Edward, who seemed terribly skinny to her,  pet him.   Later that night, she couldn’t remember the boy’s name.   She thought that Sam said it was his brother.  But, he didn’t have a brother.

“Brad this is your mother.   That bookkeeper refuses to write me a check for lumber I need.” 

“What do you need the lumber for.”

“For the tree house I am going to put in my garden.”

“O for God’s sake, Mom.   A tree house?  Mom you are an old lady.  You don’t have any kids.  It is in your front yard.  The property value will go down.  A tree house?  For God’s sake Mom.  We had this conversation before three times.”

The bald boy would take morning walks with his mother.  By the time he passed the church he needed to rest so he would often sit on Prudence’s bench.  At first his mother came along.  Then he would go himself.  Prudence would let him hold the rabbit which they named Thankful.    Then sometimes they would just sit on the bench together.  It was one of these time that Prudence remembered her grandmother’s tree house.  She assumed all boys instinctively knew what tree would be the best for a tree house.  So, instead of driving 15 miles an hour to ask the clerk at the garden shop she turned and asked the boy if he thought the old Maple tree  would be a good one.    

So they started the planning of the tree house.  It went on for weeks.  They planned the tree house as if they were telling each other marvelous secrets.   She would cup her hand over his ear and whisper,

“My grandmother’s tree house had two rope ladders.”  She would say. 

He would say," Let's put in a secret trap door!”

 “Oh, and it had a thatch roof.” She would respond,

 He would say,  “Let’s put a zip line from the top to the ground.”  They would wink.   Sam and his father decided to do it as a high school shop project.  They collected old scraps of wood, built a simple platform and hammered a few steps into the trunk for a ladder.  It was very basic, but Prudence and the bald boy whose name floated in and out of her memory, would elaborate and add onto in their planning.

One month the trustees received a letter with Mrs. Prudence Black, on the return address.  They opened it to find an invitation that they could enjoy the 2 picnic tables she was putting in her garden when they wanted.  She kindly requested that they move some of the bushes as she was now planning on making a pond with exotic gold fish.  The stream leading to the pond was right where the bushes were.  Greeks bearing gifts, they wondered

When the tree house was completed the bald boy was not strong enough to climb the rope ladder.  So while they plucked herbs and tasted the leave  Prudence told him stories of things that she and her brother use to do up in the tree house in her grandmother’s garden.  It would be a pirate ship and a castle, and a house on the prairie. 

  It came to pass that they boy had to go to the hospital to get his spleen removed.  The day before he was sitting with Prudence and she suddenly remembered the best story of all.    One night  she and her brother had convinced her grandmother to let them sleep in the tree house.  Early that morning they awoke and saw in the garden a magnificent buck.  He had large antlers with many points on it.  He turned and looked at them with round brown eyes.  The sun was rising behind him.  And in the morning air they could see the breath coming from his nostrils, like golden clouds.  They stared at each other in silence.  Finally the buck turned and walked away into the woods. 

The boy said that he had seen tracks in the garden.  Now that he thought about it.  Maybe they were hoof marks.  They were silent. 

Later that week Sam and his Dad took Prudence to visit the boy in the hospital.  They drove for an hour at least 45 miles per hour.  She made a bouquet of herbs for him.   He asked her if she had seen the buck in her garden?  She said, no. 

When they returned home, her son was in the driveway waiting for her.  She was surprised,

“I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Remember Mom, I told you I was coming.  You said you wrote it down.  You weren’t here.

Mom, you have to sign these papers.  You can’t go on like this.”  She said she didn’t want to.  But, he was her son.  He was a lawyer.  He promised to put her in a place that was closer to him.  She agreed.”

A month later the got a letter with a return address, “Black, Martin, and Peters attorney at law.”   Rev. Soul was sure it was a law suit about the bushes.  But, instead it was notification that the church was given a parcel of land from Mrs. Black.  When the trustees looked at the map it was exactly where the bushes had been and the garden now was, tree house and all.   They sent a letter to Brad requesting it be forwarded to Prudence, thanking her for her generosity to the church.  They were a cautious bunch and were afraid of the liability of the tree house, kids might fall out of it after all.  So they removed it.  They also were concerned about the upkeep of the herb garden, so they tilled it under.  But, they thought I was a nice shady spot under the Maple tree so they kept the picnic tables. 

The bald boy returned from the hospital a month later.   He walked to the garden several times and sat alone.  Soon he continued to get better and didn’t have time for the garden.  He was back at school.  He completely recovered from the cancer and graduated went to college, moved to California, married and had a family of his own.   He decided it would be good for his kids to experience a garden.  So we took the youngest two, a boy and a girl, to the garden store and they bought the beginner herb garden set.  With rosemary, thyme, basil, chives, dill.  He then bought a packet of mustard seeds and a little potting soil.   It would be a nice lesson for the kids.  That night he had a dream of a heard of caribou.  The herd was thought to have been extinct.  But, unbeknownst to the world, the herd had bred and flourished in the woods of Mrs. Blacks Victorian house.  In his dream the herd suddenly burst forth, abundant and thriving.  There was a turquoise lake where the gold fish pond would have been.  The herd jumped into the lake and swam to a low island in the middle.  One large buck emerged with a many pointed antlers and shook his head with glistening drops of water spinning off the antlers creating a rainbow all around. 

Jesus says,   , “If you have the faith of a mustard seed you could say to this tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea.’  And it would obey you.  (Luke 17:7)”