Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 3, 2004

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

In our Gospel reading this morning Jesus tells us that if we have faith even the size of a tiny mustard seed we’d be able to say to a mulberry tree be uprooted and transplanted in the sea, and it would obey us. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I read that I was overcome with joy. You see, I like to think that I have at least a little faith; and I have long harbored a secret passion for uprooting mulberry trees and transplanting them into the ocean. Call me crazy. It just sounds like a really fun thing to do.

You don’t think so? It has never occurred to you to transplant a mulberry tree into the sea? That sounds like a ridiculous thing to do to you? Well, OK. I guess that little passage just doesn’t mean anything to you then. I guess I’ll just sit down now.

Then again....

What’s going on here? What is this nonsense about using faith to uproot a poor mulberry tree and replant it in the sea? Well, I think it’s another example of the kind of thing we’ve talked about here before. A lot of Jesus’ parables just don’t make sense. This statement is a parable, a parable about faith. On its face it suggests that even just a little faith will enable us to do something totally absurd; and the absurdity of the example is more important than the example itself. The absurdity of the example suggests, as absurdity in Jesus’ parables usually if not always does, that we are to look beyond the example itself to something else, often something spiritual. The material example here is so ridiculous that it must point to something spiritual. The example is so clearly something faith can not do that its function must be to point beyond itself in the direction of things faith can do.

So what can faith do? It can do a lot of really, really hard things. We talked about one of the things it can do last week. It can give you hope in a world that seems hopeless, and that’s harder than transplanting a mulberry tree. It can also give us hope when things in our personal lives seem hopeless. As long as we know that God is with us, we need never give in to despair. As we saw last week, living in hope is living as if. With God at our side we can always live as if a better future were possible, in this world and beyond this world. That living as if is the only thing that will ever make a better world a reality.

Beyond that, faith can give us strength and courage when life seems too hard and too scary; and that’s a lot harder than transplanting a mulberry tree. Sometimes things we know we have to do, or even things that we just want to do, seem beyond us. We feel we just don’t have the strength or the courage to do them. When you stop to think about it, just living from day to day can be terribly hard and scary. Given all of the things that can go wrong, all of the things that could happen to any one of us at any time, it’s amazing that we can keep going and that we aren’t paralyzed by weakness and fear. Only two things can keep us going. One is denial, and the other is faith. Faith gives us the strength and the courage to look the dark side of reality squarely in the eye and keep on living anyway.

And faith can give us peace, and that’s a whole lot harder than transplanting a mulberry tree. The fundamental, existential fact of all of our lives is that we are mortal. We are finite creatures, not gods, and our lives will end one day. That fact has been known to drive some people literally mad, people, that is, who do not have faith. Because by faith we know that God is with us every step of the way in this life and beyond this life, we can accept and face our mortality in peace. That isn’t easy, but with faith it’s possible. I’ve seen it. Although I’ve never faced death as an imminent prospect, I think to some extent I’ve felt it, that peace that comes from knowing with Paul that not even death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And I’ve seen the fear of death in people who don’t have that faith. Faith, and faith alone, can bring us peace.

So, I don’t believe that by faith anyone can literally say to a mulberry tree be uprooted and planted in the sea and have it happen. But then, I don’t think Jesus was really saying that we could. This saying is a parable, and parables point beyond themselves to some greater truth. The Gospel truth is that faith can do things in our lives that are a whole lot harder than transplanting a mulberry tree into the ocean. In our faith we find hope for our lives and for the world. We find the strength and courage to do what we must do, and we find the peace to live as mortal creatures knowing that God’s love never fails us. That’s a lot harder than transplanting a mulberry tree, and a whole lot more valuable. Thanks be to God. Amen.