About six years ago, while on a retreat with the Episcopal Youth Community (the EYC youth group) in the parish where I served as Family Life Minister, two adult youth sponsors and I had to take a long walk one afternoon around a narrow body of water to catch up with another group of kids and sponsors. Even though we were less than thirty yards from them straight across the water, we would have to walk several hundred yards around the south end just to reach them. As we walked, one of my adult sponsors turned to me and said, "Couldn't you just part the water? It'd make this a whole lot easier."

I answered, "Yes, I could do that. Along with ordination to the priesthood comes the ability to do just such a miracle, but you only get to do it once; and we were counseled in seminary to hold onto it for emergency purposes." They laughed, too, and we kept walking.

That conversation comes to mind whenever I read one of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels like we hear today: "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you," or one of its similar sounding parallels in Matthew or Mark. Far too often, we hear this statement from Jesus as a sentence of judgment on our lack of faith, on our "unworthy" condition as poor, doubting Christians who need to get their act together. In fact, not only does that idea miss the actual point of the story, but it stands completely opposite of the message of hope and encouragement found within it.

In the Greek language of the New Testament, there exists a clause that implies something is "true according to present reality," and we find it in today's lesson. A more literal and properly emphasized gloss of today's text would read like this in verse five: "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed (and you do!), then you could say to this tree" so on and so forth. "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed (and you do!)… By taking a closer look at the Greek, we see that Luke implies the disciples already have faith of that stupendous result producing ability -- they simply need to make use of it. And by implication, so do we have that power of faith present in our lives. Of course, the question for the $1,000,000 -- so to speak -- is "How do we make use of it, and produce such fantastic results?"

Could Jesus' exaggerated, nonsensical metaphor be Semitic hyperbole for visions and dreams of the Kingdom of God that heretofore no one dared to dream or speak? I mean, no one plants a fruit tree in the sea -- it would probably kill the tree, if performed literally. So what does Jesus have in mind in using such a fantastic image as his example?

Maybe that we also need to see that we have the faith to do fantastic things, if we only made use of it. Perhaps you've heard the prayer, "O God, I don't pray for enough faith to move mountains; I can muster enough dynamite and bulldozers to do that. What I need and ask for, O God, is enough faith to move me in the ways you would have me go."

In the second half of this lesson today, Luke likens us to hired servants (slaves, actually), already tired from exhausting labor, who at the end of a long day get beckoned to serve dinner to the master, and receive no praise for it -- after all, we have only done the job expected of us, unworthy slaves that we are. This all began with a humble request by the disciples for Jesus to "Increase our faith!" How does such a seemingly discouraging story encourage us in our pilgrimage of faith?

If we accept that God has already planted within us the seed of stupendous result producing faith that can produce fantastic things, then we see in the story of the slave and his master that God expects that we will, in the course of our busy life, actually use that faith; that we will produce fantastic things as a matter of course, naturally, freely, as sure as a servant does what is expected of him or her.

The beauty of this story is that it reminds us that not one of us is any better or worse than another by what they do -- jealousy and pride have no place in Kingdom of God, and neither does false humility, judging others' work or comparing our work with another. For none of us knows what God expects of someone else; we can only hope to discern what God expects of us, and then act in faith to do it. It seems to me that Jesus' notion of 'replanting a mulberry tree in the sea' will likely look different for each one of us, for only God knows the stupendous results producing faith that God has planted like a seed within each one of us; and the fantastic things that God wants me to produce will look different from the fantastic things that God wants you to produce.

We may think that we should become missionaries to Borneo -- that would be a fantastic thing. (By the way, where is Borneo?) But maybe for God, the fantastic thing is something as simple as looking after your elderly neighbor instead of just thinking she's a grouchy dingbat. Instead of trying to write the next "Prayer of Jabez" book, or any other fantastic Christian bestseller, maybe God just wants you to perform your own job with integrity and respect, and for you to love your spouse and your kids -- maybe for God that's your fantastic thing. We know without thinking about it that loving our neighbor as ourselves would be a fantastic thing as far as Jesus is concerned.

We need to let God be the One who decides what our results will look like; we must strive to act on the seed of faith which God promises we already have -- that "truth according to a present reality."

"If you have faith the size of a mustard seed (and you do!)" Dare you believe it? I can't say for you; ask yourself. If you think not, ask why? Pray for insight, courage and wisdom -- God loves that kind of honest, yearning prayer.

While it would be tempting to part the waters once and walk across bottom on dry land to get to the other side, I would gladly trade that miraculous ability for the daily grace -- our daily bread -- to live my life fully in the love of God, and in Godly community with my family and my neighbor, even if in all of my life I did nothing else. For nothing would thrill me more than to one day say to God, "I did what you asked me to do; and I couldn't have done it without you."

The Rev'd Timothy M. Dombek
ST. JAMES EPISCOPAL CHURCH
301 Piney Mountain Road
Greenville, SC 29609-3035
(864) 244-6358
stjamesrector@mindspring.com
Copyright © 2001 Timothy M. Dombek All Rights Reserved.