Mulberry Movin’ Faith
10-07-07
My grandmother used to have light blue, shag carpet in her living room. I loved that shag carpet as a child. I loved the way it felt rolling around on it. I loved the grooves and marks it left on my bare skin, and the way it would tickle if you stuck your nose too close. The other thing I loved most about grandma’s house was her old fashioned coo-coo clock. The clock had a little yellow bird that announced the time, every half hour. From the bird’s perch to the floorboards, ran two metal chains attached decorative counterweights. My sister and I would love to put on socks, rub our feet on that shag carpet as hard and fast as we could than walk over to the clock and touch those metal chains. Out from our fingers would come big blue sparks of electricity and the hair on our arms and head would stick straight up. I liked having the power to create that spark. I use to run around sounding like He-Man declaring, "I’ve got the power."
In truth, we’ve all got the power. In fact, each of us is a little power plant. It’s true. Did you know that every time you take a step, you generate six to eight watts of energy? That wattage usually dissipates into the air. Imagine, if we could harness that power. Think of the thousands of people who dash through a large train station or airport in one hour…people rushing for trains and planes. That’s a lot of steps! That’s a lot of power! If we could harness that power we could actually generate a very useful power source.
According to Fast Company (September 2006), an architectural firm in London, is working to develop vibration-harvesting sensors. These sensors would be implanted in the structure of train stations, bridges, factories or any other building frequently trampled by commuters, vehicles or machinery. The devices would capture the rumblings of all this activity, turn them into electricity, and then store it in a battery. Pretty cool stuff if you ask me.
There is power in small steps. Problem with today, is we feel the need to super-size everything. We are looking for the miracles and the faith that will carry us through any situation with a smile on our face. In today’s passage from Luke, the apostles say to Jesus, "Increase our faith!" The disciples think their faith is too miniscule to make a difference, so they ask Jesus to enlarge it. Jesus understands the significance of small steps, so he says to them, "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" (Luke 17:5-6). In other words, Jesus doesn’t buy into their complaint that they need more faith in order to live a faithful life of discipleship. And moreover, he is not selling the notion that he is the one who can wave a wand and simply give them more faith, or the faith they think they need.
Have you ever seen a mustard seed? It’s hard to see even with 20/20 vision. Each seed is about one-twentieth of an inch. That’s very, very small. At the very least, what Jesus is doing here is to underscore the notion that faith doesn’t have to be huge to have an impact. It doesn’t have to make the news to make a difference. What we need to do is "seed-size our faith," not super-size it. We need to seed-size our faith, because that is where the power lies. I don’t know if the contemporary Church truly comprehends this type of faith. When I lived in Washington D.C., I went to a small corner church for about three months, with a housemate of mine. Now this little Holiness church, knew all about faith. We were encouraged to believe God for the possible and especially the impossible. God the God of miracles. In God anything is possible. We gathered week after week and heard the testimonies of persons who had been completely healed by believing in God's Word. From migraines to mumps, from flu to fat—we were taught that faith was the answer. That faith was further nurtured by Bible Study leaders who told us how to get faith, grow faith, affirm faith, release faith, confess faith, exercise faith, and focus faith like a laser beam upon any target area that ranged from better jobs to finding a husband. After three month’s, I came out of that church with catch phrases and contemporary analogies, and for a while at least, a sense of confidence that I had never felt before. I had the faith baby.
There was one version of faith that I remember made the rounds for quite sometime. It was described in a saying that went something like this: Faith is a blank check endorsed by God, drawn from the bank of heaven, to be spent on anything—provided the check-writer had sufficient faith. Just fill in the amount. Now some of us may have had those checks a comin’ until one day one of those faith checks bounce with "Insufficient Faith" stamped across it.
You see faith, has become, to many people, a thing, a service that is developed to secure other things; a green light at the right time, a car that will start, a positive reaction, a miraculous healing of a broken arm, resurrection from the dead. We seem to want faith to secure what we want, the right job, the right companion, the right outcome to our situations. It is fun and affirming to be on the receiving side of a miracle, an amazing to be a superstar in faith, amazing when the car actually starts. There exists show stoppin’ faith, mulberry movin’, stunning, amazing faith, high visibility faith, but faith is not merely a trust that everything is going to work itself out just fine. Faith is really not about good things for self, it is about good things for God.
You see, Luke knows that faith as a concept by itself is dangerous. The idea that our faith will solve everything is not totally true. Faith is especially dangerous when we cut and paste it to every problem that confronts us, wait for a miracle, and boldly proclaim that there is no suffering here. We ain’t fooling anyone, but ourselves. Because as we become more and more preoccupied with increasing our faith, believing hard enough, praying hard enough, telling others to believe more and pray more, we become less and less aware of the actual needs of the folks around us; less and less concerned with the needs of others.
It is not a coincidence that Jesus talks of Mulberrry-Movin’ faith alongside servant hood. What servant among you," Jesus begins, "comes in from a day's work and plops him or herself down and asks the master for a menu? "How silly," respond the disciples, everyone knows that servants serve and masters master. No reversals. No exceptions. "You're exactly right," says Jesus. "Servants serve, and masters master." But then Jesus goes on to add," It is the same with you. When you’ve done everything expected of you, be matter of fact and say, ‘the work is done. What we are told to do, we did." We don’t have Mulberry-Movin’ faith for the show. "I’m the master, you are the servants. So show the power of your faith and serve your God.
Servant-hood, my friends is about those small steps of faith. Remember the metaphor here: think of 40,000 people walking through Union Station generating energy without giving it much thought. In the normal routine and exercise of their daily life, these people collectively can produce a significant amount of usable energy. This, then, is also a picture of the church. We, as the body of Christ, who number in the millions worldwide, ought to be making a difference in simply the way we walk in our daily lives which we live before others. If Christians around the world practiced Christianity, the world would be transformed. I’m not talking about show-stopping, God-will-take-care-of-everything, I’ll-just-wait-kind of faith. I’m talking about our job description as disciples of a living Christ to comfort, serve, encourage, heal, lift the fallen, advocate for the oppressed, weep with those who weep, listen to the desperate, mediate disputes, overcome our differences, and re-establish relationships. And through it all believe, or rather have faith, that God is working through us to generate life-giving, life-changing power. It’s simply inconceivable to say that millions of Christians walking through Union Station, as it were, are not going to generate a ton of world-changing energy. The apostles themselves, though only a small number, were described as people who turned the world upside down. We need a seed-sized faith; not a super-sized faith. Our best efforts are just a few small steps, nothing spectacular in themselves. But when combined with the efforts of other faithful people, they can have a powerful impact.
Faith is a giver, not a getter. Faith is an action not a discussion; a servant not a superstar. Faith isn’t merely about believing in things that will make our lives and our loved ones’ lives better. Faith is not only believing in the power of God within and without, but working together to build up the body of Christ.
In faith and by faith this morning, we celebrate a special Communion. All across this globe, Christians of every denomination, race, and culture will be partaking in Holy Communion. By faith, today we are global Christians. We are hungry and fed up. Our children are starved and they are spoiled. We are engaged in battles big and small. We are both joyful and joyless. We feel powerful and we feel helpless. Each of us have the power, a few steps at a time, to accomplish something extraordinary. Together around the world our mustard-seed faith is uprooting more than Mulberry bushes, but also corruption, injustice, abuse, and barriers.
"Increase our faith, Lord," say his disciples. Jesus promises us powerful, mulberry-moving faith, but with great faith he calls us to great servant-hood: small, powerful, communal, transformative steps. Great faith is a giver, not a getter. Great faith is an action, not a discussion. Great faith is a servant, not a superstar. So, my friends, let us be faith-filled servants. We can all proclaim, "By the Power of Faith, I have the Power!" Thanks be to God, Amen.
Blessings,
Melissa