Pentecost 19 C

In our text today Jesus is giving his disciples some instruction. If you read further you find out that when this happens he is on his way to Jerusalem where he will be tried and executed so he is really giving instruction for how the disciples should act and live once he is gone. As you might imagine this instruction is intense. It is overwhelming to the disciples and so they ask Jesus to increase their faith. Well, the response that they get isn't what they wanted or expected. Jesus doesn't say he won't or can't do that, he doesn't say that they are wrong for asking but he seems to tell them that that isn't what they need. That they have already been given faith and the amount doesn't matter, there is no amount of faith that is less powerful or more powerful than any other amount.

What Jesus says is this. "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed it is enough to say to that big tree over there, be uprooted and go plant yourself and grow in the middle of the sea and it will".

Does Jesus mean here that faith can move trees? When Matthew tells a similar story he says faith can move mountains.

Imagine enough faith to tell the giant maples and oaks around us to move and they will, enough faith to tell them go grow in the middle of the Atlantic and they will. Or someone telling mount Everest that it better get out of the way. Imagine that happening...Now if you really imagine it you get a kind of odd scene. What a silly picture!

And why would we want this, what good would this do us? Would it increase your faith, would it feed your family? Would it bring peace and prosperity to the people of the world? No, it would just move some things around, so maybe this isn't exactly what Jesus meant in the first place.

I wonder if maybe the language here is a bit unconventional because faith is a bit unconventional too and because we just can't think about it in exactly the same way that we think about other forces. Sometimes trees grow in impossible places and mountains move in ways that are more subtle at first but more revolutionary in the end.

This week the Lutheran Church in America is asking us to lift up and learn about the Lutheran World Federation, an organization that includes our ELCA here in America as well as hundreds of other Lutheran churches throughout the world. The LWF works to relieve hunger and create sustainable water systems and farms throughout the world as well as to improve the quality of life in developing countries in many ways. On their website I found a story about a man who either needed to move a mountain or make some trees grow in some very unlikely places indeed.

Julio lives just outside of Cajamarca, Peru, in the upper central region of the country. His father had been considered a serf under the old hacienda system, someone who is very poor and basically works as a slave for the owner of the hacienda.

His family owned nothing and they were forced to work the land. His only Christmas gift was permission to kiss the hand of the hacienda owner. [He was what we think of as an indentured servant, not quite a slave but something close.]

[Then something hopeful happened, the control of the government changed and the sort of indentured work that he was doing was outlawed. So he was free and even better he was given some land by the government! This was great, all of sudden there were seeds in his life. Little tiny rays of hope. But this hope was complicated because he was given only dry mountainous land to farm. He either needed land that was flat and easier to water or he needed crops that would miraculously grow without water...In this situation the family was lucky to squeeze out one harvest a year if the rains would come–not enough even to feed them.

As a result, adults and children in the family wove straw mats and Julio sold them as a wandering peddler in the coastal cities. He was separated from his family for many months each year and still barely made enough for them to live on. The children, who often went to bed hungry, faced a grim future of begging for food on the streets...or worse.

But through a great gift of faith the mountain was moved and trees began to grow in the most unlikely of places.

The thing about faith that we need to remember here is that we don't work for faith, we don't accrue faith we can't even force faith to grow. Faith is a free gift from God. Faith is given to us. And so it is a great ending to Julio's story that gifts were given to him through faith and by faith and from other people of faith.

Through Lutheran World Relief, Julio received training in earth-friendly agriculture. This is the part where the mountain moves and it wasn't quite as easy as just a command. Starting at 4:00 every morning, Julio began to carry boulders up 45-degree slopes to build terraces on his land. and with the small purchase of a $150 gravity pump that brought water up the steep slopes Julio is now able to harvest crops three times a year.

The seeds that he was storing up, hoping that someday they would bear fruit finally had moist healthy land to grow in, the dry mountain side was now a fertile farmland with the soil gaining nutrients all the time. Julio had a shed full of seeds and some faith to work, the people who came to teach him had knowledge of farming and the faith to train him. Now finally and for the first time in any of their memory, there is enough to eat and sell, for Julio, his family and their community. Julio has great hope and big plans for the future but his joy lies primarily in his daughter, Elena, who is not only attending but also excelling in school. Now Julio looks proudly at his daughter and thanks God for how far he and his family have come. “We have moved from a life of hand-outs,” he says, “to a life we [can] hardly imagine.”

Is this what Jesus had in mind when he said that faith the size of a tiny seed could move mountains and make trees grow in impossible places? Maybe not but he was sure that even little bits of faith when treated with the same type of hope that a starving farmer might treat a seed with could certainly do amazing things.

Our text today commands us to do some pretty though things as followers of Jesus. We are asked to forgive people for their sins and trespasses and insults and carelessness over and over again. Up to seven times a day we should forgive them and I would wager even more often than that. and then at the end of the day when we have done these wonderful Holy and Christian acts of faith, love and forgiveness we are told that we should expect no reward, no one to pat us on the back and thank us for our work.

We shouldn't expect even the smallest but thanks but instead because we have been given the great gift of faith to be children of God, we shall live in the kingdom of God. In the Old testament the prophet Habbakuk is told that this is so very true that he should write in out so that even someone running past could read it. God says if you aren't sure you believe, make a billboard to remind yourself.

There should never be any doubt that the kingdom of God is truly yours when your faith feels smaller than a tiny seed and when you see faith bearing beautiful fruit all over the world. It might not happen just like you think, but faith moves mountains and commands the trees to grow! This is good news. Thanks be to God!

Amen