Moving That Tree
Luke 17:5-10
Rev. Frank Schaefer

"If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you."

Those of you who don't know what a mustard seed looks like, it is one of the tiniest seeds you'll ever see. In fact, you can hardly see it with your naked eye. And yet, it grows into a big tree; actually, it's technically a shrub, but it looks like a tree, it's as large as a tree.

Many preachers through the ages have focused on this amazing contrast, of tiny beginnings that can lead to big results. And in that sense, the mustard seed is a perfect simile of the kingdom of God. Sometimes we see very small beginnings that yield amazing results.

Well Jesus said, that even if your faith is as small as a mustard see, if you actually invest this faith you can move trees.

Now, we see very small beginnings in our own faith community. And God wants us to have faith that these humble beginnings will grow into something big; something that will change and improve the life of people around us.

If you have just a little faith, you can move trees. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is recorded as saying, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can move mountains.

That tiny little faith can move trees and mountains like their toy trees and toy mountains. our faith can move mountains in your life, in your community. How encouraging is that?

There is a saying in the world 'seeing is believing” and a lot of people live by that mantra. People are saying: unless you can show me, I'm not going to believe it.

The truth is that today you often have to believe first before you can see. That's true even of the scientific community. You have to first believe theories before you can understand what's going on in quantum physics and other physics processes.

When it comes to living our lives, faith is so important, especially when things aren't easy. Had I not believed in my calling to become a minister, I would have given up on it, because I experienced so many difficulties to get into seminary. Even some of my closest friends and even my parents discouraged me. They said, they couldn't see it in me to be a minister. I didn't get the visa I needed and financial aid fell through. But I had a calling from God and that gave me the faith to hang in there, and tata, things eventually fell into place.

And I think that's one aspect of what Jesus is talking about with his metaphor of the mustard seed. As we believe, we start to see and understand the larger picture.

When Jesus talks about our faith moving trees and mountains, he obviously refers to problems and hardships, cause people rarely have a need for an actual tree or mountain to be moved.

Today, we celebrated World Communion Sunday, a day on which we bind together with thousand of fellow believers around the world to remember what God has done for us in the symbolic action of breaking bread and sharing wine.

So, is there a connection between World Communion and this message of the mustard-seed faith? I think there is. Think about it, the biggest mountains in our way are social problems. I always say that the most cruel suffering is what human beings do to each other. Think about the cruelty and emotional agony of war, crimes, failing relationships, and the cruelty of racism, sexism, heterosexism, etc.

Most of the mountains in life have to do with living life in the human society. And on this World Communion Sunday we have a chance to invest a little faith in the church of Christ and in humanity.

On this day, we engage in an act of communion. Do you know the definition of the word communion (besides the church's definition of it)? According to the Cambridge Dictionary communion is being in 'a close relationship with someone in which feelings and thoughts are exchanged.”

On this day, we have a chance to put our mustard seed faith into God's community, even though we are fully aware that we are anything but united - in fact, we are divided. But today, we set aside these differences in belief and attitude, and we sit down together to commune. Because in spite of all our differences, there is at least one thing that unites us, we all need to eat and drink – I'm kidding, of course. That statement may be true biologically, but the spiritual thing that unites us is Jesus Christ and what Christ has done for us.

Today, we have a chance to sit together as brothers and sisters to exchange our feelings and thoughts about what should matter most to us - our faith in God. Today as we share the bread and wine, we remember God's amazing grace and unending love, Gods' forgiveness, God's hope for a world of peace and harmony.

Today, we will invest that little seed of faith we have, today we will stop our squabbles and our fights, today God calls us to renew our faith in the grace of God, the goodness of life, the hope for a world of peace and justice.

Jesus is saying: believing is seeing. Brothers and sisters, for one moment, for this moment of Communion, let's not look at what divides us, but let's look through the eyes of faith and see what unites us. And that may just be the first step to moving that metaphorical tree or mountain. Amen.