Uprooting Trees (Proper 22C; World Communion Sunday; October 6, 2013; Luke 17:5-10)

Uprooting Trees

Proper 22C; World Communion Sunday
October 6, 2013
Luke 17:5-10

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

What in the world is Jesus trying to say in the first few verses of our gospel reading?  The longer I look at it, the less sense it makes.  Usually, not always, but usually when I sit with a text in the Bible long enough and I use the tools I’ve been taught to use, something eventually pops out.  Usually, not always, but usually, that something is something I can use, something that if coaxed a little can grow into a sermon.  Usually.  Maybe if I had more time, it would, but it is in the nature of preaching that Sunday comes relentlessly, once every seven days, ready or not.  And so, as happens sometimes, I am befuddled when I most hope to be clear. 

Even though this is a very familiar text, the longer I look at it, the stranger it becomes.  I’ll show you what I mean.  First, let’s look at the last part, the part about the mulberry tree.  “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to the mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey.” 

I’m trying to picture this.  Here is a mulberry tree, possibly a black mulberry, one of several different kinds of mulberry, a fruit-bearing tree that grows no higher than fifty feet.  This particular tree is living its life and doing whatever it is that mulberries do when Jesus threatens it with becoming an object lesson in the course of which it will be violently torn from the earth and “replanted” in the sea—a sort of hydroponics experiment?  Though the story doesn’t say so, I suspect that the tree was grateful that none of the disciples tried to take Jesus up on what seems to be a dare.

It would certainly have been impressive.  It would have been a breathtaking display of power.  But my question is, Why?  Why would you uproot an innocent mulberry tree and replant it in the sea?  What purpose would that serve?  Why would anyone say, “Well, it’s a very nice mulberry tree and all but it would be altogether nicer if it were planted in the sea”?

So that’s my first problem.  My second is this matter of the size of faith.  “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed,” Jesus said.  I did not know that faith comes in sizes.  What scale is used to measure faith?  I guess a mustard seed-sized faith would be on the small end of the scale, but obviously not the smallest, since the disciples don’t have “faith the size of a mustard seed.”  Maybe the disciples have poppy seed-sized faith?  And what would a large faith be?  Would it be the size of a peach pit or maybe an avocado pit?  How do you measure the size of faith, especially when there are no mulberry trees conveniently planted nearby?

Jesus talks as if faith has size, takes up a certain amount of space, displaces a certain volume, but the more seriously we take his statement, the less sense it makes.  Sometimes when reading a text in the Bible it helps to see what comes before and after the part we’re trying to understand. 

After the verses we’ve been looking at in which Jesus tells his followers about mulberry hydroponics project, he tells them that they shouldn’t get their hopes too high; they shouldn’t put on airs; they are nobody special and they shouldn’t forget that.  That doesn’t seem to help us much.

Before our reading begins Jesus talks about forgiveness and tells his followers that if someone comes to them even seven times in a single day and says, “I’m changing my ways,” they must forgive them each time.

The disciples then say, “Increase our faith!” as well they might, since they’ve been told to do a very hard thing.  And then Jesus responds to their request to “add to” their faith by telling 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.”

So actually, it’s the disciples who bring up the matter of how big faith is by asking Jesus to make theirs bigger.  As often happens, Jesus does not grant their request.  Somehow it’s misplaced, misguided.  And what if he had granted their request?  You know how they are.  The first thing you know they’re going to be comparing their faith to each other’s faith.  “My faith is bigger than your faith.”  “Did you see the size of his faith?!”  It would have ended badly.  Never underestimate the foolishness of men in groups when they get competitive.

So maybe what Jesus does is to cut off this notion of faith that is bigger or smaller with his challenge or dare or provocation or whatever you want to call it.  “It isn’t about size, people!  But if you want to play the size game, just know that even a mustard-seed sized faith could do something as foolish and as useless as transplanting a mulberry tree in the sea.  But it isn’t about size.  Size doesn’t matter!”

Wait.  What?  What does he mean, “Size doesn’t matter”?  Of course size matters.  Whoever thinks size doesn’t matter has never played tackle on an offensive line.  Bigger is better.  Who wouldn’t want a house with extra bedrooms and bathrooms?  Who would trade a house with 1800 square feet of floor space for a house of 1000 square feet?  When you rent a car and they offer you an upgrade, it’s always for a bigger car!  We even want bigger churches and bigger church programs. 

Bigger is better.  That’s what the world around us thinks, anyway.  And sometimes we even think it ourselves.  We think it when we’re fighting for our community and we’re up against some big corporate interest and we see that “big” can afford lawyers and experts.  We settle for muddling through our lives as best we can because the things that need to change are really big and there are big companies and big governments and people with big checking accounts arrayed against us and how can we possibly win and so why even take up the fight?  We’re small. 

Do you see how that “size matters” story takes away our power, demoralizes us, takes the fight out of us, makes it so we don’t even want to see injustice in the world?  We feel like David going up against Goliath.

Do you see how the Bible—in tales like “David and Goliath”—offers us a different story, a story in which size is no advantage?

Jesus falls squarely in this tradition.  Think of how many of his stories were versions of Springsteen’s song, “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come).”   There’s the Parable of the Yeast: a little yeast makes the whole loaf rise.  There’s the Parable of the Sower: just a few seeds, if they fall on fertile soil, can make the whole crop.  There’s the Parable of the Mustard Seed: a tiny seed can produce a huge plant.  A little salt flavors the whole dish.

There are other passages—and I’m only looking at the Gospel of Luke—that point in the same direction.  Five loaves and two fish feed a crowd of five thousand men plus women and children.  The poor widow seems to be without power, but she can nag a judge into doing the right thing for her. 

Jesus tells us that in God’s eyes, the little matter, the small are important.  Their struggles for dignity and their resistance against oppression are the places where the new reign of God is at work and where God’s power can be seen.  One sheep gets lost and it’s important.  One coin is misplaced and God turns her household upside down. 

Big is not the way God works.  Big institutions and big corporations and big governments are not where God lives and works.  God works in the corners, in the cracks, in the alleys and around the corners.  God works through the small.  God works in and through the veteran who has come home with a broken spirit, ravaged by what he has seen and done, who refuses to give up and give in to the darkness in his soul and struggles to do right by his wife and children even when it seems like a losing battle.  God’s power works in and through a young park ranger doing a difficult job and facing down a grandstanding congressman looking to score political points. 

God works through a few grains of salt.  God works with a little yeast.  God works with mustard seeds.  God even—and here is the least believable example of all—works with us.  No, we’re not very big and we’re not very strong and we’re not very rich, but none of that matters much to God. 

When God’s name is hallowed, it won’t be because of some great ecclesiastical institution.  When God’s Kingdom comes, it won’t come from Washington.  When God’s will is done on earth as in heaven, it won’t be because of Wall Street investment bankers.  It will be because God worked through the weak and small and poor.  It will be because God worked through us.

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