"Visions and Seeds"

Luke 17:5-10

Some of you may remember that in the early days of television the Art Linkletter Show had a segment called, "Kids Say the Darnedest Things."  Well, after reading our scripture this morning, we might well conclude that Jesus says the darnedest things.  First, he answers the disciples' plea for more faith with a seemingly impossible vision about a mulberry tree's being uprooted and planted in the sea. Then he tells a parable that seems to call on his followers to think of ourselves as worthless slaves. Both the vision and the parable are troubling. Yet if Jesus' words unsettle us, it's for the purpose of changing us.  Jesus tosses out an impractical vision in order to change our thinking, and he tells a distasteful parable in order to change our living.

Start with this seemingly impossible vision of a mulberry tree that is uprooted and planted in the sea. Do you have a mental picture of that? Everything about that picture is incongruent. The odds against such a thing's happening are overwhelming, to say the least. After all, mulberry trees belong in soil. They require air, sunshine and rain. Mulberry trees don't do well in salt water. Now, surely Jesus has no interest in filling the sea with mulberry trees.  But he does have an interest--a passion in fact--for a different kind of world, one that seems farfetched as a tree growing in the bottom of the ocean.

Now that our imaginations have been stirred, let them show us the kind of visions that guided Jesus' life.  Picture, for example, the nations of the world, represented by these flags in our sanctuary, living together in harmony as brothers and sisters of the same family. Imagine Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims coexisting peacefully. Picture a world in which nonviolent monks in saffron robes shape the future rather than armed soldiers and cruel dictators. Imagine swords beaten into ploughshares and lions lying down with lambs. Can we conceive of a day when world communion is a reality, and not merely a Sunday on the church calendar?  These are the kinds of preposterous dreams that Jesus encourages in his disciples.  He awakens our prophetic imagination to believe that the world can be different. Jesus came proclaiming God's Kingdom. He prayed for the Kingdom to come on earth, and he believed that God had both the will and the ability to make that happen.  Jesus intends that his disciples will share his vision of a rearranged world, one in which violence gives way to peace, pride is replaced with humility, lust deepens into love, revenge into forgiveness, greed into generosity.

Even on a personal level, disciples of Jesus strive to resist thoughts such as--this deep hurt will never heal…my selfish nature is set in stone…I'll never be able to forgive…my life is at a dead end. Jesus' outlandish vision is meant to jar us. He shakes us into the realization that things don't have to stay as they are.  Life can change. The world can change. This church can change. You can change.

Of course, like the first disciples, we might cry, "Lord we don't have enough faith."  But according to Jesus, the quantity of our faith is not the issue. After all, it's not our faith that can change the world—or the church, or our lives—but God who can change us. "Faith," writes Thomas Merton, "is not important, as it is 'in us.'  Our faith is 'in God,' and with even a very little of it, God is in us."

I'm sure many of you are aware of the recent publication of a collection of Mother Teresa's letters under the title, Come, Be My Light.  Mother Teresa became world renowned for her tireless work among the poor in Calcutta, India.  Following her death, she was beatified in 2003, and today is a candidate for sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church. During her life, everyone assumed that Mother Teresa's faith was huge, unshakable, rock solid. But these letters reveal that she continually struggled with doubts, questions and spiritual emptiness. Some will say that Mother Teresa's struggle with faith diminishes her holiness, but for others this revelation only enhances that quality in her.  Many of us will find the news of her struggles more consoling than disconcerting.  With even a mustard seed faith, she inspired people around the world to greater humility and service.  Even though she often found her own faith lacking, through her, God moved mountains, changed countless lives, and brought hope to millions of people everywhere.

So what matters is not the amount of our faith, but the quality of our service. That may be what the parable we're considering is all about. Granted, at first glance, the story is distasteful to us, taking us, as it does, into the world of slavery and servitude, which is abhorrent to us.  The story seems to reinforce the notion of God as "the master," heartless and unengaged, who won't invite us to sit down at table with him. But I submit that these thoughts are off-base and a contradiction of everything Jesus taught.  More likely, Jesus is calling his disciples into service, not for any hope of reward, gain or profit, but because it is what God in us prompts us to do. Jesus came among us not to be served but as a servant, and in doing so he revealed the very character of God.  While we often cry, "Increase our faith."  Jesus responds, "Increase your service."

Our Adult Lecture Class just today began a series called "The Practices of Discipleship."  We might think of practices as seeds of the Kingdom that the followers of Jesus scatter here and there.  Prayer, for example, often seems a weak, inconsequential act, but every prayer is a seed we plant, with the expectation that God will give it growth in due season. When we practice hospitality to strangers, it seems but a small gesture, yet it is a way of seeding God's promised future.  Practicing forgiveness, showing generosity, visiting the sick, feeding the hungry—these acts don't immediately change the world, but they serve to plant seeds of hope and change. They are the dutiful, joyful practices of people who have a vision that the things can be different—that  things will be different.

Friends, if I understand Jesus' response to his disciples' plea for more faith, he's telling us not to worry about whether we have much or little faith. Instead, he suggests we plant seeds of goodness everywhere we can, and leave the harvest to God.