Update: Video link on YouTube

I had the privilege last night to give the meditation during the evening service at my church (Christ Episcopal in Cedar Rapids, IA) on the text Luke 17:5-10.

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “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.

“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me; put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’ ”

Luke 17:5-10, NRSVUE

I have never cast a mulberry bush into the sea.

I have heard endless sermons and inspirational messages about the mustard seed. How powerful this faith is! How just a little bit of it could do amazing things. How a mustard seed grows from a tiny seed into a much bigger plant. And how, somehow, the message usually told me, this little bit of powerful faith would allow me to do amazing things for God if I just did what I needed to for that faith to grow. Usually, the lessons told me, that was to do things like reading my Bible more, praying more, talking to more people about God. Get to work! Grow that faith!

I’m sure the messages were well-intended. But instead of inspiring some sort of amazing godliness in me, they caused other feelings: inadequacy. Fear. Failure. I wasn’t doing great things for God. I was struggling to just keep it together most days. And that led me to question what was wrong with my faith. I wasn’t moving trees.

It’s a funny hypothetical for Jesus to use here. Casting a mulberry tree into the sea. Not just casting it, but commanding it to cast itself into the sea! Maybe Jesus and the disciples were standing on a hill, in the shade of the tree, and looking out across the Sea of Galilee, and it was a convenient example. It’s obviously a little bit hyperbolic. You don’t read in the Acts of the Apostles about them going and commanding the shrubbery around.

Back in 2020 I got far more experience than I wanted to moving trees. The derecho took out three big trees in our yard and left us without power for 11 days. And pretty much each of those days consisted of the same work: taking my small chainsaw and some hand trimmers and slowly chopping up those big trees into small enough pieces that we could pile them up at the curb for the city to take away. Splitting up the bigger chunks into firewood, throwing it in the wagon, and stacking it by the wood pile. The day of the storm, the job looked immense and overwhelming. But I learned over those two weeks that even that overwhelming job, when taken piece by piece, was possible to complete.

There are days when I would’ve been very happy for a magic mustard seed of faith that would’ve let me command the trees to head to the curb themselves so that I could just sit and rest. But I worked away at the problem a little bit at a time, and a few weeks later things were fairly well cleaned up.

I don’t think that the faith that Jesus was talking about or that the disciples wanted was for the purpose of getting a hard job done with less effort. There are bigger challenges than cleaning up fallen trees.

In the verses right before our Gospel reading tonight starts, Jesus has been talking about the need to forgive people. “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says ‘I repent’, you must forgive.”

Suddenly the disciples’ plea for Jesus to increase their faith takes on a new color.

Because I’ve been there, and I think we’ve all been there. Someone does me wrong. Not just someone who is an enemy or an unknown, someone who I might expect to wrong me. This is another disciple, Jesus says. Someone who should know better. Who does know better. And who repeatedly, consistently, persistently is doing wrong. And that wrongdoing is damaging them, damaging me, damaging others. It’s causing me frustration and heartache and making me wonder where it’s coming from. Is that how a disciple of Jesus behaves?

And now, Jesus says I need to forgive that person? Over and over and over again? I quickly find myself making the same plea the disciples did: “Lord, increase my faith!”

Two weeks after the derecho all the downed trees had been cleaned up and carted off. A couple months later we had done landscaping and planted some new trees. Five years later those trees are as tall as our house and you’d never know the lawn had been a disaster zone. The days without power, with aching limbs and blistered hands taking apart those trees a branch at a time, today are just a memory.

But the challenges of a disciple who knows better wronging you over and over again? To forgive that person, to hold out hope for restoration of relationships - that may not be the work of just weeks and months. That may be the work of a lifetime. A work of patience, and trust. Not something that if I just try a little harder, work a little more consistently, that I can fix it.

But Jesus says this is the mark of his disciples: love for one another. And that the children of God are peacemakers. And that our future is not division, but reconciliation. And so the faith I need is not for the purpose of landscaping or topiary. It’s the faith to forgive, to restore, to hope all things for people when I am tempted to write them off.

How in the world do I do that?

After Jesus talks about the mustard seed faith and the mulberry tree he says some fairly cryptic things about how a person would treat their slave and also how a person would respond if they were a slave. And it’s fairly confusing for me listening. Am I the master? Am I the slave? Am I both at different times? Am I supposed to be ok with the idea that I’m the master and expecting my slave to both work in my field and then come in and serve me dinner?

There’s a couple things I think we can take away from this odd little parable. First, as one commentator I read put it: there are no merit badges for forgiving people. It’s just what is expected of Jesus followers. You’re not going to get an “achievement unlocked” when you forgive 7 times or 70 times 7 times or whatever.

And second, there’s a sense in which the people Jesus describes here are content to fulfill their roles, to do what is appropriate for their role, for their lot in life. To not worry about what is going on with everyone else, but being content to just say “hey, just doing what I’m supposed to be doing here”. So maybe we can take away from this that part of the way our faith is built so that we can keep forgiving, so that we can do the work of reconciliation, is to trust that God is at work in ways we don’t see. That I can learn to be content knowing that it’s not on me to fix everything. I have done my part to forgive and reconcile, and that the rest is up to God.

So the real work of the kingdom of God isn’t relocating trees, whether by chainsaws and wagons or by a magical faith command. The real work of the kingdom is forgiveness and reconciliation. It is powered by love - love that hopes all things, endures all things, believes all things - a hope that is always for the best. A hope for reconciliation and not for judgment.

That’s hard work, tiring work. And so for that purpose we, with the disciples, ask Jesus: increase our faith. Amen.