When Steve and I have traveled out West, one of the many amazing sights to behold is that of a little tree, tucked in the crevice between two enormous boulders, with nothing but sheer rock anywhere else as far as the eye can see. By some feat of nature’s determination and mystery, that little tree thrives, a testimony of life in what otherwise seems to be a rather punishing environment for green-growing things. Faith looks a little like that stubborn tree at times, doesn’t it?

The parables of Jesus are provocative by nature and meant to be interacted with rather than simply heard. They are often shocking to their audience or difficult to understand if simply taken at face value. We know this because of the sheer number of times the disciples scratch their heads and decide to ask Jesus later what he means, or quietly mumble among themselves, “Do you think Jesus is saying this?”
The parables often speak to a particular question or situation. A rich man approaches Jesus and asks how to be inherit eternal life (Luke 10:25). The Pharisees and teachers of the law grumble about the company Jesus keeps (Luke 15:2-3). The disciples argue about which one of them is the greatest (Luke 22:24). Jesus responds by launching into a story, approaching the question or situation ‘from the back door,’ so to speak.

In our text today from Luke’s Gospel, the disciples make a small request, or so they believe. “Increase our faith, Jesus.”

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

Jesus responds to their request with a story. His props are everyday items from the natural world familiar to those in the ancient Mideast–the mustard seed and the mulberry tree. How many of us have ever seen one, or both?

In Jesus’ day, black mustard was considered a weed. It was pervasive and persistent. Birds could not fully digest the seeds so they dropped them anywhere and everywhere; farmers had a tough time controlling the mustard bushes that popped up in the darndest places.

A mustard seed is not a big seed, as seeds go. Why doesn’t Jesus pick out some big seed for his illustration, something the size of a watermelon seed, for instance? His imagery seems to be a play on size and a reversal of the disciples’ expectation that faith has to be “big” to be “big enough.” A little mustard seed serves as a reminder that faith is truly about how we see and what we see. If a mustard seed is big enough, then a faith that is small is still a faith that is sufficient. Further, a faith that is persistent like the little mustard seed and pervasive like the full-grown mustard weed is much more significant than the “big faith” the disciples seek.

This brings us to mulberry trees. While they are not huge, they do have deep root systems. They are extremely messy, as animals love to feed on the berries. The ground beneath a mulberry tree in season is covered with berry goo, animal footprints, and bird droppings. Imagine uprooting a mulberry tree and planting it in the watery, sandy seabed! The sheer ridiculousness and impossibility of this act surely strikes the disciples of Jesus’ day as forcefully as it strikes us (unless they are scratching their heads and planning to ask Jesus what he means later!).

In the Gospels, do we ever see Jesus traveling from town to town, demonstrating his faith in God by ordering trees into the sea of Galilee or the Jordan River? Of course not! Writer and pastor, Bruce Prewer, suggests that we look at this parable as if it is a cartoon or a comic strip. Jesus not only uses a lot of hyperbole, or exaggeration, to get a point across, but he also uses humor. Even a tiny mustard seed of faith is plenty big in God’s eyes. Faith can be pervasive and tough like the mustard weed. More astounding yet, faith can tackle sheer impossibilities in the world’s eyes, planting mulberry trees in the Ocean, traveling where only fools for Christ dare to trod (I Cor. 4:10).

On my morning walks I run into many people over the course of a week, and John Randall is one of these people. A former high school English teacher and devout Christian, John never bargained for spending his retirement years battling small cell lung cancer, one of the most virulent and deadly types of lung cancer. Long ago in “cancer time” (which, believe me, has its own calendar!), John beat the odds for survival. He has been on and off chemotherapy, on and off hospice. I have seen John’s faith in action. It is the kind of faith that declares, “Though everything around me is not what I had planned, it is well with my soul. God is in control of my life; I am God’s, and God is mine.”

Last Sunday here at church we talked about Jeremiah, known as “the weeping prophet.” A sensitive and caring soul, Jeremiah was called to warn Jerusalem of impending disaster and live through that destruction and deportation himself. As the great city was on the verge of being destroyed, what did Jeremiah do? He bought a field (see Jeremiah 32), a crazy act in the eyes of the world. This purchase was a sign of God’s promise that what we see with our human eyes isn’t the full story, nor is it the end of the story.

And what did John Randall do last year, in the midst of battling every day to breathe? He got married in a small ceremony in Tappan Square. Later he said to me, “Every month we have together shall be like a year’s anniversary.” Each day of his life, with faith the size of a mustard seed, John is uprooting mulberry trees and planting them in the ocean.

As we celebrate World Communion Sunday, my heart is full of others doing the same. I am flooded with images of the Scattered Church—of people like Beth Peachey in Guatemala, Karla Yoder in Zambia, Susan Frances in Iraq, Liz Hamilton in Turkmenistan, or David Reese at Chicago Theological Seminary. My heart is full of images of the Gathered Church—people in nursing homes or at home battling serious health problems; people that float in and out of the church as well as those who plant themselves firmly in this soil.

My heart is full of missionaries like Dan Buttry, teaching strategies of nonviolent resistance to people living in war-torn lands. I’m remembering Debbie Kelsey, helping women trapped in the international sex slave industry to find dignity and a new life. I’m remembering those who seek to make Christianity credible in places where the Christian faith has lost any moral authority due to vagrant abuse in the name of the Christian God.

My heart is full of Buddhist monks who have been courageously leading massive protests against decades of brutal government repression in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. Many have disappeared into detention this past week. My heart is full of devout Muslims like Moazzam Begg, humiliated and tortured at Guantanamo Bay, one day released without charges or apologies, sent back to England to reconstruct a life with his family (see Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar by Moazzam Begg). To withstand such evil and yet tenaciously believe, that in itself uproots mulberry trees and plants them in the ocean. My heart is full...it is full..it is full...

If you have faith as big as a mustard seed–as big!--you can tell this mulberry tree to plant itself in the ocean, and it will. May we be such fools for Christ, to see that which is small and insignificant with the transforming eyes of faith and go about God’s work of uprooting the most tenacious of mulberry trees. Amen.