2022.10.02 | Mustard Seed Faith
“Mustard Seed Faith”
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 2, 2022
Recently I had the opportunity to join a carpool with a group of women who were only fleetingly acquainted with each other. We began our trip with introductions. As sometimes happens, I turned out to be quite a novelty for one of the travelers. This was on account of my being a real live “lady” pastor.
That traveler’s name was Carolyn. She was also our carpool driver, a retired parochial teacher, and a member of a Roman Catholic Church in the East Bay. She spent most of our one-hour trip drilling me on every question that she had about Protestants.
Like me, she was raised by people who didn’t mix. Catholics and Protestants that is. Consequently, we grew up with a lot of misinformation about each other’s tradition. I was fortunate to be able to sort out fact from fiction during my college and seminary years. Carolyn, by contrast, used our carpool time to sort things out for herself.
One question that she asked me had to do with Protestant beliefs about grace. She seemed surprised to learn that very few of us subscribed to a belief in “cheap grace,” and most of us believe that confession is appropriate and necessary for reconciliation with God and neighbor.
I ventured that Carolyn’s surprise about Protestant beliefs might have had to do with the fact that Catholics consider confession a sacrament, and that penitents are required to make their confession to a priest. Protestants, by contrast, generally believe that Christians can make our confessions directly to God, anywhere, any time, through individual or corporate prayer, with or without a religious leader present to hear our confession or absolve us of our sin.
Despite the fact that Protestants do not require confession to be made in the presence of a religious leader, numerous people (both Protestant and Catholic) have approached me over the years, and said, “Pastor Arlene, I have a confession to make.”
Even though I don’t feel that my role is required for confession, I accept that others do. So I usually say something like: “OK. Let’s hear it.”
The phrasing of confessions vary, but the gist of most goes something like this: “I don’t have much faith.”
Such confessions usually mean that the confessor has a lot of theological questions. Or that they have more questions than answers. And consequently, they think that they aren’t feeling worthy of the title “Christian.”
I listen to these confessions, and when the penitent is done telling me how little they believe and what a lousy Christian they are, I tell them a paraphrased version of the Parable of the Mustard Seed. The point of which is this: your faith, regardless of how small, is sufficient. God can and does work in and through you regardless of the size of your faith--small, medium, or large.
II
The truth that our faith is sufficient, no matter its size, is often obscured by the “Pharisaic” and “scarcity” voices in our heads and in passages such as Lk. 17:7-10 that poke at our sense of inadequacy and insufficiency.
The late Dr. Fred B. Craddock, New Testament professor at Emory University, offered a healthy corrective to these negative voices in his commentary on today’s text. [Craddock, et al., eds. Preaching the New Common Lectionary: Year C, (Norcross, CA: Trinity Press Int’l.,1992) p. 194.]
Here, Craddock explains that the crux of the gospel lesson from Luke 17:5-10 lies in how we translate and interpret the Greek term for “if.” Specifically, he writes:
The Greek language has basically two types of “if” or conditional clauses—those that express a condition contrary to fact (“if I were you”) [and I’m not] and those that express a condition according to fact (“if Christ is Lord”) [and he is.] (Ibid.)
Do you hear the difference in how the term “if” might be understood depending on whether you assumed that Jesus is referring to a condition contrary to fact, or a condition according to fact?
If we understood Jesus to be using “if” as a condition contrary to fact, then we would understand Jesus to be mocking the disciples for not having had enough faith. He would be saying in effect, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, [and you don’t] you could say to this tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
If, on the other hand, we understood Jesus to be using “if” as a condition according to fact, we would understand—as Cradock asserts that Jesus is saying, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, [and you do]…you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
Notice that there is quite a bit of difference between the meaning of the term “if” and significantly different interpretations of what Jesus is saying in Luke 17, depending on whether we understand Jesus to be using “if” as a condition contrary to fact, or a condition according to fact.
Craddock explains further that Jesus assumes a condition according to fact in his dialogue with the disciples, which means that:
…Jesus’ response is not a judgment of an absence of faith but an indirect affirmation of the faith they have and an invitation to live and act in that faith. The apostles request an increase of faith and Jesus says that even the small faith you have is effective and powerful beyond your present realization. (Ibid.)
When we correctly understand which meaning of the term “if” that Jesus is using, then we better understand the historic meaning of the text, and we have a much better chance of finding meaning in this text for our lives.
III
Some of us may feel like the disciples who doubted that their faith was sufficient to meet the challenges before them. But Jesus teaches that even a small amount of faith is sufficient to accomplish great things.
As a pastor, I spend a lot of time at the bedsides of people who are sick, recovering from injuries or surgeries, and/or who are hovering between this world and the next. In circumstances like these, I often find that family members and friends feel upset because they want to make a difference in a loved one’s condition, and they think that they can’t. They often ask the person in bed to give them a task to do that would make a difference for them.
More often than not, the person in the bed has a very short list. This situation is very unsatisfying for those of us who are “doers,” unless we are able to shift gears and get our heads around the importance of simply being present for the other person.
Valuing the significance of being present is hard for doers--unless or until they are the person in the bed--and remember the significance of someone showing up at your bedside, and simply holding their hand, fluffing their pillow, or listening to their concerns.
You might call these little tasks “mustard seeds.” They are little things that make a world of difference to the person who is ill, infirmed, or at heaven’s gate.
IV
In a similar vein, accompanying an individual or family through the US immigration process can also foster feelings of helplessness in those who seek legal status in this country and those who might accompany them. This is so, because our immigration system is a train wreck.
It is tempting to stay away, because the stories of those who are forced to navigate this system are heart wrenching and the illogical and bureaucratic nature of the immigration process is infuriating. Nevertheless, our faith compels us to keep our ears and our eyes wide open, and do what we can, where we are, with the gifts and graces with which we have been equipped.
For the past four years, for example, Eden Church has been collaborating with organizations like the Mustard Seed Immigration Law Project in Oakland to accompany asylum seekers and refugees through their immigration processes.
We take a strengths-based approach to this process. No one in our congregation is an immigration attorney, but Peggy J. Bristol, the managing attorney for Mustard Seed is. Peggy offers her services on a no bono and low bono basis and helps clients file the appropriate legal documents with the Department of Homeland Security, and she represents them in US Immigration Court as they proceed through the process.
Meanwhile, those who are part of Eden’s Interfaith Accompaniment Network do things that play to our strengths, such as the following:
Identifying sponsored housing for clients who do not yet have a green card;
Helping newcomers navigate our US healthcare system;
Coaching migrant families on how to enroll their children in our local school;
Driving asylum seekers to San Francisco for check-ins with ICE;
Writing checks and raising money to help cover clients’ legal fees;
Packing the court to demonstrate community support for newcomers’ petitions in immigration court--and more.
It’s the little things—the mustard seed things—that contribute to the success of a newcomers immigration case, and that give them a chance to live the American dream.
V
To be sure, it’s easy to listen to the Pharisaic and the scarcity voices that tell us we haven’t done enough or we have nothing to contribute to the critically ill, the indigent, or the immigrant, but then comes Jesus, who says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed—and you do—you could make a world of difference for others.
So let’s listen to the voice of Jesus, and dare to believe the good news of the gospel: you and I have Mustard Seed Faith sufficient to be the difference that we and the world have been waiting for. Amen.