Meandering Mobile Mulberry

Luke 17:5-13

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!' "

There’s a scene in the movie Jaws where they’re out in the boat looking for the shark. They haven’t seen it yet… they’ve only seen what it’s done! Then suddenly…. there it is… at the stern of the boat! It’s huge! Beyond their worst nightmares! The Chief of Police, slowly backs up, staring at the roiling water... back, into the cabin, still staring dead astern, and tells the grizzled Captain Quint, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

That’s the disciples. They had seen what Jesus had done. Then suddenly they understood!   Jesus wants THEM to do the same! It’s huge! Beyond their worst nightmares! They slowly back away, still staring wide eyed and tell Jesus, “We’re gonna need some bigger faith.” And who could blame them! They were desperate for the tools to do this impossible job they were being asked to do! That’s how it works! Right? When you don’t have enough of what you need, you go out and get more! So if you need more faith, you go out and get Jesus to give you bigger faith! Right?

But as it turns out, even though that might be the way it works at Big-Y with groceries, it’s actually NOT the way faith works. BECAUSE faith works SO differently, Jesus pulls out this over-the-top, Mobile Mulberry story, to make that difference REALLY clear. With that part of the lesson and the parable about the slaves settling into their roles, and doing their work with consistent practice and discipline, Jesus, I think, was trying to help the disciples understand that as they began to DO the things he was calling them to do with consistent practice and discipline, they would FIND that they actually weren’t short of faith at all, but instead, ALREADY had ALL that they needed to do everything God was calling them to do.

Other very smart and very spiritual folks have tried to teach this same truth over the years. Mother Theresa said, “Our calling is not to do great things, but to do small things with great love.” She too didn’t think we needed MORE faith. What we needed was already there and by doing the small things with great love, we would come to realize over time that we have all we need to also do the bigger things as well.

The Spanish Poet Antonio Machado says, “Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; Wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road and upon glancing behind one sees the path that will never be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road - only wakes upon the sea.”

Thomas Merton said, “We are indoctrinated into ‘means and ends’...But that is not the way to build a life of prayer. In prayer we discover what we already have. You start where you are, and you deepen what you already have, and you realize that you are already there.” He is saying the faith we need is already present in our lives and with discipline, prayer, and practice, we will be able to dig deeper into that already-present faith and access all that we need. Richard Rohr says something similar. He says, “We cannot attain the presence of God because we are already totally in the presence of God. What is absent, is awareness.”

This confusing bit of Gospel, with dutiful slaves and meandering, mobile, mulberries is trying to tell us how radically different faith really works from the rest of the world. Faith is a complete and total gift… a fulsome, generous and overflowing gift that we have ALREADY BEEN GIVEN in the waters of Baptism. We have been given this gift, not because we said the magic words or did enough nice things. We have been given this gift… each of us… simply because we are loved so completely that God gives us all that we need through the Spirit, to love God and love neighbor and live abundant lives, fully immersed in that Divine love.

Like the disciples, we can’t get any more faith. We’re already full-up to overflowing... where would we put it!? What we CAN do is to use the faith we have been given a bit more deeply every day. Even with just the smallest piece of faith we feel able to hold in any one moment, we can do small things with greater and greater love each day. With the tiniest sliver of faith, we can take one small step and with each step slowly realize that there is always solid ground beneath each and every step and open up more of the faith we’ve been given with each step. What we can do is to encourage each other to slowly open our eyes and our hearts and our minds and our souls to the realization that everything we do in this life, we do within an infinite ocean of the presence of God, in whom we live and move and have our being… an ocean filled with an infinite amount of faith, and love, and hope for all.

This is why we gather here in this wonderful community of faith, not to ask Jesus to give us more faith, but to remind one another (in a WORLD that makes it very hard to remember) that each of us already possess all the faith there is to have. We gather here in this community of faith to remind each other (in a TIME that makes it very had to remember) to reach out for the hand of another and then together, each day, take just one more step… to do one small thing, with just a pinch more love... to be thankful for the littlest of things and in doing so open ourselves to ever greater things. We gather here in this beautiful community of faith to remind one another (in a world that makes remembering the GOOD things such a challenge) to keep an eye out for God doing something just as impossible as having a tree walk down the street to the ocean and plant itself in the sea. Because even though the world makes it VERY hard for us to remember, God is at work doing more for us in each and every moment than we could ever ask or imagine… and thanks be to God, for that! Amen.