How Mountains, Trees, and even Hearts Are Moved 20th Sunday after Pentecost October 17, 2004
Luke 17:1-10 Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. So watch yourselves. “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you. “Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”
Dear Brothers & Sisters in Christ;
A small congregation in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains built a new sanctuary on a piece of land willed to them by a church member. Ten days before the new church was to open, the local building inspector informed the pastor that the parking lot was inadequate for the size of the building. Until the church doubled the size of the parking lot, they would not be able to use the new sanctuary. Unfortunately, the church with its undersized lot had used every inch of their land except for the mountain against which it had been built.
In order to build more parking spaces, they would have to move the mountain out of the back yard. Undaunted, the pastor announced the next Sunday morning that he would meet that evening with all members who had "mountain moving faith." They would hold a prayer session asking God to remove the mountain from the back yard and to somehow provide enough money to have it paved and painted before the scheduled opening dedication service.
At the appointed time, 24 of the congregation’s 300 members assembled for prayer. They prayed for nearly three hours. At ten o’clock the pastor said the final "Amen". "We’ll open next Sunday as scheduled," he assured everyone. "God has never let us down before, and I believe he will be faithful this time too." The next morning as he was working in his study there came a loud knock at his door. When he called "come in", a rough looking construction foreman appeared, removing his hard hat as he entered. "Excuse me, Reverend. I’m from Acme Construction Company over in the next county. We’re building a huge shopping mall. We need some fill dirt. Would you be willing to sell us a chunk of that mountain behind the church? We’ll pay you for the dirt we remove and pave all the exposed area free of charge if we can have it right away. We can’t do anything else until we get the dirt in and allow it to settle properly."
The little church was dedicated the next Sunday as originally planned and there were far more members with "mountain moving faith" on opening Sunday than there had been the previous week! (Author Unknown).
Wow. At first listen, that story sounds like an amazing fulfillment of a saying Jesus liked to use during his ministry. Both Matthew and Mark record him as saying that faith the size of a mustard seed could move mountains. Luke, in the Gospel for today, records Jesus as saying, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it will obey you.” Either way he chose to say it, the message was the same: With just a little faith great things can be done.
It’s no wonder then, that the disciples said to him, "Increase our faith." Is it any wonder that the pastor of that small mountain church called for those with "mountain moving faith" to come pray. But the point of Jesus’ illustration does not support such conclusions. His point is that the amount of faith you have doesn’t matter. Lots and lots of faith isn’t necessary, but rather any faith at all, even a tiny bit like a mustard seed is enough. But enough for what? How about enough to move trees or mountains or even human hearts.
The size of faith doesn’t matter because God is the one doing the moving. If it were my faith that moved the mountain, then the bigger the mountain the more faith I would need to move it. The bigger the obstacle the more strength I’d need to climb it. The more serious the sin the more faith I’d need in order to have it forgiven. That kind of thinking kind of makes sense, but that’s not how faith works. In fact, faith doesn’t do the work at all. God is the one doing the work through faith. Think of faith as the key that opens the door to God acting in our lives. If I have a bigger key ring than you do, does it matter? Because we can both open the door with that one little key. And once the door is open to God, he can move the mountains and trees and even our hearts.
So, what Jesus is saying to his disciples, who asked for their faith to be increased, is that even if they would have the smallest amount of faith they could do great things. Great things like what Jesus tells us in the gospel for today.
Things like being especially sensitive to people that are new to the faith and so Jesus says, “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. So watch yourselves.” (Luke 17:1-3).
Things like offering Christ-like forgiveness again and again, if necessary, and so Jesus says, “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” (Luke 17:3-4).
These things don’t seem like such great things until you have to do them, and the apostles didn’t think they were able. But they were. They already had what they needed, they already had faith, so they just needed to let God move the mountains and the trees and even their own hearts for them.
And so do you. Like the Apostles you also have what is needed, you also have been given the gift of faith by God. Why else would you be here. You are here to hear the Word of God and to be nourished by his body and blood because the Holy Spirit created faith in you at your baptism. You are hear because that faith even faith as small as a mustard seed has moved you to pray, praise and give thanks to the one who loves you and has given himself over to death for you. You are here because of a faith that trusts only in what God has done to give you eternal life, as Paul reminds us in the 2nd lesson that it is “God who has saved us and called us to a holy life – not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace” (2 Timothy 1:8-9).
Faith certainly can accomplish great things and since as I have already said that faith is the reason you are here and faith is the reason you are a child of God, then faith is also the reason that you can do the same things as the apostles. You also can be sensitive to people new to the faith. That means always living your faith. Don’t act righteous and holy on Sundays and the rest of the week you live as the heathens do. What would someone new to Christianity think if they knew you from church but heard you take the Lord’s name in vain? And in the same way what would a new Christian think or any Christian for that matter think if after we hear Jesus tell us to forgive and forgive and forgive, and then after we feel someone has sinned against us we refuse to forgive?
I think all of us have to admit that at one time or another we are guilty of conducting ourselves in an un-Christian manor and more often than not we are guilty of holding grudges and refusing forgiveness. The worse part of this is the fact that what I have mentioned so far is only a small list of how we sin in thought, word, and deed each and every day and because of the things we say and do we are deserving of an eternity spent separated from God in hell.
But praise God that he doesn’t treat us according to what we deserve. Praise God that in spite of our sins he has given us faith – even faith as small as a mustard seed. And God working through the faith he has given us will defeat the devil’s temptations to sin, he will help us overcome the obstacles we face when forgiveness is required. God working in us through faith can move mountains and trees and even our own hearts for his glory. Faith is powerful, because the Christ in whom faith believes is powerful. He defeated death, destroyed the devil and swept away our sins by his mercy. Through faith in Jesus God can even do the impossible: save sinners like you and me.
And so that brings us back to that little mountain church story I told at the beginning. At first it seems to be a good illustration of the mountain moving powers of faith. But in the end it never happened - at least that’s what the resource I got the illustration from says. And I’d tend to agree. According to this text God didn’t need twenty-four people with big faiths to pray. Nor did the pastor’s believing make that contractor show up in his office. Mountains, trees and even human hearts are moved by God through faith so tiny as a mustard seed. In fact, the whole idea of "if you really, really believe, then it will happen" is disproved by this text. But let’s not twist these words in order to convince ourselves that now we don’t need to take this Christianity stuff faith and prayer and study any more seriously than we already do. Realize that since you already possess more than enough of what’s needed to change your life, your heart, your family, your community, even your world, the question ceases to be "Why can’t you?" and is now "Why won’t you?" Mountains, trees and even the stubbornness of our own sinful hearts are moved by God Amen.
