MOVED ANY MOUNTAINS LATELY? —

Octaher 12, 1986, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M.- Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

“if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this
mountain, ‘Mave fram here to there’ and it will mave." --Matthew 17:20

Scripture
Matthew 17:14-21

Ts that true? “Tf you have faith no bigger than a mustard seed, you
will say ta this mountain, 'Move from here to there!! and it will move;
nothing will prove impossible for you." Ts that true in any way that. makes
sense toa us? ;

On oecasion someone has asked me about the little prayer with which T
ordinarily begin the reading of the Scripture and the sermon.

"Startle us, 0 God, with your truth..." The question is usually
simply, "Why do you say that? Why do you want. to jar us? To be startled
is not. on my agenda when T come to church. On the contrary, T'm looking
for a little serenity, -a reminder that someone up: there has an eye on me.

T don't. want to be startled." T hear that question. T hear where it comes
from. Sometimes T have to make myself pray that prayer. Sometimes on
Sunday morning T know exactly what. it means to be looking for something
else. Sometimes hy the time Sunday morning comes around T have been
startled more times than T want to be...hy the relentless rush and noise of
the traffic and the abruptness of harns blowing, and taxis shoving...hy

the incredible capacity of human beings for violence, which screams from
the front page of the paper...hy the street person who out of nowhere
confronts me and asks for a handout:..by the too-cheerful vendor who has
shoved a rose-bud under my nose every night for one solid year. City
heople don't, need any more startling, so why this little nrayer?

The answer is that what God has to say to us is startling. And
sometimes ~-either hecatise we have come here for shelter from the stormy
hiast - not more shocks and surprises, and sometimes hecause we have heard
the familiar words of the Bible so many times we don't. really hear them at
all any more, and just as the little boy calling wolf too. frequently, or
the false alarm of fire in a theater are dangeraus precisely hecause
repetition has diminished and destroyed their ability to startle, sa an
Sunday morning, T surmise, we sometimes don't even hear what are
significantly startling words fram God. So T have gotten into the habit of
asking Gad to help us a bit: to penetrate, to shake us awake, to startle
us with the truth we otherwise might not even hear.

“Tf ‘you have faith no higper than a mustard seed, you. will say to. the
mountain, ‘Mave from here toa there!' and it will move." [Ts that true? Ts
there any sense in which we believe that to he a dependahle description of

the way things are? Not. really... That's why it's so startling. Tf yan
want to move a mountain, a better idea than generating faith, is to secure
some earth moving equipment. If concrete results are what we are after,
power, authority and technology would seem ta he a more promising way of
proceeding than piety.

T can remember when the mustard seed was a popular item af jewelry.
The seed was encased in a sphere which served as a magnifying glass and T
can recall being told about Jesus' mustard seed analogy and coneluding that
T obviously had missed part of the equation. On the ather hand, T did
receive a healthy dose of American folk wisdom, appropriated through my
father, mostly, to the effect that "yau can do anything you want to do if
you want itt badly enough and try hard enough" and T've always gotten that
confused with what Jesus said and of course that's not it at all. Wanting
something hadly and trying with everything in you to achieve it - will,
indeed, help a lot. Rut there is a major thealogical heresy lurking in
that. Can Gad be brought in on the side of goals that are ungodly simply
hecause we want them badly...? We can't have everything we want. Tn
fact, there is a sense in which one of the most impartant developmental
tasks for each af us is ta come to terms with limitations, that wanting
something badly is not always relevant. to bringing if. ta pass and is surely
not what Jesus meant - whatever it was.

The little saying about the mustard seed has heen called “intentional
hyperbole." Someone pointed aut that “the Rabbis in Jesus' day used
‘mustard seed' as a simile to denote smallness, modesty, insignificance,"
which is fairly obvious. [The Parables, G. A. Buttrick, p. 20] Someone
else uncovered the fact that "the Talmudic writers use 'uprooter of
mountains' as a term af praise for a skillful expositer of the law who
removed difficulties of interpretation." [The International Critical
Commentary, p. 189] Someone else pointed aut that in St. Paul's famous
soliloquy on love in First Corinthians 13 faith, sa as to move mountains,
if it is without love, is nathing. And while all that is helpfnl in
understanding this passage as literature, the question of its truth
remains. Ts it true? Tn what sense is it true?

The most. helpful thing T've read in a long time about the sayings of
Jesus was written by Joseph Sittler, Professor of Theology emeritus at the
University of Chicago, in an essay an the role of the churches in the
camplex and difficuit task af peace making. Sittler said: "the parables
shock the mind into opening to the unenvisioned possible: they madly
exapperate in arder to jolt the consciousness of the religiously secure:
they are an assault on the obvious. The entire momentum of canventional
piety is bronght into question." [Gravity and Grace, p. 110]

Well now... "shock the mind -. exaggerate in order to jolt - an
assault. an the obvious." "Startle us, 0 God," perhaps. Perhaps Jesus‘
purpose was to shake people loose from their religious conventions...to
startle them with a brand new possibility. Furthermore, Sittler wrate,
“the parables of the Kingdom are a kind of surgical explaration of those
modes and postures of sin that blind, corrupt and pervert humanity's
relationship toa God.” (109)

So perhaps what. is at stake here, fundamentally is not astually our

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capacity to rearrange the landscape, hut our personal relationship with
God.

Look again at the story. Jesus and several of His disciples had
just come dawn from a mountain on which they had shared a deeply moving,
spiritual experience, in which they came to fuller understanding of who he
was. They had shared a vision, complete with appearances hy RKlijah and
Moses... We know that experience as the “Transfiguration.” Rut now they
are back down in the valley and they encounter one of my favorite
characters in the Rible - this compelling, human, anonymous parent who
brings his sick san to Jesus - because he has tried everything else and
nothing has worked and his lave for his son won't allow him to just let it
go, give up. So he's there at the foot of the mountain, and he and his son
are wha Jesus encounters after that incredible experience on the mountain.

“Have mercy, Lard." he says and fails on his knees, embarrassing
everybody in the vicinity...the disciples, the onlookers, his son: can you
imagine that hoy looking at the ground, kicking a stane as his father then
spills out the pathetic story of how the boy has seizures and falls into
things and gets burned and half drowns himself and how the disciples who
were not up on the mountain having a religious experience had tried to heal
the boy and it hadn't worked, and you know from that. detail a poignant
fact, namely the boy had had a seizure there, while the father was talking
with the disciples. And the disciples... Dea you remember a situation like
that?... Trying to do a simple job that you should have been able to do,
and not getting it done, and enduring the embarrassment of having others
witness your inability, and then the hoss, or foreman, or your parent, ar
the mechante, ar supervisor suddenly cames and does the task, quickly,
efficiently, smoothly. And there you are grinning sheepishly — waste-deep
in your own ineptness?

The parahle startles at a number af points and just when we want to
ask how Jesus cured epilepsy, it changes direction and focuses an faith -
first of the disciples. “How did you do that?" they ask for us. “Why
couldn't we heal him?" And it is then that Jesus says: "Your faith is too
weak ~ if you have faith no bigger than a mustard seed, you will say to
this mountain, ‘Move fram here toa there!!! and it will move: nothing will he
impossible for yon."

Tn what sense is that true? What does that mean? We can hegin to
work with if. as a metaphor - as intentional hyperbole and observe that the
disciples did, indeed, move a mountain or two hefore they were done...

Back within this incident at the foot of the mountain we can surmise that
maybe the disciples didn't really try to heal that boy. Mayhe their trying
was the kind af half-hearted effort that dooms itself to failure hecause it
knows it} cannot and will not succeed. Maybe the point af all this is that
the disciples were waiting for big faith and didn't realize that it doesn't
take big faith to do God's work. That may be a word for us.

We are enthralled by bigness. We Americans, particularly, make a
very hasic assumption that “more is better." When T have ventured into the
kitchen, put pots and pans in place and opened the New York Times Cookbook,
F have discovered a deep dark secret about myself that T didn't know. T
Operate on that principte ~ more is better. If the recipe says a "clove of

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gartic" | assume the product will be improved if T ignare moderation and
load iff up. One has to he careful about sex stereotypes, but T have been
told that men do that sart af thing. Someone quipped recently that
American men are constitutionally incapable of saying the following seven
words: "That ought to be five percent less."

Reluctantly, we are learning. Tn hiology we are learning that it
makes sense ta pay attention ta smatineas. Microbiologist Lewis Thomas has
written beautifully about the microcosmic as a source of edification and
wisdom. The Lives af a Cell he called his first bestseller about the

astonishing things that can be learned hy attending to smallness.

E. F. Schumacher wrote Small is Beautiful a decade ago, ahout the
same truth in economics Schumacher and others are convineed that mast of
the major problems af the world can be attributed to bigness. In fact, he
challenges the assumption that big is natural, that it is somehow in the
nature of things far little units to get together and make big wits and
suggests that it is in the nature of things for big units to break into
small units and thus increase their efficiency. He called aur posture the
“idalatry of giantism" and argued that the only possible future for us is
within more manageahle and understandahle —- therefore smaller, political
and economic structures...which if you have tried to travel from New Vork
City to Chicago on a Friday afternoon recently - is a rather attractive
idea.

Tn things religious, we wait for hnge faith, for faith experienced,
perceived, felt, tatally in our lives. We envy those whose religious
experiences are dramatic and big. We wish they were ours. We feel
inadequate. Perhaps the ward here is startlingly simple: yan don't need
big faith to do God's work. All you need is a little faith and one thing
further - the will ta venture, to put it to work.

Perhaps the word is a challenge to take on a few mountains and see
what happens...big mountains, immovahle mountains. The psychologists are
telling us that a sense of individual smatiness and insignificance is:
paralyzing us. We are avoiding major national and cultural problems that.
are looming ahead of us because they are so huge. Mayhe we need the
tantalizing suggestion of St. Matthew - that you really dan't need much
faith to move a monmtain.

Mrs. Acquino's recent visit. was a reminder that one million
Philippinos eartier this year decided that the mountain of dictatorship,
carruption and oppression was movahie. And so they confronted Marcos!
traaps, tanks, machine guns with nothing but their faith and flowers and
pastries they had baked - and a mountain moved.

A mountain T worry about is morality in common life: morality
defined as integrity, honesty, justice, fairness, and freedom. Playwright.
Arthur Miller was intraduced to a convacation af preachers in New VYark City
last. week as an artist known for writing moral plays. Miller told us that
was not an economic asset. at. the moment in the theater. Rut then he
intrigned us by ohserving that. there aren't. many jobs for which a
commitment to high morality is a prerequisite. Honesty, which ance was
regarded as nearly sacred is simply relativized out of existence. Ellen

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Goodman's. column Friday in the Tribune identified twenty distortions of the
truth which occur everyday and to which we have accommodated ourselves,
beginning with Mr. Rlank's secretary who says he's in a meeting — and he's
not. and you know he's not and she knows you knaw.:.all the way to
dishonesty now raised to national ‘standard operating procedure. The.
government lies toa us, and then lies again hy saying they didn't do what
they did and then elevates lying to us, to national palicy as an acceptable
act. for our security. And the appalling thing is that with the exceptian af
Bernard Kalb no one is appalled. Now, that, T. would suggest is a mountain
and its maving will reqiire some faith - faith in a system of government...
which values ‘integrity ao highty it does not lie to its own people even for
their own’ good. ;

A mountain which looms ahead and over us is the qniet, birt rumbling
volcano of nuclear weapons. And the most dangerous: “posture of allt is: far
millions of people in the United States and the Soviet Union who care. about.
a future, to ignore it, to abdicated any responsibility for its moving
because it is so huge. To move it will require faith — faith that. it can
he maved,; ‘shovel of dirt at a time:

The text challenges us to-take oan a few mountains, and it alsa
challenges us to regard our small. life-tasks as doahle.. Tt is an
invitation to tackle those life tasks which we know are God's work. Tt is
not a. promise that if you. jack “up your self confidence and say your prayers
that: you'll accomplish whatever you want. Tt is that if you trust. God,
God's work is poing to pet done “in: your life. “Tt ts -a challenge to “the
insidious cynicism in ourselves ahout the future.

We need to hear the promise that we are created in God's image and
given responsibility for creation and that no mountain is. immovable: But
the mountains which kept you awake last night - ar which awakened you an
hour before you wanted ta be awake this morning, the mountains about which
we do our real worrying are not public and political. They are huge, but.
they are personal. No-ane_else-knaws ahout them. Tt is in personal, quiet
moments that we confront them. Rach of us has a mountain, visible only to
us: looming ahead — immovahle:. someone is waging secret, life and death
war with aicohal: a young man on drugs doesn't know where to turn or how to
turn: a. mother wonders about her meaning and identity when the last child
moves out: an-executive is passed over for promation and looks ahead at.a
mountain of futility and.a derailed career: a widow, left alone suddenly
and without. warning, wonders what. there is of life left for her: the
patient. on chemotherapy, sick in hady # and in spirit, wonders if the

deterioration and discord and the future looks like a steep, impassible
mountain: .a victim of AIDS faces the double tragedy of debilitating
illness: and social alienation. Somewhere you and 1 are in that picture —
or a similar-one.. There is a mountain for each of us that seems. immovable.
And somewhere in each of us there is an impulse to let it stand there, ta-
pull back ta the safety of cynicism.:.. "Oh what's the use.:-it's tao
big...teo much..." And somewhere in us. there is another, better impulse =
the impulse of the couple. to try again, to goa once more to the counselor;
the impulse of the patient to live, to undergo another series; the .impilse
af the widow to hang in, of the ATDS patient to take it a day at.a time,
and of ‘the passed over executive ta build apain;.the impulse of the

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homemaker to find new meanings, of the chronically addicted to make it
through one more day of hurning need... T helteve that impulse is put in
us by the one who created us and laves us and wants us to be whole. T
believe that impulse is what Jesus Christ addressed when he said "Vaoun-don't
need more faith, you need to use what you have. © Venture. Try it. Vou
could say to the mountain, 'Move from here to there and it will-move!_
nothing will prove impossible far. you."

What. is this faith? Tt is not a list of ideas about the nature of
God. Tt is an expectancy of the soul, a confidence that this God wha
created us is a resource for the living of full life. Tt is a thrust into
the future which knows that the one who has heen in our past will be in the
days ahead, indeed is already in the future. Tt is a deep trust in Jesus
to tell us the truth about God and ourselves. It is confidence not unlike
that. anonymous father's who brought. his sick son and fell on his knees -and
said, “Lord have mercy."

He's the main character. It seems at. first that he, and his sick
san, are just part of the set, that Jesus' healing power and the disciples'
weak faith are the real points of interest. But T keep coming back to
him... He's the ane who had faith like a mustard seed... He wasn't a
disciple, a religious zealot, a Pharisee - just a human being, with a
desperate prohlem - a deep Tove and an indomitable sense that his san
must he well. He hrought the immovable mountain in his life to Jesus — in
simplicity — in total trust in the grace and acceptance and healing power
of the ane who is Gad among us.

He fell an his knees... “Lord have merey..."

Tt. just takes a little faith, Jesus promised, like a mustard seed.
With it - you can move mountains. Amen.

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