A Collection of Mustard Seeds

The apostles said to the Lord, 'Increase our faith!' And the Lord said, 'If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this sycamore tree, "Be rooted up, and be planted in the sea," and it would obey you'" (Luke 17:5-6).

It's always the most fundamental scriptures -- the familiar ones about faith and justice and concern for the poor -- that are the hardest to preach on at home. When the themes are ones we struggle day in and day out to commit our lives to, I sometimes wonder after all these years if there is anything new to say.

When this scripture made a recent appearance in our lectionary, and I was the scheduled preacher, I felt at a loss. I remembered the last time this passage was preached at Sojourners. Rob Soley, who was a teacher of young children in a Montessori school at the time, brought in a small handful of mustard seeds. He explained that when he passes them around to children, he tells them to be careful how they breathe as they look at them. The least bit of wind would blow these tiny seeds away.

I recognized then why this metaphor was so powerful to Jesus' disciples, who lived in a society based on the land -- on planting and harvesting and the promise that small seeds hold. The message of the mustard seed was a clear sign that even the smallest faith can move trees -- or mountains. But apparently the faith of the disciples -- and us -- doesn't even add up to a molecule of a mustard seed; I haven't seen a lot of trees throwing themselves into the sea lately.

AS I WAS REFLECTING ON the smallness of my own faith, I recalled a story that was told to me last summer by some marvelous sisters and brothers from Mexico whom I met at a conference. They had recently founded the first branch of Service for Peace and Justice in Mexico, and they told of their many struggles. Then they offered a story from Brazil, which was a source of inspiration for them as they worked to make a witness in Mexico.

A small group of peasants lived on a piece of land in Brazil, which was wanted for development by government and private business interests. To make their land seizure legal, those who wanted it got the Congress to declare the land theirs. The peasants were pushed off the land, their houses and crops destroyed.

As the people moved on to start over, this action was repeated several times. Whenever the peasants tried to resist, the police came in with force, wounding and killing some of them. Their burden of suffering was tremendous.

So when it became known that they were about to be pushed off their land yet again, one person asked, "Why should we resist? It will just mean that more of us will lose our lives. " Another pointed out that even if they were not killed, they would die slowly of starvation. Without land, they had no way to live, no way to plant or grow food. Despair was the prevailing mood, until some of the women got an idea.

With a little research, the women found out where all the members of the Congress lived. While the government officials were at work in their offices, the women went with their children -- each to a different house -- and sat on the front lawns of the luxurious homes.

These were some of Brazil's most prestigious neighborhoods, and the sight of ragged women and their children on the lawns was an extraordinary and curious vision. After a while some of the wives of the Congress members went out with bread. The mothers told them, "We want no bread from you."

Some of the wealthy women came out with money. "We have not come here for money, " said the mothers. And eventually each wife asked, "What do you want?"

The peasant women answered, "We are going to die. And since this is a nice place, we thought we would like to die here. "

Then the wives asked, "Why are you going to die?"

And the mothers told of how their land was about to be stolen again, how their children were going to starve, and how the Congress was voting to make their doom legal.

The phones at the Congress began buzzing. Every wife called her husband to plead with him not to vote for the bill in Congress. And in the end, the people kept their land and their future.

INJUSTICE SEEMS SO ENTRENCHED. It is like a sycamore, with deep roots -- of exploitation and greed and violence -- all entangled and firmly anchored. The thought of budging the tree an inch, let alone throwing it into the sea, seems overwhelming.

But Jesus reminds us to think big, even if our faith is small. And the women of Brazil have proven that if we put all our little mustard seeds of faith together, we can indeed move trees, or mountains -- or even Congress.

Joyce Hollyday, the author of Clothed With the Sun: Biblical Women, Social Justice, and Us, was a Sojourners contributing editor when this article appeared.