Friends, the news this week has been horrifying. Armed troops invading our cities. Masked men abusing non-violent protesters. ICE agents swooping down from the sky in Blackhawk helicopters in the middle of the night to break into homes and rip families apart. Whole roofing crews swept away and disappeared. Cruel plans unveiled to force the deportation of vulnerable unaccompanied minors. All this, while lawmakers plot for millions of Americans to lose their healthcare and go hungry so that the wealthiest among us can enjoy tax cuts. The truth is, we are living under a violent and repressive regime that continues to methodically solidify authoritarian power. Their strategy, to further weaken those already struggling, to hold us all captive in fear, to pit us against each other… it’s pretty effective, isn’t it? We can begin to feel as if there’s nothing we can do. Like it’s an impossible job to dig up this deeply-rooted, fast-growing Invasive monstrosity.
“Wisdomkeeper,” Jesus’ message bearers said, “help our weak faith!” The disciples made this plea in response to Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness. In the previous verses, he said that if a person repented—that is, turned in a different direction, changed their mind and heart—the community ought to forgive them as many times as necessary, even seven times a day. Understandably Jesus’ followers felt that was a little much. So they ask for more faith, stronger faith. “If you had faith as small as a mustard seed,” Jesus replied, “you could also say to this mulberry tree, ‘Come out by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would do what you say.”
This “mulberry tree” is not the same one whose sweet juicy fruits make big purple splotches on our sidewalks in the summertime. In his book, Plants of the Bible, Israeli botanist Michael Zohary identifies this tree as a black mulberry. It grows up to 30 feet tall, produces bitter barely edible fruits, and has an incredibly deep root system that allows it to thrive in a desert climate. This tree’s massive roots makes it nearly impossible to remove. Cut to the ground, this tree will simply regrow unless every little sliver of root is painstakingly dug up.1, 2
“Faith,” biblically speaking, is not a matter of having the right beliefs. Faith is a bond of trust and loyalty. It is the capacity for vision and imagination. Faith is the energy, power and skill required to act. When Jesus’ disciples lament their weak faith, it seems they feel they don’t have what it takes to cultivate the community of belonging Jesus envisions. The roots of hurt and hardened bitterness are too stubborn. The world is too trapped in endless cycles of hatred, polarization, fear, and violence. What Jesus seems to be saying back to them is that God can do big things with our smallest, slightest efforts. When we work together with God, we are like mustard seeds that embody a near-miraculous process of change and growth.
In his book, Community, Peter Block describes our present context. He depicts the “stuck community” as having an obsessive focus on deficits, problems and blame. He notes our dependence on leaders for answers. He describes how the media markets stories of fear and fault and feeds the illusion we just need more laws, stricter oversight, harsher punishments to create the accountability for which we long. It all adds up to a fragmented society, in which we are isolated, disconnected, lonely and polarized. Block writes this: “Restoration begins when we think of community as a possibility, a declaration of the future that we choose to live into. […] Community is something more than a collection of individual longings, desires or possibilities. […] The communal possibility rotates on the question, ‘What can we create together?’”3 What can we create together? I also hear this as the key question of faith.
Block offers some intriguing examples of what happens when we take this question seriously, when we embrace the shift in context it implies. For instance, he tells the story of the Clermont Counseling Center, a mental health facility. He writes,
“[The director of the center, Tricia Burke], and her staff decided to change the conversation at Clermont in dramatic ways. They gave up Medicaid funding for their ‘partial hospital day treatment’ program and put the clients in charge of the program. […] The organizing questions to members—no longer patients—were ‘What do you like to do?’ and ‘How do you want to fill your day?’ […] In the first year, [of the new center, newly named Phoenix Place] the members came up with ingenious answers to the question, ‘What can we create together?’ For example: They volunteered their services to an animal shelter. They wanted to travel, so they decided to open a snack shop to earn money. When Phoenix Place received a grant to offer medication education for other mentally ill folk in five counties, the members provided it themselves. [They gave testimony to legislators.] The group started training police on the nature of mental illness. […] At the end of the first year of Phoenix Place, its members felt pride in what they had created; they had jobs to do and had regained some of the roles they had lost in the larger society. Most of all, they had begun once again to have hopes and dreams about their future.”4
There is a strategy afoot to transform our present political situation. We could call it operation mustard seed. According to research done by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, the non-violent uprising of 3.5% of the population who actively refuse to cooperate has been proven, again and again, to be sufficient to overthrow an authoritarian regime.5 Indivisible and ISAIAH are both pursuing this strategy. Through ISAIAH, clergy and people of faith are mobilizing to give witness to our values. Here in Minnesota clergy are developing a multi-faith rapid response network so with one text message, hundreds and even thousands of us can mobilize quickly show up in the streets and bring members of our congregations with us.
With other Christian denominational leaders and clergy around the country, we are also setting out on what we call the “Palm Sunday Path”. On Palm Sunday afternoon we will publicly denounce white Christian nationalism, reclaiming the narrative of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem as a peace-maker and justice-seeker riding on a humble donkey. We will contrast the cruelty, greed, hate and oppression of the Roman empire, and the Trump Administration, with the kin-dom Jesus enacted and calls us anew to embody, in which we heal the sick, feed the hungry and honor and welcome the stranger. Our goal is tens of thousands of Christians marching in St. Paul, and other regional centers in Minnesota, and hundreds of thousands more in state Capitols and cities across the country. We will follow up Palm Sunday with sustained action on Medicaid cuts, SNAP benefit cuts, and immigration. The path will culminate in a mass action in Washington D.C on July 4th, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Friends, let us take the small actions in faith that will culminate in big changes. And let us remember that faith calls us not only uproot and resist, but to build and plant. In this climate that seeks to weaponize our fear by turning us against our neighbors, let us dig deep to remove our own unforgiving bitterness and polarizing anger. Let us focus our energies not on battling enemies, but on making friends and securing allies in surprising ways, across seemingly uncrossable divides. Let us cultivate a community of belonging for all, including those who need our forgiveness and our repentance. Let us join God in shaping this dust and chaos with spirit and life. Let us labor, shoulder to shoulder, to birth a new a kind of democracy that is truly inclusive, truly diverse, that is made beautiful by the gifts of all of us, that is about asking, again and again, “what can we create together?”
1 Mustard Seeds and Mulberries by John Buckner
2 Mulberry Tree? Sycamore Fig? – Luke 17:6
3 Pages 50–51
4 Pages 52–53
5 The ‘3.5% rule’: How a small minority can change the world