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!'"
Are there people out there who inspire you? I’m a person who tends to look constantly for inspirational people. I don’t mean people who inspire me because of their great athletic ability (although those folks can amaze me) or great wealth. I look for people who live in an exceptional way. Instead of living according to convention or self-focus, they choose to make a difference in life by serving God in a way that makes us sit up and go, “Wow, this is a person who understands the meaning of life.” As a result, I am inspired by people like Larry Stewart, a man who made a huge difference to thousands of people, and who embodied our passage for this morning.
Stewart died this past January, but during his life he made a difference in the guise of his alter ego. He was like some sort of real-life superhero, and he had a secret identity. He was known to his friends as Larry Stewart, but to those he helped he went by the name, “Secret Santa.” And as Secret Santa in Kansas City, Missouri, he gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of the past seven years. His practice was to walk the streets of Kansas City, looking for people who seemed like they were hungry, were struggling, or just needed a hand up, and to give them money. He received the name “Secret Santa” because he generally did his giving around Christmas time, although in recent years he began to do it all year round. His normal practice was to look in the faces of people walking by. If he saw someone who looked like she or he was struggling, he would drop a $100 bill behind the person, tap the person on the shoulder, and say, “Excuse me, you must have dropped this.” If the person objected, saying, “But it’s not mine,” Stewart would smile, say “then Merry Christmas,” and walk away. Doing this year after year after year, Stewart ended up giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars to people in need. In addition, he spent much time raising funds for the Salvation Army, the YMCA, and many other charitable organizations.
Over the past few years of his life, he enlisted many other secret Santas, such as George Brett, a baseball hall-of-famer, football hall-of-famer Dick Butkus, and former Kansas City Chiefs star, Deron Cherry. How did Larry Stewart become the Secret Santa of Kansas City? It all started when he was a child.
Stewart was born poor and was raised by his grandparents. When he was eleven, his grandfather died, meaning that they had even less money. A memory he had that truly influenced him was of his family receiving, one Christmas, a ham and a basket of fruit given to them by a man from the Salvation Army. For a poor kid, this was an amazing sight: fresh fruit and meat. He couldn’t believe that people would just give that to them out of love. What had they done to deserve it? What kind of people were that generous?
Stewart had to go to work early in his life, and started off as a door-to-door salesman. He struggled, sometimes making a decent living and sometimes not. There was one period in particular in which he struggled. It was around 1971, and his sales were poor. He could no longer afford to stay in hotels, and so he lived out of his car for eight month. During one particular two-day period, he didn’t even have money for food. He was starving. Not knowing what else to do, and knowing that he had to have food, he decided to go into a diner and order breakfast. When the bill came, he would pretend that he lost his wallet. So he ordered breakfast and ate it like a starving animal, which he was. Then the bill came, and he said that he lost his wallet. The waitress knew he was lying, and told the owner so when she went to get him. The owner came by and asked what the problem was. Larry Stewart told him that he had lost his wallet. The owner, Ted Horn, pretended to pick up something off the floor, winked at Stewart, handed him a $20 bill, and said, “You must have dropped this.” Stewart couldn’t believe Horn’s generosity. He never forgot Ted Horn’s example.
Afterwards, Stewart slowly pulled himself up and started making a living again. He got married and had a child. Still, his life was always up and down. At one point, after getting into the cable television business, things got very bad again. He had no money and felt that he was letting his family down. He bought a gun, drove to an isolated spot, and contemplated suicide. But then he realized that he was taking the coward’s way out. Afterwards, he went to a place to get a hamburger—one of those places where the waitress comes to the car with the food. His waitress looked like she was struggling. Stewart had about $20 left over after buying his hamburger, and gave her the $20 as a tip. The look of surprise and joy on her face inspired him. He decided at that point that life meant giving, and so he looked for ways to give.
Slowly his life got better. He got into the communications business, coordinating the sales of accounts for Sprint. Around 1999, Sprint was sued for failing to pay the full commission to its various salesman, and lost a $60 million dollar judgment. Stewart pocketed $5 million. He was set. He bought a new car, and a house for his family, and then he dedicated his life to giving his money away. He spent the next seven years giving back by following Ted Horn’s example, giving to people who seemed like they needed a smile and a hand up.
Larry Stewart had a faith that accomplished amazing things, but he also did it without expecting a reward. He was a man of service. People like Larry Stewart inspire me because they live what Jesus taught. Stewart made faith something practical that you do in everyday life, and that’s what made him special.
A lot people think that faith means having the right beliefs about Jesus, God, the resurrection, the virgin birth, and stuff like that. And those things are important, but they aren’t necessarily faith. They are beliefs that can help our faith, but they aren’t faith.
So what is faith? David Steindl-Rast, a well-known author on prayer and spirituality, says, “To have faith does not primarily mean believing something, but rather believing in someone. Faith is trust. It takes courage to trust. The opposite of faith is not disbelief, but distrust, fear. Fear makes us cling to anything within reach. Fear clings even to beliefs. Thus, beliefs can even get in the way of faith. In genuine faith we hold our beliefs firmly, but lightly. We trust in God, not in our particular understanding of God. That is why people of deep faith are one at heart, even thought their beliefs may differ widely. When beliefs become more important than faith, even small differences create insurmountable barriers.”
I want you to pay attention to certain things about what Steindl-Rast has said. He says that faith isn’t believing in something, but believing in someone. Who is that someone? It’s believing in God, but doing more than just believing. He says it is trust in God, something that takes courage. Faith means trusting God, and because we trust God, it means being willing to follow and do whatever we sense God is calling us to do.
The faith Jesus talked about in our passage is one in which we grow to trust God so much that God’s power and grace flow through us—even in little things. Jesus tells us that if we have the faith the size of a mustard seed, we can actually cause a bush to go into the sea. I don’t think he’s just being metaphorical. I think he is being literal. I think he is saying that when we have faith, God’s power can flow through us and have us do tremendous things.
The whole example of us having faith the size of a mustard seed sound preposterous, but from a faith perspective it makes perfect sense. The whole idea of faith is that we are conduits for God’s Spirit and grace to flow and act through us. If we have faith, wonderful things can happen through us, and we can harness the power of God. But it requires a willingness to trust in that grace. I think that Jesus is being very serious in what he is saying, but I also think that there is a paradox here. We may have the power to have a bush fly into the sea (or, as he says in Matthew’s gospel, have a mountain fly into the sea), but faith also means seeking God will in everything. So we would only have the bush go into the sea if God calls us to do so.
For a long time I had a hard time understanding this passage because it seemed to turn faith into some sort of magic trick, but the person who helped me to understand it was my pastor growing up. He told a story when I was in my early twenties that has stuck with me. It taught me that faith means trusting God to do amazing things through us, but also finding a way to make ourselves available to be conduits of God’s grace—to let God’s miracles flow through us. Long ago, there was a pastor of a small church out in the country. He was preaching a sermon one Sunday about God, faith, and miracles. He said that if we have faith God can do miracles. A young man was in the church, and he yelled out, “I don’t think God does miracles. I think God doesn’t even exist!” Without skipping a beat, the pastor said, “God can too do miracles, and if you come here next Sunday, I will show you a miracle.” The young man said, “I’ll be here to see you fail!”
Of course the church was full the next Sunday. People all over, including the skeptical young man, wanted to see this miracle. They filed into the church, and there in front of the altar they saw a spinning wheel like the kind used to make yarn out of wool. There was a hush. What was the spinning wheel doing there? As the service started, the pastor welcomed them all, and told them that they would see a miracle. At the appointed time, after the opening hymn and the prayer of confession, they would see the spinning wheel spin by itself using only God’s power. The people could barely pay attention to the hymn and the prayer as they waited in anticipation.
Finally, the pastor rose and said, “I will now call on God’s power.” He began to pray, “Amazing God, you have the power to make this spinning wheel spin. Now let your power loose to bring faith to the unfaithful. Amen.” As he closed the prayer there was a hush. The spinning wheel started to creak. Then it started to move. Then it started to spin faster and faster. The people were amazed. The young man, not knowing what to do, ran to the front to look at the wheel. As he looked closer, he saw a wire going from the spinning wheel through a hole in the floor. He yelled out, “What the heck is this? There’s a wire going from the wheel through the floor!” The pastor smiled and said, “Follow the wire.”
The young man, followed by the congregation, ran into the basement, where he saw it going around a cog and out the window. Running outside, he followed the wire out to a weather vane as it spinned furiously in the wind. The man yelled at the pastor, “What kind of fraud are you? You’ve rigged it to spin.” The pastor smiled and said, “I told you that you would see a miracle. I don’t put God to the test, but what I did ask God to do was to hold off on the wind until the appointed time, and then to let loose. God used me to rig up the spinning wheel, but it was God’s power in the wind that provided the miracle. God held off the wind, and then God let it loose. Which is a harder miracle to do, to control a spinning wheel, or to control the wind?”
We’re not necessarily called to put God to the test, but we are supposed to have a faith that allows God’s grace and love flow through us, just like that pastor, just like Larry Stewart. It’s a faith in which we trust God for our lives, and as a result we let God’s life flow through us. So my question is, what size is your faith? Is it large enough to let God’s grace and power flow through you?
Amen.
