Like a seed cracked open

Sermon by Pr. Craig Mueller on the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost + Sunday, October 5, 2025.

Once upon a time, there was a kingdom of acorns nestled at the bottom of a huge old oak tree. The acorn citizens who lived there went about their daily business with great purpose and energy. They would spend all day oiling, polishing and shining their outer shells. They believed this would improve their longevity and overall well-being.

One day, “out of the blue,” apparently dropped by a passing bird, there appeared a knotty little stranger. He was cap-less and dirty. The other acorns looked upon him with suspicious and condescension. 

One day, this odd, capless stranger told the others a wild tale, pointing at the huge resplendent oak tree, and said, “we . . . are . . . THAT!” 

The other acorns were beside themselves. They whispered to each other, not believing such a tall tale. Finally one of them blurted out, “so tell us, wise one, how would we become that tree?”

The stranger pointed down to the earth and said, “it has something to do with going into the dark earth and cracking open our shells.”¹

Acorns are not mustard seeds. But they are seeds. And Jesus says that if you have faith the size of a tiny seed, you will be able to do amazing, wondrous things.

On this feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, we reflect on the miracle and gift of faith within God’s marvelous creation. Until the past fifty or so years, Christian worship and theology centered solely on human beings. We were considered the apex of creation. Some blame the Christian understanding of “have dominion over the earth” in Genesis, as a direct link to our burgeoning climate crisis. Fifty years ago, there we no prayers in our liturgies for the earth and its creatures. We just prayed for human beings. Thankfully, things have changed.

Back to faith and mustard-seed faith. Were you taught that faith is thinking hard enough?  In other words, faith is in your mind.

I must admit that when I read the newspaper these days, I don’t have much faith that things will get better. And it makes me sad. Especially since sermons need to be about hope! Sometimes I wonder if I even have mustard seed faith. And according to a recent poll, I’m not alone. At the height of the pandemic—when we were divided by masks and issues of racial inequality—a majority of Americans had faith that the country was capable of solving its problems. Today only 33% do. These days political opponents are called enemies. Hatred and retribution have been normalized and diversity is demonized.

Once an elite runner and coach was asked by brand-new runners when it would feel easier or when they would be able to run effortlessly. He tells them: it doesn’t get easier, you just get stronger.

We join the prophet Habakkuk in lamenting what is going on in our country and the world. I cry for help, and you do not listen. Why do we have to keep looking at wrongdoing? Destruction and violence. Strife and contention. The law becomes slack, and justice never prevails. Eerie to hear those words in light of our current realities.

And the prophet goes on, look at the proud. Shining their shells, I add. The spirit is not right in them. But there is a vision for our time: the righteous shall live by their faithfulness.

If faith is not about thinking hard enough, what is it? If I ask you the opposite of faith, how many of us would answer doubt? In the gospels, the opposite of faith is fear. And fear is what many of us are feeling these days.

Faith can seem like having shiny shells, knowing the right answers, the right path, the right way. Faith can seem like optimism. The well-known biblical scholar Walter Bruegemann, who died recently, once said, “We all hunger for certitude. The problem is the Gospel isn’t about certitude. It’s about fidelity.” Faithfulness.

The disciples cry out to Jesus: increase our faith. Jesus’ words are hard. Keep forgiving over and over. Love God more than anything. Reach beyond yourselves to the needs of others. Die to self. Surrender. Give us faith, they cry out.

Jesus isn’t scolding the disciples for not having enough faith. He’s reassuring them. Your little seedlike faith is enough. You have all you need. Deep within you. And connected to one another.

And so we gather, not as super-faith Christians who have it together. Who have the right answers. The right politics. The right beliefs. We are not a community of acorns wearing sashes saying “best Christians of the year.”

You can’t plan an acorn in a pot near a sunny window. The acorn needs the cold darkness of an underground winter. The scruffy, self-obsessed acorns from our earlier parable must sink into the soil to develop roots. And develop complex and far-reaching root systems. So too for us. As we face the setbacks and challenges not only of our lives, but of our nation.

Our hope is in God. But our hope is also in the goodness of the earth. For the earth holds all that is needed. Creation. Sun and moon. Animals, like the ones here today. Plants. All living things.

Saint Francis delighted in creation and all its creatures. Francis renounced riches and found joy in poverty. Francis beheld in his own wounds, the very love of Christ. 

We come together in worship to nourish our spiritual roots, nurtured by the sacred in the dark depths of our souls.² We gather around Christ, the seed planted in the earth. Whose dying and rising is the pattern of our lives. We are a community of little faith. A faith as small as a seed. We come together to be cracked open. To grow in faithfulness. And be nourished by the eucharist, the thanksgiving, offered at this table.

There is more potential in the seed—in us—than we can possibly imagine. When the road ahead seems impossible, here we find the courage we need. To touch the earth lightly. To use the earth gently. Nourishing the life of all the world in our care.

¹As told by Cynthia Borgeault in Wisdom Way of Knowing

²Beth Norcross and Leah Rampy, Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees. I recommend this book strongly!