If I were to ask you the question, “How much power do you have?”  I wonder what you’d say.  Maybe you’d think, “My dog obeys me so I have some.  But apart from that I haven’t really got much power.”  Well, last week I discovered that is untrue.  Each of us here is a little power plant.  In fact every time you take a step you create 7 watts of energy.  That’s not an awful lot.  But in the space of an hour of walking it adds up, especially if you are talking about thousands of people.  That’s the brainwave of a company called Facility Innovate that makes devices that convert the mechanical movement associated with footsteps or vibrations from vehicles into electricity. ‘Energy harvesting’ it’s called, and they have turned the idea into powering streetlamps from people’s footsteps, illuminating a railway tunnel from the vibrations made by the trains, charging an iPod while walking to the photocopier, recharging a phone from the engine vibrations in a car, driving the plasma screen at the local gym from the treadmill and even feeding the floodlights of a football stadium from spectators climbing the staircases.  Small steps can make a world of difference. 

Then there’s the Minnesota dairy farmer Denis Haubenschild who converts the manure of his 800 cows into a generator that can power 78 average-sized homes.  At one point when milk prices were down, Denis’s cows were earning him 40 cents a day from their milk and 30 cents a day from their electricity.  Bear that in mind, when we think now about the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel reading.  Because unless we cling on to the belief that small things can have a lot of power we may become discouraged.

Here is what Jesus said, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed then you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”  Now, you might respond with, “Well, that’s me sunk then.  There’s no hope for me.  I don’t even have that amount of faith.  I mean, sometimes I find it hard to even believe in God let alone command trees to jump into the sea!  You know, some days I don’t have faith to get out of bed, and here’s Jesus saying that if I had faith the size of the tiniest seed in the world, then I could rearrange forestry without the use of a chainsaw?  Well, that makes me feel really great.  Obviously I have faith so tiny that you can’t even see it.”  This can sound like a harsh criticism of his followers.  When we read it we can feel like Jesus is rebuking us for having such little faith.  We can feel a huge and unmanageable burden of expectation.  As if Christ is demanding a level of faith that is totally impossible.  We’re bound to fail.  In fact, if you read it that way, you can conclude that every Christian who has ever lived has failed in this expectation because, as far as I know, no Christian has ever literally done this – tell a tree to go and throw itself in the sea, and it obeyed.  This seems out of keeping for the Christ who says in Matthew’s Gospel: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."  This weight of expectation is too great.  The bar has been set too high.  The standard is unattainable…  Unless, we’re reading it wrong.  

Let me then approach it from a different angle.  Let me ask you, “How much faith do you need?” 

You might answer, “How much faith do you need for what?” 

“How much faith do you need to make it through life, coping with all the tasks and difficulties and trials that God has called you to face?” 

Well, I think the answer most of us might give this morning is, “Enough.  God has given me enough faith in him to enable me to get out of bed this morning.”  Obviously he has because you’re here.  Yesterday God gave you enough faith to do the things that needed to be done.  You survived the day.  You didn’t give up on God.  You didn’t change your name and run away to start a new life somewhere else in order to escape the problems of this one.  You didn’t do any of those things.  So that tells me that you have enough faith to live one day at a time, believing in God, trusting in his love, and muddling through till bedtime, and then doing it all over again the next day.  You and I have enough faith for that.

 Notice the context of Jesus’ statement about mustard seeds and mulberry trees.  He says it in response to a direct request from the disciples: “Lord, increase our faith.”  He then says “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed then you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”  He doesn’t give them a direct answer.  He doesn’t say “OK, I will increase your faith.”  Neither does he say, “No, I won’t do that.”  He makes this odd response.  It’s a response that implies that the size of their faith is not important.  The Twelve are asking for the wrong thing.  They want bigger faith.  Jesus says it doesn’t matter how big or small your faith is.  In fact he says that tiny faith, the tiniest faith you can have, is able to do amazing things.  And they have at least that amount of faith.  Obviously, they have because they’ve given up homes, jobs, families and friends to become his disciples.  That involved amazing faith.  So,  Jesus is not saying, “You pathetic bunch – you can’t even command a tree to throw itself in the sea – you don’t even have faith as big as a mustard seed.”  No, he is saying, “The tiniest drop of faith has great power.  Even with the amount of faith you have God can do amazing and wonderful things.”  So this is an encouragement from Jesus, not a rebuke.  But our eyes are trained to read the Scriptures and find a rebuke or guilt or a statement of our inadequacy.  But this is not what Jesus was intending. 

It’s easy to think of faith as being the most important thing, when actually it is God who is the most important.  Our faith doesn’t really accomplish things – it is God who accomplishes things, using our faith.  Faith is like the wiring in your house.  Electricity passes along the wires and turns on the light bulb.  It is not the wires that turn on the light, but the electricity running through the wires.  The wiring is important, but it is not the power, just the means by which the power has an effect.  So it is for faith.  Our faith is just the means by which God often chooses to act in our lives.  But it is God who is the source of power, and he who actually works.  So that means we can’t claim any credit for something being done by our faith.  No, God uses our faith.  It’s not about us achieving things, but about God achieving things through us.  And that relieves us of the pressure of having to make things happen.  It’s good news because it means we don’t have to grow to a certain level of maturity before God can use us.  God can choose to use us however and whenever he wants, how much and how little he wants.  All we are are channels for his grace and love.   If that were not true then it would all about me.  Whenever I overcame a problem in life it would not be God who did it, but me and my faith; whenever I achieved something good in life it would mean that I deserved the glory, instead of God, who achieved that good thing through me; and whenever I performed an act of kindness for someone I would be worthy of the credit, instead of God who actually performed it through me as a channel.

Friends, do you have enough faith to move trees?  That doesn’t matter.  Quantity isn’t important, says Jesus.  What matters is not your amount of faith.  The glorious fact is that you have faith.  We have enough to believe that God is real, that he loves us.  We have enough faith to have been put right with God.  We have enough faith to receive his blessings each day and to face every hour with the certainty that he is present in our lives and will go with us through challenges and hardships.  Do you have that faith?  I think you do.  Now let’s use it.  Because it would be a terrible waste if we have this wonderful treasure in our hearts – this God-given faith – and we just let it stay there, hidden in the dark and not being of any use. 

Speaking of things going to waste, according to the Association of British Bankers there is between £250m and £300m lying in dormant bank accounts.  The Prime Minister has just announced that he is going to raid some of it and pass it on to charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups.  He has said that only accounts that have had no activity for 15 years will be taken.  I also read last week that unclaimed lottery winnings in the UK amount to about £78m, and there is £5.2bn of unused loyalty points sitting on British credit cards.  What an amazing waste.  We don’t want to be that wasteful with our faith do we?  We want to use it and not let it fester and wither.  I think faith is like a muscle.  The more we use it the stronger it grows, and the more useful it becomes. 

So, how do we use our faith?  Here are a couple of ideas. 

1          You can’t walk on the water unless you step out of the boat.  Is there something good and noble you have been thinking about doing but you have been too worried about the possible consequences?  Too afraid of being misunderstood, or too anxious that your resources will be inadequate for the task?  Maybe there’s a person you were going to try to help, or someone you were going to talk to about something.  Perhaps there’s a gift you were going to give, or a job you were going to volunteer for.  Maybe there is a commitment you’re thinking of making.  Well, maybe God is asking you to use that little bit of faith you have and step out, believing that in Christ’s name he has given you the resources you need to do it.

2          Remind yourself of God’s great promises to you, like the promise to be with you forever, the promise to answer your prayers, the promise to use you for his glory, the promise to do you good, the promise to hatch a plan for your life that will give you hope and a future.  Because when we face a time of uncertainty we can lose sight of these promises and struggle under a cloud of doubt and worry.  So, perhaps God is calling some of us to place our little bit of faith in God’s promises and his love.  I think he’s saying this to us as a parish.  As we face an uncertain time let’s not be overwhelmed by gloomy predictions, but let’s look to the God who has a wonderful, but as yet unknown, future for us.

 So Jesus’ encouragement to you this morning is this: don’t be discouraged, use your faith and it will grow.