As it was mentioned before, my name is Eli Deifeld, and I am a pastor from the Lutheran Church of Brazil. Thank you for the opportunity to preach once again.
This summer, we had the opportunity to go to Brazil to visit family and friends. First, we went to the north of the country, to the state of Mato Grosso, a region considered part of the Amazon. There are two main seasons in that area: six months of rain and six months of dry weather – both hot. While visiting my siblings there, we had the chance to see various types of animals, such as macaws and parrots, monkeys, and fishes. We even went swimming with the fish.
After three weeks in Mato Grosso, we went to southern Brazil. However, different from our experience in the north, we faced a very rainy and cold winter there. In the South, we visited Thiago's family and my mother. My mother lives in the interior, near Argentina. In the winter, they grow wheat, sorghum, and oats there, and now, more recently, they've also been planting mustard. So, when we drove by the many farms, we could see beautiful fields
of flowering mustard. Vast green fields below, covered with an infinity of yellow flowers.
When we returned to Victoria a few weeks later, Thiago received a birthday card from church with a beautiful image of a mustard plant. And, coincidently, the first gospel lesson I receive to preach is also about the mustard seed.
In the lesson that we heard today, the disciples ask Jesus: increase our faith. Sometimes I feel like the disciples and pray: increase my faith, Lord.
Because we see more than just fields of flowers around us. We see the intensification of situations that cause fear, hopelessness, and death. We see an increase in the persecution of immigrants in various parts of the world, as if they were the cause of the world's ills. (Thankfully, we're in Canada, where there is no risk of being arrested for speaking with an accent in public)
Growing political violence fueled by the exploitation of social media and hate speech. It seems that hate speech engages much more than the idea of liberating love.
We see the widespread dissemination of fake news, used as a means of manipulation and polarization. Medications and vaccines that once were trusted to save lives are now seen by many as threats. And, amid the chaos created, there are those who call themselves the saviours.
Since World War II, there have not been as many armed conflicts and wars as there are today. The wars in Ukraine, Congo, Sudan and Gaza, where, trapped under rubble, we see children, women, and elderly, denied basic rights for human survival, such as food, medicine, and water.
We see Mother Earth, the one who gives us everything, having its resources exploited to their limits, and, consequently, we have a climate imbalance as never seen before. 2024 was the hottest year on record, with increasing
floods, fires, and droughts. And this seems to penalize mostly those who are already the marginalized in our society.
In addition, we see racism and hatred of minorities spreading like wildfire. (The question is: are we, as human beings, condemned to our own destruction? No, we are not.)
As hatred spreads like a weed, so love can grow and blossom like a mustard seed. God is love, God is life.
Written at around the year 80, Luke’s Gospel presents a very outdated view of how employees should be treated; however, the evangelist uses an example common to his time to explain how the disciples should serve God. How we can serve God.
Faith makes us disciples of Jesus and his love for the world; faith makes us disciples of the creator of life. Faith can be as small and fragile as a mustard seed. But the gospel reminds us that we are not alone; God is among us.
God is life. When we serve life, we are serving God.
When we are kind and gentle with ourselves, when we take good care of ourselves, we are serving God. When we are sensitive to the pain of our neighbors, when we fight against injustice and discrimination, we are serving God. When we defend peace and reconciliation as ways of life, when we oppose the barbarities of war, we are serving God.
When we understand that we are just one planet, and that it is urgent to preserve it, we are serving God. (the air that fills our lungs, the water that keeps our blood flowing, the food that keeps our bodies standing, are from this planet, if the planet dies, we die.) When we do what is within our reach to preserve life, especially of the most fragile, we are serving God.
All the sad stories we hear and growing concerns about the state of the world can make us feel that only hatred and destruction are covering the fields around us. So, we pray to God: increase our faith in these hard times and help us to see the seeds of love. And there are many seeds of love.
There are people risking their lives to bring supplies to people in Gaza. There are so many volunteers facing risks to save forests, animals, and people from fires and floods. Here at this church, there are people working hard to support refugees and immigrants. There are so many others who donate to programs like Mustard Seed and the Shelbourne Community Kitchen, which provides food support to more than 1,800 adults and 700 children throughout the year. There are people serving coffee in this congregation and helping to build community. There are people checking in on their neighbours. And all of this matters.
Acts of love may be small, but they have the capacity to grow and multiply, like a mustard seed. And our job is to keep planting them. Not because we will receive a reward, but simply because it is our mission.
As Jane Goodall, an anthropologist who passed away this week, said: You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
As we heard in the sermon last Sunday, there are no easy solutions for such a complex world, but hatred, war, and discrimination are certainly not the answers we seek.
Let's plant mustard seeds. Let’s be a mustard seed in God's hand, with the hope that the world can be a better place where everyone can flourish, like a vast mustard field. Amen.
