A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Our lord said to his disciples, scandals will inevitably arise, but woe to him through whom they come. He would be better off thrown into the sea with a millstone around his neck than giving scandal to one of these little ones. Be on your guard. If your brother does wrong, correct him.
If he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times a day and seven times a day turns back to you saying, I am sorry, forgive him. The apostles said to Jesus, increase our faith. And our lord replied, if you had the faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this sycamore, be uprooted and transplanted into the sea, and it would obey you. And this is the gospel of the lord.
Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. Whenever I read this text, the thought occurs to me is, supposing I put my faith to the test and tried it out on a willow tree or one of these trees out here to ship it down to Galesville and plant it in the Chesapeake Bay. Just wonder what would happen.
I wouldn't expect the tree to go traveling directly to Galesville. But this is what our Lord said, that That if you had faith as and the the mustard seed is a pretty small seed. Maybe you've seen it. It's a very tiny seed. And our lord says to his disciples, if you had that much faith, this is what it would mean.
In another place, he said, if you had a little bit of faith, you could move mountains. Well, in a very real sense, faith can move mountains. And there are plenty of instances where faith, trust and now I'm using that word in the sense of trust and confidence, not in the sense of belief. This is the great confusion of the age ever since Luther's time. But we know what can happen, how lives can be changed through trust, through confidence, and I'm not even talking about the supernatural.
I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking on a purely natural level. One of the worst things that can happen to anybody is to grow up without an associate, a companion, a relative, a parent, or whatever, who he or she knows has trust and confidence in them. And I've seen it, and I'm sure you have seen it, what can be accomplished when one person has a tremendous trust or confidence that by golly, I will walk. I will climb that mountain.
I will swim that channel. I'm just referring to an article in the Reader's Digest for this month. And they do it. And they do it. So let's not downgrade this thing.
I don't know what we can do with mountains, but in many ways, you know, changing a person's life is a much harder job than moving a mountain. All you need to do is to move a mountain is to have enough of equipment. But to change a person's will, to bring something to bear upon them that causes them to do a 180 degree turn in their lives, to me that's much more impressive. Much infinitely more impressive than moving a a mountain. I've seen that.
Maybe some of you some of you have seen that famous gold mine, it's it's West Of Cumberland. And here here's a deep valley. Well, that valley is man made. It's where the mountains sank after they took out so much earth underneath to to try to recapture the gold. So you don't need even you don't need faith to move mountains, all you need is equipment.
But when you have a you have someone who's been a professed atheist, and who comes back and falls on their knees and says, I believe in God, you don't bring that about by just bringing in a lot of mechanical equipment. And yet these things happen. These things do happen. Now, today there's a great deal of confusion about this word faith, and trust, and belief. Faith and trust, put them together if you want.
But don't confuse it with belief. Belief is a matter of credibility based on hardcore evidence. Hardcore evidence. It's what goes on in every court of law, and that and we hear a lot about credibility today. And most people have no idea what they're talking about.
But credibility means evidence for a truth that I don't see. Credibility means that I have evidence for the credibility, not for what I accept. Belief or trust is an emotional thing. Belief has to do with my intellect, weighing evidence, analyzing it, criticizing it, evaluating it. Belief and trust have to do with emotions for the most part, with trust and confidence.
As Luther said, all you have to do to be saved is to trust God. On what basis? How do you know he exists? Oh, I feel that he exists. I know he exists because I can't deny my feelings.
I know that very well. You cannot deny your feelings, I know that, but it doesn't prove a blooming thing. Not a thing. Feeling proves nothing. That's the reason I am so absolutely almost antagonistic to feeling, because it can not only be negative, but it can be so awfully misleading.
And above all, and above all, we come to expect it and to weigh our belief in God on the basis of our emotional reaction that we call trust and confidence. It's a horrible mistake, and it's a mistake in every phase of life. If you ask me from the wealth of my years of experience with a marital state, the main one of the main things that's wrong in The United States with the holy state of matrimony is that the young people go into with a completely false sense of what to expect. They've been so gussied up with the the this romantic idea that that it's a wonderful, beautiful, happy life, and they're on the wave of enthusiasm, and this is good. There's nothing wrong with it.
I just met someone, been married for two years, and they're still on cloud nine. But wait till they're twenty two years married, they're not going to be on cloud nine. Wait until the crunch comes. And it's and it will come, it's inevitable. And then, feelings, emotions, where are they?
They're down the drain. What keeps men and women loyal to each other, to their responsibilities? Feeling and trust, that that idea of going out and seeking self fulfillment and being joyful, like this character that went out to Oregon from Virginia. So what is our Lord talking about here? He's talking about a commitment.
That's what he's talking about. And that has to come from me with his grace. Now don't don't ask me how I put these two things together, but I know I have to put them together, that I save myself and God saves me. That's putting it very baldly, but that's the truth that we have to live with. And our blessed Lord is telling us, I'm not asking much of you, but I'm asking something.
Trust me, and have confidence in me. That's great. That's wonderful. But that is not what put Saint Joseph and made a martyr out of him. Because when it comes this is a fact of life that when we most need to pray, for example, we least are able to do it.
People will come they used to come and say, I I'm not getting anything out of my prayers anymore. Well, what do you mean? Well, I when I used to pray, used to go and I felt close to God. Notice that word felt. Well, as soon as I hear that, you know, the red flag goes up.
I long I I used to feel close to God. And now, I just seem to my I I'm I'm going my mind's going every way, every direction. I can't concentrate. And I turned to them and said, do you know that the prayer praying you're doing now is probably much more a prayer than anything you ever did when you got all those fine feelings? And this is this is the basic truth.
And this is I mean, you can read Saint Teresa of Avila, of any well recognized saint, if I may quote them. This is the story. So our blessed Lord here isn't telling us that now you've got to have that fine feeling. No. What he's telling us is you've got to have the fine commitment to the creed.
I believe in god. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.