Seeds, Mountains, and Quantum Energy
Editor's Note: This is the opening sermon of Peace Camp 2023 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It treats the text of Matthew 17:14–20. It appears here unedited.
Greetings and thank you for the invitation.
As I was reading the text from Matthew, a memory came to mind...
There was a man who used to pass by my grandmother's house from time to time. This man looked disheveled, with dirty clothes, barefoot, and carrying a huge bag filled with papers. If we were outside, we would quickly go inside and watch him from the window because my grandmother told us that this man took away children who misbehaved. He was the "boogeyman," and the boogeyman's song goes like this:
Sleep, child, sleep now,
For the boogeyman is coming to take you away.
Sleep, child, sleep now,
For the boogeyman is coming to eat you up.
I never thought of this man as someone with a mental illness in need of support until today. The pandemic has exposed us to moments of depression, sadness, and loneliness. This man brings back the fears we've built along the way and how we get lost in this journey.
Context
The metaphor of the mustard seed is embedded in the story of a family. A father and a son with problems. His son was "possessed." The symptoms, similar to those of a person with schizophrenia, were enough to break off relationships with the person and the family due to the contamination brought by evil, labeling them as unclean.
One of the most profound results of the pandemic has been the decline in mental health. During the pandemic, the number of people worldwide with depression increased from 193 to 246 million by 28%, which is about 53 million people. Anxiety disorders increased by 25% to 374 million, which is about 75 million people. The Catholic Church reported a surge in requests for exorcisms due to demonic possession during the pandemic. Another study showed that anti-vaccine groups attributed the influence of the devil to creating or receiving COVID-19 vaccines. We hear over and over again about the rise in senseless violence, the use of weapons, drugs, loss of purpose, and oppressive loneliness. The loss of mental health confronts us with our own demons and terrors, but also with the demons and terrors of society.
The changes in global leadership and geopolitics, with the reversal of rights, the assertion of white supremacy, the increase in economic and health disparities, misinformation, and culture wars, etc., have impacted our priorities and how we process reality. There is greater despair, a lack of faith in institutions and the future. On the other hand, these changes affect our personal decisions about responsibility and collective well-being. We are more closed off from the world, immersed in ourselves, with less commitment to the community, the church, and our people; with more indifference and less compassion.
Exorcising, casting out what we find or perceive as negative, evil, and harmful has been part of religious cultures throughout history. Humans need explanations for evil and how to contain it to ensure that social structures remain firm against chaotic forces. The text does not provide details of this family's history, but it is clear
that this young man needed liberation and healing to live his life to the fullest,
his family needed stability and peace, and
his community needed to repair the broken relationships caused by the presence of evil in this family.
Evil, at its root, is profound violence against another or oneself, causing suffering not only in the person who is the object of evil but in all the relationships that person has, including those who commit the evil, God, and the community. In Puerto Rico, femicides, including trans individuals, and the painful death of two-year-old April Thais due to sexual abuse and violence, have shaken the social fabric of our society. Suffering is an unpleasant and distressing experience that severely affects us on a personal, social, psychophysical, and existential level.
Discussion of the Text
In this context of a family's pain affected by evil, the disciples and Jesus act. Those who couldn't resolve the young man's illness receive a strong rebuke from Jesus. In fact, the phrase 'faithless and perverse generation' is usually directed at unbelieving crowds or leaders who did not recognize His authority. Why such a strong reprimand? It seems that the disciples' inability provoked Jesus' anger - the monster emerged in Jesus, the courage.
The disciples' question, "Why couldn't we cast it out?" opens up a discussion with Jesus about motivations. It also raises other questions for us today: Why can't we end hunger in the world? Why can't we stop environmental destruction? Why can't we eliminate racism, violence, injustice in all its forms? Why can't we stop war?
Can we move mountains? A mountain disappears using bulldozers or dynamite, etc. But on a deeper level, fiction becomes reality; the possible materializes from the impossible. Quantum mechanics states that particles exist in multiple locations simultaneously. It also predicts that a particle effectively moves from one place to another without passing through the intermediate space. Of course, the laws change when it comes to large objects, but in theory, an object can spontaneously move to a different location or be in two places at the same time... meaning the mountain can be moved.
In Matthew 10, we hear that Jesus gave His disciples the power to cast out demons and heal diseases, and in Luke 10:17-20, we hear that they return with joy. However, Jesus comments that what's important is not subduing the spirits... but being inscribed in the book of life, and even more, the actions we take. The object in front of Jesus and the disciples in this text was not the act of exorcism but the human being behind the act.
Application
Pain and suffering can destroy us, but on the other hand, it can help us grow constructively. It can tear a community apart, but it can also integrate it and make it stronger. Having faith like a mustard seed, capable of "moving mountains," is a metaphor for quantum mechanics. It conveys the idea that the smallest amount of faith/energy can have a powerful impact on life. The problem isn't whether the disciples had enough faith. Their inability to heal the young man wasn't due to a lack of belief but a lack of love.
1 Corinthians 13:2 reminds us that no matter what gifts we have or the strength of our faith, if we lack love, it's all in vain. It doesn't count. Faith, as "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1), is total and absolute certainty that something will happen, but the foundation of this faith is love. Faith gives the impetus, the conviction. Love provides the quality, weight, and value to action.
I ask you: Do we believe that the racist system can be transformed? Do we believe in a world where everyone can fit? Well, it seems we have the faith that can drive us to action. The question is, do we have enough love?
Do we have enough love?
Do we have enough love to continue the liberating but agonizing work of self-reflection to identify the hold that white supremacy has on us? This is a call to conversion where embodying the hope of the Gospel calls us to work with the painful roots of white supremacy and colonial ideologies.
Do we have enough love to revisit what "salvation" means in this time and context? The Spanish conquest, the Inquisition, the spread of the manifest destiny of the United States, etc., are examples of the tension between the 'chosen' and their definition of 'salvation' versus the 'unchosen.' Jesus broke with the dichotomy of "us/them," "outside/inside," "chosen/rejected," and calls us to break with theological frameworks that hide our passions and greed.
Do we have enough love to develop ministries that address both the individual and the collective? The polarization of ideologies, the increase in armed and racial violence, natural and man-made disasters, individual rights, etc., add to the collective post-pandemic trauma. Finding joy and purpose in how we care for people and families in their celebrations and failures; creating "healthy mental and emotional spaces" is embodying the kingdom.
Do we have enough love to discern the truth, even when it hurts? We've become digital, and these technologies connect us. But they also confuse us with conspiracy theories, fraud, and misinformation, which separate us from others and distance us from honoring the truth.
Do we have enough love to create eco-sustainable economic spaces? We have millions of traumatized people (unemployed, with mental health problems, homeless, displaced, hungry, etc.) living in an increasingly damaged environment with the intensification of climate disasters.
These Are Our Mountains...
We have the faith to make these changes. But do we have enough love to believe that the object of our action—those people and communities we serve—are worthy and deserving of our efforts? What motivates us to serve, the crown of life? The sea of glass? Forgetting sorrows and afflictions?
Conclusion
You can protest, fight for justice with a small faith because faith is powerful. But to accomplish the task of the kingdom, you need to love the object and reason for that kingdom not in the abstract but in the materiality of life. You need at least a "quantum" of that energy with which the universe is woven - that minimum amount of love that turns the impossible into the possible.
God emptied Himself to "become flesh" and "dwell among us" (John 1:14, 16). The incarnation of the human is confusing, messy, and intense. We live with pain, fears, and doubts. We make mistakes all the time. We hurt ourselves and others. However, God's incarnation in Jesus Christ acknowledges that the human being, even with all our pains and fatigue, is profoundly valuable to God (John 6:44). Jesus values your humanity and mine. He rebuilds with His Spirit our possibilities of life. God not only changes lives but reorganizes our destiny.
Faith allows us to act, and by faith, we can make changes in the world for peace and justice. But it's love - that which values and appreciates the object of our faith - that allows us to distinguish the divine fibers in the structure of the universe.
Baptists for Peace have a history of faith in which we have achieved many things. We have sustained peace and justice processes in hundreds of spaces and in thousands of people. We have a stubborn faith in building another possible world. But for this time, if we love, the entire universe will conspire in our favor even in the worst and most painful circumstances. Together, we can balance the minds, hearts, and spirits affected by so much evil. That's my faith. But if we love enough, those mountains blocking the arrival of the kingdom will move.
