Sermon Series: What Jesus Did in His Last Week

Exercised His Faith

Dr. Larry Thorson
March 25, 2007

Matthew 21:18-22

18 Early in the morning, as he was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. 19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, "May you never bear fruit again!" Immediately the tree withered.

20 When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. "How did the fig tree wither so quickly?" they asked.

21 Jesus replied, "Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. 22 If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."

Today’s New International Version Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society

It’s the last week of Jesus’ ministry before his death and resurrection. In previous weeks we’ve been looking at what he did and said during those last days. I’ve been looking for clues as to what he considered important for his disciples to understand before he left.

In his last week he went on a mission trip to Jerusalem. At night he would commute back a few miles to Bethany and presumably stay in the home of some friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus.

On this day in the last week we see more of the human side of Jesus. It says “he was hungry”. I can relate to that. Anytime from 11:30 until I eat I’m hungry. Unfortunately for the poor fig tree, it was the wrong tree in the wrong place at the wrong time. Jesus withered it. It doesn’t say that he killed it but for the time being it looked as if it was deprived.

We planted some trees after we moved to Hemet and so far only about one of those trees is still alive. One of the trees appeared poisoned because of the speed at which it went from a healthy young tree to dead. Even so it die as quickly as this fig tree died. I think Jesus was demonstrating for his disciples both the dangers and the possibilities of faith.

In a sense a strong faith that truly believes anything is possible can be as dangerous if abused as a loaded gun. Just think of the number of criminals who have believed they could pull off the impossible crime and did. If we only knew what we were capable of because believing has a powerful affect.

Recently a group of us went on an exploratory tour of the devastated areas of New Orleans and south Louisiana. What we suspected before we left and was confirmed to us over and over after we arrived there is that the odds are stacked so highly against these people that it almost seems easier to kill a fig tree instantly than repair the damaged lives down there. That’s how bad it is. But faith has a powerful affect and our team wants to share what faith we saw in Louisiana with you. (The team of John Adams, Bob Browning, John Crossman joined me up front. Gary Marks and Rev. Jim Karcher were not with us for the service).

Jacquie Lyman who went on a team to New Orleans last year hooked us up with a team from Community Presbyterian Church of Redlands and First Presbyterian Church of Redlands including several non church member faculty folks from the University of Redlands. We worked through a ministry arm of the Presbyterian Church called Presbyterian Disaster Assistance or PDA. We’re going to show you a video that can be ordered from www.pcusua.org called “The Gulf: Hurricane Katrina Resources for 2007 that shows you how PDA works and what our housing looked like.

Funding for PDA comes from something called “One Great Hour of Sharing” which Presbyterian churches across the country contribute to every Easter Sunday. I did extensive earthquake relief work in the Bay Area following the Loma Prieta quake in 1989 and there was no PDA. The Southern Baptists and the Mormons were there but not the Presbyterians. Thanks to the One Great Hour of Sharing all of that has changed.

Two of our long time members Ray and Leatrice Thurston spent a part of last year volunteering at the pulse of PDA in Little Rock, Arkansas. I’ve asked them to come and share with us what it was like serving with PDA.

We flew in on Friday evening February 23 and toured New Orleans on Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday afternoon we traveled south forty minutes to a city called Houma, Louisiana where PDA has a camp. Houma is a well kept city of about 30,000 people where a lot of the major retail chains like Hampton Inn, Circuit City, Best Buy, Lowes have located. It has an oil industry driven economy.

Houma wasn’t damaged by Hurricane Katrina. In fact refugees from New Orleans were sent to Houma for shelter. Instead Houma was affected by Hurricane Rita, the fourth most powerful hurricane ever recorded. Rita hit land on September 24, 2005, almost a month after Katrina which hit New Orleans August 29. Rita alone caused 11.3 billion dollars in damage. Every levee in Terrebonne Parish was breached by Rita.

Our team stayed in comfortable “pods” corrugated plastic tents big enough for two cots and high enough to stand up in. In the mornings after breakfast we would split up to go to one of three or four projects they assigned us. One team from Ladue Chapel, a large Presbyterian church outside of St. Louis was also there and I worked with them on a roofing project one day.

Four of our members, John Adams, Bob Browning, John Crossman, and the Rev. Jim Karcher drove out to Houma from Hemet playing golf along the way. Jim Karcher worked with me but the other three worked together to build cabinets for a 43 year old carpenter. This man had been flooded out 5 times in his lifetime, was in a serious car accident that wasn’t his fault a year after the hurricane and his wife fell and broke her arm not long before we got there. John Adams is going to tell you about their experience.

Jim Karcher and I along with several others worked for a man named Nolan whose wife was a bank manager and he was on Disability with back damage. Nolan’s house had sat in three feet of water for nine days before he could do anything about it. He had virtually gutted the house out with volunteer labor, had a large tin roof placed on the house and was in the process of finishing the inside of the house when we got there.

The only way Nolan’s house would survive another Hurricane or flood was to be put on stilts at least eight feet in the air. The cost of raising a house can range from $35,000 for a simple house to $70,000 if removing and replacing brick is involved. On our last day there a company raised Nolan’s house nine feet in the air. Six men took all day to raise it by hand using six pulleys on the front and six pulleys on the rear. It was quite a thing to see and experience. The neighborhood came out to watch and Nolan videotaped highlights of the event.

I framed in a closet in his upstairs and put up a ceiling veneer in his living room. Since his floor had been under water for nine days it warped so Nolan planed all the boards until they were flat on both sides, stained them and then had us nail them to his ceiling. It made for a beautiful, natural wood ceiling.

John Crossman finished up our presentation with a talk about why we need to be in south Louisiana doing relief work. John has a PhD in biology from Virginia Tech and had done extensive professional research on the eroding shoreline of south Louisiana years ago. He talked of four million acres disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico having a devastating affect on the economy not only locally but nationally. In addition about 254 square miles of land off the coast are being weakened with the permanent floodings taking place there every year making the area even more susceptible to lesser hurricanes.

The Presbyterian church has a 20 million dollar commitment to restore the Gulf coast over the next 15 years. They plan to keep the Houma camp open at least four more years and are helping to build a permanent meeting facility for the Elks Lodge who are allowing them use of the land. PDA’s theme is “Out of Chaos Comes Hope”.

That’s what we saw in Louisiana; hope rising out of chaos. The odds for fixing this horrible situation seems insurmountable. It’s going to take faith and working as if change can happen. Some people look at their own situation and say it can’t be done, historically its never been done before, the odds are against it and it may even be physically impossible to happen. That’s what some people say. For those people, what they want to happen won’t happen, God or no God, it simply won’t happen. Studies have shown that more bad things happen to people who dwell on bad things than those who look to the positive believing what seems impossible.

This lesson that Jesus felt was important for his disciples to learn before he left them was to exercise their faith even though the odds will be against them. Forget the odds. Leave those for the Vegas bookies. Do something to exercise your faith. Do something that you don’t think you can do. Believe the impossible. With God all things are possible. We’ve seen it and it works. Amen.