I assure you, if you had faith the size of a mustard seed
….
Nothing would be impossible for you.

As we complete the ninth week after Pentecost and also celebrate, as a community, the Transfiguration of Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, we hear a most poignant message from God in our Scripture readings. The first portion of this message is contained in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (3:9-17). The second portion is from Matthew’s Gospel (14:22-34). The message in Paul’s letter is conveyed by this simple, and yet powerful, question: Are you not aware that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? This is a question which, I believe, we must ask ourselves at some point in time if we desire to grow spiritually and increase our understanding of who we are in God’s creation.

The message in Matthew’s Gospel is conveyed in these words of Jesus: I assure you, if you had faith the size of a mustard seed…. Nothing would be impossible for you. These words give us hope that we can come to know that we are temples of God’s Spirit. These words also give us an insight into how we can come to know we are God’s temples. It is all a matter of faith! It is all a matter of daring to believe what we hear in the Scriptures and not be afraid to embrace this truth.

It seems that oft times we humans fear to really believe that God is within us because we become so focused on our own weaknesses. It is often hard for us to conceive the truth in the revelation that God has made to us through the Person of Jesus, namely that the life we experience is a sharing in God’s own life. This fear to believe this truth comes, I believe, from some of the negative statements we have heard about our sinful nature and some of the experiences we have had that highlight humankind’s ability for cruelty, selfishness, hatred and niggardliness.

Because of the behavioral aberrations we often discover in ourselves and others we sometimes fear to believe that we are God’s temples. These aberrations are quite often due to the fact that we do not conceive of ourselves as God’s temples. The truth of the matter is that once a person begins to truly see him/herself in the way that Paul saw himself and others, life changes and it is no longer possible to be anything other than a child of God. It takes faith! Faith in who we are in God’s kingdom.

Dare to embrace this truth!