I do love mulberries. Particularly enclosed in warm pastry and served with ice-cream. There’s luscious tree in a suburb near where I work, and when it’s dripping with fruit, I’m tempted to action that sentence where Jesus said: “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.” Only I would replace the words ‘in the sea’, with ‘in my back yard’.

But what did Jesus mean by that purple statement? Are we to take his words literally? Do we really have the capacity to reposition things, not selfishly, but philanthropically, to hungry mouths and needy situations? Jesus made the statement in response to his disciples asking for an increase in faith, and he was telling them that even a mustard-seed-size amount could give a sea-change to a fruit tree.

The inclusion of the phrase ‘planted in the sea’ is hermeneutically helpful, for it reveals that Jesus was not speaking literally but metaphorically, for there would be no practical purpose for a mulberry tree to reside in the midst of an ocean. Yet Jesus is not just speaking colourfully, but challengingly, exposing the typical smallness of our faith and the lameness of our regular prayers, and daring us to take his glory and power more seriously. Urging us, if the magnitude of the metaphor is any indication of his desire, to know better his capacity to care and willingness to bless.