“A Thousand Different Decisions”

• Scriptural Reference: Luke 17:5-17
• October 7, 2007

“O, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise.” It’s a wonderful hymn, huge and grand. I love rock-n-roll, but I also love those classic choral pieces when we sing them like we just sang that one. Of course, in this room, we have a few hundred tongues, and not all of them were singing (in some cases we’re grateful for that) but we get the picture anyway. I remember once when Billy Graham came to Charlotte for one of his crusades, Mr. Jarvis, our minister of music at FBC, Charlotte, excitedly announced one Sunday that they were organizing a thousand voice choir for the Charlotte Coliseum. It would be a grand and glorious event. Sure, you could have someone sing a solo and with the right equipment amplify it so it would be as loud as a thousand voices, but you and I know, no matter how loud you amplified it, the quality of the thousand voices still would far exceed the solo.

Imagine that. One voice by itself isn’t much, even if you amplified it. Two voices, at the same volume, change the quality a bit. Add to that ten, then fifty, then a couple hundred. Each voice added raises the volume until the texture of sound thrills the soul. Each voice is a mustard seed of sound. Together, they’re a primeval forest of acoustic beauty.

And so it is with our faith.

Luke tells us that at one point early in Jesus’ ministry his disciples said to him, “Increase our faith.” Luke goes on:

The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed,

you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted

in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

Now, most people who read this parable probably understand it the way I have for most of my life. “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, then you can make a tree move to the ocean.” Usually people don’t consider the humor in that. Why would anyone want to move a mulberry tree to the beach? At this point, Jesus probably had a glint in his eye. Sure it’s absurd to move a tree to the ocean, but that’s just my point. When you employ mustard seed faith, even the most impossible things can be accomplished. Well, I always understood this in terms of bang for buck; sort of like determining how much dynamite you need to blow out a stump.

My grandfather was clearing land one time when we went down to visit. He had a bunch of giant stumps of oak trees he’d felled and needed them gone. When we got there, he’d decided to get them out with dynamite. I was excited. Like most kids, I loved the notion of blowing things up. So I went down to the field with my dad and granddad. Mom wasn’t worried because in her mind, her dad was infinitely wise and knew exactly how to handle dynamite. As it turned out, he’d never used dynamite before, but mom didn’t know that and I get ahead of myself.

Anyway, we got down to the field and granddad put some sticks underneath a stump that my uncle had bored a hole under. We walked about twenty yards away and granddad lit the fuse. The sparkling fire disappeared down the hole and there was a moment of silence. Then there was a gigantic boom. The ground heaved. The stump shot high into the air, luckily in an arch away from us, but we couldn’t see that because a solid curtain of dirt blocked out the view, the tree line beyond, and the sun above. It showered down on us and after it all settled and we were spitting the dirt our of out mouths and scooping it away from between our shirt and neck, we noticed birds flying away, dogs barking, and my mom standing on the front porch of the house about a half mile across the soybean field behind us, clutching her apron. Seems my granddad had way overestimated how much bang he needed to remove that stump. As it turned out, it took him about as much time to fill in the crater in the field as it would have taken him to simply dig the stump out to begin with. He had only needed a mustard seed of dynamite.

I always thought of Jesus’ mustard seed faith in those kinds of terms. If faith could be weighed on a scale and mature faith weighed, say, 100 pounds, if I only were to build my faith up to a couple of ounces, I could MAKE THINGS HAPPEN. Just a couple ounces of faith, a mustard seed size, would blow the heck out of even a really BIG mountain. Faith gives you lots of bang for your buck. In this view, faith is an instrument you use to accomplish a purpose or task that otherwise won’t submit to normal human forces or techniques. Faith is a technique for getting things done in that view.

But hold on. Rarely when people consider this short parable of Jesus do they also take into account what comes immediately after it: he talks about the duties of a slave.

Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from the field,

‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather

say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat

and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what

was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to

do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’

This seems odd at first blush. First of all, wasn’t Jesus against slavery? Well, though in the gospels Jesus never condemns slavery explicitly, I think he was against any degradation of any human being, slavery being a terrible degradation. But the slavery referred to in this parable was more in the form of indentured servitude. The poor people, who were the majority of folks in Palestine, and the majority of those who listened to Jesus’ teachings, were well acquainted with this form of work and if they hadn’t done it themselves, they had family members who had. In indentured servitude, you had a lot of work to do and were expected to do it immediately and with efficiency, but you didn’t get much pay and no benefits to speak of, sort of like working in a fast food restaurant today.

So what’s the connection?

You see, slaves don’t work for themselves. Slaves don’t have authority or power. They work for the sake of their master in order to accomplish what their master has in mind. Now, it might not sound all that attractive at first, but if you’re a Christian, that’s what you do: you work for the sake of your master to accomplish what your master has in mind.

Faith, then, is not a technique which you can learn to use more effectively. Faith is a life of obedience. Faith is the style of life one fashions in response to one’s master. The difference between the slave who has an earthly master and the person who has Christ as master lies in the fact that the Christian slave has freely chosen Christ as master. Also, an earthly master doesn’t really care about the individual personality of the slave. Christ as our master has precisely that in mind. When one makes the choice to enslave him or herself to Christ, then his or her truest and most authentic personhood becomes more alive than ever and even the smallest change in conformity – even a mustard seed of obedience – to the will of our Master yields new power, and the more one yields ones life to Christ, the greater the power.

But one yields ones life to Christ in mustard seed increments.

People often ask me how I learned to play the guitar so well. I’m 53 years old. I started playing guitar when I was 12. For forty-one years, every day, I’ve been playing my guitar. Some days I play more than others. Every now and then, I miss a day. But everyone knows, I didn’t simply pick up the guitar and play a hot bluegrass lick. I had to learn G, C, and D. I had to learn what 4/4 meant, and 3/4, and 6/8. I started finger picking with two fingers and went to three. Then I went to all five. A guitar player isn’t made over night. It happens in a thousand little ways, in the thousands of times, for instance, that I decided to pick up my guitar and not watch television. Each little decision was a mustard seed.

It’s not the big events that make a difference in people’s lives. Rather, the thousand little decisions we make day in and out compose the character of our lives. “Mustard seed faith” refers to the life so infused with and obedient to the mind of Christ that the thousands of different decisions made day in and out make a collective difference over time.

One doesn’t become overweight with just one giant meal – a thousand little decisions at a thousand different tables make that difference. One doesn’t become an athlete with one run or one workout at the gym – a thousand little decisions to work out, or run, or eat the right foods make an athlete. An anniversary or a birthday celebration doesn’t make a marriage rewarding – rather, the thousands of little decisions to be kind, affectionate, and considerate over the long haul make a marriage, the unsolicited and unexpected compliment, the brief kiss on the cheek while walking past your spouse in the kitchen, the bouquet of flowers on a Tuesday afternoon months away from Mother’s Day or anniversary or birthday. Little mustards seeds make a marriage wonderful.

And a mature faith doesn’t come from one aisle walk and an hour or two a week with a decorative noose around your neck. Rather, a thousand little decisions rising from study, prayer and meditation every day, along with worship, conversation, and service make a mature faith and lead to a vital and lively community of Christ followers. It’s those thousands of little decisions daily that lead to the absence of anxiety and the flowering of Christ-love. The little mustard seed decisions day in and out move the tree to the beach.

And so, we praise God from whom all blessings flow not in a solo, but with all our mustard seed voices – because God infuses even the smallest parcel of our universe, the mustard seed niches, down to the quarks and gluons. When we conform our lives to that power we won’t just move mulberry trees – we won’t just meet budget – we’ll discover ourselves and this world we live in transformed. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!