Twenty-seventh Sunday In Ordinary Time
LUKE 17:5-10
For a month of Sundays, Luke will step away from his zeal to teach Christians the correct use of wealth. Today the subject is faith. The apostles approach Jesus with this appeal, “Increase our faith!” Jesus does not comply by heaping a “quantity” of faith on them. He replies, “If you would have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” Has this ever been tried? Perhaps, but the statement is hardly intended to be understood literally. This is another example of a literary device called hyperbole (exaggeration) to make a point. Since a grain of mustard seed is proverbially small, the implication is that even a little faith can accomplish great things.
As happens frequently in Luke, a reader wonders why Luke put this strange saying at this particular point in his gospel. He places the apostles’ request for faith between two other instructions which, if taken literally, would be difficult to put into action. The immediately preceding instruction is on forgiveness. “If your brother sins, correct him. If he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and turns to you seven times, and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” Forgiveness is not easy for those offended. All the more so, when the offense is frequently repeated. What is however humanly impossible, becomes possible with the grace of God. Therefore the apostles’ request, “Increase our faith,” seems logical after an instruction on forgiveness.
Following Jesus’ response to the apostles’ appeal for faith, Luke adds an instruction on humble service. A servant or employee works on a farm all day, plowing or tending sheep. When he returns to the house in the evening, his master or employer will not say, “Have a seat at the table.” Instead he tells his employee, “Prepare my supper. Put on your apron, and serve me. After that you may eat.” The employer might not even thank his employee, since he is being paid to do what he is doing. This may or may not reflect the usual relationship between employer and employee. It is hardly ideal. But it is more realistic than expecting a mulberry tree to move itself from its location to a place in the sea by a command based on faith. We cannot expect the machinery of faith to operate like a backhoe or a crane.
Luke adds the moral of the story, “So you also, when you have done all that is command-ed, say this, ‘We are worthless servants. We have only done what we were obligated to do.’” In 1 Corinthians 9:16, St. Paul expresses a similar thought, “Even if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting, for that is my obligation. A curse on me if I do not preach the gospel.” Job 22:3, “Is it any pleasure to the Almighty if you are righteous, or is it gain to him if you make your way blameless?” Job 35:7, “If you are right-eous, what do you give to him (the Almighty), or what does he receive from your hand?”
Romans 11:34, “Who has first given to him that recompense should be made?” A justi-fied conclusion: God owes us nothing unless he has obligated himself to owe us, as he obligated himself to Abraham in Genesis 15:1-20.
And now, “the rest of the story.” In Luke 12:37 we read, “Blessed are those servants whom the Master finds awake when he returns. Amen, I say to you (I swear), he will put on his apron, and have them sit at table and come and serve them.” Quite a turnabout! In his own freedom God decides to serve us because of faithfulness to what he commands. Absolutely speaking, we have no claim on God. But in the concrete circumstances of sal-vation history, God has adopted us into the divine family and obligated himself by his own initiative to reward his faithful children. He not only rewards them. He serves them. An illustration of this is at the Last Supper in the Gospel of John – Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. In Jesus, God makes himself the servant of his disciples. Yet all the good we accomplish comes from God. Paul writes in Phil. 2:13, “God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” We end as we began, “Increase our faith!”
HABAKKUK 1:2-3, 2:2-4
The Prophet Habakkuk, 7th century B.C., expresses the terror of violence. He fears that God is ignoring the agony of the Kingdom of Judah in the face of foreign oppression. A heartbreaking but daring cry, “I cry out to you, ‘Violence,’ but you do not intervene.”
God does hear his cry. The answer will come.” Basically God says, “Trust me! Have faith in me!” The last sentence of this reading determined its choice to accompany the gospel’s instruction on faith, “The just one, because of his faith, shall live.” This statement became a foundation of Paul’s teaching of salvation by faith.
2 TIMOTHY 1:6-8. 13-14
Both Letters to Timothy give the impression of a young man overwhelmed by his ministry as bishop of a Christian community. The language is blunt, “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather of power and love and self-control. So do not be ashamed of your witness to our Lord….” Young Timothy is reminded to “stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.”
