The 27th Sunday of the Year Hab 1:2-3 & 2:2-4; 2 Tim 1:6-8 & 13-14; Lk 17:5-19 (year c)
‘How long, Lord, am I to cry for help while you will not listen; to cry ‘oppression’ in your ear and you will not save?” The complaint of Habakkuk voiced Israel’s mounting anxiety as she was overshadowed by the threat of Babylon’s encroaching power. Israel had indeed sinned, but now, through the prophet, she had turned to God. But in this, the darkest night of her history, was God listening to his people?
The response, written down in Habakkuk’s vision, was not so much an answer as a call to patient faith: “The upright man will live by his faithfulness.”
We frequently pray for answers and solutions, especially as we face the crises that life inevitably brings. Like the prophet, we can see no end to our pain, only the assurance that the upright man will live by his faithfulness.
Ultimately this patient trust in God alone formed in Israel’s consciousness the expectation of a new kind of Messiah, a suffering servant who would both hear and share in the pain of his people. It is in the crucified Christ that we begin to understand a faith that is not an escape from pain, but rather the grace that enables us to trust in the Father alone.
The Apostles doubted that they had such faith, hence their prayer: “Increase our faith.” Jesus assured them that, were their faith as tiny as a mustard seed, it would be more than sufficient, because it would be his gift. But had the Apostles truly understood? The challenging words that followed seemed to indicate that, both for the Apostles and ourselves, the refinement of a truly trusting faith is a gradual process.
Jesus likened us to servants working for their Lord throughout the day. They harboured expectations that, by their labours, they had merited special treatment, that their Lord would serve them at table. The tale ends with a challenging and seemingly cold confrontation: “Must the master be grateful to his servant for doing what the servant had been told? So with you: when you have done all that you were told, say ‘We are merely servants: we have done no more than our duty.’ ”
A truly humble faith knows that it can do nothing to demand God’s favour: we can only trust in his merciful love. To such faith Jesus revealed himself as the Lord who washed the feet of his disciples, who, at his table, fed them with his living presence.
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