1st Reading: Habbakkuk 1:2-3, 2:2-4
2nd Reading: 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14
Gospel: Luke 17, 5-10
Homily: Catherine Maresca
Sylvia and Patty and I had a lively conversation about today’s Gospel and agreed that none of us liked the description of the servant in the parable as “useless, simple, unprofitable, or unworthy.” The choices of what to do with this included changing the adjective completely, ignoring the reading entirely, or wrestle it to the ground. We finally agreed I could do my best and the choice is mine.
I’d like to focus on our call to serve. This is part of our relationship with God. As we grow in love and gratitude and wonder, we begin to want to help, we want to be part of God’s grand kindom project. We pray for this in the Lord’s prayer: “thy Kindom come”; we proclaim it in the Mystery of Faith: “Christ will come again”; and even taste it every once in a while – in moments of deep communion with God, with others, or with creation. But how will we serve? Our specific work on behalf of the kindom may be determined by our talents, our experience, our community, opportunities, and/or the deep desire of our hearts. We may be healers, thealogians, ministers, organizers, writers, builders, investors, farmers, peacemakers, teachers… All vocations can be put to the service of the kindom of God. It’s important that we all recognize both our communal call and our individual calls, and respect the ways everyone (even atheists) contributes to a thriving communion of creation.
As Christians, we have 3 readings today to help us with this call.
In the first reading, Habakkuk is begging God for help, intervention in the face of ruin, misery, destruction, violence, strife and discord. In reply God tells Habakkuk to “Write down the vision…which still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint…it will surely come.”
This can be boiled down to “Help!” and God’s response: “Vision.”
Why is vision central to God’s help? God’s answer tells us: we are part of a huge project – beginning at least 13.7 billion years ago, and inclusive of the whole universe. The stars have contributed the elements, gravity hugs us to the earth and holds us in communion with our sun, coral cleans the oceans to support plant and animal life, microbes prepare the atmosphere for breathing, and every plant and animal contributes to the ecosphere it is part of. All of creation contributes, and as humans we also contribute…to what?
Teilhard uses both the Bible and creation not only to look back to what God has been doing, but also to look forward to what God is building. That vision, which we call “Parousia”, is informed by the prophets’ description of the Messianic age, by Jesus’ miracles and parables, and by history’s slow movement towards peace, healing, and justice. Parousia is a time of cosmic communion; when God will be all in all; when there will be no more war, sorrow, death, sickness, hunger, or injustice.
Understanding that my life as a Christian wasn’t a journey towards judgment and heaven or hell completely changed the meaning of my life in Christ. We are loved unconditionally and building a communion of love together with God. The Biblical past shows me that God has been acting in history and the Biblical future shows me the trajectory of God’s work among us. Together we are building a future of inclusive love and beauty.
Let us refresh ourselves in a vision of hope.
The second reading speaks of the power of Sophia that fills and prepares us to take up our Kindom work. Paul writes that we “do not have a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.”
This last gift of Sophia – self-control — is perhaps the most important for us to consider in our situation today. We white and comfortable Americans have immense financial power, destructive power, and societal power. We can buy more, waste more, influence more, and destroy more than most. Destruction of the earth in many lands can be traced back to the consumption by Americans of everything from minerals to meat. What could our self-control offer the kindom? Just distribution of the earth’s gifts. Just empowerment of oppressed peoples, migrants, disabled, women, children, LGBTQ+ folks, and the poor. Relief for the earth itself. Clean air and water. Self-control in this verse is contrasted to fear. How much of our consumption is related to fear?
Let us be free of all fear and embrace our power to build the kindom, to love all of creation, and to share the earth justly with self-control.
And now for the Gospel. First, remember the story is a parable, and in this case perhaps an absurd one. I imagine (in) the audience of Jesus are servants, not owners, laughing at the image of coming in from the field expecting the owner to serve them dinner, grateful for their work and obedience. How much more likely is the owner to expect more work and postponement their own meal for the owner’s comfort? The story is capped off with the servants themselves saying, “We are unprofitable servants…” If the beginning of this scenario is absurd, the last sentence is just as absurd. They know the value of their work, even if the owner will not acknowledge it.
So, what could the lesson be for us in this absurd story? First, what empire in our own lives best reflects this dynamic between owners and servants? With my experience, my thoughts turn immediately to the Roman Catholic hierarchy. To varying degrees, we embrace a myth that the higher up you are the more worthy, profitable, and useful you are. Non-ordained church employees, diocesan personnel, and volunteers are the unworthy servants. The ordained are the owners, hoping, as white slave owners used to do, that they are (the) “good” ones. We might laugh with the servants in the parable at the idea of the clergy serving us after a long day of hard work. And we might say these words, “We are just useless servants,” with biting humor. But we know our worth. We know we are not useless. We know our labor is much more valuable than our paycheck or a pat on the back. And still we serve.
If the servants of this ungrateful owner continue to serve, how much more are we – who have vision, power, and freedom from fear, who are loved and gifted by God – called to continue to serve, not the “owners,” but God, the people of God, and creation itself. We do not get out of this by saying, “I’m unworthy, unprofitable or useless.” “I’m not ordained, I have no place.” We are called. God’s project is immense and long, and God’s work through us is fruitful.
We do not all tend sheep, or work the fields, or cook the meals, but we can all serve God in our particular way, with deep joy and great love.
May we hold the vision, embrace the power of Sophia, and continue to serve together. Amen
Meditation: Prayers to an Evolutionary God, by William Cleary
Spirit of God, in almost perfect hiding,
I welcome you to enter my work from your darkness.
Out of the rising river of your energies
Active in everything that is
Comes the irresistible glowing warmth
Of your magnetic purpose in me.
You lure me with a future
Of endless evolutionary possibility,
Let me harmonize my singular melody
With the colossal chorus of all creation,
In all space, and in all time,
So that what I do promotes the evolution of your desires
And what you desire
Grows as a discernible pattern beneath my efforts. Amen.