Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous - therefore judgment comes forth perverted… I will stand at my watch post, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint. Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.
Psalm 37:1-9
Do not be provoked by evildoers; do not be jealous of those who do wrong. For they shall soon wither like the grass, and like the green grass fade away. Put your trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and find safe pasture. Take delight in the LORD, who shall give you your heart’s desire. Commit your way to the LORD; put your trust in the LORD, and see what God will do. The LORD will make your vindication as clear as the light and the justice of your case like the noonday sun. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently. Do not be provoked by the one who prospers, the one who succeeds in evil schemes. Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; do not be provoked; it leads only to evil. For evildoers shall be cut off, but those who hope in the LORD shall possess the land.
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Paul, and apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I am grateful to God - whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did - when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lives first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saves us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. Hold to the standards of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.
Luke 17:5-10
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 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. Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in 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 only done what we ought to have done!’”
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I have to admit (though if you've seen the church Facebook page this week you already know) that the first thing that stood out to me in this reading of the Gospel was the whole ‘we are worthless slaves' line. Some translations say ‘unworthy’ instead of ‘worthless,’ which is just about as bad. It comes across as completely bogus, totally uncalled for, bordering on the edge of abusive, if you think about it. One more story for the “sometimes Jesus is a jerk” collection. God doesn’t want us in that kind of relationship, where we bow and scrape and consider ourselves worthless, not even ‘unworthy.’ Our Eucharistic prayer includes the lines thanking God for ‘making us worthy to serve you as your priestly people,’ remembering that in the beginning we were created good. So what in God’s name is Jesus talking about here!?
Well, as usual, it’s complicated. So let’s start by looking back a few verses to where Jesus’ disciples are coming, to get a bit more context. We have this section of Luke's Gospel where it seems at first to be just a random collection of Jesus’ sayings and teachings sort of piled together because Luke had nowhere else to put them. That happens sometimes, or feels like it. I mean, there were so many stories being shared by word of mouth, sometimes the order of things got mixed up, or the exact details were a bit conflated before they got collected and written down. That’s why we take the Bible seriously, but not literally. But the author did have something serious in mind, we assume, when putting things in order, and so we look at what came immediately before this passage to try and make sense of it: Jesus has said to the disciples that those who cause these little ones to stumble would be better off drowned with millstones hung around their necks. And if that weren’t harsh enough, he follows it up with the admonition to forgive those who sin against us, each and every time they repent, no matter how often.
That makes sense, though. I mean, tripping up kids on legal technicalities is not okay. Causing little ones to stumble, on the scale of righteousness, is lower on the scale than the bottom of the ocean. It’s things like the school to prison pipeline that he’s talking about. Trying children as adults or over-sentencing them because of the color of their skin, which we cannot pretend isn’t happening, this is ‘causing the little ones to stumble.’ So this saying of Jesus is one I can get behind, and standing up against it, really doing something about it, will take some serious justice work. It will mean a lot of confrontation. It will mean we make some enemies and maybe some folks will mistreat us in return. So we will also need to learn to forgive. Heavily. Often. Because holding grudges is a sure way to get off track from God’s mission to bring liberation and healing to the world.
No wonder the disciples asked for more faith! God’s work of setting all people free is something that the whole system is rigged against. It’s not comfortable for those who have power, and those who have power make it darn uncomfortable for anybody who would threaten that way of living. We’ve seen it in the news, we’ve seen it in the way people fight in public discourse as conversations and debate unravel into interruptions and bullying tactics. Stirring that system up, waking people up to what racism and classism and phobias we’re swimming in, it’s holy work to be sure, but it’s not going to be easy. So the disciples ask for more faith.
We, too, might, if we’re paying attention. Then Jesus does this curious thing where he says that mustard seed faith is enough to uproot a mulberry tree and have it plant itself in the ocean. Some days it feels that such a miracle would be easier to expect than forgiveness or changing the way a system is broken. But faith isn’t for big showy signs to prove ourselves to ourselves or to others. We don’t have faith or use faith to do arbitrary miracles while avoiding the hard work of justice and forgiveness. Yes, we need faith to forgive, we need faith to keep in front of us the reason and the vision of what it is we are living for. The story of Jesus is one that drives us out of our own shadows of fear and contempt and into the heart-wrenching work of honesty and struggle with those grey areas where we’d like for a clear-cut black-or-white answer.
So, no, we’re not worthless, unworthy slaves just coming in from the fields to serve our master dinner. That’s not how we are created, and that’s certainly not the God who deserves our worship. But sometimes Jesus says this stuff that doesn’t sit right with us, and we can’t explain it away or pretend it means something pretty and wholesome and nice, and learning to live in that tension is hard. It’s hard like forgiveness is hard. It’s hard like living in any grey area is hard. It’s why we have a God who is so big and complicated who comes to us incarnate and is still big and complicated even as a person - just as complicated as any person is. Any person who we might need to forgive is a complicated person, any person who we might want to fight for is a complicated person, any person who we might want to convince of our point of view is a complicated person. Being human is a lot like being God, and being God is a lot like being human, it’s part and parcel of what it means to be created in the Image of God. We aren’t simply either/or, and we aren’t always comfortable, with ourselves or with one another. Jesus’ life is a reminder of that holy discomfort which we live in every day.
We need faith, we need focus, we need vision and reminders that this life is not either/or, not simply either good or bad, either sinful or blessed, either sacred or secular. But our work is not to throw mulberry trees into the ocean. Our work is much more difficult, much less visible, much slower and deeper work. The Holy Spirit works in us on this mission, too, shaping and reforming as we encounter conflict and celebration day after day. Like Paul said in his second letter to Timothy, “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” And the prophet Habakkuk calls to our minds the immediacy of this work, in the begging for justice and the assurance of hope coming soon. What if we are part of that hope today? What if the grace of Jesus Christ is to set us free from the need to always prove ourselves right by proving others wrong, setting us back on balance in the struggle to find our way through the complicated work of forgiveness and justice?
Because we are free, my friends. We don’t live in a world of either/or, and we don’t have to make it so. We can live in the grey areas without anxiety about rightness or purity or deserving, there is no earning the love of God by always doing or saying the right thing. Our faith is rooted in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus, who has lived a complicated and often uncomfortable life, who would probably today be killed just as swiftly as he was two thousand years ago, who would come among us still, anyhow, to be with us and to bring us into freedom. Our God walks among us, grants us grace to forgive and be forgiven, lives in the grey spaces with our conflicts and in the sweat of our labor, in our very skin and in our very communities. Justice is coming. Freedom is coming. We get to be part of it. And that is a far bigger miracle than throwing mulberry trees into the ocean.
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