27TH SUNDAY HOMILY IN THE ORDINARY TIME – YEAR C
HOMILY THEME: LORD INCREASE OUR FAITH
BY: Fr. Celestine Muonwe
Hab 1:2-3, 2:2-4; 2 Tim 1:6-8, 13-14; Lk 17:5-10
Habakkuk probably served as a prophet sometime after the death of the good King Josiah in 609 B.C. and prior to the sack of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. His prophecy is directed at Judah (the southern kingdom), because Israel (the northern kingdom) had been crushed by Assyria and had long since ceased to exist as an autonomous nation.
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The prophet begins today with a lament: “Yahweh how long will I cry, and you will not hear?
I cry out to you ‘Violence!’ and will you not save? This lament is inspired by violence. The violence might have been caused by internal forces, the Jewish leaders, and the external forces, Babylonians.
The late King Josiah had found a copy of the law and had implemented a number of reforms to comply with the law. However, his son, Jehoiakim, who reigned from 609-598 B.C., abandoned the reforms begun by his father. The people of Judah are therefore suffering under evil leadership (2 Kings 23:37). Habakkuk might be protesting that Yahweh has neither listened to his people’s cries for help nor exercised his power to save them from their leaders.
He could also have been speaking about the presence of injustice in the lives of his people, just like Prophet Amos, and the like had lamented. Justice implies that the people have lost the right relationship with God, with whom they had entered into a covenant relationship, and they have also lost the right relationship among themselves as they should have in a good social situation. In other words, Habakkuk’s complains that the people of Judah have abandoned the righteous order intended by God for their society, even after they had renewed their covenant with the Lord and underwent a sweeping religious reform only twelve years earlier in the time of King Josiah.
Most of Habakkuk’s prophecy centers on the fear of and preparation for the impending invasion of Babylon, acknowledged as the means of God’s judgment: “For destruction and violence are before me. There is strife, and contention rises up“ (v. 3). The prophet uses two couplets— destruction and violence, and strife and contention—to portray the problems that he has seen.
He fails to understand why Yahweh has permitted these things, why He has failed to take action to stop them. In other words, why is God silent in the face of evil, in the face of injustice, and destruction, insecurity as is evident in Nigeria today, a kind of feeling that one could have if he were to see a police officer standing by, doing nothing, as a crime took place right in his presence.
Yahweh orders the prophet to write down the vision: ‘Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets, that he who runs may read it‘” (v. 2). The writing of the vision is significant, because a written prophetic record, shared with others prior to its fulfillment, makes the prophecy testable in the case of future events. Further, God calls the prophet to exercise patience in the face of adversity and suffering: “For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and it hurries toward the end, and won’t prove false.
Though it takes time, wait for it; because it will surely come. It won’t delay“ (v. 3). In other words, the prophecy will be realized in God’s good time. To humans, God’s time might seem slow, because “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). There is, therefore, a good deal of uncertainty regarding when the appointed time will come—but no uncertainty with regard to whether it will come.
Those whose souls are not upright before the Lord will fail, that is, those who have not a good relationship with God and neighbour, who fail to keep God’s law, those who are behind the violence in Isreal, shall surely fail in the day of judgement, or the invasion by the Babylonians, “but the righteous will live by his faith“ (v. 4b).
To have faith does not mean to merely acknowledge that God exists. However, here, the believer acts in accordance with his belief, even when that might does not serve ones’ self-interest. Hence, with such faith, one remains steadfast and faithful even when times are tough—even when it seems that God is nowhere to be found. They do not require evidence of God’s love, because they live by faith that God loves them.
In the second reading, Paul writes to his spiritual son, Timothy, and his successor while in prison. He exhorts Timothy to “Fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands” (v. 6). Paul envisions the moment of his commissioning of Timothy, when the heat of faith first began to glow in Timothy’s heart. Paul urges him to tend that fire, to uphold that first courage and set himself ablaze. He does not have to do it from scratch, the gift is already there, just as we all have received also the gifts of the Holy Spirit at our baptism.
The faith Timothy received, which we also received in baptism, is not personal, but communal, and must be used for the good of the body of Christ. Hence, Paul acclaims: “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power, love and self-discipline” (v. 7). In other words, the Spirit we receive is not meant to reside in a state of solitude, but in a community. The Holy Spirit is the one that binds us together, and gives us the power to endure suffering and hardship, the love to support one another, and the discipline to remain steady in the faith.
Paul asks Timothy not to be ashamed of the gospel or of Paul, who is now a prisoner because of it. Paul’s imprisonment is not something to be embarrassed about. Paul does not downplay the hardship; but invites Timothy into it. “Join me in suffering for the gospel,” The suffering is real, but just like the Spirit, it is shared. Though we answer the call of the gospel for ourselves, we do not live out that call alone.
The context of the Gospel reading today, is that Jesus balances judgment with grace, by addressing the way that we should deal with people who hurt us in a Christian community of faith. We are to confront the offender and, if there is repentance, we must forgive. The forgiveness is absolute, even if the offender repeats the offense and the plea seven times a day (vv. 3-4). However, the disciples were moved by these requirements, and ask Jesus for the faith required to meet them. Jesus does not dispense faith on the spot, but instead tells them about the power of faith, even a very little faith.
According to Jesus, if you had faith as small as a grain of a mustard seed, you would tell this sycamore tree, ‘Be uprooted, and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you” (v. 6b). The point is that faith, even in small quantities, has great power. The person of faith taps into God’s power, which makes it possible for him to do even very difficult things as moving trees, and accomplish impossible tasks as making trees grow in saltwater. It is not merely our faith that works these wonders, but the God who stands behind our faith.
How, then, do we get this powerful faith?
The disciples had it right; faith is the gift of God, which we can get through prayer, in ever asking the Lord to increase our faith. Spending time in prayer is fundamental to faith development, as well as association with the people of faith, and our participation in the worship, the sacraments and life of the church in general.
Also, the reading and knowledge of the word of God increases our faith, by informing and correcting it. Without the guidance of the scriptures, we may tend to have faith in creatures other than God: money, a charismatic person, or the government, something that will ultimately disappoint us. We grow in faith also, by acting in faith, since every gift of God is strengthened by the exercise of it, including faith.
Jesus further tells the parable of the Dutiful Servant. He narrates that no one who has a servant with whom he had gone out to the farm would, in coming back move to serve the servant at table; but rather, he would ask the servant to serve him first. Jesus therefore notes that the master should not thank the servant for having done what was his duty to do, as such, when we have done what we should do, we should simply say: “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.”
With this short parable, the Lord teaches that we are wholly His, both by right of creation and redemption later in Christ. Therefore, as God’s own, we ought to serve Him, by doing all those things which He has commanded us to do: “Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded.”
When we have accomplished our duty, well, we should look on for our reward, not in the sense of a debt that God owes us, but the power of His grace on us. Our service and obedience, no matter how perfect they are, do not merit anything before God’s justice, but ends at the tail end of His infinite Divine Mercy and Love.
Prayer
May the Lord help us to be ready to serve without expecting anything from God and our fellow human beings, but out of love for God’s glory.
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