Homily for 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Homily for 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Today's Gospel, at least the official version of today's Gospel, jumps four verses from last time where, if you remember, we had the last of the three parables that centered around the notion of steward. What I've done is I've put back the missing verses. So in the Gospel today I'm giving you from Luke 17:1 to 10, because if we start at Luke 17:5, where the apostles say to the Lord, "Increase our faith," which is the beginning of today's Gospel officially in the lectionary, we don't get a sense of why they're asking for this suddenly. It makes much more sense to see them asking for something in the wake of what they've just heard. So I've put back the first five verses, and I hope that you will allow me to use them to make sense of what comes afterwards. First, remember, as I've said, we've had the three parables in which the role of steward and the potential for what a good steward might be is illustrated in a variety of interesting ways — played around with, let's say, in the three parables. But here we have the disciples being spoken to with a view to their future role as stewards. So let's see what Jesus says to them. This comes immediately after the parable of Dives and Lazarus, which we saw yesterday — Eliezer, the rich person, not feeding the poor person, the poor person not even having a voice in the matter. And here Jesus says to his disciples: "Occasions for stumbling, occasions for scandal, are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come." This is going to be absolutely part of the development of the Gospel. Luke brings this out very clearly, that the Gospel does provoke a scandal in a certain way, and blessed are those who are not scandalized by Jesus, because what he's doing is turning upside down the whole order of the world. And there will be people, stewards, who think they're doing the Lord's work by going against that. We see this frequently enough, and they actually cause scandal. So: occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come. Part of the steward's job is making quite sure we don't cause scandals, that we don't become the occasions of scandals, that we enable the Gospel and grace to be transmitted freely, particularly towards those people who might not otherwise be able to receive it. And getting in the way of that is a terrible thing. And here we have our Lord saying: "It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble." Okay — millstone, a large piece of stone… extremely heavy, around which a mule or ox would have dragged another stone forever and ever and ever, in order to grind meal or whatever grain. The notion being that a scandal is like constantly going around in circles doing the same thing until you're worn out, but it's still going on. And discarded millstones were to be found – are still to be found apparently in the Holy Land. The notion of having one hung around your neck and thrown into the sea is exactly the reverse of having your name inscribed in heaven. It means basically your whole being is scandalized, so you're being cast into the sea, which is the equivalent of definitive annihilation. That's the use of the being cast into the sea in Hebrew – in the Hebrew world, definitive annihilation. It would be better for you, for that, than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. In other words, whatever we do, we must not be involved in scandalizing little ones. And "little ones" doesn't only mean children; it means those of small faith, those who might come to understand grace but are held back by our bad stewardship of the Gospel. "Be on your guard. If another disciple sins" – literally "another brother," but obviously this has been de-sexed; the translation is unsexist – "if another believer sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive." So this is going to be terribly, terribly difficult: how to work out in fact when rebuking the offender is the right thing and when forgiving is the right thing, what actually constitutes a sin, whether one is always right in one's judgment as to what is a sin. Being a steward is not going to be an easy matter. "If there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day and turns back to you seven times a day and says 'I repent,' you must forgive." In other words, your principal role is going to be – you're going to have to be terribly careful as to when you are scandalizing, when rebuking is the right thing to do, and how to forgive, which is going to be the most constant thing you have to do, even if it seems like the person who's sinning is going round and round, doing the same thing again and again. In other words, it's going to be enormously wearing – to constantly be open to having the patience to see that something good is coming, even in the midst of someone getting it wrong again and again and again, and making your life difficult again and again and again. So it's in the light of that that the apostles then say to the Lord, "Increase our faith." In other words, they understand what he's saying to them. He's saying this is going to be a hell of a task. It's easy to be boss if you're following a manual. It's easy to be boss if all you've got to do is to make sure that the franchise – your franchise of whatever the outfit – is follows all the things that are said in the book, but actually constantly being in this learning process, and constantly to be undergoing being forgiven yourself, and undergoing being stretched into forgiving endlessly tedious and tiresome people — this is going to be a real challenge. It's going to make you feel like the millstone being driven round and round and round by a mule. Millstone actually in Greek is a mythos moulikos, because it's the mill the mule would take round. So under these circumstances you can see why the apostles say, "Increase our faith," and the Lord replies, "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." Now, some people have said this is our Lord being terribly cruel and harsh to his disciples. My guess is that there's more of a hint of humor in this, because he's taking two very common things: the faith the size of a mustard seed, and a mulberry tree, which was, if you like, the poor cousin of the cedar. In the Hebrew Scriptures you get the cedars, which are the great mighty things from Lebanon; you get mulberry trees, which are sycamines, which are very abundant and plentiful — in other words, of no real importance, unlike the cedars, which are usually signs of great things. You could say to this, "Be uprooted and planted in the sea," and it would obey you. So we've noticed several things. The sea has come back, whereas before it was the millstone that was being cast into the sea; here we have something utterly bizarre — someone trying to plant something in the sea. Well, you've got to be pretty dumb to want to plant something in the sea. It's weird. But he's saying that if they have faith the size of a mustard seed — which is, in other words, the size of nothing — it could say to something as boring and ordinary as a mulberry tree, "Go and be planted in the sea." But it's more than that. It's not just saying something bizarre and impossible. "Be uprooted and planted in the sea" — he's hinting at Jeremiah. Jeremiah's vocation, as given at the very beginning of the book of the prophet Jeremiah, is: "I appoint you over the nations to uproot and to plant." So he's saying to them, "You are going to be living out Jeremiah's vocation." What you're going to be doing as stewards is actually what Jeremiah was doing. You're going to go through a genuine little bit of it, and you will be acting as greatly as Jeremiah. Jeremiah was the great prophet who was appointed for the planting and uprooting of nations, who foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, who got himself into endless trouble, was constantly treated badly by the patriots of the time, turned out to be right all along — and his book ends with, guess what, him telling the people to take this book, tie it to a stone and cast it into the river Euphrates — into the river rather than the sea — but the tying to a stone and casting into the sea is very much a Jeremiah thing to do. So it appears to me that what he's saying to the disciples here is: the person who had real faith, the person who could put up with mammoth scandal, was Jeremiah. Literally everything went wrong. The whole of his life was being faithful in the midst of everything going wrong. So hence the importance of our first reading from Habakkuk this week, in which Habakkuk talks about — you know, that's what righteousness looks like. It's someone who lives by faith. It's someone who keeps on trying to tell the truth in the midst of everything going wrong, everything collapsing around them. Whereas those who don't have faith, whose righteousness, let's say, depends on the winds of who's in charge — they're going to blow away like anything. So standing to and listening to the word of the Lord, having faith and standing: that's what Jeremiah did. That's what being able to put up with a scandal and not be run by it and not mete it out to others, even though you are held to be scandalous in the first place by others for doing this. So he's giving them a strong Jeremiah picture of what a good steward looks like. And then he shifts from Jeremiah to, I think, King David. We'll give him the image here. "Who among you would say to your slave who's just come in from ploughing 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've done all that you were ordered to do, say: we are worthless slaves, we have done only what we ought to have done." Now again, this sounds very moralistic and moralizing — you know, be humble and all of that, be humble and hardworking. I think that there's much more going on here. Remember that only a few verses, only a few chapters before — and certainly this would have been remembered by the disciples — Jesus had told everybody; actually, he told his little flock, which certainly included the disciples: "Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit. Be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them." Now you can't confuse the fact that in one you have the story of the servant feeding the master, and in the other you have the story of the master feeding the servants. There's no accident here — it's supposed to cause us to think. They're being asked in this parable to identify with the master. And of course they would come in, the servants would come in, and they would be expected not merely to have done their work but actually to do more for him before getting their food and drink. In other words, these stewards are not only going to be doing their ordinary job, from which they earn their living, but these stewards are also going to have to serve the people of the Lord. They're going to have to serve the crowd before eating and drinking themselves. It's not a question of, "Well, we've done our job, and now our job is for us to get served," which of course is the great temptation for any of us who claim or pretend to be stewards in the household of the Lord. But here's where the image gets funny. He says, "Say you also, when you've done all that you were ordered to say, 'We are worthless slaves; we've only done what we ought to have done.'" Well, here's a weird little story. This is, I think, where things get interesting. That "worthless," "profitless" — the notion of girding your loins and being profitless comes in a rather well-known story, because you see, when David decides to bring the ark into the city, what does David do? He strips down into what likely is referred to as a linen ephod, but which at the time would have seemed like his underwear, and he dances in front of it happily with all the Levites making great noise. And when they come to the city of David, Michal, daughter of Saul, looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart. Well, Michal was actually David's first wife, and she had fallen for him rather at the same time as her brother Jonathan had. But it was only one of those two that was reciprocated. It was Jonathan's falling in love with him that David reciprocated. He was courteous and correct with Michal. He even went as far as to follow the requisite jumping through of hoops set by King Saul to get married to her, cutting off a hundred foreskins of Philistines to pay the proper marriage price. But in fact, he did that so as to get into the royal family in the proper way. And he never showed any real interest in her afterwards. So we have this poor woman, Michal, who sees David dancing in his underwear, and she despises him in her heart. Well, yeah, she had tough competition. She had Jonathan, now she has the Lord, and she has this very flamboyant, non-participating husband. So David returns from all this, he takes the ark of the Lord into the city, and after he's offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, he distributes and feeds the people, and then he goes back home to bless his household. So what he's done: he's come in, he's brought the Lord in, he has done all the hard work and feeding the people. Then David returns to bless his household, but then Michal comes and says to him, "How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants, made as any vulgar fellow might shamelessly uncover himself." She — you can see — has problems with his behavior. And David replies as follows: "It was before the Lord who chose me in place of your father and all his household, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord, that I have danced before the Lord. I will make myself yet more contemptible" — literally, yet more worthless, yet more unprofitable than this — "and I will be abased in my own eyes. But by the maids of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor." And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death. In other words, what's the image which is being given to the disciples? Think of yourselves as like King David. What did King David do? He abased himself. He made himself look contemptible. For the people who understood these things, it was in doing that that he was actually serving the Lord. And notice that before he went home, he went and gave food to the Lord, and then gave all the offerings to the Lord, and gave food to all the people, and then he went home. And then he said effectively, "I am an unprofitable servant, I am a worthless servant; we have only done what we ought to have done." That's exactly what David's response effectively was to Michal. So he's saying: yeah, be like David. David as servant. David as the one who understood who he was serving. And that means not being David the corrupt king, as we see later on — he's David's servant. And that's actually how you will find yourselves living the other half of the story: that the one will come into your midst and come to your table and will serve you. Those two mentions of serving the Lord, and what place you're in it, coming together. I hope that makes it slightly more fun. I think that this is Jesus actually nudging people into having a bit of a bigger imagination about what it looks like to serve, and not to be too important, and to remember that their work is not over until they have served the Lord. And this, I hope, is something that I can remember as I attempt to be one such. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.