The Long Run: Sunday Reflection

This morning’s Gospel reading is Luke 17:5–10:

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” The Lord replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

“Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here immediately and take your place at table’? Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished’? Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’”

"How long, O Lord?"

That lament comes to us in our first reading today from Habakkuk. However, that plaintive cry for both justice and mercy comes from nearly every passage in scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments, in the Gospels and the epistles. Adam and Eve cried this out upon their exile from Eden, the Israelites wept it during their 40 years in the wilderness as well as during their own exiles and captivities. Even the apostles wondered when Jesus would return after the Ascension, after at first assuming that they would live to see it in this world. 

Habakkuk writes this prophecy roughly at the start of the second wave of the Babylonian exile, which explains the context for its desperation. The Lord answers Habakkuk's plea and gives him a message to proclaim:

How long, O Lord? I cry for help but you do not listen! I cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord. Then the LORD answered me and said: Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets, so that one can read it readily. For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late. The rash one has no integrity; but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.

The first wave of exile has already taken place by the time Habakkuk's prophetic mission begins, and the second is underway. The southern kingdom of Judah is under constant assault at this time, and the Lord is trying to call the Israelites back to Himself through the prophets, notably Jeremiah at this time. And what does the Lord call for? Faith.

It's important to recall how Judea and ancient Israel found themselves in this position. The Lord rescued the Israelites to make them a nation of priests, prophets, and kings so that all may come to them and learn of His Word. The Israelites repeatedly balked at this, insisting on establishing themselves as a worldly kingdom rather than a nation with the Lord as its only King. They put faith in themselves rather than the Lord, usurping His authority while maintaining the outward trappings of faith -- most notably the first Solomonic temple. Jeremiah warned contemporanesously in this period that the Judeans had turned the temple into an idol, under the assumption that they could extort the Lord into defending their kingdom rather than lose his dwelling on Earth. 

The Judeans had not just rejected the Lord's leadership. They had treated Him with contempt in many ways, as Jeremiah also warned, which meant rejecting the Lord's protection as well as His mission. Put simply, they had lost faith in Him, which was the root of all their misery, destruction, and violence. The Lord, in His love, had allowed His children to go out into the world without Him -- and to suffer the consequences of the free-will decision to reject faith and loyalty to Him. 

The parable of the prodigal son again applies in this instance. It may be the most direct parable regarding the arc of salvation through time that Jesus ever gives us in the Gospels. The younger son -- perhaps analogous to mankind, with the angels represented by the elder son -- rejects the Father, demands His estate as an inheritance, and goes out into the world to utterly dissipate himself and sell himself into slavery. What happens when the younger son comes to his senses? He recalls the mercy and justice of his Father, and yearns to return to it just to get scraps from the Father's table. 

But he makes that decision because he regains his faith in the Father.  He understands, through the misery and destruction his choices created, that he can rely on his Father as an arbiter for mercy, justice, and sustenance, even after his brutal rejection of the Father's love. He goes back to humble himself before his Father, but in faith that his Father has not changed and will at least treat him with some measure of mercy and justice -- far more than he deserves, and far more than he can find on his own. 

That brings us to today's Gospel. Jesus offers a hypothetical more than a parable regarding service to one's master, provided only through obligation rather than through love or faith. The Lord does not desire servants; the Lord desires faithful children. As the prodigal son returns, he returns in humility and faith, after recognizing how much the Father had once loved him -- and the Father recognizes this. He rushes to celebrate the return of His offspring because of the return of his faith in the father, even as the son returns to offer himself as nothing more than a mere servant in atonement. 

Jesus tells us in this passage that service matters, but faith is transformative. Faith in the Lord means aligning our wills to His, and that makes our service to Him sacred. If all we do is an obligation, we are not putting faith in Him. Without that faith, we are liable to reject His leadership and go back into sin, destruction, and spiritual blindness while the world deteriorates around us, the consequences of rejecting our mission to be priests and prophets for the Gospel. 

In those times, we will often lift up our eyes to Him and ask, "How long, O Lord?" We are deaf to His response: "How long, my child? How long will you wander in rejection and return to me?" He calls us back through all of the parables; Jesus calls us through the Gospels; the apostles call us through the epistles and through their descendants in the Church. They say Your time of exile is at an end, if you choose it. 

How long before we hear it? 

Previous reflections on these readings:

• Multiplication Tables: Sunday Reflection (2024, indirect)
• We need to talk about our flair, er, faith: Sunday reflection (2022)
• Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Sunday reflection? (2019)
• Sunday reflection: Luke 17:5–10 (2016)

The front page image is "Return of the Prodigal Son" by Cornelis Massijs, 1538. On display at the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands. Via Wikimedia Commons.

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature that looks at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.  

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