Homily for 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The story is told of a man who fell off a mountain cliff. Half-way down the cliff he succeeds in grabbing a branch of a tree. There he is, dangling on the branch, unable to pull himself up yet knowing that letting go of the branch he would definitely fall to his death. Suddenly the man gets an idea. He looks up to heaven and shouts, “Is anyone up there?” A voice comes from heaven, “Yes, I am here. I am the Lord. Do you believe in me?” The man shouts back, “Yes, Lord, I believe in you. I really believe. Please help me.” The Lord says, “All right! If you really believe in me you have nothing to worry about. I will save you. Now let go of the branch.” The man thinks about it for a moment and then shouts back, “Is anyone else up there?”

Is the man in the story a believer? O course, he is. He believes that God exists. He believes in the power of prayer. He believes that God is able to help him and save him from his predicament. And, yes, he prays to God. But if he truly believes in God as he claims he does, why then does he not take God on His word? Why does he not let go of the branch to which he is clinging for life? Is God not able to save him? Many of us laugh at the story because we can recognize ourselves in this man. We believe in God, but when the going gets tough and things do not work out as we expect we take matters into our own hands or look for help elsewhere. We believe, yes; but we are people of little faith

The apostles too, the gospels tell us, are men of little faith. They believe in Jesus and follow him, but when they see the soldiers approaching in the garden of Gethsemane they abandon Jesus and flee. They are men of little faith. The big difference between us and the apostles is that whereas we often see ourselves as keeping the faith all right, the apostles see themselves as men of deficient faith. They know their faith lacks something. So in today’s gospel, they come to Jesus and say to him, “Lord, Increase our faith!" As the saying goes, he who does not know, and does not know that he does not know, is a fool. But he who does not know, and knows that he does not know, is a wise man. The apostles know that they their faith is not adequate. And they take steps to improve their faith. What steps have we taken in the past one year to develop our faith? How many retreats, seminars or bible study classes have we attended? How many books have we read? These are means through which the Lord increases our faith.

In response to the request of the apostles to increase their faith, Jesus tells them the parable about the unprofitable servant who comes back from plowing the field and proceeds straight away to prepare supper for his master and to wait on him while he eats. Only after the master’s needs are fully satisfied does the master then give the servant leave to attend to his own need for food and rest. How does this parable answer the request of the apostles for an increase of faith. Jesus is saying that if we have mature faith we would put the will and pleasure of God first in our lives at all times. If we have faith we will not grumble and complain that we have been working for God all day long, now we are tired and it is God’s turn to attend to our needs. Rather we will forget ourselves and work ourselves to death in God’s service, knowing that God will come to our aid when and how He deems right.

Faith for my deliverance is not faith in God. Faith means, whether I am delivered now or not, I will stick to my belief that God loves and cares for me. This is the mistake of the young man caught in the mountain cliff. He has faith in his own deliverance, not in God infinite power to save and unfailing love for him. God’s unconditional love for us demands only one proper response from us, our unconditional love and service of God. So many of us Christians today believe that true and mature faith consists in our ability to obtain miracles from God. The truth that today’s gospel shows us is that mature faith consists not in how much God attends to our immediate needs but in how willing we are to serve God unconditionally, without counting the cost. Let us today join the apostles in asking the Lord to increase our faith.

Faith.  This is a word that we throw around a lot in religion.  But what does it mean? Before we look at today’s readings, let’s perhaps review its meaning. Faith is about the future. It is about belief, and it is about trust and loyalty.

If we look at faith as belief, it means that we accept things that don’t have any real evidence or logical proof. For example, belief in God or belief in an afterlife.  People have come up with proofs for God’s existence, but in reality most people believe it in faith.

If we look at faith as trusting in something,  we believe in the truth of something and are loyal to that belief. The faith of our fathers (and mothers) that we talk about is our trust that the religion we accept, the path that Jesus taught, is truthful and right. We accept it, live it and believe in it.

But, it is not always easy in our culture to have faith in something, to have faith in anything.  Faith, we say, is a gift. When the apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith, they are asking for something that most humans have felt in their lifetimes. We want to believe in something.  We need to believe in something. But we have doubts. So how can we increase our faith, lose our doubt and believe more deeply than we do? The Apostles were with Jesus and still had to ask the question: how can we increase our faith?

The prophet Habakkuk was asking the same question. He had faith – he was addressing God, but he didn’t think God was listening. How long did he have to see violence and destruction and misery before he lost his faith in God and was no longer loyal to the one God. How many times can we be depressed and alone and unanswered before we give up?  The answer to Habakkuk was that if you are a just person, and act justly to others with integrity, your faith will be strengthened as a result of your living, and even though the rewards are delayed, you can be sure they will come. In this case, faith seems to be increased by living morally and honestly which is being loyal to God’s commands. I find this interesting because we, in our culture, feel that we live morally and truthfully because we have Christian faith. But here God puts the cart before the horse and says that by living morally and truthfully, you will increase your faith. You become more loyal to God by acting loyally to God.

Paul, in the second reading to Timothy, tells Timothy that his faith will be increased by his ordination, the imposition of Paul’s hands on him, in which the spirit increases the gifts we have of power, love and self-control. This is the reverse of Habakkuk, but is what we normally think of – that faith leads to integrity.  So at this point it seems that we are developing a circle here of being moral leading to faith and loyalty to Jesus, leading us to be more moral.

When the Apostles ask Jesus how they can be more faithful, what they are asking in the context of what has just gone before, is how they can be more loyal to Christ, how they can strengthen their belief and trust in Christ and all that Christ demands. Jesus has made it very clear to his close followers that he demanded loyalty from them.  As we have seen recently, he demanded that even that they put Jesus ahead of their families.  Jesus was demanding a lot from his twelve apostles. Their question, then, was one of asking for help in making that commitment.

With his metaphor of the mustard seed, a very tiny seed, Jesus tells them that even with a small amount of faith, God will hear them and answer their needs, even if it was something that needed a miracle. But Jesus also tells them that their faith at this point is very weak. He doesn’t mean this as a put down. Jesus explains that the Apostles do have faith and that with the amount of faith they already have, they can do impossible things.

Then Jesus tells a short parable about a man who has only one servant. And that servant is expected to do not only the outside work, but also the inside work or preparing meals.  A servant is hired and expected to do what an employer asks. Some tasks will be more difficult and time consuming than others. We shouldn’t expect the employer to do the servant’s task of making supper and having the servant sit down to eat with him.  It doesn’t work that way. Do we give special favors to a person who is just doing his or her job adequately? The end of the parable simply means that a good servant is expected to just do his or her job.  This is similar to the Habakkuk reading in that by doing what you are supposed to do, your faith will increase. The Twelve, to increase their faith, have to do the work of Jesus has taught and expects them to do. Faith is a gift! We don’t get it by working harder for it.

So what can this mean for us this week? I am sure we all struggle with our faith at some time or another. First of all we need to recognize that it is a gift to us.  It is a grace. We sing “Amazing Grace” often because it explains that the word grace means ‘gift’.  Faith is our gift – it has been given to each of us here, some more than others. Some of us might have the faith of a mustard seed, others might have been given a greater faith.  But we can use what we are given and do amazing things with it – move mountains! All we need to do is to accept and come to grips with this gift of faith. We need to do the things that we are expected to do, the things Jesus asks us to do – love our neighbor, love God. If we work at these things, we will be increasing our faith. To work to bring and end to injustice in the world and to work toward making the kingdom of heaven happen here on earth is what we must do as Christians.  It is expected of us.

The late archbishop Fulton J. Sheen used to say that as Christians we are God’s chosen people but from the way we live out our faith one would think that we are God’s frozen people. What is the key to enthusiasm in living the Christian life? How can we serve the Lord with dynamism? In today’s second reading from Second Timothy Paul shares with Timothy his recipe for enthusiasm in the faith.

Second Timothy was the last letter that Paul wrote. Paul wrote it when he was “chained like a criminal” in a prison in Rome ( 2:9) expecting to be put to death any time. “The time of my departure has come” (4:6), he writes. So this letter can be seen as Paul’s last will and testament to his “beloved child” Timothy (1:2). Paul gives Timothy the example of his own life, how he has remained fearless and dynamic in bearing witness to the Lord even in the face of impending death. He shares with Timothy his recipe for enthusiasm in serving the Lord. The recipe Paul gives Timothy can be summarized in one short sentence: Believe it, live it, and teach it.

For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands (1:6). The opening words of the reading give us Paul’s purpose in writing these last words to Timothy. It is to remind him to rekindle the gift of God that is within him. Even though Timothy is a bishop he still needs to be reminded that there are gifts that God has given him for the service of the church which still lie dormant within him. The same can be said of any of us who have received the laying on of hands – at baptism, confirmation or ordination. Some of us think that we have no gifts. Maybe it is more correct to say that we have not yet rekindled the gift of God within us. But the gift is there.

For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline (1:7). What is this gift that God has given us? It is the spirit of God Himself. This spirit is not a spirit of cowardice or frozenness. It is the spirt that gives us power in our relationship with God, love in our relationship with our neighbour, and self-discipline in our relationship with ourselves. The Greek word used here for power is dynamis. This is what makes us dynamic sons and daughters of God. It empowers us to serve the Lord with dynamism as opposed to lukewarmness.

In the second part of the reading Paul spells out three practical effects that will be seen in our lives when we rekindle the gift of the Holy Spirit that lies dormant within us: (1) We shall live out the faith in our lives without fear of suffering or death: “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” (1:8). (2) We shall believe the sound doctrine that comes from the apostles and not water it down: “Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1:13). (3) We shall guard and hand on to others (teach) the deposit of the faith that has been handed down to us: “Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us” (1:14).

The endings of these last three verses give us a key to how we can obtain and maintain enthusiasm. Put the endings of these three verses together and you get the answer: “relying on the power of God … in Christ Jesus … with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.” The word enthusiasm comes from two Greek words, en meaning in, and theos meaning God. Paul is saying that it is by immersing ourselves into God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – that we rekindle the life of God within us. With that we no longer live as God’s frozen people but as God’s chosen people in dynamism, love and self-discipline.

So let us think this week about how we are doing in what has been expected.  Have we shown love to our God and neighbor?  In what little ways?  Have we fought to bring justice to all people?  In what little ways? Have we tried to transform the world and make it a little better place?  In what little ways? If we are not using our gift, it will not grow. From the littlest seeds, great trees can grow. And even a tiny mustard seed bears much fruit!

By Bishop Kasomo Daniel

Bishop of The Society of St.Peter and Paul (SSPP)