October 5, 2025

Pentecost 17 Lectionary 27

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4, Luke 17:5-10

Epiphany, Winnipeg

First, just a little piece of business to get out of the way: You heard how it ends? “We are worthless slaves; we have only done what we ought to have done.” I’ll ask a quick question: Is anyone here worthless? I look around the room and see no one who is worthless. Can we all agree on that? Can I get an “amen”?

More on that later.

In a parish I served way back in the previous century there was a woman who we all just knew as Mrs. B. Mrs. B. was one of those people who everyone might say was a woman of deep faith. I know I certainly saw her that way. And it wasn’t just because I’d see a Bible on the coffee table when I’d go to visit, or she’d ask to me to say grace before coffee and she’d bow her head reverently. I knew that at the centre of her life was this trust in God, a trust that seemed as simple and profound as “God will be with me through this.” She talked like that when she spoke about trying to get by when she immigrated here way back in the 1940s, and when she talked about her late partner who she missed so much, and when she worried about a grandchild who just seemed to be, well, off the rails a bit. Her faith was a deep thing and an inspiration to me.

She also spoke honestly about how faith seemed hard to find sometimes. Maybe a lot of the time, because she hadn’t seen everything work out the way she’d hoped. She might even have thought of her own faith as smaller than a tiny little mustard see. But she still lived with this trust in the God who had carried her along and who she know would continue to do so. Her faith was deep.

But I don’t for a minute think that Mrs. B. could say to the spruce tree out on her lawn, “Be uprooted and thrown into the river,” and it would obediently pull itself up by the roots and jump into the Souris River. She knew that faith wasn’t about doing tricks or overcoming all the odds to do the impossible. She knew that it was just trust in God who somehow promised that somehow, sometime, things will work out.

We heard a word from a prophet named Habakkuk a few minutes ago. Now I know that a lot of you have stayed up late at night discussing what Habakkuk was up to, and sharing your joys and frustrations with what Habakkuk’s message seemed to be. Right?

It’s OK. I haven’t either.

You might recall what we’ve heard from a few other prophets in the last few weeks, like Jeremiah and Isaiah. There’s always been something about those two and how they are writing and speaking for a nation that’s facing a disaster: they’re going to be, or they already have been, taken over by Babylon, and they find that their homeland isn’t their home any more.

The prophet Habakkuk is talking about…well…pretty much the same thing. He’s writing about the same time and the same people in the same situation, and he gives voice to what the people are all wondering: “God, how long will you just stand by and let the wicked eat up the righteous; eat up your own people?” And Habakkuk responds with a word from God: “The righteous will live by faith.” Which means that God’s people don’t live and trust because they’ve seen proof and everything’s worked out. They survive, they live, on their trust in the God who has promised that they will be free again.” They might not see the tree uproot itself and throw itself into the sea. Their faith isn’t going to make everything turn out right right now; their faith is just a trust that God will keep the promises that God makes. Sometimes it’s really hard for them to trust, and sometimes all the evidence seems to be to the contrary. But their faith is simply that, like we said a few weeks ago, the disaster will not last forever. Life and justice and peace and freedom will come along, soon, or in a generation, or even further down the road, because that’s the kind of thing that God promises.

The disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith. So he tosses in this weird image of telling a tree to throw itself into the sea, and I think that by telling it all that way Jesus was saying that even if faith looks like a tiny thing that you can’t even see, it’s enough. And faith isn’t something you measure, as though you might have this much but maybe you should have that much instead. I might have thought that I had just a little, but if someone just added something to it I’d have as much as Mrs. B. But faith is not something that comes in units that you can add up to something bigger. It’s just a gift given to us. Sometimes it’s hard to live with that gift, but then another time it’s easy again; sometimes it seems impossible to have faith and sometimes it’s the most natural thing in the world. However it is, it’s just trust. Not more, not less; just trust in the one who breathed life into it all will keep on breathing life into it.

After the talk about faith, Jesus asks the question about how a master might treat the servant. Does the master serve the slaves, or do the slaves or servants serve the master? And it all ends with that strange line, “So you say, “We are worthless slaves; we’ve only done what we ought to have done.” Once again, is there anybody here who’s worthless? No. Can I get an amen to that?

But the last thing the servants say is the main thing here: We’re just doing what we ought to do. Things like forgiving, things like loving our neighbour as ourselves, welcoming the stranger, or praying for our enemies instead of wishing the worst for them, and some days that seems like the hardest thing to do. Our life is never about trying to get more faith, or the kind of faith that makes us work wonders with mulberry trees. Our life is a call to love, forgive, and act like everybody counts and everyone is worth it.

So maybe when Jesus seems to tell his disciples, “we are just worthless slaves,” he’s just trying to get a rise out of us. So he says that thing about being worthless slaves and we stand up and say, “Wait a minute! That’s not right. Nobody is worthless!” And Jesus nods and grins and agrees.

In the stories Jesus tells and the stories he lives, nobody is worthless. Not the traveller left beaten by the side of the road, or the child who takes the inheritance and leaves home to squander it all. Not the one who made a lot of money on shady business deals – remember that little guy named Zachaeus? – not the woman in town who everyone says is a sinner, not the one who everybody says is just out of their mind. Not the person being executed on the cross next to Jesus, not even the ones who are carrying out the execution orders. Nobody is worthless.

In the stories that we see or the stories that we live, nobody is worthless. Not the trans woman trying to stay safe, not the person who can’t understand what that gender stuff and those initials are all about. Not a young girl whose orange shirt was taken away from her on her first day at residential school. Nobody is worthless. Not the addict, not the trucker trafficked and exploited – have you seen those billboards? – not the worker who doesn’t have the right documentation, not the one in prison or the one who put them there. Not the Palestinian, not the Israeli, not the Muslim and not the Jew. There’s no one who’s worthless. Not the one who lost their job or failed their exam, not the one who can’t imagine life without that career they had or that partner they loved.

My guess is that all of us have known what it’s like to feel worthless. Maybe I’m wrong; I don’t know what your life experience has been. But look around. As you scan the crowd look at each face you see and remember that there are no worthless people. Not that one, not that one, and not that one. Somebody just looked at you and thought that same thought. The world is full of people who are worth everything to Jesus.

And to drive the point home, Jesus asks that question, “Which of you, having servants who come in after another shift of dusty and tiring work would tell those servants to sit down at the table, and then you’d put on your apron and feed them supper?” Jesus asks, and everyone sits there wondering what the right answer might be, and then Jesus says, “Well, I would.”

Then he calls us up to a table and serves us all the food and drink and faith we could need.