Unprofitable Servant? That's Our Joy And Privilege

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Course 2025

If we were to survey a thousand websites asking the question, “what’s wrong with the world,” we’d probably get at least a thousand different responses. But the best one I’ve ever seen came a hundred years ago from the British essayist and poet, G.K. Chesterton. When he was asked “what’s wrong with the world?” he answered, “I am.” And then he wrote a book with that title.

The atheist or agnostic or cynic would rather answer, “God is wrong with the world.” If there is a killer landslide, they say “God caused it; God is the killer.” If there is a war, they think God should have prevented it. Birth defects? They either prove that God had a faulty design or there is no God. But we all sense that those statements all come down to what Fyodor Dostoeveski told us: “if there is no God, then anything is permitted.” Denying God’s existence and providence is an excuse for making up your own moral rules of conduct.

The prophet Habakkuk lived in a Judea that was surrounded by enemies: Assyria to the north, weakened by the assaults of Babylon to the east and subdued by Egypt to the south. It seemed to him that his people, God’s chosen people, had been abandoned by their God. He asked his Lord, “why do you look on faithless men, and are silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?” God’s answer follows. The vision of justice rendered seen by Habakkuk still has its time, presses on “to fulfillment and will not disappoint.” The rash one, the impatient one has no integrity, “but the just one, because of his Emunah faithfulness, shall live.

Our psalmist tells us how to express our faithfulness in psalm 95. This is the prayer that all clergy are enjoined to recite every morning, in all situations: “Come let us sing joyfully to the Lord, and acclaim the Rock of our salvation.” Our faith, a divine gift, demands that in all circumstances, we give thanks, bow down and kneel before our God, our maker. We are reminded that our spiritual ancestors, the Hebrews in the desert, hardened their hearts and rebelled against Moses and the Lord at Meribah and Massah, denigrating the free food—the manna—given by God and demanding water and meat. It was such a time of chaos and revolution that Moses, instead of using his staff for prayer, struck the rock in anger. It gave the water they and their flocks needed, but Moses’s faithlessness became the reason he wasn’t called to lead his people into the Promised Land.

Saint Paul wrote to one of his proteges, Timothy, a leader of the church in Ephesus, and prayed that he use the gifts given to him by the Holy Spirit, gifts so often absent from both secular and religious leaders. Courage, self-control, and powerful love. He reminds Timothy to bear his share of hardship, just as Paul is doing in Roman imprisonment. His words are important to us who are leaders in our families, parishes, cities and states: guard the rich trust in the Faith and Love of Christ Jesus.

So when we read in the Gospel that the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith, we should be asking with them. In St. Luke’s account, Jesus and His followers are on the road to Jerusalem. He has already warned the crowd that in that city He would be tried and convicted and murdered and rise on the third day. In this chapter He has told them that scandals—situations that might cause people to lose faith—are bound to come, but it a leader is the source of that scandal, both he and the scandal would find a millstone tied around them and they’d be cast into the sea. And to give them an example of something that might do that, he warns that if a brother or sister Christian harms them, they must be forgiven when they repent. Moreover, if that happens seven times in every day, forgiveness must be theirs.

That demand, it appears, elicited the disciples’ plea that their faith be increased. Jesus answered, knowing that their faith was very tiny like a mustard seed. He told them that even a tiny mustard-seed faith would be enough to work miracles. Remember, too, that the biggest miracles are internal, not external. Our faith and our prayers are more importantly directed toward a sinner’s conversion, an addict’s recovery, an abortion-loving politician’s repentance than toward winning the lottery.

One last point—an important one. What Jesus and the Church teach is not how to get extra points on our heavenly report card. We are all commanded to pray, tithe, spread the Good News, bear up under persecution, and remain cheerful in Christ. If we have done all that, all we could, we shouldn’t be proud. We should be thankful. It’s a great gift even to be an unprofitable servant of Our Lord.