Twenty Seventh Sunday (Year C)

Twenty Seventh Sunday October 02, 2022

Habakkuk 1:2-3;2:2-4; 2 Timothy 1:6-8,13-14; Luke 17:5-10

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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.

A beautiful example is found in the first reading of the day. Destruction, violence, strife, contention, these had become the norm of the day. Habakkuk was frustrated because the Lord was not taking control of the situation. He complained that the Lord God would not save the people. Responding to Habakkuk's cry to Heaven, the Lord God answered, telling him to write the vision and make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.  In His message, God said that there is still a vision for the appointed time which speaks of the end and does not lie.

Faith is not about giving intellectual agreement to a particular doctrine or idea. Faith is not about how much or how strongly we believe Jesus’s words or actions. When we speak about a married couple’s faithfulness we do not mean they believe or agree with each other’s ideas or even a particular understanding of marriage. They are faithful because they have committed themselves to each other in love and trust. They are faithful because they continually give their life to the other and receive the other’s life as their own. They are faithful because they carry with them that one relationship wherever they go, in all that they are and all that they do. So it is in our faith-relationship with Jesus.

Faith, however, is not lived out in the abstract. It is practiced day after day in the ordinary everyday circumstances. Some days when the pain and heaviness of life seem more than we can carry it is by faith, relationship with Jesus, that we get up each morning and face the reality of life.

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.

Happy Sunday