Lk 17:5-10
Dear Friends, For us, the treatment of the servant in today’s gospel passage can be both distracting and upsetting. We need to move beyond these concerns to discover the real challenge Jesus is presenting to us. It is the issue of faith that helps us to see who God is and who we are.
Faith means understanding and acting on our commitment to Christ and the values of his gospel message. Faith is a call to service. It means the steady recognition and response to the circumstances in our life situation. We should realize that this is our duty, our call to service. It is accepting the proper order of reality.
Today’s short gospel passage is part of a longer section. In this part of his gospel, Jesus is continuing to teach the disciples what it means of be his follower. Immediately, before today’s selection, Jesus presented the challenging issue of forgiveness. For those listening in Jesus’ presence, down to us today, it is a truly demanding task to forgive once a day not to mention seven times a day. “If he wrongs you seven times in one day, and returns to you seven times to say I ‘I am sorry’, you should forgive him”. (Lk 17:4) This lesson is why the disciples asked the Lord to increase their faith.
The phrase about the mulberry tree flying off to the sea is just another example of the strong and exaggerated language that Jesus used to stress a point. What he is saying to the disciples and to us, is that the little faith we have is sufficient if we only trust it and express our confidence in God. Faith allows us to share in the power of God. The impossible becomes possible to the person of faith. Of course, this requires that we accept both God’s authority and schedule.
We should not be put off by the treatment of the servant. This was an example from the everyday reality of Jesus’ listeners. Jesus is not accepting nor rejecting it. He is using it to convey a message that his listeners would understand. The real issue is not how the owner treats the servant but how the servant understands his role. It should help us understand our basic reality. God is God and we are the creature. We must fight the constant temptation to make ourselves god and God our servant. This was the basic problem with Adam and Eve in the Garden. It has been the same through the history of humanity.
Jesus is using the parable to also teach us about discipleship. We need to see our role as servants. Jesus is contrasting this understanding with the constant practice of the Scribes and Pharisees. They saw themselves in a position of privilege and expected special recognition and esteem at all times. On the other hand, the disciple of Christ should seek to lead by example and service. Jesus said he was among us as one who serves. We could have no more powerful example of this than the washing of feet at the Last Supper.
Accepting ourselves as creature and God as Creator puts everything in the right perspective. It means, among other things, that we can never put God in our debt. We can never have any claim on God. When we have done our best, we only have done our duty. We are not living in the realm of law with its exactitude in measuring our responsibilities. Jesus has called us into the realm of love where the boundaries of our giving and self-sacrifice are always expanding to new horizons.
St. Teresa of Avila understood her role as creature and servant with profound accuracy. All her teachings and wisdom flowed from her appreciation of true humility. She recognized, with ever-growing clarity and insight, that God is God and she is the creature. In embracing her humble circumstances, she accepted God as a loving and merciful savior and herself as a humble and sinful child and servant, but one both loved and forgiven. She understood her life, in its deepest truth, as the story of God’s mercy. It is the same for all of us. That is the real message in today’s parable.
