Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Luke 17:5-10

Why do you let me see ruin?  Why must I look at misery?  Destruction and violence are before me.  Lord! I cry out for help, why do you not intervene? Those words of the prophet Habakkuk millennia ago could be words on our lips today.  In fact, the problem of suffering and pain is one of primary things the new atheists point at to argue against the existence of a good and loving God.   Sometimes the silence of God is deafening especially when we feel ourselves crumbling under the weight of our labors and burdens.  And I think it is so critical that the Scriptures give voice to the reality of this pain, confusion, anguish and discouragement not only at our personal pain but at the seemingly endless news cycle of violence, the ongoing misery of things like homelessness, the destruction of lives of the unborn, of people of color through incarceration, of the youth through bullying, suicide, etc. The truth is that most of the misery and destruction we see including of our common home (the earth) is a result of human choices.  The opioid crises did not come up from thin air, the vaping issue is not an accident, racial segregation, and the way our neighborhoods are changing and developing is not accidental.  It involves human choices.  The Scriptures today invite us beyond cursing the darkness to lighting the candle of faith.  Faith empowers us with the dream of God for our relationships (what Habakkuk refers to as ‘the vision’), It gives us the strength to see that we can speak to (and uproot) the mulberry tree, speak to the darkness and confusion that obscures our vision, the service of faith challenges us to engage in the work of justice and transformation, because it is our duty and servants of our Lord Jesus.

There was a time when East Los Angeles was overwhelmed by gang violence.  There seemed to be no way out.  Some 30 years ago, a 3-year-old girl was gunned down in the line of gang fire, and suddenly the community woke up.  This has to stop.  We desire something different.  And they began to walk by faith in that new vision.  Faith meant families doing the community night watch, faith meant mothers and grandmothers engaging the gang members as ‘mi hijo’, not simply condemning them for their wrong activities but offering an alternative, a hope, jobs not jails.  Faith meant Fr. Greg Boyle beginning with fits and starts, like the idea of a plumbing company.  Who knew that people would not want ex-cons working in their homes? he said.  Faith meant working through all the obstacles, condemnation of the work and gang-members, death threats, to having the largest national gang intervention program in the U.S.  Faith also meant Fr. G carrying on even after burying some 200 ex-gang members, sometimes senselessly gunned down by people who saw them only for who they were in the past.  This line from Habakkuk is Fr. Greg’s favorite; “For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.”  Faith is that seed of hope that endures though buried in the darkness of the earth because faith sees the darkness not as a tomb, but a womb.  “For though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit appear on the vine, though the yield of the olive fails and the terraces produce no nourishment, though the flock disappears from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, Yet I will rejoice in the Lord and exult in my saving God”  Habakkuk 3: 17-19

The person of faith is in the boat, tossed by the storms and waves of life, but like Peter, sees the vision of what is possible – Jesus walking on the water.  Faith catches the vision and dream of God’s power to overcome, of kinship, of forgiveness, of the possibility of transformation and change – of living and walking differently – and if today we hear his voice – it is a call to step out in faith towards Jesus way of love and service.  We see Jesus’ faith as experiencing suffering and anguish of heart and asking for the cup of suffering to pass, ‘yet not my will but thine be done.’  Jesus crying out why have you abandoned me?  Yet committing his spirit into the hands of the Father.  Faith is the vision of Jesus post-resurrection, bearing his wounds not as a sign of defeat, but that he has overcome through faith in his Father.  Jesus is the just one who lived by faith in his commitment to the sinful and broken human family, transforming it by becoming one of us, by speaking the dream of God – the Kingdom, powerfully demonstrating its power through healing and releasing from bondage, through his suffering and death, by releasing the power of forgiveness, and through his rising which assures us that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

“Yours is the gigantic task of overcoming all evil with good, always trying amidst the problems of life to place your trust in God, knowing that his grace supplies strength to human weakness. You must oppose every form of hatred with the invincible power of Christ’s love.”

“The future is in your hearts and in your hands. God is entrusting to you the task, at once difficult and uplifting, of working with Him in the building of the civilization of love.”

“There is no evil to be faced that Christ does not face with us. There is no enemy that Christ has not already conquered. There is no cross to bear that Christ has not already born for us, and does not now bear with us.