Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, October 5, 2025
There is a lot of suffering in the world
right now.
There is still war raging in Ukraine
and threatening to spill over into NATO territory
triggering WWIII.
The Israeli offensive in Gaza
has killed tens of thousands,
orchestrated food shortages,
and has been condemned as genocide
the world over.
Decades,
if not centuries,
of social and political turmoil
in Central and South America—
as well as many other parts of the world—
has driven desperate people from their homes
to make a dangerous voyage,
often on foot,
through uninhabitable deserts and tropical forests,
pleading safe passage from marauding gangs
and larcenous ‘coyotes’
looking to profit from their desperation,
all for the mere hope of a better life in the US.
And now a government formed in our name
has made a scapegoat of these people
and is using gestapo tactics to harass and intimidate,
to disappear and incarcerate them.
Our outreach ministries here
have centered around
addressing widespread hunger,
worsened by the pandemic,
and the rising cost of food and housing.
It might be easy to share Habakkuk’s frustration.
“O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack, and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous—therefore judgment comes forth perverted.”
And yet,
some take a different tack.
Some look at all the violence,
poverty, destruction, and tragedy,
in the world and thank God
that they have been spared.
#Blessed.
Trusting that they have escaped by their innocence,
and that in the end,
God will deliver believers
from the ultimate destruction of all this anyway.
Some look at the world and ask,
Why do bad things happen to good people?
Others look at the same world
and their own lives
and conclude
that bad things don’t happen to good people.
These other folks might pray
like these apostles
in our gospel reading.
Give us more faith,
make us more righteous,
protect us even more
from all the evil in the world.
Both the stressed and the #Blessed
believe that God has the power
to transform the world,
to end all suffering,
to rescue and redeem.
One person wonders what’s taking so long,
and the other wants an extra helping.
But the response
that the scriptures give for both requests
is the same.
In our reading in Habakkuk,
there is a mistranslation at the end of verse 4.
In the original Hebrew
that verse reads more like
“the person of integrity will live
because of their faithfulness.”
The righteous do not live because of their faith
but those with integrity
live because of their fidelity.
Their faithfulness to the law and the prophets
creates the world they yearn for.
In our Gospel reading
Jesus responds to the request for more faith
with a pair of parables.
Faithfulness the size of a mustard seed
has miraculous power,
and you won’t get extra credit
for obeying a commandment.
Jesus’ responds,
“Your fidelity is more than enough
to impact the world around you;
so, get busy.”
Both Jesus’ response to these apostles
and God’s response to Habakkuk
remind me of a quote from Abdu’l-Bahá,
the founder of the Baha’i faith.
Abdu’l-Bahá said,
“Sometimes I want to ask God
why he allows poverty, famine, and injustice
when he can do something about it,
but I’m afraid he just might ask me
the same question.”
What good is our faith
if it doesn’t make us more faithful?
What good is our belief
if our lives make the gospel unbelievable?
What good is our trust
if our neighbors can’t trust us?
What good is our hope for salvation
if it means the world’s destruction?
God is standing in solidarity
with the poor,
with the hungry,
with the victims of injustice
and asking us,
“What is taking you so long?”
“How long, O Church,
shall I cry out for help
and you will not listen?
Or cry ‘Violence!”
and you will not save?”
“Why do you make me see wrong-doing
and look at trouble?”
“When, O Church,
will you live with integrity?”
Christ has come to us in the person of the poor,
the hungry,
the vulnerable
to ask us to give him something to eat,
knowing that fidelity the size of a mustard seed
can perform miracles,
and there are no gold stars or merit badges
for obeying the commandments.
The issue was never our faith,
but our faithfulness.
We have the power
and the invitation
to be partners with God
in remaking the world around us,
in doing something about the poverty,
famine, and injustice
together.
If we are #Blessed
it is to be a #Blessing.
At Christ’s table,
we are all servers,
unworthy of special praise
because of the measure of our faith,
which is itself a gift from God,
but called by this faith
to increase our faithfulness, our integrity,
in grateful response to God’s faithfulness and integrity.
Beloved,
the good news
is that we have the power and the invitation
to join God in becoming the answer to our prayers.
How long, O Church,
will we put up with poverty,
famine,
and injustice
when God has given us the power
to do something about it?
Amen.









