Week 27 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Habakkuk 1.2-3; 2.2-4; Psalm 94(95); 2 Timothy 1.6-8, 13-14; Luke 17.5-10

One of the strangest apparent contradictions in the Gospel of Luke arises here. Today's gospel speaks of servants who are not to expect anything special from their master but are simply to do their duty, serving his needs even if they have already been busy all day. We are unworthy, they are to say, we have only done our duty by doing what we were commanded to do.

Five chapters earlier, however, we are presented with the picture of a master serving his servants, having them sti at table, he himself serving them: the very situation today's gospel tells us not to expect. These servants have also, presumably, 'only done their duty', they have been faithful in their service, keeping watch and staying awake until he returns from a wedding feast.

How are we to understand the different contexts that give rise to this apparent contradiction? Is it that the unworthy servants have only done their duty and there is nothing of 'grace' in what they do, no going beyond the call of duty? They are then like the rich young man who appears in the gospels, faithful in observing what is commanded but without the freedom that would enable them to live according to the logic of Christ? Because the logic of Christ is always the logic of grace - of freedom, love and gift, and so therefore also of surprise. It is surprising to think of a master serving his servants and perhaps it is because he is returning from a wedding feast and so likely to be merry and happy, a bit tipsy, and so ready to serve them? The blessing of the wedding feast is contagious, as it were, spreading out to include these servants. Or is it simply that their being still awake, watchful in the small hours, ready to wait for the master even without knowing when he will return: is this them acting beyond the call of duty?

We are to be always ready and the master who finds us so will treat us in the kind way we read about in Luke 12. This is the message of that passage. To be that kind of servant - ready, watchful, attentive - is to live and work according to the logic of Christ. The measure of our own logic will leave us reliable and dutiful but without the openness that makes graceful living possible.

There is a surprise in today's gospel reading and that is the suggestion that a mustard seed's worth of faith is enough to uproot a tree and plant it in the sea. Faith also belongs to the logic of Christ, an openness to the truth and action of God for whom northing is impossible and with whom, therefore, surprises are inevitable, if we persevere along that way of faith.