• Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4
• Psalm 95:1-2, 6-9
• 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14
• Luke 17:5-10

We have an extraordinary (and extraordinarily arrogant) tendency to try to dictate to God how God should behave. The readings for next Sunday may serve to warn us against this sort of behaviour.

In the first reading, Habakkuk, roughly contemporary with the prophet Jeremiah, and so living through the cataclysmic events of the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of its leading citizens in 597 BC, rather angrily demands, “How long, YHWH, do I cry out, and you do not listen?” and, “Why do you cause me to look upon iniquity?” Doubtless we have all directed rebellious mutterings at God from time to time. The difference with Habakkuk, however, is that he is prepared to listen to what God is saying: “YHWH answered me, and said, ‘Write down the vision’.” Then he is told, “If it delays, wait for it still, for it will surely come – it will not delay”, and the culmination of the argument (which St. Paul was to use in a rather different way) is that “the just man shall live by faith”. In other words, our response to God’s apparent indifference to our suffering must be to go deeper into the relationship with our loving Creator.

That relationship is cheerfully proclaimed by the psalm for next Sunday, “Come, let us rejoice in YHWH, and make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation”. Here there is no arrogance, simply an exuberant enthusiasm for God that we shall do well to imitate: “Come, let us worship him and kneel before YHWH who made us”. And the relationship is what counts: “He is our God, and we the people he pastures, the flock of his hand; if only you would listen to his voice today – don’t harden your hearts…as your ancestors did, even though they had seen my deeds”. God is beyond anything that we can imagine, but the relationship is unfailingly on offer.

In the second reading, Paul is talking to Timothy, a young church leader, and telling him that he can rely on this relationship, reminding him of “God’s free gift, which is in you through the laying-on of my hands…God gave us…a spirit of power and love and self-discipline”. Therefore, he begs him, “Don’t be ashamed of witnessing to our Lord”. And Timothy is to listen to God: “preserve that beautiful deposit, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in you”.

In the gospel, the apostles respond to Jesus’ insistence on forgiveness by demanding: “give us faith” (evidently believing that this forgiveness business is for the birds). Jesus makes no concessions to human weakness, however, and says, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard, you would tell this sycamore tree, ‘be uprooted and be planted in the sea’ – and it would obey you!” Disciples have to learn that we cannot dictate terms to God, as Jesus indicates by reminding his (evidently fairly affluent) audience, “Which of you has a slave ploughing or looking after the sheep, and when he comes into the house will tell him, ‘Come here immediately and sit down at the table’? Will he not rather tell him, ‘Get me something to eat; put proper clothes on, and wait on me while I eat and drink – and after that you in your turn will eat and drink’.” Disciples cannot call the tune: “Must he be grateful to the slave because he’s done what he was supposed to do?” So we disciples, ready as we are to lay down our terms to God, have to recognise that this is not a relationship in which we can dictate. God is greater than anything that we can imagine, and so, Jesus concludes, “When you’ve done everything that you are supposed to do, you must say, ‘We are useless slaves – we have done what we were due to do’.” If we can grasp the mystery here, we shall be beginning to glimpse how much God loves us – and that makes all the difference.