Reflections on the Twenty-seventh Sunday in OT: Habakkuk 1:2-3;2:2-4, 2 Timothy 1:6-8,13-14, Luke 17:5-10
“Lord, increase our faith!”, the Apostles’ request in today’s Gospel sounds so familiar and relatable, doesn’t it? It is a prayer we have all likely uttered from the depths of our hearts. When we are confronted with the chaos of the world, the weight of our own struggles and challenges, the difficulty to forgive, the loss of a dear one, etc., we know, intuitively, that our own strength is not enough. We need more faith, more grace, more power. From our experience then, the Apostles’ request seems certainly justified and holy. However, Jesus’s response is startling. He doesn’t tell his apostles, “Of course! Here you go. Your faith is now doubled”. He does not hand them a heavenly measure of faith. Instead, he immediately reframes their request: “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
Jesus’ response reveals that the disciples’ prayer, while well-intentioned, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. They are thinking of faith as a quantity. They believe their problem is that they don’t have enough of it. They want a larger portion. To Jesus, however, the problem isn’t the amount; it’s the quality and the application. Faith is not a passive object or possession that we could accumulate. It is an active, potent force that, even in the smallest dose, contains unimaginable potential. The mustard seed was proverbial in Jesus’s time for its tiny size. Yet, it grows into a great tree. The power is not in the seed itself, but in the life within it. Similarly, the power of faith does not reside in the intensity of our feeling, but in the truth and faithfulness of God in whom we place our trust. The question is not “Do I have enough faith?” but “Is my faith, however small, alive and active? Does it inspire me to surrender myself to God for whom nothing is impossible?”
This redefinition is crucial because it shifts the focus from our own internal capacity to God’s infinite capability. It saves us from a cycle of anxiety, constantly taking our own spiritual temperature, wondering if we have “enough faith” to be saved, to be effective, to get through our trials. Jesus breaks our tyrannical obsession with quantifying our faith, shifting the focus from the ‘quantity of our faith’ to its ‘quality and object’. In the first reading, Prophet Habakkuk cries out to God from a context of sheer terror and violence: How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen! This is the cry of a faith that feels small, overwhelmed by the world’s evil. God’s answer is not a quick fix. It is a call to steadfast trust: “the vision still has its time… if it delays, wait for it… the just one, because of his faith, shall live.”
Faith, even mustard-seed faith, is what sustains us in the terrifying darkness, allowing us to wait for the Lord’s salvation. Paul, writing to Timothy from prison, echoes the same truth. He tells his disciple to “bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.” He calls not for a faith that removes hardships, but one that gives us the strength to endure them with Trust. Jesus narrates the challenging parable of the master and the servant, which may seem harsh to our modern ears. The dynamic behind their relationship appears to be exploitative, unjust and oppressive. After a long day of work in the fields, the servant is still required to prepare supper, serve his master, and then think about eating or drinking himself. There is no gratitude, reciprocity, dignity, or fairness.
The parable is not meant to be a manual for human employer-employee relationships but a radical theological metaphor for our posture of faith before God. To Jesus, the only true yardstick of the quality of our ‘unquantifiable faith’ is the willingness to serve. We are called to become servants who seek not glory, self-sufficiency, or admiration. Faith is to assume the existential posture of selfless service centred on God. The life of faith is not about waiting for God’s congratulations. We do not do our duty to earn God’s love or spiritual accolades. Instead, we serve because we have already been loved and redeemed. Our service is not a transaction for grace; it is a response of gratitude. Let our faith shine through our posture of selfless service.