Care for creation and wait in patience. – Tom Mundahl reflects on Habakkuk 2:1-4 and Luke 17:5-10

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary 

Readings for October 2-8, Year C (2013, 2016, 2019, 2022)

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
Psalm 37:1-9
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10

For more than fifteen years we have grown “Grandpa Ott’s Morning Glories.” But earlier this year, we wondered what had happened to this vining purple perennial? Was it the cool, damp spring? Was the thin soil next to our alley driveway finally depleted, despite our attempts to amend it? Where were these flowers that had greeted us every morning for so many years?

We should not have given in to despair quite so easily. After all, were not these seeds that Baptist John Ott had brought from Bavaria more than a century ago, the very seeds that had sent Diane Ott Whealy, co-founder of Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, IA, on a forty-year journey of seed preservation? For, in late June, they were back—the vivid flowers opening to the sun as they have for centuries. We needed what Henry David Thoreau called “Faith in a Seed” (cf. Thoreau, Faith in a Seed, ed. Bradley P. Dean, Washington D.C., Island Press, 1993, p. 207).

Just as in gardening, so in the remainder of life: God’s people are called to a life of faith and trust. As we conclude the church year, we face texts that balance the challenges of life against trust in God’s justice, a movement that culminates on Christ the King Sunday. Whether we reflect on accelerating climate change or the actual use of chemical weapons in Syria, even people of faith may wonder whether this trust is well-placed.

This certainly was the perspective of Habakkuk, the seventh century prophet, a contemporary of Jeremiah. Our First Reading is comprised of cuttings from two dialogues between the prophet and God. The issue is simple: Habakkuk cannot understand why God permits the Babylonians (here called Chaldeans, see 1:6) to occupy Judea. As a prophet, Habakkuk must wonder if there is a word that can be shared with the people.

That word is provided to this “watchman” (2:1) in the famous section from Habakkuk 2:

Write the vision: make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right within them, but the righteous live by their faith (vv. 2-4).

While it may seem difficult to see the ‘forest’ of history among the ‘trees’ of current events, things are moving God’s way. Whether the instructions are to send runners throughout the land sharing this prophetic word, or to write it so large that even someone “running by” cannot miss it (cf. Edgar Krentz, New Proclamation, Year C, 2001, Fortress, 2001, p. 216), what is most crucial is that, even in the midst of this chaos, there is a word that can be trusted, that can be “waited for” (Habakkuk 2: 3). Can we “wait” in regard to care of creation issues that we face?

One might glean similar counsel of patience engaging with our reading from 2 Timothy. Yet, this pastoral letter, providing advice to church leaders in the early second century CE, both calls for an adherence to “sound teaching” (1:13) and also urges leaders beyond a “spirit of cowardice” to embrace “a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline” (1:7). While there seems still to be some level of eschatological expectation (“that day” is referenced, 1:12), the very notion of a “pastoral epistle” seems to indicate that ministry advice and oversight for the long run are needed. That may remind us today that leadership for” the long haul” must include care of creation as a central tenet.

Much the same could be said of our Gospel reading. After a series of parables critical of wealth and the dependence of the religious elite on “mammon,” suddenly the focus returns to the disciple community. Luke’s Jesus reminds disciples that not all conflicts will be with religious opponents. In fact, it is impossible to avoid “occasions for stumbling” (Luke 17:1), similar conflicts, within the new community. They are called to respond to these with endless forgiveness.

Because this is a ‘heavy teaching,’ it is no wonder that disciples ask, “Increase our faith!” (Luke 17:5). At first, we hear a Jesus who seems to be offering the kind of ‘miracle-working faith’ that is described in Matthew 21: 21 and Mark 11: 23. But I think the key to this text is the word “obey.”

Just as even faith the size of a “mustard seed” (v. 6) in parabolic language could lead to a mulberry tree “planted in the sea,” so also that same increase in faith would lead to something even more important—the obedience of servants. As we recall the arrogance of the rich man who continued to ‘lord it over’ Lazarus even in death (Luke 16:19-31), we see the contrasting style of relation that characterizes the disciple community.

Rather than a cause for panic among anxious disciples, Jesus’ teaching about the inevitability of conflict and the need for forgiveness is not designed to create religious “superstars”; rather, it describes a discipline that is “the absolute minimum for life in the kingdom” (Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Collegeville, 1991, p. 261). No longer is the hyperbole centered on miraculous feats of faith (v. 6), but on the action of “worthless slaves,” who do “only what we ought to have done!”( Luke 17:10). Of course, there is nothing “worthless” about this obedience; that is the real miracle. And, in Luke, where Jesus calls disciples to “take up crosses daily” (Luke 9:23), it is obedience for the foreseeable future and beyond.

That is the challenge for people of faith caring for creation—dealing honestly with the urgent need for response to issues like climate change, water resources, and population—while retaining a stance of patient waiting and expectation. Is this possible? What resources might we have to assist us?

Psalm 37 may help us here. On first reading, you may have been reminded of “O Rest in the LORD,” the aria from Mendelssohn’s oratorio, “Elijah” (If you ‘Google’ this, you will hear fine YouTube performances). How are we to “rest in the LORD” in the midst of the environmental challenges that threaten creation? Perhaps one response might be a re-appropriation of the Sabbath.

Sabbath assumes a relationship between work and rest. Only it is the reverse of what we often understand. Americans rest in order to work more efficiently. Sabbath theology suggests that we work in order to celebrate the Sabbath. And what is the Sabbath? Is it not the gift of menuha, rest that comes from the last day of creation? (Genesis 2:2-4). And on that day does not humankind share with all that lives the “blessings” of creation? (see Norman Wirzba, The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age, Oxford, 2003, pp. 34-41)

Then the words of the psalmist take a deeper meaning: “Trust in the LORD, and do good; so you will live in the land and enjoy security” (Psalm 37:3). Living in a Sabbath-oriented world may provide both the sense of purpose and energy to “listen to” (a root meaning of “obey”) all creation, to care and serve it, and to wait in patience—even for Grandpa Ott’s Morning Glories.

Tom Mundahl, St. Paul, MN                                    tmundahl@gmail.com

For additional care for creation reflections on the overall themes of the lectionary lessons for the month by Trisha K Tull, Professor Emerita of Old Testament, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and columnist for The Working Preacher, visit: http://www.workingpreacher.org/columnist_home.aspx?author_id=288