Reflection on the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

We are unprofitable servants, and we live in ordinary times. Indeed, today is the 27^th Sunday in ordinary time. I want to offer words of comfort today, and I apologize for starting off bleakly. But there is plenty that is bleak in the world and always has been. The prophet Habakkuk says God isn’t there, and then he says that God’s promise is on the way but it may be late. 

People were suffering. Habakkuk was the eighth minor prophet of 12. He lived probably around 600 BC, possibly under King Jehoiakim, whom Google says led his people into evil. And it was right before the Babylonian invasion. That’s how it was back then, and that’s how it is today –  ordinary times. I don’t want to minimize how bad it is, but I don’t want to catastrophize. We can’t curl up into a ball of misery. This is the world we have, and we have to do the work to make things better. Like Habakkuk.

The chorus of the responsorial psalm is one I love: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” Apparently it is ordinary to hear God’s voice, practically every day. And it’s ordinary to harden one’s heart. I think I told you last time that, according to Google, “Harden not your hearts” appears in Scripture 35 times. We are unprofitable servants, hardening our hearts to God’s voice.

There isn’t exactly comfort in Paul’s letter to Timothy, but there is a bit of spine-stiffening. God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and love and self-control. Bear your share of hardships Paul says. Pull up your socks. Take your norm in the faith and love that are Christ Jesus. Guard this rich trust with the help of the Holy Spirit. 

They were hard times, Habakkuk’s times and Timothy’s and Paul’s times and our times today. Today is not the worst of times and the best of times. It’s ordinary time. The 27^th Sunday after Pentecost. 

There’s a point to be made by saying this is the best of times, this is the worst of times. But today I’m finding solace in a different point, the point  that we are ordinary. Our hardship under a difficult ruler isn’t so different from Habakkuk’s King Jehoiakim or the Roman rule of Jesus’ time. Like Habakkuk we’re standing in the street to say it’s wrong. And like the disciples in the Garden of Olives, we fall asleep. Even at our best, we’re unprofitable. We’re ordinary. 

What we have is the faith and love that are Christ Jesus, same as Timothy and Paul. We won’t see the end of the story here on earth. Things will keep happening, injustices that people struggle to put right, cruelties that people strive to mend with love. We humans will keep trying to do our job, faithful servants, even if we don’t turn a profit. Our hope is in the present moment of the 27^th Sunday in ordinary time.