Habakkuk 1: 2-3; 2:2-4 2 Timothy 1: 6-8, 13-14 Luke 17: 5-10
Knowing that the tragedy was coming never stopped it from tearing at my heart. After I was a child, “The Wizard of Oz” returned to network television yearly. Every yr, awaiting her final triumph, children traveled afresh through all of Dorothy’s tears and terrors. And each yr, my soul sank when Toto saw a cat and jumped out of the departing hot air balloon on the last moment. Dorothy followed her dog, and the Wizard of Oz, who had promised to take her back to Kansas, floated away, together with hope itself. More tears would follow!
In fact, every year, Dorothy would learn that the ability of return to that Kansas farm had all the time been along with her. Real desire, and three taps of those ruby slippers, would take her home!
The method to imagine within the vision is to immerse ourselves ever more deeply within the lifetime of the vision keeper, the mystery that we call the church.
Eventually I spotted that the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion were themselves Kansans. They were the farmhands Hunk, Zeke and Hickory. So, although Dorothy had been in a technicolor world of terror and wonder, she had never really left the corporate of her companions. Intelligence, heart and courage had walked along with her right through Oz.
The disciples ask Jesus to extend their faith. That seems as proper as prayer intentions come. We’re all the time told to do the identical, to ask the Lord to extend our faith. That’s why the tone of impatience in his response is tough not to note, although we don’t comment upon it.
If you’ve gotten faith the scale of a mustard seed,
you’d say to this mulberry tree,
“Be uprooted and planted in the ocean,” and it will obey you (Lk 17:6).
Our Lord then adds that it isn’t an issue of more grace being given to us in the shape of religion. It’s quite a difficulty of motion on our part. Are we able to move forward, to act upon the religion that we have now?
That seemed easy enough 2,000 years ago. Now, it seems harder. For the primary time in generations, no less than within the West, most of us now not imagine that life is improving, either for the person or for society. Indeed, global warming perfectly expresses the spirit of our age. The world itself has grown uninterested in our selfishness, and it has turned against us.
We only hear these words from the prophet Habakkuk once every three years, all the time on the twenty seventh Sunday in Odd Time.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to success, and won’t disappoint
if it delays, wait for it,
it should surely come, it should not be late.
The rash one has no integrity;
however the only one, due to his faith, shall live (2:3-4).
List a number of the troubles that didn’t exist the last time that we heard this prophecy, in 2019: Covid, the war in Ukraine, inflation, energy shortages, increased racial animosity. Does the vision still have its time? Is it pressing on to success? Are we sure that it should not disappoint?
Those are good questions. Have they got a solution, or should we start praying for more faith? But you see, identical to Dorothy, the reply has all the time been with us. The method to imagine within the vision, to ready ourselves for its completion, is to immerse ourselves ever more deeply within the lifetime of the vision keeper, the mystery that we call the church.
That’s one method to understand the character of the church, its purpose and its many manifestations. The church keeps the vision. Encounter the church and also you encounter the vision, you hear it proclaimed.
Emily Dickinson has a small poem on the ability of the spoken word:
A word is dead
When it is claimed,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
One spouse never says to a different, “I told you that I loved you on the day we married. Isn’t that enough?” Truth never involves us once for all. It should always be restated, relearned and reinforced. Community is certainly one of the ways in which happens.
Your imagination is way too tiny if the word “church” summons up images of hierarchy. That has its God-given role to play but by itself it isn’t any more church than the Wizard is the Land of Oz. No, the church is that community of people that keep the vision, who live the vision. Or, we’d say, the vision keeps them. It offers them life.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to success, and won’t disappoint
That’s never been easy to imagine, yet our Lord expects us to quit our fretting and to act in faith. The ability to search out our way home has all the time been with us.
There is simply one method to imagine the vision, and that’s to live the vision. That’s what we call the church: those that keep the vision.
Beloved:
I remind you, to stir into flame
the gift of God that you’ve gotten through the imposition of my hands.
For God didn’t give us a spirit of cowardice
but quite of power and love and self-control (2 Tim 1:6-7).
