Preaching Paths 5 October 2025, Proper 22C

Sally A Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary

A helpful step toward preaching from today’s text, Luke 17:5-10, will be to begin reading at v 1, both for study and in the worship service. The high bar of addressing and forgiving others’ offenses that Jesus sets in vv 1-4 is the impetus for his disciples’ urgent request at verse 5: “Increase our faith!”

Jesus’ (perhaps?) sardonic reply about the miniscule faith needed to transplant a mulberry bush (v 6)  indicates that a larger quantity of “faith” is not what they need. Instead, Jesus shifts the subject at hand away from “faith” as a commodity, to faithfulness to the reign of God, which is a way of living. What his disciples need is consistently to practice the ways of Jesus—the ways of the reign of God—just as faithful servants will carry out the tasks their masters assign to them (vv 7-9).

Handling the analogy Jesus draws between a slave’s or servant’s unquestioning obedience and faithful discipleship is awkward, to say the least, in today’s pulpits. In the U.S., the very mention of slavery instantly evokes images of the brutal chattel slavery that took root in the American colonies in 1619 and prevailed in the U.S. until 1865. Preachers must clarify the contrasts between that heinous system and what Luke’s readers would have in mind: a well-understood servant/master contract that was mutually beneficial and foundational to Mediterranean economies of Jesus’ time. Servants received food, shelter and security in exchange for their labor, were often trusted with high-level financial management in the household, and in some cases, could negotiate terms for their freedom.

What Jesus calls for is not enslavement, but a relationship of unwavering mutual commitment and trust between himself and his followers. This commitment and trust is meant to shape relationships between the disciples themselves. In the verses preceding today’s lection, vv 1-4, Jesus enjoins his followers not to lead astray the “little ones”—those whose understanding of the ways of Jesus is fragile and vulnerable to error (v 6). Jesus entrusts us with the hard, but crucial task of addressing and repeatedly forgiving any offenses we may suffer from other community members. Too often in our Christian congregations, long-standing, unaddressed grudges and disagreements fester beneath a façade of civility, corroding trust and hardening hearts. Addressing potentially toxic disagreements,  and practicing genuine forgiveness, can free a community to pour its energy into the whole-hearted pursuit of one another’s well-being, as well as compassionate care of needy neighbors and strangers.

The final verse of today’s reading (v 10) is yet more problematic. The phrase “we are worthless slaves” shocks and offends us. Even granting that Jesus employs hyperbole here—a trope we have come to expect in Luke—does Jesus really mean to reinforce a self-deprecating attitude routinely forced upon women and persons of color in white patriarchal societies? The crucial interpretive key here is to read the pronouns in vv 7-10 carefully. In v 7, Jesus begins, “who among you–?” and then proceeds on the assumption that the “you” he is addressing will automatically identify with the role of master or mistress, and thus will agree that one doesn’t thank servants for doing their job (v 9). Next, Jesus also starts v 10 with “you:” “You [who are now thinking of yourselves as masters], must  regard yourselves as ‘mere’ servants; for that is who you are in the reign of God: servants who do what is asked of them by the One who has called them to follow. The force of v 10 is that the reign of God by no means reinforces this world’s master/servant hierarchies, but unravels them. As Jesus moves steadfastly toward Jerusalem, where his fate awaits, the implications will become more clear. In the city, the throngs will discover to their dismay that Jesus has not gone to Jerusalem to master it. Instead, he will yield to the powers of religion and state determined to take his life. For, as he will teach us, he has come among us as one who, in serving, shall win our redemption (Luke 22:26-27).