“We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty” (Lk 17:10).
We have had a good run of challenging Gospel passages this summer . . . enough to make one wonder if really the whole gospel just is difficult. Not unlike those original hearers two thousand years ago, we find ourselves constantly doubting whether the Lord could really mean what he is saying. So often this seems to be exactly what is intended, because it requires us to listen more closely. Usually we find that the message is indeed hard, but it is not without hope; indeed, the hope and the joy are usually embedded within the hardness, which comes more from our own hardness of heart than from the message itself.
Today we have to listen to this story about servants and masters. (Some translations say, probably more accurately, “slaves,” but that’s another homily.) Before I’ve come at this from the angle of how God is a better and more perfect master than any earthly master could ever be—the kind of master, in fact, who is the source of real freedom. But this time I really want to focus a little more on the context of the disciples asking the Lord for more faith.
It’s a sort of humblebrag, maybe: one can imagine them feeling a little bit proud of themselves for recognizing the true Messiah, for leaving everything to follow him, for making sacrifices of family and work to live this life as roaming preachers and healers.
The Lord’s comments about faith the size of a mustard seed could be a reminder that even a little faith is quite powerful—so there’s no need to fret about perfection. That would be the right message for someone who worries that they’re never doing enough, who’s constantly doubting the Lord’s favor and goodness. But there could also be, for those who are fairly confident in the strength of their faith, a sober reminder that perfect faith is possible only from God—the disciples, in other words, do not in fact seem capable of moving mountains, despite their faith in Jesus.
Likewise, the mini-parable about masters and servants could be a kind of put-down of those who think they’re doing God a favor by all their hard work. Hey, God, look at all these things I’ve given up! Look at all this sin that I’ve avoided, even when I was tempted! Look at all the brilliant things I’ve said, the hard work I’ve put in! Easy thoughts for any serious disciple; all the more tempting for someone in any kind of apostolic work, like yours truly. And the response to this is pretty blunt: wasn’t that, you know, just doing what you were supposed to do? I mean, do I expect my wife to throw me a party just because I unclog a toilet? Do my children think they deserve a prize every time they successfully put on their socks? Should I tip the grocery store clerk just for successfully counting out my change? Do we think we should get a ticket straight to the beatific vision and a personal autographed icon of Our Lady just because we managed to go a day without falling into serious sin?
Let me just say: rewards, incentives, psychological tricks, or whatever have their place in this world. But this bears remembering: sin, and all the disordered desires that plague us, is not normal. Holiness is normal. Sin is abnormal. Disordered desire is abnormal. We were created for holiness, for goodness, for divine service. The fact that between Adam and Mary not a single person actually did what he was created to do doesn’t change the reality of what we were created to be and to do. So, again, we’re not doing God a favor by being good or avoiding evil. We’re fulfilling our natural vocation.
Hence the response: “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.”
But I want to pick at this phrase a little. This is one of the (very) rare moments when I think the New American Bible has a better translation than the RSV. Instead of “unworthy” servants, it reads “unprofitable” servants. It shares that translation with the King James and the Douay-Rheims, among others. I think it is worth dwelling a little more on this idea of being “unprofitable.”
Of course, we may be also “unworthy,” but probably we think of that concept a little differently. It suggests more something to do with our nature or our character; we are “not worthy” to approach the Sacrament because, like the centurion, we are unclean. But it is our worthiness, our human dignity, which is what the word in Latin usually connects to, that is itself transformed by the Incarnation. Our lowly state is elevated by union with the divine nature.
In any case, that isn’t quite right for what’s going on in Luke 17. The Greek word is achreios, which can be translated “unworthy,” but the more customary translations are “useless,” “unprofitable,” or even “lacking in merit.” The same word is used, in a more obviously economical context, for the “unprofitable” servant in Matthew 25, who buries his talent and refuses to invest it; he is cast into the outer darkness because he is “unworthy,” to be sure, but his “unworthiness” of character is revealed clearly by his lack of profit, his refusal to invest his resources toward something greater.
Now, I would be the last person to harp on economic metaphors in Scripture; I think the forensic concept of atonement that occupies the heart of many a modern Western person’s concept of salvation is often incomplete and misleading, because salvation is about the transformation of the human person, not the paying of a cosmic bill. But at the same time, we have to take seriously this language of “profit,” which does figure prominently in the tradition. Probably even more than in Scripture, it shows up quite often in Latin prayer, including our own (Divine Worship) missal, where it appears fifty-six times in the proper orations for holy Mass! Often we hear about the examples of saints and their prayers being “profitable” for us. Or we pray that the sacraments will be “profitable” for our salvation, or for the healing of our souls. It seems most common in the “prayer over the offerings,” what used to be called the “secret,” said by the priest just before the sursum corda and the eucharistic prayer or canon.
I think that in that offering prayer, we can find our way to the heart of what “profit” really means in the liturgical tradition, and by extension for the Christian life, and what we should take from the words of the Gospel. What is “profit” if not getting more out than what you put in? It doesn’t have to be currency, though profit in currency makes no less sense than it does with agricultural crops. I don’t think we could even conceive of a more “profitable” venture than the celebration of Mass. In the offertory prayers, we are especially aware of this reality, for what we offer is merely these small gifts of bread and wine, along with our prayers, and our small gifts of time and effort and other ancillary items like candles and incense and song—and what we get out of it is life and immortality, union with God, fellowship with one another, a foretaste of heaven on earth.
Back to the scene of master and servants: as servants of the Lord, we are incapable of being profitable on our own. We already owe him everything. There is nothing more than we can give that we do not already owe. So this is the starting point. But then there’s that little matter of faith . . . the mustard seed, if you will, that tiny spark of trust in God, who can make even our meager work profitable, if he wills.
You see, I don’t think, in the end, that God is all that much like the master in the story. He knew we were unprofitable, in cosmic terms, but his love didn’t depend on us being profitable. We don’t have a right to it, but he all the same gives us, in supernatural grace, the ability to profit, to merit, to be useful, in his restoration of creation. So if we combine these two stories about faith and works, we may find that we should say, We are unprofitable servants, Lord, but we trust that you will use our work for your glory, and that our work will not be in vain. Therefore we can strive for the good, not merely because we must, but because we know that God is able to bring everything to perfection in his own time.