This Sunday’s Gospel brings to the fore two issues of concern for the followers of Jesus: faith and slavery.  In the first part of the Gospel we hear the apostles asking Jesus to increase their faith.  Jesus replies with that well known metaphor – if your faith were the size of a mustard seed you could say to this mulberry tree ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea’ and it would obey you.  It seems that the image of throwing a large tree, or a mountain, into the sea was not an uncommon metaphor at that time.  And it is important to remember that it is a metaphor.  Jesus seems to be telling his disciples that the faith they have is enough.  Just a little seed of faith, like we have, is enough to do great things.  But the disciples would not use their faith to transplant trees into the sea!  The gift of faith is instead called on to manifest acts of forgiveness, healing and justice.  It is about building communities of peace and inclusion.  These are the marvellous things that faith can do.

The second part of the Gospel is more difficult for us to hear.  It talks about a slave working in the fields all day and then preparing her masters dinner.  Must we be grateful to the slave for doing what she was told?  So with us as followers of the Lord.  We should say “we are merely servants: we have done no more than our duty”.

This time, Jesus has used the metaphor of a slave to illustrate the disposition of a disciple.  To follow the Lord is to accept the gift of faith, and to do great things in the name of forgiveness and justice, and to attribute the glory to God.  We are not seeking accolades or glory for ourselves.

The difficulty for us is that this second metaphor jars with our understanding of human rights and slavery.  The world of the New Testament seems to accept that slaves are part of the structure of society.  They are referred to as being sold, thrown into prison, tortured, beaten, dismissed and so forth.  While we might accept the metaphor in relation to our good works being attributed to God, we should reject the notion that any person should be ‘enslaved’ to another.

We may think that our world is freed from slavery today, but in fact there are many examples of enforced child labour.  The United Nations, Amnesty International and many religious orders continue to highlight the millions of children exploited in parts of the mining industry and global supply chains.  Similarly, Australian Catholic Religious Against the Trafficking of Humans (ACRATH) advocate constantly for the ending of the trafficking of vulnerable persons, either in the labour market or for sexual exploitation.

The call of the gospel today is to turn our faith, as small as it may be, to increase the common good: to obliterate slavery, to provided opportunity for all, to build a culture of peace, forgiveness and inclusion, to raise the dead to new life and to proclaim the Lord’s year of favour.  A faith that can do that is even more incredible than uprooting a tree and planting it in the sea!

Fr Brendan Reed