Make the Vision Plain

Lectionary Reflections for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

By Elizabeth Kaeton

Readings for Pentecost 18, Proper 22, Year C, Oct. 3, 2004

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4

Psalm 37:1-10

2 Timothy 1:1-14

Luke 17:5-10

“Write the vision; make it plain on tables, so that a runner may read it.” (Habakkuk 2:2)

I confess that there is something very appealing about being able to receive a vision from God which is so clear, so absolutely irrefutable, that it can be made “plain on tables, so that a runner may read it.” That's thoroughly un-Anglican, I know. We are supposed to have the spiritual maturity to be able to live in the tension of ambiguity and mystery.  

Still, I envy the clarity of Habakkuk's oracle, for I, like so many others, have struggled as he does with the silence of God in the real and present danger of evil and wickedness. He demands of God, “ . . . why do you look on the treacherous, and are silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?” (1:13) Oh, that I could have an answer to that profoundly disturbing question that has such accuracy and precision that it could be writ large enough so that even passers-by might read and understand!

In these weeks before what is predicted to be the closest presidential election in history, my soul is troubled. Why are we still at war in Iraq months after our administration has declared “Mission Accomplished” and no weapons of mass destruction have ever been found? And, over 1,000 U.S. soldiers and countless innocent Iraqi citizens have lost their lives in the name of peace? And, the administration responds with simplistic answers that boggle the mind, insult the intelligence and placate the masses?

Why do Palestinian and Israeli people continue to morn the senseless deaths of their loved ones? What is the logic which compels a wall to be built to separate the city as the solution to the problem? Have we learned nothing from Berlin? Can nothing stop the madness?

Surely the very heart of God must be deeply grieved to see the starvation, sickness and slaughter of the innocent. Why is God silent? Why has God not given to someone – anyone – a vision of peace and unity which is so clear it cannot be missed – even by those who would run fleeing from its message?

Why does genocide persist? Germany. Armenia, Rwanda. And, presently, the Sudan. Surely the very heart of God must be deeply grieved to see the starvation, sickness and slaughter of the innocent. Why is God silent? Why has God not given to someone – anyone – a vision of peace and unity which is so clear it cannot be missed – even by those who would run fleeing from its message?

Is it, as the lessons seem to suggest, a simple matter of faith? St. Paul writes to Timothy that faith is either a matter of genetics or modeling: “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.”

In the gospel passage, Jesus has just told the apostles that, “. . .if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,' you must forgive” (Luke 17:4). The apostle's response to this directive is: “Increase our faith!” Good call! But, is the answer as simple as that? Are we not able to articulate a vision of peace because we have little faith?

Not so, says Jesus. All it takes is faith the size of a mustard seed. Something that tiny, when planted, can yield a great faith, he says. Activist Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan once said, “If faith does anything, as shown by the prophets and Jesus, it leads us into the injustice and suffering of the world.”

Perhaps the vision we are waiting for is right before our very eyes, waiting to be writ large for all to see. I suspect Jesus was telling his disciples that we are not lacking faith so much as religious imagination. Something that can help us imagine saying to a mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey. If we can imagine that, we might be able to imagine an end to hunger, poverty, war and genocide. We might even imagine electing a political leader with religious imagination and intelligence.

“Imagination is the secret marrow of civilization,” Henry Ward Beecher once said, “It is the very eye of faith.” Jesus is imaginatively challenging us to take a new path into the Realm and Justice of God.   But, we can only see the vision of that challenge through the eyes of faith.

The Rev. Elizabeth M. Kaeton is the president of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company ( The Witness ), and serves as rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Chatham, N.J.   Elizabeth writes a regular column for The Witness online, Another Word for Justice , and may be reached by email at EMKaeton@aol.com .