What is your diagnosis of the great test of our time? Paying off the national debt? Rising threats from North Korea, Iran, Russia or Islamic Terrorism? Do tariffs and trade wars concern you? Is it the internal threats from national policies on abortion, migrants or human sexuality that raise your concerns? We live in a time of tumult and uncertainty. Mostly life is about fear and distrust. In the first story about people in the Bible, the pattern of human conduct is described. God gives man and woman a good world. He sets up a simple boundary to their life – don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. One way or another, things always fall apart. How are we to live?  If the scriptures are to be trusted, wasting our energy in useless griping is not the way forward.
 
Psalm 95: The griping begins
The Garden of Eden was not the last time in God was distrusted. Psalm 95 is one the most famous Psalms in the Old Testament and describes Israel in the desert during the Exodus. Ancient Israel knew how to gripe. The psalmist sings:

O that today you would hearken to his voice! Harden not your hearts, as at Mer′ibah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work

 This Psalm refers to a story found in Chapter 17 of the Book of Exodus. There the people griped that God had abandoned them.

From the wilderness of Sin the whole Israelite community journeyed by stages, as the LORD directed, and encamped at Rephidim.  But there was no water for the people to drink, and so they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses replied to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the LORD to a test?”   Here, then, in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “Why then did you bring us up out of Egypt? To have us die of thirst with our children and our livestock? ”  So Moses cried out to the LORD, “What shall I do with this people? A little more and they will stone me!”   The LORD answered Moses: Go on ahead of the people, and take along with you some of the elders of Israel, holding in your hand, as you go, the staff with which you struck the Nile.   I will be standing there in front of you on the rock in Hereby. Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it for the people to drink.  Moses did this, in the sight of the elders of Israel. The place was named Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the LORD, saying, “Is the LORD in our midst or not?”  Ex. 17:1-7

 In Chapter 16, God had just fed the people with manna in the wilderness. So, the people turned on God and Moses pretty quickly.  “Massah” means ‘contention’ in Hebrew and “Meribah” means ‘testing’ or ‘proof’. Massah and Meribah was not the last time that the people turned on God.
 
Habakuk: Fear and Faith
Habakuk lived at the time of Jeremiah and other pre-exilic prophets. The crisis of the Babylonian invasion created great anxiety among the people of Jerusalem. In fact, Jerusalem would be destroyed by the Babylonians in the near future. Some of the people of Jerusalem thought they might pull victory out of the fire. In very difficult times, Habakuk spoke of the fears of Jerusalem

How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen! I cry out to you, "Violence!" but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord. Hab. 1:2-3

 Who needs God when everything is going great and your car engine starts in the morning. But pull away the supports to our sense of security and then our griping begins. Habakuk then hears the voice of the Lord:

“For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late. The rash one has no integrity; but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.” Hab. 2:2-4

 Seventy years after the destruction of Israel, the people of Jerusalem returned from captivity in Babylon. The New Testament quoted Habakuk in Rom. 1:17, Gal. 3:11, Heb. 10:38.  Faith is lived in this world because it is rooted in the promise of God yet to be fulfilled.
 
Faith and the sycamore tree
For the previous two Sundays, we have heard about the Dishonest Steward who used his master’s money to buy favor with the master’s creditors. Last weekend, the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man told us the importance of connecting with the little ones that God loves. In today’s Gospel, Luke, St. Paul’s disciple, describes Jesus speaking of the necessity of faith.

"If you have faith [i] the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.” Lk. Lk. 17:57

 First point of impossibility is uprooting a sycamore tree. The root system is extensive because it is a water hog. The second impossiblity is even more so, when Jesus said that if you had faith you can ‘plant it in the ocean’. Faith, the ability to see something through because of hope, unleashes tremendous power in our lives. In short, you could do the seemingly impossible, which is what Jesus does through most of his ministry, up to and including the Resurrection. So the point is that faith can do supernatural things. Faith can do things that are technically impossible, but it accomplishes these things through the power of God.
 
The performance of our duties is at the heart of the life of faith.

“Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.'"   

 Jesus has been talking about pride and humility. The apostles were selected from out of the crowds and given a special place. They had been given the power to cast out demons and to heal. He taught them apart from the crowds. They were sent out on a special mission and returned saying, “Even the demons are subject to us.” Lk. 10:17. They left their families and homes and had been promised the kingdom. The purpose of this parable is to remind us of our dependence on God.
 
Respect Life Sunday
Faith, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, is the lived reality of hope [ii]. From our mother’s womb to our death, we live and move and have our being in God [iii]. When people think of God as Creator, they go back to Genesis and the story of Creation.  But the Bible describes not a God who is an absentee father, but the God who is actively and always involved in his creation, even when evil and suffering tempt us to think it has all come off the tracks. God’s human face is Jesus of Nazareth. ​
 
Respect Life Sunday reminds us all the ways life is threatened. Abortion, in so many ways, is the issue that distorts our national politics. But every fear from the economy, to the environment and immigration is about respect for all life in God’s creation. The thread that runs through all of these fears is the perception that others are a burden. Hope is the virtue “by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC, 1817)   God’s son entered life through the womb of a woman, worked and suffered and died. None of us knows the details of the future for this side of the grave or the next. A woman with a difficult pregnancy doesn’t know what awaits her and her child. Parents raising children, either married or single, have fear for the future. It is a hopeful faith that is necessary. The enemy of faith isn’t fear; it is our own griping. Remember the psalmist, “if today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”