Homily for 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
27th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Oct. 5, 2025
Luke 17: 5-10
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

The Unprofitable Servant
(by Eugene Burnand)

“We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do” (Luke 17: 10).

The little parable in today’s gospel, just 4 verses, is unique to St. Luke’s Gospel.  In it, Jesus tells the apostles they’re “unprofitable servants.”  Luke’s Greek word here, douloi, could also be translated as “slaves” instead of “servants,” and “slaves”  might better fit the social condition of Jesus’ time.

Not only is the parable unique, but some commentators also find it difficult.  As I said, Jesus is speaking to the apostles, and therefore also to us who’ve received his teaching thru the apostles.  That’s one meaning when we speak in the Creed of the Church as “apostolic”:  we profess the faith handed down to us from the apostles.

Jesus, then, is comparing us to slaves, which he does in some other places, as well, as when he tells us to be like slaves waiting for their master’s return from a wedding—an admonition to be ready for the Lord when he returns at the end of time, or the end of our individual lives (Luke 12:35-38).  At the Annunciation, the Virgin Mary called herself the doule, the “slave,” of the Lord, which our English translations soften into “servant” or “handmaid” (Luke 1:38).

It sounds harsh, indeed, to hear Jesus call us “slaves”—or “servants” at best.  At the same time, we call him “Lord” or “Master”—Dominus in Latin, from which we get the word dominate.  There’s clearly a humble relationship between us and our Lord Jesus.  He’s reminding us that when we carry out his instructions or his commands, we’re just doing what we’re supposed to do.  We have no special claim or privilege due to us when we obey God’s laws or when we practice virtue.  God owes us nothing.

That’s all the more evident when we consider our sins.  How often are we unfaithful servants because we lie, omit our prayers, speak ill of others, snap at them impatiently, think or act against purity, swipe something that belongs to another person, eat or drink greedily, ignore the needs of the poor, and so on.  Such thoughts, actions, and omissions really do make us “unprofitable slaves,” or “worthless slaves,” as some translations put it.

And yet….  In that other parable of the master returning from a wedding and finding his servants watching diligently for him, Jesus calls them “blessed” or “happy” and says that their master “will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them” (12:37)—quite the opposite of what we hear in today’s parable.  The master becomes the slave—like Jesus who says, “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45), like Jesus at the Last Supper when he washed the apostles’ feet (John 13:1-17).  That kind of behavior is unbecoming of a master.

Today’s gospel began with 2 verses that seem unrelated to the 4 verses of the parable:  the apostles ask Jesus to give them greater faith, and he tells them a little faith will do something impossible like transplanting a tree into the ocean.  Maybe there’s a relationship between that and our unworthiness as the Lord’s slaves.  Can we believe, do we have the faith, that Jesus thinks of us as more than slaves in spite of our sins?  That our good deeds and our virtues don’t earn us God’s forgiveness but are God’s love and mercy at work in our lives?  We can’t earn our way into heaven, but God in his gracious mercy will give us eternal life.  Yes, it takes faith to believe that God loves us and forgives our sins, and to try to return his love and to believe God has a wonderful master plan for us:  thru our Lord Jesus he wants to give us a place at his heavenly table after we’ve done our humble best to carry out his wishes while we look forward to his return on the Last Day.