The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22), October 5, 2025

God’s Call and Faithfulness Persists Through the Ages

The lections for the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost all have to do with faith: the faithlessness of Israel, the faith shown by Paul and commended in Timothy, the faith sought by the disciples, and the overarching faithfulness of God by which we are judged, redeemed, and guided.

2 Timothy 1:1-14 In God, Christ, Church, Marjorie Suchocki explores the significance of Process Theology for the life of the church. To introduce the Process model, Suchocki imagines a woman named Catherine. Asked to introduce herself, Catherine might begin with her name. Her name, of course, was chosen by her parents, who chose it because of its relationship to their faith, their personal history, community traditions, and other factors. Catherine will also describe her major relationships to family, work, and place of residence. In each of these relationships she takes her place in a framework of history and tradition. They partially define her, and she, in turn, partially defines them. Her existence now includes them, and their existence now includes her.

I am reminded of Catherine as I read this letter. Pseudo-Paul speaks of Timothy’s sincere Christian faith, which was handed down from his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. Similarly, the writer forcefully asserts his own faithfulness in continuity with his (Jewish) ancestors. The birth and death of Christ bring new possibilities for humanity, abolishing death and bringing life through the Gospel. But they are in continuity with God’s purpose and grace which began in Christ “before the ages began” (think of John’s “In the beginning was the Word”) and have continued faithfully. Therefore we can have confidence as we receive (prehend) the Christian tradition and express it in our own way in our time and place. Neither Paul’s imprisonment, nor any of Timothy’s difficulties, nor any of our own modern crises need shake our faith in the God whose grace we know through our ancestors and continue to experience into the future.

Luke 17:5-10 It is unfortunate that the Lectionary divorces this passage from the previous elements in Chapter 17. The chapter begins with Jesus warning his disciples and followers not to place “stumbling blocks” in each other’s path to faith. A refusal to forgive one another is one such stumbling block, to which the disciples respond, “increase our faith!” As Luke has assembled his material, both the statement about the mustard seed and the analogy to masters and slaves are a response to their request. The answer to “Who among you” is, as with most of Jesus’ parables, “None of us!” No master would thank a slave for simply doing what was commanded, and few slaves would expect such thanks. The implication is that a lifestyle of forgiveness is not something remarkable; it is simply what one does.

As Master Yoda would say, “Do, or do not. There is no try.” Yoda has no time for Luke Skywalker’s protestations; neither does Jesus for his disciples’. Jesus knows they have the capability, because it is not a matter of their individual qualities or even their faith: they stand in the tradition of God’s servants and prophets throughout the ages. Those

men and women were sure that they did not have the power, but discovered that, through their relationship to God, God’s faithfulness was sufficient for them.

Lamentations 1:1-6 Though we typically read the Old Testament first, at least in my church, I find that I need 2 Timothy and Luke 17 to find any hope in this passage. The strength safety of Israel are in its fidelity to God. The consequence of its rulers’ unfaithfulness to God and to their own people is depicted in relational terms: the city is empty of people, Zion is a widow, her lovers have deserted her and her friends have become her enemies.

If there is any hope, therefore, it lies outside the text itself. It lies in the knowledge that God’s relationship to God’s people began at the dawn of time, that God is faithful, and that God’s purposes, God’s initial aim, persists and is renewed through the millennia.

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Tim Bowman is an Ordained Minister in the United Church of Canada, serving Gladwin Heights – St. Andrew’s Pastoral Charge in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia. He is currently a ThM student at the Vancouver School of Theology, focusing on Process Theology. Tim is a contributor to Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God, Edited by Jeff Wells, Thomas Jay Oord, et. al., and lives in New Westminster with his wife, child, and two cats.