Reflection at morning worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 11th November 2026
A brief reflection on the reading we’ve just heard, Luke 17:7-10, set for this Tuesday.
Slavery was legal, and slaves were common throughout the
Roman world, including Roman Palestine. Jesus’s disciples would have understood
very clearly the role slaves played in society, and how they were commonly treated.
Thank God, slavery is illegal now everywhere. This is largely due to the efforts
of Christians in the C19th who believed it was their duty to end it. It is hard
to believe, but true, that even today some 5,000 people in Ireland are estimated
to be subject to forced labour, modern slavery, at any one time.
In this passage, Jesus is not approving slavery. Rather he
uses the fact of slavery in his society to teach his disciples about their duty
to God, to his and our loving Father.
Duty is something that we don’t talk about enough these days,
I think. It feels a bit old fashioned to talk of duty, doesn’t it? Nowadays we
are more likely to talk about rights. But for every right we claim there is a
corresponding duty on us to act to uphold it.
It is right to expect politicians and government ministers to
do their duty by working for the common good, not to corruptly enrich
themselves. It is right to expect company directors to exercise a fiduciary
duty, taking decisions for the good of the entire company, not just themselves.
It is right to expect soldiers and police to do their duty by putting
themselves in harm’s way for the sake of other people. Yet we know too, that
some businessmen and politicians act in their own selfish interest, and some soldiers
and police glory in their power to subdue and terrorise the innocent. It is to
their shame, and it is right that we should seek to hold them to account.
In the same way, it is right to expect every person to do
their duty by their conscience to support all that is right and good and true,
whatever faith they profess, or no faith.
Jesus tells his disciples - including you and me - to do our duty to God. God feeds us and gives us everything we have. But we must
never sit back and believe that we have done enough to be entitled to God’s
lovingkindness. We are entitled to nothing more than any other human being. Rather
we must continue to listen to God’s Holy Spirit speaking through our conscience,
to see what more God wishes of us. Then we will know what our duty is. Then we must
act upon it, or we will suffer the shame of disobeying our God of love.
Let us take Jesus’s words to heart: “When you have done all that you were ordered to do, say,
"We are worthless (); we have done only what we ought to have done!'
"
