An extended weekday homily on Luke 17:7-10 given on the Memorial Feast of St. Martin of Tours and Remembrance Day with insights from the writing of John Caputo.
Jesus said to the disciples, “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’” ― Luke 17:7-10
There comes a moment — if we live long enough — when what once felt like duty begins to soften into love. When the things we must do become the things we choose to do. When obedience sheds its weight, and becomes a way of belonging.
I think this is what Jesus is showing us in the parable he tells today — a story of a servant, returning from the fields at dusk, hands rough with labour, dust clinging to his clothes.
He sets the table. He prepares the meal. He waits while his master eats. No one thanks him. No one praises his effort. He simply does what love requires. And when it is done, he says, with quiet humility, “We are unworthy servants; we have done only what we ought to have done.”
At first, it sounds stark — bare, almost joyless — until you begin to wonder if Jesus is whispering of a deeper freedom: the freedom that comes when love no longer asks why; when we simply do the next right thing — not to be noticed, not to earn a recognition, but because Love has already noticed us, already called us by name.
Maybe this parable is not about duty at all, but about the strange and holy beauty that blooms when duty dissolves into love.
Today as we remember St. Martin of Tours — a soldier who became a saint, a man who once wore the empire’s armour, and later clothed the poor with his cloak. He served with courage, but when the call of Christ came, he laid down the sword for the sake of mercy.
Duty became love. And today, too, we remember others — men and women who, in the long shadow of war, answered a call they did not choose. They stood in fields not unlike the ones in Jesus’ parable — fields sown not with wheat, but with sacrifice.
They did what they believed they ought to do. They served. And when the guns fell silent, many came home quietly, asking for no thanks — only peace.
“We are unworthy servants,” Jesus says, “we have done only what we ought to have done.” At first, those words sting — they sound cold, almost dismissive. But maybe they speak of a freedom beyond recognition — a humility that no longer needs applause.
Because when God calls, the call does not thunder down as command — it trembles forth as invitation. A whisper. A stirring. A voice that only asks for faithfulness. Not for glory, but for love.
God’s power is the weakness of mercy — the quiet insistence of compassion that refuses to force its way into the world, but waits — waits to be lived.
St. Martin heard that whisper. So did the ones we honour today —those who marched and mended, who prayed and waited, who bore the weight of conflict so that others might know peace.
And though they might never have called it holy, their faithfulness became a sacrament of love. When duty becomes love, the battle field becomes an altar. The uniform becomes a vestment. The small, unseen acts — the tending of wounds, the sharing of rations, the mercy of a shared cloak — become the quiet liturgy of the kingdom.
Today, we do not only remember their courage; we remember their humility — their willingness to do what must be done, without expecting to be thanked. That is faith. That is love made real.
And so we stand in the silence of remembrance — not to glorify war, but to sanctify the service that sought peace. To give thanks for those who, like St. Martin, found in duty the deeper call of love.
Because the kingdom of God is not built by heroes, but by servants — those who, in the weakness of love, make room for peace to be born again.