LCMNU Homecoming Sunday Worship

Guest Preacher:  Katie Martini ‘17

17th Sunday after Pentecost

Texts:  Habakkuk 1: 1-4; 2:1-4; Psalm 37: 1-9; and Luke 17: 5-10

October 5, 2025

Good morning, everyone. It is so nice to be back here, and it also feels a bit surreal. As I was preparing for this, I had flashbacks to the last time I was invited to give a sermon, my senior year, which feels like decades ago, probably because it has been almost an actual decade since I was last here.

In talking with Deanna, memories of my time here started flooding back.  Laughing so hard we’d cry on car rides to go tutor, sitting on those couches over there commiserating over midterm and finals seasons, which somehow felt like a never ending season, and gathering for Wednesday suppers with friends. Being back here is surreal, because, now, 8 years after I’ve graduated, college almost feels like a fever dream.

 Since college, I’ve gone on to graduate school, lived in a few different states until I’ve found where I think may be home for good; I’ve made deep friendships, fallen in love, and then out, and then back in, again; I started my first job as a speech pathologist, felt a lot of imposter syndrome – how could I ever be the expert in any room on any topic?

But somehow that “fake it til you make it and hope nobody notices” mentality, has morphed into feeling confident enough to even mentor new speech pathologists. 

If college Katie heard this short summary of life after college, I don’t know if she would believe it.  Hindsight is truly 20/20, and in the 8 years it’s taken to start feeling like an adult, there has also been a lot of uncertainty that we sometimes erase when we reflect back. 

Because there was also lot of worry, fear, confusion, second-guessing my decisions, wondering if I’m truly living out my vocation, something I’m sure Deanna continues to talk about here. And there has been, and still is, so much waiting for these answers.

I think waiting is one of the hardest things we do as human beings. I’ve worked with families who are desperate for their toddler to start talking, for answers about why their baby isn’t meeting milestones.  I’ve watched friends lose family members, waiting for the debilitating pain of grief to ease. We all waited, and in many ways, still wait, for a sense of normal to return after COVID turned society upside down.

College can sometimes feel like its own bubble, with its own rules, but there is still a lot of waiting. For grades, for internship acceptances, for GRE scores, for graduate school interview results.  To feel a sense of belonging, to feel like you’re confident in what you want to do for the rest of your life. And the stakes feel so high - like your entire future rides on these answers.  Because, in some ways, it does.

For me, a lot of my time at Northwestern, especially the first few years, was really difficult.  Being from Philly, I didn’t have my family and friends around to lean on, and for the first time in my life, I felt alone. I had roommate problems that ended with me not feeling safe, and having to move mid quarter back into the dorms. I found myself suddenly having to work hard for grades that had once come so easily. I struggled with extreme anxiety that turned into panic attacks, and I didn’t yet have any strategies to help me cope. I spent a lot of nights wondering how I would ever make it through college. I felt very alone, and often I didn’t even know what I was waiting for, but surely this couldn’t be the college experience that tv shows glamorize and loved ones looked back on so fondly. It felt like I was waiting for that quintessential college experience to happen to me. 

And as people of faith, who believe in a God who is always with us, who hears our prayers, and knows the desires of our heart, waiting can feel a lot like asking: “why”, “where are you, God?”, and “when will you hear me?” I asked these questions a lot during college, and I still do today.

Zooming out of our own experiences, these questions still apply.  In a world where the news is increasingly full of unprecedented times, we sometimes feel a sense of fear in these questions.  Where are you, God, as families are being separated? Why are people being shot and losing their careers for speaking on their beliefs? When will you step in and end the constant existential dread that seems to cloud every news story?

Our texts today speak directly into this experience of waiting. Habakkuk cries out, “How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you ‘Violence!’ but you do not save?” He looks at the brokenness of his society—violence, injustice, wrongdoing —and wonders why God is taking so long to respond. The prophet is waiting for answers, for guidance on next steps, for anything from God, and the waiting feels unbearable. 

We know that cry. “How long, O Lord?” How long until I feel like I have community here, until I feel like I know what I’m supposed to do with my life? How long until we see justice, mercy for the suffering, peace for the weary? The cry of Habakkuk is not one specific to his time—it is the prayer of every believer who has faced silence in the waiting.

But God responds to Habakkuk. He promises: my timing is not your timing, but my promise will hold. God calls Habakkuk to live by faith even in the gap between the promise and its fulfillment. “The righteous live by their faith.”

Psalm 37 echoes this same call. “Do not fret because of the wicked… Trust in the Lord, and do good… Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him.” Waiting can tempt us to despair or to envy those who seem to prosper without God. But the psalm encourages us: waiting is not wasted time when it is waiting on God. It is active trust, rooted in the assurance that God’s faithfulness is stronger than our fear.

This idea reminds me a lot of my work with parents of children with disabilities. I often have to be the bearer of bad news. That no, there isn’t a quick fix to this. No medicine that will suddenly make their child start speaking in sentences. That this may be something your child will struggle with for years to come. But, I can also offer hope - with the use of strategies, hard work, and lots of patience, their child will communicate. It takes active waiting - day in and day out, choosing to believe that progress will come, even if we don’t quite see it yet.

Active waiting, can also just be called living. And we are not called to live alone in this waiting.  For me, it’s through community that living in the waiting seems possible.  I watch as families lean on grandparents, friends, siblings, teachers, therapists, and doctors to help them walk through the uncertainty, and keep hope alive. And out of this seemingly awful experience, communities grow.

I found during college that the friendships I was forming were the keys to waiting amidst change and stress and fear. And, if I hadn’t had these experiences, if I’d been comfortable from the start, I don’t know that I would have challenged myself to make these friendships, many of which led me closer to God. I even chose to be baptized. God used a time of waiting for good.

In these times where our seemingly perfect plans for our relationships, our career paths, and our life timelines go out the window, it makes room for God’s plan. And God’s plan is always perfect. He zooms out of the college bubble, out of the imposter syndrome, out of the fear and worry, and sees the bigger picture, even if we can’t quite yet.

In Luke, the disciples cry out to Jesus, “Increase our faith!”—a request that sounds familiar if, like me, you’ve ever prayed, “God, I don’t think I have enough faith to get through this.” But Jesus says: “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

It’s not the amount of faith that matters. Even the smallest seed of faith is enough, because faith is not about how strong we are—it’s about trusting in the God who is stronger than everything. Who sees Faith, even a mustard seed’s worth, and clings to God’s promises when the fulfillment seems far off.

And then Jesus tells a short parable. He once again uses an unjust structure of his time, in this case slavery, to make a point, something he does time and again in his teachings. Jesus’ point here isn’t that the slaves aren’t worthy of eating before their masters. In fact, we know that through Jesus’ life and death, he will go on to flip this script, and offer a different perspective on who should be serving. Jesus, who is fully God, yet who lived a perfect life as man, who by all accounts, is worthy of being served, is the one who ultimately serves us all. But his teachings were not always about dramatic miracles or heroic acts. He highlights here in this parable that it’s showing up in the ordinary, every day moments of life where we can live out our faith.

Waiting is part of faith. The Bible does not sugarcoat that. From Abraham waiting for a child, to Israel waiting for deliverance, to the church waiting for Christ’s return, waiting is woven into the story of God’s people. If you feel like you are waiting on God, you are not failing in faith—you are living in the same story as Habakkuk, and many other prophets for that matter.

 But we can trust that in the waiting, God gives us what we need—not always clarity or quick answers, but enough faith for today. Not a lifetime supply all at once, but a mustard seed’s worth of faith is enough for God to work with.

While we wait, we are not called to sit idle. Psalm 37 says, “Trust in the Lord, and do good.” While God is working a plan we do not see or understand in difficult times, we are called to live faithfully now: feeding the hungry, praying for peace, comforting the grieving, forgiving one another, showing kindness.

Deanna shared with me LCMNU’s mission - who you are, and what you are about. You guys chose to highlight so many ways God calls us to live in the waiting - through intentional dialogue and education to challenge world views and emphasize how we are all siblings in Christ, and through calling each other to action with your time, skills and resources. Your mission gives me hope, as I watch you all choose to live out God’s love in the ordinary, every day moments. In doing this, you are living in the uncertainty of waiting.

Waiting is not easy. But Habakkuk reminds us that God is faithful, even when it doesn’t feel that way. Psalm 37 reminds us: the Lord upholds the righteous. And Jesus reminds us: even the smallest seed of faith is enough.

God has not abandoned us. God’s promises still stand. And even now, in the quiet, ordinary faithfulness of your life, God is at work. May we hold fast to that little sliver of faith, even in the waiting.