1:1 The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw. 1:2 O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? 1:3 Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me strife and contention arise. 1:4 So the law becomes slack, and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous therefore judgment comes forth perverted. 2:1 I will stand at my watchpost and station myself on the rampart I will keep watch to see what he will say to me and what he will answer concerning my complaint. 2:2 Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. 2:3 For there is still a vision for the appointed time it speaks of the end and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it it will surely come it will not delay. 2:4 Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faithfulness.
Habakkuk 1:1-42:1-4
What is a prophet? We often think of prophets as people who see the future (this definition is what has led us, again and again, to people interpreting scripture as a way to predict the “end times.”), but Biblical prophets are people who speak truth– hard truth. They speak truth to power and to the people, announcing the ways they have strayed from God’s ways and that they are facing the consequences of doing so. In doing this they risk (and often face) death. The prophets also speak truth to God. They face God and ask the question why is this happening? Where are you in all of this pain, all of this violence?
Like a patient parent, God doesn’t respond with a “how dare you question me?!” or “shut up and do as I say,” God explains Godself, usually with the difficult answer that the situation the people are in now is a result of the people not listening to God. But here we have something different.
Habakkuk was likely written around the time that Juda’s status as a nation-state had come to an end, between 609BC, when it became a vassal state, and 586, when the people of Judah were forced into exhile. They were living under the terrible occupation of the Babylonians (here called Chaldeans) and a corrupt government of puppet leaders. The Judeans were facing violence, corruption, occupation, and poverty. It is from that context Habakkuk’s voice cries out with the cry of the psalmist, “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save?”
This is a familiar cry, not only from scripture, but a cry that rings out through the ages from the hearts and lungs of people who have seen violence or experienced harm that makes them question the nature of God, or the existence of God altogether.
I feel like we don’t talk about this enough in church.
People are relegated to their cries of “why God, why” alone, on the floor, in the middle of the night, when the pain at the state of the world or the state of our own lives becomes unbearable. It comes out when we are alone, when no one can hear us, when we don’t have to be strong, or keep a stiff upper lip as my grandfather would say. When no one will judge us for breaking down or questioning God’s wisdom. Scripture gives us a model – it is okay to question God! It is okay to ask God what in your name are you doing and why? And gathering as a community to read it together allows us the opportunity to bear it together – to not be alone in our grief, in our rage, in our sorrow, in our wondering what the heck is God up to and why is all of this happening. Part of the purpose of church community is that we do not have to bear things alone. That we hold one another's pain and suffering, that we hold all of it together, making it easier to bear.
And right now, we have a lot of reasons to cry out to God, to ask why, to yell at God. I want to take a moment to allow you all space to do just that. For those cries you are willing to have read aloud, there are the big poster papers on the back wall again. For those you want to put in the collective, but might not be willing to have read aloud, we have pieces of paper for you to place in the empty baptismal font. We’ll take about 5 minutes for this, then we will read some aloud and continue on with the sermon – don’t worry, I’m not going to leave us here.
--we read aloud people's cries and questions to God--
Habakkuk cries out, he asks God what the heck?! And God says, “for there is still a vision for the appointed time” these things will end, God says. You just have to wait for it! The righteous live by their faith. And here is the promise. The promise to Habakkuk is that the violence, the broken system of justice under which the people of Judea were living would end – and it did! Historically there are a few different lengths of time for this, as there were different groups exiled at different times and different returns, but the exhilic period lasted about 150 years. Then the people living in exile were returned home.
One of the things I love about reading the prophets is that they remind me that humanity has always had cycles of terrible, that there have long been oppressive regimes, that there is nothing particularly new under the sun regarding systemic injustice or personal pain. I am connected to my ancestors through generations of people looking around saying, “This sucks!” They also remind me that the suffering is never forever. That it always ends. That despots fall, that oppression ceases, that goodness wins. We are tied to our ancestors joy and resilience. They remind me that getting through requires a few things – community, making space for good things to happen in the midst of the terrible, resistance and that most important of things, faith.
What is faith? Due to the influences of the enlightenment we have a tendency to view faith as an intellectual assent to the existence of God and the (or at least some of the) doctrine of our denomination. It’s almost like a “yes, we agree that is true.” But this is not the faith of our ancestors. I grew up going to a Lutheran camp in central Ohio. There we sang a song that I always think of when I think about faith. The words are, “to hear with my heart, to see with my soul, to be guided by a hand I cannot hold, to trust in a way that I cannot see, that’s what faith must be.”
Faith isn’t intellectual assent, it’s trusting with your heart. It’s following when you don’t know where exactly it may lead you. It’s believing in God’s promises of a new heaven and new earth, working toward the promised future, when so much of the evidence seems to point in the opposite direction.
In today's gospel Jesus talks about faith, and this past week I heard an interpretation of this lesson that I had never heard before and really liked. What if what he is saying is that we don’t need faith the size of a mustard seed? That if we had even that much faith, we would be using it for our own power, spending our time doing unnecessary landscaping (and so much more) rather than simply following and doing what we can with the faith we have? I mean, think about what the disciples might do given stronger faith? Jesus is constantly playing down what he does with the power of his faith in Luke’s gospel.
What if it’s okay to have faith the size of a carrot seed or a lettuce seed? That what he is saying is that that is all we need?
We take whatever faith we have and we lean into the knowledge that all will be right. We lean into God’s promises to us that, eventually, all will be well. It might not even be well in our lifetime, but that’s okay because we are working toward better for future generations and trusting that, when Jesus returns, all will be restored. We experience little glimpses of the kingdom in our lives here on earth, try to create moments of the kingdom for others, living and loving and giving and sacrificing as Jesus asks. We cry out and keep going, appeal to God and question God and still, at the same time, with our little faith, we trust in the promise of the resurrection. The promise of the kingdom. For it will come, just as we pray.
Amen
