A sermon by David Roquemore
Camp Hill Presbyterian Church
May 30, 2010
Habakkuk 1:1- 2:4
Robin and I have decided to preach through some of the minor prophets this summer. We bounced around several ideas and decided this might be interesting. We typically use the Revised Common Lectionary, used by most church denominations, and it takes us through the Bible on a three-year cycle. It covers the life of Jesus between Christmas and Pentecost, then from today – the Sunday after Pentecost, or Trinity Sunday, — until Advent begins, it focuses on the teachings and parables of Jesus. This is a good thing but there is the obvious problem that we don’t read all of the Bible, and some of it we never touch at all.So summer seemed like a good time to step aside from that path and do something different.
In the Bible, in the Old Testament, there are a lot of prophets. The long books, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, each had their own scroll. Then the rest, the twelve shorter prophetic books, were put on one scroll; hence the name “minor prophets.” Their message is not minor nor unimportant; it is the length of the book that is meant.
We are not going to do all of them, and of the ones we read, we aren’t going to read every word. Some of it gets very repetitious. But we will try to present the main themes and messages of these works, in a way that makes them relevant to our spiritual lives today as Christians.
And so we begin with Habakkuk. I want to explore the text from Hab 1:1 to Hab 2:4. and so I am going to read it in sections and comment on each part.
The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.
O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen?
Or cry to you ‘Violence!’
and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrongdoing
and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack
and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous—
therefore judgement comes forth perverted.
Here is Habakkuk’s complaint: how long do we have to wait for God to respond? How much do we have to put up with? When will there be justice? We cry out violence, and God does not save. The law becomes slack. Does that sound familiar?
Here is something we may as well get out in the open. There is in the Old Testament a certain point of view, a certain theology, that says something like this: if you live a good life, you will be rewarded by God. If you live a bad life, if you disobey the law, you will be punished. Well, actions DO have consequences, we know that. We hear this kind of simple blessing and punishment theology, and it sounds good. It sounds right, there are plenty of Bible verses that say just that. However, we also know it isn’t true; that is not the way the world is. The wicked prosper, and the good man, he goes down. The prophets often cry out, asking why the world is this way, instead of the way that we’d prefer, instead of a neat scheme of blessing and curses.
And so as we read the prophets, we find verses that seem to apply directly to us. That is, we find them describing our situation. Prophecy is less about foretelling the future, someone said, and more about “forth-telling,” telling forth, the truth. The prophet speaks a word that my be true on different levels for his time and for our time. That is what makes these books so rich. At the same time, we will want to be careful about drawing conclusions meant for God’s chosen people Israel and applying them to our nation or the nations of the world.
So, back to Habakkuk. The law is slack and there is no justice. Well, read the newspaper! That is our time. Destruction and violence are everywhere, no one wants to take responsibility for his actions, and no matter how much we cry out for help and justice, we hear no response from God!
But wait, God does respond!
5Look at the nations, and see! Be astonished! Be astounded!
For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told.
6For I am rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous nation,
who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.
7Dread and fearsome are they; their justice and dignity proceed from themselves.
8Their horses are swifter than leopards, more menacing than wolves at dusk;
their horses charge. Their horsemen come from far away; they fly like an eagle swift to devour.
9They all come for violence, with faces pressing forward; they gather captives like sand.
10At kings they scoff, and of rulers they make sport. They laugh at every fortress,
and heap up earth to take it.
11Then they sweep by like the wind; they transgress and become guilty;
their own might is their god!
God has an answer – he is bringing in the Chaldeans! That is, the Babylonians. In 612 BC Assyria fell to the Babylonians, who then came south and subdued Egypt. In those days the struggle was always between Egypt and the northern empires, with Israel just a little territory along the way, like Belgium between Germany and France. As Habakkuk is preaching, all of this is happening. So, then. God’s answer to the lack of justice is…to bring the Babylonians!
Suppose that in 1954 or 1963 someone had said, there is no justice, God, America needs to change, and God had said, I will help you; I will bring the Soviets! Or today, perhaps, the Taliban. Or the Chinese. That is about how shocking God’s answer is. I am bringing in the Chaldeans, God says, and boy oh boy are they tough! You think you have seen violence? You haven’t seen anything yet!
Habakkuk is not pleased.
12Are you not from of old,
O Lord my God, my Holy One?
You shall not die.
O Lord, you have marked them for judgement;
and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment.
13Your eyes are too pure to behold evil,
and you cannot look on wrongdoing;
why do you look on the treacherous,
and are silent when the wicked swallow
those more righteous than they?
14You have made people like the fish of the sea,
like crawling things that have no ruler.
15The enemy brings all of them up with a hook;
he drags them out with his net,
he gathers them in his seine;
so he rejoices and exults.
16Therefore he sacrifices to his net
and makes offerings to his seine;
for by them his portion is lavish,
and his food is rich.
17Is he then to keep on emptying his net,
and destroying nations without mercy?
God, Habakkuk says, you are the creator. You are in control of all things and all nations. You have marked those Chaldeans for judgment; how can you use them? You are pure; how can use those evil ones? They drag up every single one of us as though we were fish in the sea. None shall escape. They have no mercy.
This is not good news, Habakkuk says. For God to answer this way, to act this way, is worse than God’s silence, perhaps. At least then we knew – or thought – that the wicked would some day perish. Now we aren’t so sure. Could God really use our enemies to teach us a lesson?
And God answers again. Chapter 2, verses 1-4.
I will stand at my watch-post,
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.
2Then the Lord answered me and said:
Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
so that a runner may read it.
3For 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.
4Look at the proud!
Their spirit is not right in them,
but the righteous live by their faith.
That is likely not the best place to end, but that verse, verse 4, has taken on a life of its own in the history of the church. Martin Luther in the midst of a struggle over the role of works of merit in the medieval church saw where Paul quotes this verse Galatians, and took it to mean that it we are saved by grace through faith alone, not by any work of our own. And so Habakkuk leads right into our Protestant pews, in a roundabout way.
Habakkuk takes his place on the watch-post, to see what God will say. And God says, Write the vision. Write it large so that a runner may read it. Make it big.
I served a church on a highway outside Baltimore, not unlike the Carlisle Pike. We had long discussions one summer about what our new sign should look like. It had to be large enough that it could be easily read from cars moving forty or fifty miles an hour. If you want it to be read, make it big. That is what God says to Habakkuk.
Write it big, he says, but he does not say what the vision itself is. He tells us instead that there IS a vision, that it comes at its appointed time. It will come, as surely as the sun rises, it shall come one day. If it seems to tarry, just wait. Wait, and have hope. God has not abandoned us, even though the times seem dark and the portents dire. God has not abandoned us, though there be wars on every front. God has not abandoned us though the wicked prosper everywhere. For their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.
For us today, the message is one of hope: the people need hope to live. We live by faith in the promises of God, that is, hope, and not by the evidence of what we see and think and believe. We hear all kinds of fear-mongering from every side, but we live by faith. We see some people getting away with murder, while the good people suffer, and we live by faith. We see injustice and we are told that there is no god. But we live by faith. And we wait, for the fulfillment of our hope, for God to bring the Chaldeans, or even a Savior, knowing that what God has promised will surely come. Do not despair!
Thanks be to God. Amen.
