Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
What are you to do when God doesn’t seem to care? That is what the prophet Habakkuk wondered in our Old Testament reading this morning. Habakkuk’s question to God is this: “How long, Lord?” How long are you going to let the violence, death, conflict, injustice, wrongdoing, cruelty, and lawlessness in this world go on? How long do I need to keep crying out for help?”
Chances are that each of us is familiar with the experience of feeling like God is slow to act.
The term the church uses to categorize questions “how long?” is called ‘theodicy’. It’s the classic question of ‘how can a good God allow bad things to happen to good people’? The Bible’s Job is the best example of this kind of question. If you’re not familiar with the story of Job in the Old Testament, here is a quick summary. Job is the man who does everything right in his life – he’s a good father, a good husband, a good businessman, a faithful servant – and yet Job is still visited by an unspeakable amount of suffering. He’s the person who receives bad news upon bad news upon bad news in spite of having done everything he can to live a good life. The conundrum that Job faces is that while Job comes to live with his suffering, he can never accept that it is just.
The way that many of us have learned to deal with the theodicy problem – why do bad things happen – is to make God into a distant Creator of sorts who is content to let time tick away. We let God off of the hook by emphasizing God’s majesty and immenseness. God is the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth whose concerns are too big to deal with our small problems as human beings. We don’t doubt that God created the world, or that God called it good, or that God is behind every law that governs the universe; what we doubt is whether God has much involvement with any of it anymore. And that can lead people of faith to grow apathetic, to become sluggish. Why care about anything or anyone but myself if God seemingly is slow to act to fix things?
Habakkuk is not content to let God off of the hook so easily. Habakkuk believes that God does care about the world. He doesn’t dwell on the ‘why’ of it all. Habakkuk doesn’t ask the question “why are all these bad things happening?” Instead, Habakkuk’s question is “How long?”
God, how long do I have to cry out for help
before you listen?
How many times do I have to yell, “Help! Murder! Police!”
before you come to the rescue?
Why do you force me to look at evil,
stare trouble in the face day after day?
Anarchy and violence break out,
quarrels and fights all over the place.
Law and order fall to pieces.
Justice is a joke.
The wicked have the righteous hamstrung
and stand justice on its head.
Or, put in modern language: “What did I do to deserve this? In war when powerful weapons can kill dozens in an instead, “How can human beings be so brutal?” Or, as anyone asks after yet another school shooting, “Who could shoot a child?”
Habakkuk is listed as a prophet, a minor prophet to be specific. The term ‘minor’ has nothing to do with his importance, though you would not know that since Habakkuk only shows up once every three years in our cycle of readings. That means that Habakkuk is read only one out of every one hundred and fifty six Sunday’s. Add in the other three readings that come in the lectionary every Sunday, and chances are, if you’re lucky, you hear a sermon from Habakkuk once every ten years.
But, I wonder if we shouldn’t be reading Habakkuk more often? He seems more in tune with our spiritual condition. Habukkuk’s ministry was less about delivering the word of the Lord to the people as the other prophets did, and more about the reverse: delivering the words of the people to God. That seems to fit our times. Almost everyone, including us regular church goers, are suspicious anymore of anyone who stands up and claims to speak for God. One of two thoughts pop into your mind: either, that person is delusional or that person has an agenda. But, I’ve found that in spite of our skepticism of religion, far more of us are willing to ask the hard questions to God. Call them our prayers of protest. They are in good company. Habakkuk was a man who protested with prayer. If you noticed when Alhea was reading, Habakkuk never said ‘listen to what God says’, but rather something like ‘God, listen to what I’m saying.’
In an ironic twist, an answer is given to Habakkuk’s complaint of injustice and lawlessness. An unidentified speaker, presumably God, says that the Chaldeans (a brutal military power at the time) are going to be roused to overtake the people of God. The answer is offensive to Habakkuk’s ears; a godless military machine is being sent to punish a godly nation. Habakkuk protests: How can this be? Why would God do such a thing?
In the second part of what Alhea read, Habakkuk takes up watch, waiting again for an answer concerning his complaint. I think Habakkuk won’t let God off the hook so easily because Habakkuk knows that sin in all its forms – violence, injustice, lying, cruelty – while it is a reality, is not necessary. Here’s another way to say this: while sin and evil are present in the world, it doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t have to sin to be a human being. Of course, every single human being sins. But it’s not necessary. The Scriptures in Genesis teach that God created the world and all that is seen and unseen and called it ‘good’. Yet, sin and evil enter as a hostile, invading force like an army of marauding mercenaries. That’s what the story of Adam and Eve eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is in part about. The thing known only to God himself is why he permitted evil in the first place?
But again, that’s not Habakkuk’s concern so much as it is “how long, Lord, are you going to put up with it? People are suffering because of all this violence and injustice and cruelty. Enough is enough.”
Habakkuk is doing an important kind of prayer. He is lamenting to God. Lament is a kind of prayerful protest to God that the way things are now is not the way they are supposed to be. Lament is just as much an act of faith as praise is. Faithful complaining to God, holding God to account for his promises, those are signs of faith, not doubt. Faith is a living, breathing relationship with all of its twists and turns and ups and downs with the gracious and everlasting Father. As someone who is a faithful Christian once told me, “I think God is big enough to handle my complaining and anger at him.” Habakkuk would certainly agree.
Habakkuk is most remembered for the last seven words that Alhea read, “but the righteous will live by faith.” Twice quoted by the apostle Paul and used as Martin Luther’s rallying cry during the Reformation, these words, “the righteous will live by faith” are a reminder that we live by a promise.
The promise of God throughout Scripture is that God will do something to set the world right. That the way things are is not necessarily the way things will be. From delivering the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt, to the prophets and their call to preach repentance to the people, to the promise that in Christ, God is making all things new – the divine reply that Habakkuk received was shaped by a vision of the future, a future where God will restore what has been lost, repair what has been broken, and heal what has been wounded. We may not understand the Lord’s timing, but that is the promise.
Faith is not about having all of the right answers, having all of the perfect ways, or having life all put together. Faith is not about being happy with God. Faith is a choice to live by the promises of God; to trust with all of your heart that God is who he says he is; that in Christ, who died and was raised, he has willed to make you his own; that he who began a good work in you will bring it completion; and to resolve each day to live to serve and obey this God and no other.
This leaves us with a question to close. What are we going to do as Christians when we encounter sin and evil, cruelty and violence, injustice and unfairness? We can ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist. We can try to justify it. Or we can do what Habakkuk does and resist sin and evil, cruelty and violence, injustice and unfairness. That is what each of us promised in our baptism. We promised to renounce the powers of evil and desire the new life of freedom in Christ. And we promised by the grace of God to resist oppression and evil and seek love and justice.
To resist wrong can look like prayer. That’s what Habakkuk is doing. To resist wrong can look like forgiving someone if they have perpetrated a wrong against you. Forgiving doesn’t mean that you need to accept what has happened as right, but forgiveness does mean giving up your right to retaliate. Forgiveness is about releasing your right for an eye for an eye. To resist wrong can also look like saying one very powerful word “No”. “No, I will not participate in this lie. I will not support gossip. I will not justify violence.” To resist wrong can look like shining a light on it, cleaning it up, and wait for God to act to disinfect it.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.