Faith is the way to go in the face of a whole lot of woe (Habakkuk 2:2-20, Romans 1:16-17)

It was cliff hanger.

Last week weleft Habakkuk the prophet, standing on the ramparts, looking out from city wall, like a sentry on guard. Over the horizon the imminent invasion of the Babylonian empire, their vast unstoppable like a desert wind. Picking everything up before it and sweeping it away.

Habakkuk had cried out to God about the injustice and wrongdoing, violence and destruction, conflict and strife in Judah, in the face of which the courts seemed paralysed, or worse were perverted to support the cause of the unjust. “How long, God, will you let this go on, when will you act.”

God’s answer was to point Habakkuk to the meteoric rise of the Babylonian empire, the rising world super power, in the seventh century BC. The answer was that God was going to use the Babylonians to discipline Judah, and take them into exile.

Habakkuk accepts that for a righteous God injustice means judgement, but he again complains, how could a righteous God use such a violent and arrogant people, like the Babylonians. Is this greater evil really going to triumph?

That’s where we had left Habakkuk… on the rampart… Taking watch, but his eyes were not scanning the horizon for the enemy’s advance, rather he looked to God for God’s answer and God’s action. That is the cliff hanger…

In the reading we had today, God answers Habakkuk’s complaint. God tells Habakkuk to write down a lament, a funeral dirge, in our culture it maybe something we equate with the bagpipes or a kuia’s cry at a tangi. This one is a series of five woes. But in this lament is the seedbed of hope. God says to Habakkuk… ‘the righteous will live by his faithfulness’ trusting in God who keep his promises… Faith is the way to go in the face of a whole lot of woe.

Now the Babylonians would have been used to hearing laments as they broke into cities and violently subdued and abused its peoples. The book of Lamentations in the bible is a collection of laments about the fall of Jerusalem. What makes the lament in Habakkuk so different is that it is a lament for the Babylonian empire. It’s a lament for the captive people to sing, in verse five we read that it is a taunt, full of ridicule and scron. It is biting political satire. It’s powerfully subversive, and turns Babylon’s victims into hopeful survivors. 

The passage starts with the Lord replying to Habakkuk. What had been a personal dialogue Habakkuk is told to make public. He is being given a revelation that will come to pass at the appointed time. Habakkuk is told to write it on tablets, so it can be taken by a herald to all the peoples under Babylon’s heel. Writing on tablets was the Babylonian way of communicating their decrees and royal commands, but right off the bat we see that Israel’s God is letting people know who is sovereign and in charge of history. It is his decree that will come to pass in his timing.

God then liken the Babylonian emperor to a drunk. Puffed up and full of themselves. Maybe you’ve been accosted some time by someone who had had a little to much to drink and it emboldens them, they get a bit aggressive…in fact Babylon is likened to an alcoholic who is addicted to power and military conquest and just can’t seem to get enough. Bu they are not in control and we all know that will lead to their downfall.

But says God in contrast to that My righteous ones, will live by my faithfulness. The righteous will live by faith.  A humble trusting in God ,trust that God’s is faithful to his promises. It is the same way that Paul says we should live In Romans 1:17, not puffed up and dependant on our keeping of the law or our own righteousness but by faith in Jesus Christ. That his life and death on the cross has paid the price for all we have done wrong and made it possible for us to be forgiven and be bought back into relationship with God as our loving Father and his resurrection has given us new life as citizens of God’s Kingdom.  That forms the basis of our lives and how we live that faith out  faithully.

The funeral dirge contains a series of five woes…

The first woe is economic, that the Babylonians in fact all empires or institutions who acquire wealth unjustly by force or threat may feel they are building their wealth but what is really happening is that they are building debt. Eventually the creditors, those ripped off who have had it stripped away from them will wake up and there will be a reckoning. “fair Go” on a grand scale. Economic oppression breeds rebellion and revolt, hardship and financial suffering brings down governments.

The second woe is to those who would build their houses by injustice and blood shed. A house here could mean a fortress in which they feel safe or a dynasty, but if that is what you build with well even the stones with which you build will cry out against you. More than just graffiti appearing on the walls…  Violence and bloodshed can never be the basis for a just and lasting country. Those injustices will always come back till they are addressed properly.

The third woe, is that Babylon had tried to build their city and empire on conquest and bloodshed, they had a vision of violent conquest of the whole world, to impose their will with military strength and might. But in the end human plans come to nothing, they are like something that you would tear down and throw on the fire, the constant waring will simply wear the nation out. Which seems so relevant in a week where we marked the end of the first world war, where it seemed to be a race of who would run out of resources and exhaust their of men for the meat grinder of trench warfare first.

But here right in the middle of this dirge, at its heart which is often the case of Jewish poetry we are presented with God’s alternative vision for the earth. The central and important thing is at the centre of the poem. Here is the seedbed of hope beginning to sprout. The whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Glory of God as the waters cover the seas. Gods plans and purposes are at work amidst the rise and fall of empire, the swirl and blur of human political philosophy’s and policies. Below the wind swept storms on the surface of time is a deeper current, God’s plans and purposes in God’s timing. This is where the current of time is ultimately heading. Habakkuk’s contemporary picks up the same imagery in Isaiah 11:9 at the end of a vision of a peace filled Jerusalem with the coming of the messianic king, the root of Jesse. Ultimately God’s answer to the woes of human injustice is the establishment of his kingdom. Not a kingdom by political or military might, but through its kings gracious sacrifice. A kingdom you and are citizens of as we  come to put our faith and hope in Jesus Christ, that we are called to be ambassadors of in how we live out our faith. In generosity in the face of greed, loving enemies in the face of conflict and strife, seeking peace and justice in the face of conflict and injustice. Proclaiming the gospel in the face of the destructive chains of sin and death, that hold people captive. It’s subversive and counter culture but it’s God’s alternative vision for this world.

The fourth woe picks up Babylon’s wine culture again, it’s drinking culture which lead it to not only conquer their people but to force them to join in their drunken debauchery. Stripping them of their dignity, dehumanising them.  There is a sense here of sexual abuse as well. But the woe is that God is about to turn the tables and instead of them doing this to others as a way of asserting their total dominance, they themselves will be shamed. God would pour out his wrath on them. It’s interesting that in Daniel 5 we have an account of the end of the Babylonians in a druken party where they had shown their total arrogance by bringing out the temple implements from Jerusalem to use as common drinking cups, a finger writes on the wall that they have been weighted and found wanting and that night Cyrus 2^nd emperor of Persia over takes the city.

But this woe also goes on to talk of the Babylonians bringing destruction to nature, stripping bear Lebanon of the cedar trees to build their city, and the wholesale slaughter of animals. Denuding the land of life, in shameful grab for indulgence. God loves and cares about creation and this passage speaks to our western civilization as well where our consumption and wealth and comfort has been at the expense of both other people and creation around us. We see the truth of God’s words as we look and discover that we too may just become exposed and shamed by that excess. It is why creation care is part of the Presbyterian churches five faces of mission. The whole earth, the whole of creation is to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD.

The last woe concerns where Babylon puts its hope. It talks of the futility in building and worshipping idols. Worshipping the things we have made. The woe focuses on words of human activity, carved, made, covered to whom we say “wake up!” but they do not speak they do not wake up. While it is hard for us in the twenty first century to think of worshipping an idol which we have made, to worship means to base our life around upon. Do we base them on material things, status and career, family, there is a tendency to think that technology can save us...

While we started this passage with a cliff hanger. Habakkuk waiting looking out and waiting for God. It does not finish as a cliff hanger, we are left in no doubt to the way forward and where the real power and real sovereignty is. We are left with a concrete bridge across what will be seventy years of turmoil and sorrow for the people of Judah. The LORD is in his Holy Temple; let all the earth be silent before him”. Unlike the idols God is real, even though the temple in Jerusalem will be destroyed by the Babylonians, God is still in his temple on his throne in the heavens, seated above the storm as it says in Psalm 29… The phenetic behaviour of the idol worshippers to create a God who will speak is in juxaposition with the call for the earth to be silent as God has already spoken. God’s plans and purposes are still being worked out.

We started with a cliff hanger we finish with a concrete hope. The power of Babylon is exposed and seen for what it is. The seed for its destruction are already sown in its foundation of injustice and violence and while it prospers now like all such empires and institutions it too will fall. All who are puffed up and drunk on their own power significance, need to take note. Because Habakkuk’s faith in a sovereign and righteous and just God are sure and right.

While we have not yet come to Habakkuk’s response… we are not left with a cliff hanger, because we know that the righteous will live by faith. Not dependant on our own resources our own power our own strength but trusting only in God and God’s faithfulness. Trust that it it Christ’s work on the cross not our labour that puts us right with God. But the fact that God gives the oppressed people, his righteous this funeral dirge to sing, shows us that living by faith is not simple passive acceptance, rather it is a call to resistance and a subversive lifestyle of living out that faith. Speaking truth to power, proclaiming the gospel when it just seems so out of kilter with the world today. Living it out; generosity not greed, love not hate, a commitment to  real love not just the hollow resignation of tolerance… This week I was really challenged by one of Jesus truly radical disciples, for whom living by faith meant raising an army in the face of the injustice and pain and want, both spiritual and physical, of the industrial revolution in Europe.

An army like no other whose weapons were love and prayer, joyful music and care… general William Booth of the Salvation Army…

 “while women weep as they do now, I’ll fight

While little children go hungry as they do now I’ll fight

While men go to prison, in and out, in and out, I’ll fight

While there is a poor little girl upon the street, I’ll fight

While there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight

I’ll fight to the very end”…

Faith is the way to go in the face of a whole lot of woe is both subversive and revolutionary and our hope is God's alternative vision...

"That the whole earth would be filled with the knowledge of the Glory of the LORD.”

How Long O God: Waiting On God (Habakkuk 1:2-2:1 Matthew 24:42-44)

On Monday I took this photo of two white faced heron or Matuku Moana, perched on a stone breakwater. The two birds are standing with their heads into the wind their long elegant necks down and pulled into their bodies for warmth, and they seemed to be waiting and looking out over the water. Still and focused: Waiting for the tide to turn so they could go out on the mud flats and forage for food. Waiting for the wind to drop and the warm sun to heat the day. Waiting for a mate to return to this breeding ground. I don’t know but as well as making a great photo it bought to mind Habakkuk’s posture waiting on God’s answer and his moving in history on behalf of his people. In chapter 2 verse 1 with which we finished our reading today. He says I will stand on the ramparts, like a sentry on duty, ready and alert, staring off in to the storm of injustice and judgment and waiting, waiting and looking for God’s answer to my laments, waiting for God to move. The same posture we had in our New Testament reading, where Jesus tells his followers they should be alert as they wait for the consummation of God’s Kingdom.

Habakkuk speaks to us as well to wait on God in the face of life storms, to wait on God in the face of  personal storms where we need to know God’s care and love, wait on God, in social storms, where like Habakkuk we see or experience injustice, wait on God as it seems the world just does not make sense. The series is called “As the waters cover the seas” and it refers to the verse at the heart of Habakkuk . Where we are given one reason to have hope in the face of life storms. That history seems to be like the turbulent surface of the ocean, with wild waves tossed and turned by unpredictable shifting winds, but that there is a deeper steady and unstoppable current of God’s purposes and plans that the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Glory of God, as the waters cover the seas’.

Habakkuk the prophet has a vision in which he has a dialogue with God. Habakkuk laments about the injustice he sees in Judah (verse 2-4), then we have God’s response in verses 5-11, and instead of it being about God saving his people, Habakkuk is told that God is raising up the new world super power of Babylon as his instrument to discipline. This does not sit well with Habakkuk and in verse 12-chapter 2:1 he again complains to God, how could a righteous God use such a vicious and arrogant and violent people. That’s what we are looking at today. Next week we are going to look at God’s answer to Habakkuk’s second complaint, and then finish off the series the week after looking at  chapter three which is a psalm of praise and trust from Habakkuk.

Habakkuk is writing in the seventh century BC. Judah, the southern kingdom, had been through a period of religious and social renewal under king Josiah, the reforms had been sparked by the discovery of the scroll of Deuteronomy in the temple archives. You can read about that in 2 Kings 22-23.  However Josiah is killed in battle with the king of Egypt who had marched north to support the Assyrians battling against the raising threat of the Babylonians. The Pharaoh appoints a series of Josiah’s sons as successors on the throne and we are told in 2 kings 24 that they did evil in the eye of the Lord.

Habakkuk describes this is a series of six different ways. Injustice and wrongdoing, violence and destruction, conflict and strife.  The law and the courts, which the prophet would expect to uphold the law of Moses, is paralyzed in the face of this, when he speaks of the wicked hemming in the righteous so that Justice is perverted, you get the sense that the courts themselves have become clogged up with law suites designed to rob the people not protect the innocent.

At the heart of what troubles Habakkuk is how can the God of Israel, the God who has revealed himself as just and righteous allow such things to carry on. The hope in the face of the storms of life is in the person and the character of God While our hope and history don’t rhyme. Habakkuk’s complaint does not turn him away from God, rather it turns him to look more at God. His prayers are constant and consistent, waiting for God to act. 

In verses 5-11, the LORD answers Habakkuk, and God’s answer is have you noticed the surprising rise of the Babylonian empire. In 605bc they defeated the Assyrians and the Egyptians and start their conquest of the region. The imagery that is used here speaks of their military might. The swiftness of their cavalry like a leopard and an eagle swoop. They are like a sand storm, vast and unstoppable, that picks prisoners up and swept them away. Like the Assyrians before them the Babylonian strategy to stop resurgent nationalism in the countries they conquered was to deport the population to another part of the empire and to indoctrinate and enculturate them in to Babylonian ways and religion. That is the background t the exile and the story of Daniel and his friends, who resist that process, by refusing to eat the food given to them. In Jeremiah 21 we read that the people of Jerusalem felt impregnable in their fortress on a hill.  The LORD’s answer is that these people laugh at fortified cities, they had developed the tactic laying siege and building an earthen ramp up against the walls.

The answer to Habakkuk’s complaint is that God is going to sovereignly move in history. While it may look like the rise of the Babylonian empire was their own doing and they would claim the triumph of their God’s over the God’s of those around them. The LORD says the ebb and flow of history is at his command. We may look and not perceive that as we see things unfolding and we may question and wonder. But the answer to Habakkuk’s complaint is first and foremost the sovereignty of God in history. That’s hard for us to understand its hard perhaps to see in the short term as Habakkuk finds it hard. It seems that injustice is going to be  overcome by greater injustice. But amidst this churn and blur of history God has not lost control…

The answer to Habakkuk’s complaint was that in the sovereignty of God, injustice would bring about judgment, not a popular message. But Habakkuk would have known this was the case, as God was being faithful to the covenant he had made with his people as he had bought them out of Egypt, that had been restated in Josiah’s time with the discovery of the second book of the law. That if the people of Israel continued  to ignore God and his righteous ways and law, that they would be removed from the promised land. 

But even in this pronouncement of correction and punishment there is a glimmer of hope. Judgment is never God’s final word, it is never God’s purpose or plan. It may be a spoiler alert, but this judgment was not to destroy or simply punish God’s people, rather to discipline them, after seventy years the remnant would return. Even more than that the words that the LORD starts his answer with here in Habakkuk of watch and look and be utterly amazed, because God was going to do something people would not believe even if they were told in Habakkuk 1:5 is quoted by Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13:41 to point people to the sending of Jesus Christ his death on the cross and his resurrection. God’s ultimate purpose and plan is salvation in Jesus Christ. God’s ultimate answer to injustice and oppression comes in the establishing of his Kingdom in Christ.  We live in the tension between the all ready of Christ’s death and resurrection and the not yet of his return, We too are called to wait and wrestle with the how long of injustice and judgment and the hope of salvation. .

In verse twelve Habakkuk responses to what he hears from the LORD. Again he brings a complaint, a lament. Habakkuk is aware of God’s holiness and righteousness, he acknowledges that God is his rock, but Habakkuk cannot see how God could use such a evil people as the Babylonians to achieve his purposes and plans. Habakkuk uses a vivid metaphor of the Babylonians like a cruel and arrogant fisherman, always casting the net to drag up more and more fish, feeding their own appetite with no mercy. A fisherman who worships their net as a God, and relies on and worships their own strength. The net represents the military strength of Babylon. How can a righteous and just God use these people, this nation on histories stage to achieve his purposes. It is not right…

Habakkuk stops there and takes up that posture of waiting like a sentry alert on the parapets. We will have to join him there because we know God does answer him, but we are going to look at that next week. But as I said before Habakkuk’s posture his waiting has a lot to say to us.

Firstly, in the face of all the language of military strength and overcoming fortresses standing watch on the wall seems to be a dangerous place to be. You are kind of in the front line. God has just finished saying how futile fortresses are to the Babylonians. But Habakkuk’s waiting is different it is not a dependence on his own resources and those of humans in the face of God’s sovereign action in history. It is a posture of setting up watch for God. He looks not to the troops coming over the horizon, but rather it is the posture of Psalm 130, where the psalmist also uses this image of a watchman waiting for the morning to say that in the depth he waits for the Lord with his whole being. It is a Psalm that finishes by saying Israel put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. It is a posture of hope and faith only in God. As we face life’s storms waiting is not a simple hope that things will work out, but a posture of trust in a God who cares for us, whose plans are for good and not for harm, who has in Christ already saved us from sin and death and can be trusted to act justly. Part of God’s answer to Habakkuk in chapter 2:4 is that the righteous will live by faith.

The idea of a watchman also has other scriptural ramifications. Ezekiel in his prophetic ministry is likened to a watchman in Ezekiel 33 looking and seeing what God has to say and bringing that word to the people. In this oracle Habakkuk also does that as well. Waiting on God does not mean that we are Silent and passive rather we are called to speak our our hope and our faith. Our calling as people of God is to be prophetic, to witness with our words to the good news of Jesus Christ even in the face of the storm. To declare God’s goodness even when it all does not seem to make sense. Like Habakkuk to be prepared to speak  God’s justice and righteousness in the face of the storms of injustice. Not in a name it and claim it shallow faith, but with confidence and trust. On the steps of the capital building in Washington DC in 1963 as the civil rights movement was starting to pick up some momentum, in his I have a dream speech Martin Luther King Jr speaks out God’s purpose and Plan in the words of the prophet Amos “let justice flow like a river, and righteousness like a never-ending stream.” That still echoes and speaks and hopes even today…

In the Olivet discourse, Jesus other sermon on the mount in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus turns to address his followers waiting between the crucifixion, resurrection and the full coming of his kingdom. Jesus tells a series of four parables  to instruct his followers in what it means to be alert and wait.

The parable of the faithful and unfaithful servant, he articulates that to keep waiting is to keep going about caring and loving and treating one another with the love of Christ.

The parable of the ten virgins and the oil for their lamps, Jesus says to wait is to keep on in our spiritual disciplines, to keep alive and full the presence of the Spirit of God in our lives.

In the parable of the talents, to wait on God is to continue to invest our resources and gifts into seeing God’s kingdom grow.

The parable of the sheep and the goats, waiting on God is seen as continuing to care for the poor and the imprisoned and those without, because what we do for the least we do for Jesus himself.

I wanted to finish this sermon by tying everything up and giving answers, but by stopping where we did in our reading of Habakkuk, we find ourselves like the herons in the image. Like Habakkuk on the ramparts waiting for God. It sort of feels like we are left hanging… but actually it’s a good place to be In the storms of life, in the uncertainty of the world around us, the churn and blur of history, to be alert and waiting… How Long O God is a lament… but how long O God is also that posture of hope and trust and faith… will you stand watch and wait on God…  

Habakkuk: the man and the book (an Introduction) (habakkuk 1:1-4)

Over the next month we are going to be exploring the book of Habakkuk. Habakkuk is one of the minor prophets, the twelve as they are known in the Hebrew cannon. If you remember from our study earlier this year of the book of Haggai, that does not mean it is any less important than other books but rather it is simply short, not one of the long books like Isaiah or Jeremiah.

Habakkuk is important because it wrestles with faith in the face of injustice. It is a book written in the seventh century BC for a very specific context, however it echoes the cry of humanity and God’s people in every age and all ages. “how long?”, How Long will I cry out for help and you do not listen?” How long must the innocent suffer from injustice and wrongdoing, how long must we be faced with violence and destruction, how long this strife and conflict… How long will law and justice be paralysed, and unable to respond.  How Long God! Where are you amidst all this on a local and international level. How Long, How Long, How long… have you ever found yourself saying that “how Long”? Then Habakkuk is for you… 

I’ve called the series ‘As the waters cover the seas” because at the very centre of the book in chapter 2 verse 14 amidst the ebb and flow, churn and blur,  of human history we have a statement of God’s sovereignty and his unstoppable purpose and plan, ‘For the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God, as the waters cover the seas”. We look at what is going on around us and it can be like a storm at sea, with large waves crashing wind howling, the sting of salt spray,  and we feel like we are in a small boat being rocked and tossed around and around, drenched, helpless and fearful. The storm is threatening to overwhelm and sink us. People do die in storms. But part of God’s answer to Habakkuk is that while this is on the surface of history, while it is what we see, we feel and we experience, we also need to remember the unchanged current in the depth of the ocean, God’s purpose, God’s plans for the world to know the weighty reality of God is being worked out. God is sovereign…That flow in history is unchanged and unchallenged by the storms above…

For Habakkuk as he looks at his time and place that would mean that unjust Judah, would be disciplined by the Babylonian empire, it meant the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile, and the purified remnant returning to rebuild. But that deep ocean current goes on to the coming of Jesus, his life, the cross and the empty tomb, God’s kingdom being established, and breaking into the realms of humanity and amidst the storms of today, you and I being ambassadors of that kingdom amidst the disorientating wild wind and waves,  looking forward to its consummation in Christ’s return. Habakkuk finishes with a psalm of praise to God and an amazing confession of trust in God and invites us to trust God and be strengthened by that trust amidst the storms of life. The “How long” of faith turns into  the “Hold on”of faith… I will hold on to God.

This morning I just want to do an introduction, to Habakkuk: focus on the first verse and Habakkuk the man and Habakkuk the book. I know that sounds a bit dry and academic, but I think that there is a lot in those things that will speak to us today and enrich what the book of Habakkuk can say to us as we explore it.

Let’s look at Habakkuk the man,

 Habakkuk is amongst the most anonymous of biblical writers. He is only mentioned twice, both in the book that is named after him. In the first verse, which we had read out today and then at the beginning of chapter three where his name is mentioned as being the writer of the psalm that concludes this book. For most biblical characters we are at least given where they come from or who their tribe and parents are but we are not even told that.

Even Habakkuk’s name seems to be rather obscure, some suggest it is a part of a plant, while others see it coming from the word ‘to embrace…’. embrace speaks of Habakkuk’s faith in this book. He is willing to embrace the questions, to wrestle with God. The book reads like a Q&A session between Habakkuk and God, where Habakkuk is willing to ask the tough questions. But also that God embraces Habakkuk as well and answers, even if they are not what Habakkuk wants to hear.

 The name also has the sense of being an embrace or a hug for warmth when there is no shelter. A huddle together for warmth. The book of Habakkuk, reflects that amidst the difficulties Habakkuk can only turn to God and God embraces him and the book finishes with Habakkuk in chapter 3:17-18 saying that even if he is stripped of all the comforts and shelter of land and food and blessing, still he will rejoice in the Lord. That is where he and ultimately we, find that embrace and shelter. Even if the storm strips everything else away our hope and our source of Joy is the LORD.

What we do know about Habakkuk is that he is called the prophet and that he was also a musician. This has led to people seeing him as a professional prophet at the temple in Jerusalem. In 1 Chronicles 25 David sets aside a group of people to be temple musicians and prophets, under David’s supervision. We see that many of the Psalms not attributed to David are written by these people, Heman who you may remember from a couple of week ago who wrotePsalm 88 is named. While Habakkuk is not named he stands in that tradition.

The role of the Prophets was to bring God’s covenant word to the people of God in music and song and poetry and prayer. The role of the prophet was to wrestle and understand what God’s covenant relationship with his people then meant for God’s people now.  Others have called it taking the timeless word of God and making it timely. One example from Habakkuk itself is the most often quoted lines from the book in chapter 2:4 ‘the righteous will live by faith’, This is Habakkuk’s word to God’s people how they should live in response to what is going to happen. In the new testament this is picked up in Romans, Galatians and Hebrews. The way to have new life is through faith in Jesus Christ. In the face of the oppressive religiosity of the medieval church in Europe it is the rallying cry of the reformation” the righteous shall live by faith, liberty and freedom and new life comes through putting our hope and our trust in Jesus Christ. In the uncertainty of our world today that hope and trust and faith in Christ is what allows us to know God’s presence and live out the kingdom of God even in the storms.

One of the reflections of Habakkuk the man is that even in his obscurity in history, a person of faith willing to face the storms and the big questions trusting God, can make a difference and bring hope through God’s word. It’s true for you and I as well with a faith that is willing to embrace the big question and be embraced by God even when the answers are not what we are expecting.

Habakkuk also challenges us about the place of artists, poets and musicians in our midst. This past week the world learned that Eugene Peterson, famous for producing the message version of the bible, a  translation into colloquial English, had died, aged 85. It lead me to re watch a video of Peterson and the lead singer of U2 Bono, talking about their mutual love for the psalms, and Both Bono and Peterson talked of the honesty of the psalms to express human experience and anguish and praise.  They spoke of the place of the artist today in the church and world to be honest and bring out the reality of both the world around us and of the hope we have in Christ. That is the prophetic nature of art and music.

Very quickly I want to look at Habakkuk the book. In Hebrew it was part of the twelve because they would have all fitted on one scroll. 

The book is called an ‘oracle’ the whole book is to be viewed as a vision. I called it a Q&A session before and it kind of feels like a TV current affairs show a serious interview like BBC hardtalk or sixty minutes or 20/20. To give you an outline of the book In verse 2-4 we have the prophet as the presenter asking the hard-burning question about the injustices in Judean society, God the interviewee responds in verse 5-11 is to point to the Babylonians, then Habakkuk asks his question again “how long” and God responds with a series of woes for the proud nations an affirmation of God’s sovereignty and a call for the righteous to live by faith. Then Habakkuk turns to us the viewer and summarises his response to the interview which is a psalm of praise and trust and hope in the LORD.

The word oracle can also be translated Burden and the book of Habakkuk can be seen to be Habakkuk’s burden. It is the burden of an honest faith to see injustice and wrong and violence and to question and look for genuine answers. It is the burden of our faith that when we are confronted by the quandary of what to do when our ‘hope and history don’t rhyme’ not to abandon that hope, not to abandon that faith and search for another answer but to hold on to what we know of God. That is what Habakkuk does his questions are based on what he knows of God’s goodness and righteousness and faithfulness. In the process of his questioning we can see Habakkuk’s faith and trust deepen.  In response to God’s answer look at the Babylonians, Habakkuk is prepared to wait even longer for God’s response and to understand God’s purposes. His question comes out of his relationship with God “how Long O God”, I know you are kind and just, not a rage against God or shaking his fist at God, ‘How long will God let this go on”.

But it is also the burden of Habakkuk to speak the truth, that injustice and violence will lead to judgment. For Judea their rejection of the covenant and its call to do justice and pursue peace, will lead to God keeping his covenant promise to lead them out of the land.  He’s going to use the Babylonians to do it.  It is not a popular message, Habakkuk’s contemporary Jeremiah has his scroll burned and is imprisoned for insisting on the same message. In an event that echoes the headlines of our time with the killing of the journalist Kamal Khashoggi for his outspoken opposition to the Saudi regime, in Jeremiah 26 King Hezekiah has Uriah the prophet chased down and killed for saying the same message.  Its pure speculation but maybe that is a bit behind why Habakkuk is so anonymous.

Habakkuk’s burden is also to say that the way through that judgement and turmoil to finally know God’s salvation and restoration is to live by faith. In Romans 3 Paul is straight up in saying the wages of sin are death, but, so we have the good news that in faith in Christ there is a way to live and change.

I love the photo I took at the front of the church. It is dark with just the light from the spire shining on the front in it the thing that stands out and is illuminated is the cross. It is God’s answer to the darkness. Habakkuk says to us that Christianity is not about escapism, its not the exit sign from the confusing complex and often difficult, dark and dangerous maze of human history. It is not a hunker in the bunker mentality when we see the storms of injustice and violence. Rather it is a way to face that and navigate those things. It is a light that will not go out. The burden like Habakkuk is to be willing to see what is going on around us and bring the big questions to God to seek an answer, and as we work through the storm  to continue to live by faith, continuing to live out that faith prophetically in how we treat others and in what we speak and say, in challenging systemic issues .  Like Habakkuk that burden of faith leads us to a deeper trust and faith.

renewal of hope (haggai 2:1-9) Video of sermon translated into korean.

I had the privilege of preaching at "the Lord's Church Auckland' a Korean Presbyterian Church on Sunday and it was a challenge to be translated into Korean by Revd Choi Jung Han...

Light in the dark: A reflection in pictures... My devotions for today without words... well I've put the words in to explain it.

Just a wee reflection on light and dark.. maybe a bit cheesy but hopefully helpful as it was for me.

The motif of light and dark is pervasive in the scriptures. Jesus calls himself the 'light of the world' (John 8:12). John speaks of the incarnation as being the light shining in the darkness (john 1)  We are invited to let our light shine before humanity to the glory of God our Father (Matthew 5:15). God himself is seen as light in 1 John 1:3.

My hobby at the moment is photography the practise of capturing light, and at the moment I'm exploring black and white photography and I carry my camera (not just my phone camera) with me where ever I go...

On my way to work I stopped off at the supermarket and was captivated by the light coming into a walkway from the underground carpark... it was a light well well lit... The architect did a good job...  In fact I found myself says well this rocks.. and if it was a rock band it would be the white stripes... (dad Joke).

Then I walked into church this morning, still thinking of light and shadow and at the front of our sanctuary I was drawn to the light from our spier shining down on the cross...  once again the architect had done a good job... But I felt God saying in a very visual way... focus on me, on the cross.. this dark place that is in actual fact the light of the world... focus on me I am the light for your life...

I took another photo (trying to be arty) of the church bathed in light and shadow.For me it talks of the ways in which we can knowledge of God's light from creation represented by the palm tree in our sanctuary and also a symbol of a person who delights in the word of God from psalm 1, and the ultimate way in which we can know God's presence and goodness… Jesus Christ, his incarnation and through the cross.

One the way out of the church I was captivated by the light coming through the  windows  round the top of the walls of the church and the light simply shining through on the very everyday block walls and mechanical window opener... and I thought this is my prayer in response to the Cross... Lord let your light shine in my darkness...

Then into my office and I noticed the light coming through the blinds (and the dirty window) and thought even here Lord let your light shine and guide my work...

Honesty to God in the midst of dispair: reflections on Psalm 88 (psalm 88, 2 Peter 5:6-9)

Recently I've been experimenting with black and white photography and trying to capture the stark reality of an urban suburban landscape. But as I contemplated Psalm 88 I was also aware of places where life seemed to grow in difficult situations... grass growing in a gutter, a weed bathed in sunlight (glowing even) high up on an old brisk façade... and a black bird  singing its heart out a top an old cracked brick... seeming impervious to the fact that for most Kiwi's we now view such brickwork as an earthquake hazard... they are images that go well with Psalm 88... 

We may be more used to the idea of darkness as a friend from that Simon and Garfunkel classic the sound of silence with its opening line “hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again”… than the closing line of a psalm, but that is exactly how psalm 88 finishes ..with the psalmist saying darkness…darkness is my closest friend. It is according to EM Blaiklock the ‘saddest and darkest psalm in the whole psalter. IT is one wail of sorrow from beginning to end.” You could say that from go to woe… well it’s just all woe. Another commentator says… its uniqueness is in its bleakness. “Psalm 88 is unmatched in its tone of darkness and despair”.  The only glimmer of light is the first line, “Lord, you are the God who saves me”, kind of like the last comforting rays of the sunset before the long dark night envelops the psalmist as he waits for God.

Yet, Psalm 88 is as canonical as Psalm 23. One of the amazing things about the psalms is that within them the whole of human experience is raised up before God.  AS such it is “proper that it should contain the record of an hour so dark that no relief comes” (EM Blaiklock). From the introduction to this psalm we see that it was put to a tune, it was a song that was designed for corporate worship, so it was meant not only as a personal expression of suffering and waiting for God to act but as a corporate one as well, drawing together people to acknowledge a shared pain and longing and disquiet. I could imagine the exiles by the rivers of Babylon singing this sort of psalm as they wept, as they remembered Zion. It reverberates with the cry of people who have suffered oppression down through the ages.

It echoes the cries of people of faith who have wrestled with unanswered prayer. In the midst of running an international prayer movement, Pete Greig’s wife suffered a serious medical problem and it seemed no amount of prayer helped. He wrote a book about this experience called, ‘God on Mute”. In it he includes an appendix called “heroes of the faith and unanswered prayer”. It lists quotes from biblical and historical heroes of the faith as they have wrestled with suffering and the seeming silence of heaven. Missionary to China, Hudson Taylor, on hearing about the massacre of 58 of his missionaries and 21 children… ‘I cannot read; I cannot think; I cannot even pray; but I can trust”  St john of the Cross… “the Dark Night of the Soul… in this time of dryness, spiritual people undergo great trials… they believe that spiritual blessings are a thing of the past and that God has abandoned them”. Mother Theresa “ I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God, and that God does not exist.” CS Lewis reflecting on the death of his wife… “what chokes every prayer and every hope is the memory of all the prayers Joy and I offered and all the false hopes we had…  step by step we were led up the garden path.’ Time after time, when he seemed most gracious he was really preparing the next torture.” But these people are heroes of the faith, they are people of great faith.   If we are honest, as followers of Jesus, in a good but fallen world, Psalm 88 is our song as well, not that we have lost our faith, that we do not trust God, but that at some stage in our spiritual journey there is a good chance we have found ourselves in that dark place of psalm 88.

Maybe that’s not the stuff you want to hear on a long holiday weekend, but in our season of prayer this year we are looking at surprising spiritual disciplines, and Psalm 88 invites us to look at honesty in prayer as a spiritual discipline. It is raw and its real, and I don’t want to do it a disservice by just turning it as a text book for praying when it’s difficult, or making it a series of points, dispensing a couple of platitudes and pat answers.  So these are more just hopefully helpful reflections.

In fact the psalm comes from a place where there seems to be no simple answer, it’s part of the wisdom literature in the Hebrew Scriptures that wrestles with the question of evil, why bad things happen to good people. It has many similarities with the book of Job, the Psalmist is sick and facing death and disaster, he feels like Job, that God is unjustly turned away from him and he finds no comfort in friends and neighbors, in fact they simply add to his suffering. While there are good theological answers to the question of suffering and evil in the end the people of God resort to poetry and song to bring out the depth of that suffering.

The  psalm is written by Heman the Ezrahite, and when I read that I couldn’t help thinking about another He-man. The Maters of the Universe was a range of toys put out by Mattel in the 1980’s. It was the first range of toys that a comic book range, animated TV show and film were written around and produced to specifically market the toys. The key hero was He-man and his catch cry was “I have the Power” he was unrealistically muscled and was marketed as the “the strongest man in the universe”, able to battle evil and injustice in his own strength, or at least with the help of a magic sword. But that is a plastic toy,  a made up myth, maybe the first ever myth of western consumerism, simply to sell product it’s not a reality. We can end up having a plastic unreal faith, with no real substance and depth.  Part of the honesty of prayer as a spiritual discipline, is to recognize times in our lives, and situations that leave us perplexed and feeling like our prayers simply echo off the ceiling and go no further than our voice can carry. We are used to hiding our doubts and questions, our wondering about the power and goodness of God. We need to be willing to be like Heman the Ezrahite, not He-man the figurine, and cry out in those times to God., strength comes from honesty… I think that is what the recent openness about mental health issues and struggles is teaching us again.

One of the things this psalm does is allow us to know we are not alone in wrestling with God, we are not alone in facing seemingly insurmountable difficulties, we are not alone in feeling alone and unloved. We are not alone in still having faith and trusting in God even in the face of what may seem like God’s absence.

Eighty eight is what Walter Brueggemann calls a psalm of disorientation, when what we believe about God does not equate with what we are experiencing,” as U2 say in their song Peace on Earth “when hope and history won’t rhyme”. The Psalmist sums it up well in verse 7 by saying that “you have overwhelmed me with all your waves”. You get the picture of being caught by wave after wave, till you are struggling for breath and can’t find which way is up.

The second thing is that even in the absence of an answer from God the psalmist does not abandon his hope. As we said before the only glimmer of light in this psalm is in the first line “lord, you are the God who saves me”. What enables the Psalmist to continue in his dark place is what he knows about the person and the character of God. What he knows from the scriptures and history of God’s dealing with his people and what he may have experienced in his own life. That is the call to us as well, what we know of God’s goodness, what we have seen in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the promise of the Holy Spirit’s presence with us, is not changed by the situation, it is not voided like a dodgy warranty by our emotions and feelings, it is not  made untrue by our personal experience. Pete Grieg says that during his time of unanswered prayer he even tried being an atheist, but he didn’t make a good atheist because he kept telling God he didn’t believe in him anymore.

What shapes our understanding of the world is not our experience of it, good or bad, but our understanding of God. Our prayer life needs to resound with and be shaped and directed by our understanding of God through the reading and study of scripture. Martin Luther in a letter to his barber talked about the fact that he does not trust himself to pray his own prayers but each day his prayer came out of his scripture reading, alongside that he said that he used the Lord’s Prayer as the model for his prayer. It is this finding ourselves deeply rooted in the biblical understanding of God that enables to wrestle with the sense of his absence in the hard and dark times. It does not lessen our experience or our pain or disorientation rather it allows us to move through that to a reorientation and a deeper faith.

The other thing is the psalmist’s sense that God is not answering does not stop him from praying. He has a regular discipline of morning and evening prayer.   Day and night he cries to God I says in verse 2. “I call to you, Lord, every day; I spread my hands out to you”, in verse 9, “but I cry for help, Lord, in the morning my prayer comes before you.”  In verse 13. Keeping that relationship is of central importance to him, regardless of the outcome. That is the way that Walter Bruggeman talks of another type of Psalm within the psalter, psalms of reorientation, where people of faith have wrestled with the question and the lack of answer and in it they have found that some peace and comfort is to be found in the abiding presence of God, weather or not the conflict or problem has been resolved. In the psalms of ascent, Psalm 130 is a lament like psalm 88, where the writers longing for God to answer his cries is pictured being like a watchman on the city walls staring off into the dark, waiting for the hope and safety of the dawn. In the very next Psalm almost as a response, the writer says he has learned to be still and content like a weaned child on its mother’s knee. No more the frantic calling out for its needs to be meet but simply content with its mother’s presence to comfort. In his letter to the Philippians, paul summarises this reorientation when he says I have learned to be content when I have a lot or when I have nothing, when I am hungry or when I’ve had my full because I have learned the secret to contentment ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. While this passage is often quoted with the emphasis on the “I”, “I can do all things”… “I have the Power”… I’m sure the emphasis for Paul is on the through Christ who strengthens me… the abiding presence of Christ.

The motto of the life boat service on the ragged and storm tossed coast of the Atlantic “Is we must go out”, they are there for the very times when the rest of us are wanting to be safe and secure in on shore at home, in the worst of waves and the worst of storms where they fear for their lives, and others lives are in danger. It’s not what they do in those times that means they are able to operate and go about their life saving duties in the roughest of conditions, rather it is the training and the training and the long hours they out into doing their routines and their jobs when its calm weather and good seas that enables them to do what they do. While it says in James that as we face hard times our faith is made strong, and perfected, the developing of good spiritual disciplines is what keeps us persevering through the hard.

There is an element in Psalm 88 as well of emotional release. There is a phycological side to prayer. Being honest with God is a way that those emotions and that form that knot at the core of our being can be released. Once they are expressed and out there they can be addressed and dealt with. Another psalm that I wrestle with is Psalm 109. The psalmist calls out to God in righteous anger as one who has been wronged, and he calls on God to bring justice on his enemies in no uncertain terms. It’s the kind of prayer that makes you think that we believe in a wrathful and vengeful God. But as I have meditated on it, I see it as the psalmist praying knowing that God can be trusted with his anger and pain and trusted to act in a right way. Christian folk singer Barry McGuire, says that Christians are called to be shock absorbers in the world, to take the anger and the bad in the world and not to simply pass it back or on. Neither are we to internalise it and let it fester there, but to be able to pass it God and return Good for evil. That is one of the things that we are able to do with Prayer. God’s reply to psalm 109, is not the flash of lightening and a pile of ashes, but rather we see it that Christ stepped into our world, in Jesus Christ, he showed us a better way, the way of love, and then died on the cross to forgive us all, and was raised to life so we could have a fresh start and new life in Christ.

When we come to studying the scriptures one of the important things that we need to do is to view a verse in the context of a passage and a passage in the context of its wider work, and we can often forget that when we come to Psalms they seem to stand alone, but the fact is that they are placed in their sequence by an editor or complier. Psalm 88 comes between psalm 87 and 89…I know that sounds rather inane, but it finds itself between a short strong affirmation of God’s abiding love for his people and for Zion, and a long prayer that talks of God’s faithfulness and sovereignty through all generations and all circumstances. If we are honest about our lives and our prayer life we recognise that they are very much bound by the limitations of time and space. The hear and the now, and we find it hard to see beyond the night to the new day, the hard time to the hope of fresh days and fresh starts. But that is how this psalm is placed in the book.

EM Blaiklock says that Psalm 88 has been seen as a gethsemane prayer, when we look and all we can see is the cross and death. In fact it reflects the belief in old testament Judaism that death was final, a belief that was in Jesus day expressed by a party within the Jewish faith called the sadducees, but that as Christians we can look beyond that to an empty tomb, that we know that God’s plans go beyond this little day, that there is a new page waiting to be written, that while we may find it a dark night for our soul, the hope is that our future is in and with Christ.

Which brings us to our new testament reading from 1 peter 5 and how I want to finish this reflection. Peter tells us to humble ourselves before the Lord, under God’s almighty hand… to realise that God is sovereign and in control and can be trusted with the whole of life, both its highs and its lows, and that we should cast all our anxiety on God… because he cares for us.