Monday, November 26, 2018

The true source of Joy and Strength in the face of life's storms (Habakkuk 3:1-19, Phillipians 4:12-13)




I couldn’t help but think of this scene from the film of JRR Tolkien’s the Lord of the rings: the two towers’ when I read the first part of the psalm that Habakkuk finishes his oracle with. It’s a very kiwi thing to do to by the way to finish with a waiata isn’t it. Habakkuk paints God as the creator warrior coming to the rescue of his people at the last minute. The sun in the clip bursting over the horizon reflecting Habakkuk’s words in verse four “his splendour was like the sunrise, rays flashing from his hand where his power is hidden.” The creator using creation itself to fight on behalf of his people.

Like most of us there is the hope that God would come riding in to our difficult and dark situations and issues, our life storms  NOW and somehow instantaneously resolve them and whisk us away. Our folk law is full of that sort of longing and hope… the school bus sliding off the bridge only to be carried to safety by a superhuman hero. The settlers out of ammunition and about to be over run and suddenly the cavalry turns up. The villain’s figure on the trigger, and then bang, he’s shot and falls to the ground as the battered hero steps into the scene.  Maybe I watch too many movies. But I wonder if we and Habakkuk don’t have that kind of expectation and hope in the back of our minds. Save me now God, do the miraculous, and god can and does but we like Habakkuk can look back at what God has done before and say like you did then….or hear someone’s faith inspiring testimony of God’s intervention…’like you did for them… 

Yet by the end of his Psalm and book Habakkuk has come to a different place, a different and deeper faith, even if all the simple blessings of the land, it’s provision and prosperity is taken away Habakkuk says I will find my joy in you. Even though the way forward feels like a treacherous mountain path, I trust you to guide me through as sure footed as a deer, or mountain goat, I find my strength in you. Habakkuk had been told that the righteous will live by faith and here we see him starting on that journey. It is the faith and trust that Paul says is the secret to contentment in our reading from Philippians… “whether I have a lot or absolutely nothing, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. “ It is the abiding presence and faithful character of God… that is the source of our joy and strength and hope. It is the same faith we are called to have as we face the storms of life, as we face injustice and violence, when what is happening in the world just does not make sense and we wonder where is God...

Habakkuk’s journey has been from  How Long O God to I will hold on to you O God. He had raised a complaint about the injustice and wrongdoing, violence anddestruction, conflict and strife in Judah. God had answered, by pointing him tothe rise of the Babylonian empire. This was going to be the instrument that God was going to use to discipline Judah. God was going to keep his covenant promise and remove his people from the land. Habakkuk had again complained, how could God use such a violent and arrogant people, was this greater evil going to win out in the end. He was prepared to wrestle with God, to get insight and understanding. The storms and questions and complaints did not turn him away from God but rather drew him to go deeper to wait on God. God again replies andgives Habakkuk an answer in a public royal decree, a funeral dirge for those conquered by Babylon to sing, not for themselves but for Babylon. The seeds of Babylon’s own destruction were present in their own arrogance and violence. God’s alternative vision, god’s purposes and plans  was for the world to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the water cover the seas. God’s call for his people was that the righteous would live by faith.

In the reading we had this morning Habakkuk responds to this revelation in prayer and in song. We’ve got the words for the song but we don’t have the tune. Its called a shigionoth, there is only one other Psalm which has a similar designation, and scholars aren’t sure what it means. Sort of has the idea of being a song with different musical elements, all pulled together, a changing of tunes. Which kind of fits in with Habakkuk’s wrestling with what God has told him and coming to a place of trust.

It’s a psalm not unlike many of the songs we use in church, that has a refrain and three stanza’s or verses and finally what you would call a bridge that musically and thematically takes the psalm in a different direction.

Verse 2 is the refrain and contains the heart of Habakkuk’s prayer Lord I have heard of you fame, I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord, repeat them in our day, in wrath remember mercy’. Habakkuk remembers all the times God has acted on behalf of his people in the past, all the stories from the exodus, wilderness wanderings the conquest and Israel’s history, where God has both disciplined Israel for disobeying the covenant and also where he has heard their cry and saved and restored them, and he is praying that God would do the same in his time.

The three stanzas, which are indicated by the word ‘selah’. Reflect on what God has done in the past. The first stanza focuses on the idea of theophany, of God showing up and all the ways in which creation reacts to that. The appearance at Sinai with earthquake and fire and cloud. When Judah is faced with an enemy who laughs at fortified cities, Habakkuk speaks of the creator God whom before even the mountains, so solid and symbols of permanence quake and melt. The second stanza focuses on the times when God has used creation to fight on Israel’s behalf. Now God has shown up it changes from talking about God to talking to God. It focuses on God’s saving actions, The parting of the red sea and the river Jordon, the sun standing still in Joshua 10 as they battled the Amorites. Plagues going before him may look back to Egypt and the exodus but also when the Assyrians under Sennacherib come against Jerusalem only to have their army succumb to a plague in 2 kings 18. The third stanza carries on a similar vein, it sees all God had done was not because God was angry with creation but was defeating the various kings who had stood against Israel. God’s saving activity…

Our hope and our trust comes from ‘hearing those stories as well… of seeing God moving on behalf of his people. We have the same stories as Habakkuk did in the scriptures, we can look past Habakkuk and see how the remnant came back from exile and rebuilt the temple and waited for the messiah. We can see Jesus Christ, his life, his death and his resurrection, saving us from sin and death, ushering in the kingdom of God.  We have the New Testament in which we can see God moving in his people and the story church history as well. In that we can see God’s constant faithfulness to his people… which gives us hope as we face our storms, in our times and our places. It encourages us to be able to pray lord show your mercy today as you have in the past.

Habakkuk’s storms were military conquest so it was right that his reflection on God was as the creator warrior striding out across the field of history  on behalf of his people, but we could equally look at God’s provision when we are faced with financial storms, Gods healing when we are faced with health storms, How the people of God have faced persecution and the Gospel has grown in its midst, how there have been times when the church has been in threat of dying out, only to once again be revived and reinvigorated, or God’s lifelong care and commitment to people of faith  and Christ’s victory over death, as we face our own mortality.

Then in verse 16 we have a change of tune, Habakkuk’s prayer changes to a prayer of trust in God. The change comes with a repetition of the phrase ‘I have heard’ The first three stanza’s refer to the stories of the past, God’s action in the past, but now Habakkuk addresses the fact that God has spoken today to the situation Habakkuk finds himself in. His hope not only comes from looking at the past, but looking up to God, and listening to God speaking in the present. His word is that Judah will be taken into exile by Babylon and God’s people are going to have to live by faith, as they await God’s saving action in history. The Babylonians will conquer Jerusalem, the people will be taken into exile, but even that does not mean that God is not going to show mercy and act on behalf of his people… 

Habakkuk now hears what God is saying now today. That is why its important when we face life’s storms to be looking up and pressing in and waiting on God, because he does and will speak into our situations. Our hope is based on God’s past activity in history, it gives us assurance that God is for and with his people, but we need to look to God to show us how that connects with us today.

Habakkuk lets God know that he is trembling and afraid, it is going to be hard to wait and live by faith, but he knows that is the way forward. We get one of the most beautiful and powerful prayers of trust and hope.

Even if it’s all taken away, the blessing of the land and its provision, fig trees, the vine, live stock food and shelter says Habakkuk, yet I will find my joy in you O God. Even though its going to be a rocky difficult path ahead I trust you to help me navigate it, like a deer on the heights. You give me strength.

Walter Brueggemann says in the psalms he sees three different types of psalm, Psalms of orientation, the happy clappys where everything is as it should be, the people can rejoice in God’s blessing shown in the provision of nature. He also sees Psalms of disorientation where faced with storms the psalmist wrestles with what’s going on and does not seem to be able to find the way up, and then psalms of reorientation, where the psalmist has come to that place of rest and hope, realising that in the storms and through the storms the key thing is the abiding presence of God.

NCEA exams have dominated our family time over the past few weeks. Isaac’s been sitting them and Kris as a math teacher has been encouraging her students to remember good exam technique. When it comes to maths one of those keys is to show the workings, so the examiner can see that you understand the process and Habakkuk helps us by showing his workings. Moving from disorientation to reorientation… You get a sense of his understanding of God being on the side of his people, that is how it is supposed to work, but in this situation that is going to be shown in a different way. You can feel the emotional and intellectual turmoil he was worked through, and finally coming to that place of realising that the righteous will live by faith, and the God who is for and with his people can be trusted to work it out in his time, in God’s way. The source of Joy and hope and strength is in God’s abiding presence with his people.

We started with a bit of JRR Tolkien and I want to finish with a bit of his friend CS Lewis. Lewis’s book the Screwtape letters is a wonderfully creative book about Christian discipleship. It’s written as a series of letters between a demon, wormwood and his superior Screwtape... Wormwood’s charge has become a Christian and he writes to his boss to ask how he should handle it. How he should work at destroying the man’s faith. He tries persecution and suffering and in that the removal of any sense of God’s presence and the response he gets from his boss is this…

 “Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

Habakkuk sends his song of hope off to the director of music, and it is intended to be our song as well… sung in the face of our storms… sung as we wrestle with those storms and as we come to that place of trust and joy in the abiding presence of God. we don’t know the tune but I’m going to invite you to say that final part of the bridge as the prayer to close this sermon… 

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