Last week, we talked about how to live as followers of Jesus in the middle of questions.  How to live as people who are in Christ in the middle of circumstances that vex us and perplex us; circumstances that cause us to ask questions like “How long, O Lord?” and “Why?”  We looked at three responses from the first chapter of Habakkuk.  The first was coming to God in prayer and lament.  Living between the questions and the “but” or “and yet.”  Questions of “How long?” and “Why?’ and the affirmation of “But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation” or the assurance of “Yet you are holy; enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you, our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.”  We talked about listening for God’s voice, even though it may not be what we were expecting to hear.  We talked about standing and watching, just as a sentry keeps watch on the ramparts of a walled city, just as a parent stands and watches and waits for her children to come home. 

This is where we left off – “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.”  Here we are with God’s answer.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we look at God’s word together.

The story of God is a story a conversation between God and people are invited into His saving work – God’s saving/delivering plan for humanity and indeed all of God’s good creation   From the call of Abraham to the long discussion Moses has with God as to why he’s in no way qualified to do what God’s asking him to do.  From the promise made to David that God would establish his throne forever, to the echo of that promise made by the angel Gabriel to young Mary.  To the prayer that Jesus, God as man, makes to his Father in a garden, which ends with “Not my will but yours be done.” 

God answers Habakkuk beginning in v2.  We’ve been waiting for this all week after last Sunday’s cliffhanger ending! No answer is given by God regarding timelines or explanations as to why/how.

God’s answer to Habakkuk is, “I’m giving you a job to do.”  Then the Lord answered me and said, “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.  For there is still a vision for the appointed time;” In other words, live in hope, and make your hope known.  There is so much left ambiguous here, so many questions that are left unanswered.  Is the runner here someone who’s reading the vision as if it were written on the ancient equivalent of a billboard?  Make it plain so that someone running past might read it?  Unlikely given the relative unpopularity of running in ancient Judah, but it works as an image.  Is this an allusion to ancient messengers who would be tasked with making news known?  This really works as an image!  People who were selected, trained, could go 100km in a day (unimaginable!), trustworthy, familiar with the terrain, courageous.  Write the vision.  Make it plain on tablets so that a runner may read it.  Make the vision known.

To follow Jesus is to be a living letter of Jesus.  We want to be coming to a deeper understanding of who God is and who we are in Christ with the living Spirit of Christ in us.  Listen to how Paul uses this image in 2 Corinthians – “You yourselves are our letter (he’s talking about a letter of recommendation), written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

I am a living letter of Jesus.  You are a living letter of Jesus.  What is this going to mean the next time I am cut off in traffic?  Write the vision.  Make it plain on tablets so that a runner may read it.  We’re the runners.  I have fought the good fight.  I have finished the race, Paul said near the end of his life.  I have kept the faith.  I have held fast.

At this point, we should address the question, “What is the vision?”  Is it the rest of Habakkuk 2?  Is it all of Habakkuk?  Is it historical events?  Is it the whole of God’s story as it’s been revealed to us in God’s word?  The answer is, of course, “Yes.”  The Babylonian empire, like all empires, will rise and fall.  The writing was on the wall.  Babylon will fall.   In 539 BC, the army of King Cyrus of Persian will march into the city.  The divine promise was that God would make a nation from Abraham through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed, and that promise would not be thwarted.  The divine promise was that God would establish David’s throne forever through one who would come from his line, and that promise would not be thwarted by some expansionist empire, no matter how bad things looked or look or will look.  Listen to the divine vision from Isaiah 11:6-9.  Listen to the divine vision from Revelation 21.  We are a people who hope, and that means that we are a people who live in confident expectation of God because the God to whom we belong is good.

So let us personalize this.  Write the vision, make it plain on tablets so that a runner may read it.  Let us ask God to make the vision plain in our lives, in our actions, in our words, in my messages.  Let us personalize this as I ask you a question.   'What truth about God are you being called by God to make plain in your words and deeds?'  This could be for you individually, for our church, or both.  Right now, I would say this – “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.”  I put this question to people in our church, including our Board of Deacons.  Here are some of the answers:  God has the last word.  I lay it in God’s hands.  God’s plan, God’s timing is over all.  God’s laws were self-sustaining, and ours tend to be self-destructive.  Wait on God.  Above all, trust God.

Let us keep these truths in front of us.  Let us remind one another of them.  Let us keep on running together.  The vision may not be apparent in our world or in our lives.  “There is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and it does not lie.  If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.” (2:3-4)

There is a call to steadfastness here, a call to holding fast.  It’s a call that I believe speaks plainly to people of faith in what I see as the biggest danger for us.  I think that the biggest danger for us is not that one day we are going to say, “You know what, all this Christ stuff is not really for me.”  Kind of like a reverse epiphany.  I think the bigger danger for us is that we are beginning to drift.  That we begin to drift away from the practices that have held us fast to Christ.  That we begin to let cultural currents take us away from the thing that matters most in this life.  That we begin to see the problems of our world-the – the problems of our life – less and less through the lens of Christ and his birth and death and resurrection and promised return, and more and more through the lens of.

Well, often through our own lens. I suppose.  The autonomous lens.  The lens if self-sufficiency.  The lens of “I got this” or “We got this.”   So, how are we doing with our self-sufficiency?  The problem with this lens is that, through it, the problems of the world and the problems of people like us in the world tend to either overwhelm us or cause rampant indifference within us.

While the Kingdom of God is open to everybody, it’s not for everybody.    Which brings us to the verse that’s been described as one of the central affirmations of Biblical faith.  The first thing described is what faith is not – Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them.  What do we worship?  Weapons of war in the same way the Chaldeans worshiped the metaphorical nets in which they caught up other nations and people like helpless fish?  The pursuit of wealth?  An everything-is-meaningless and hopeless nihilism/despair?  Ourselves – when we are depending on things like smarts, wealth, charm, and the ability to figure things out.  We are puffed up.  Our spirit is not right in us.  Something is crooked within us when we are not living in harmony with our creator.  We see the results all around us. 

1. To react to God’s saving work in Christ in a way that is fitting and proper and right and good.  To live by faith or faithfulness. Trust in God that is not simply a one-time thing that might be affected by adverse circumstances, but ongoing trust in and dependence on and reliance on God. “Faithfulness means placing one’s whole life in God’s hands, and trusting him to fulfill it, despite all outward and inward circumstances… Faithfulness is life by God’s power rather than one’s own, and therefore it is truly life because it draws its vitality from the living God who is the source of all life.” 

The One who is faithful.  This is the thing about our own faith, our own trust in God.  It’s based on God’s faithfulness.  Part of God’s nature is to keep promises.  So we live in hope.  So we live with a confident expectation of good, no matter our circumstances. The writer to the Hebrews picks up the language from verse 4 in Hebrews 10:36-39. 

We won’t shrink back.  God will bring about his promises.  Evil, oppression, injustice will not be allowed to stand forever.  We cry out, “How long?” in the meantime, knowing this.  We have what’s known as “woe oracles” here. These speak of the future, and they speak out about what’s going on in the present.  “Alas for you who heap up what is not your own.  How long will you load yourselves with goods taken in pledge?  Will not your own creditors suddenly rise, and those who make you tremble wake up?  Then you will be booty for them.”  Injustice will not be allowed to stand forever.  Empires come and go.  Those who worship created things will find that the things they worship teach lies.  “Alas for you who say to the wood, ‘Wake up!’  To silent stone, ‘Rouse yourself!’  Can it teach?  See, it is gold and silver plated, and there is no breath in it at all.” 

In Christ, there is fullness of life.  That might be my new message.  We can have more than one.  I’m going to invite us to write down the message that God is laying on our hearts today.  The message you are being called to run with, to make plain as you go through your days.  Through everything, we continue to come to God together, to listen for God’s voice, to watch and wait in confident expectation of good.  Through it all, the prophet reminds us of this truth - “But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!”  We’ve been given a vision.  We’re called and enabled to live it out.  We’re called to praise, too, and we’ll look at that next week as we finish.  May God continue to plant and nurture his vision so that all may see with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, and may this be true for us all.

 Amen