Here’s the situation.  We are being threatened by a kingdom to the south.  Trouble is all around.  Violence is all around, from our city to the international news.  Strife and contention are all around.  Justice seems to never prevail.  Judgement comes forth, but it’s twisted.  Polarity is the order of the day.  In the midst of all the angry words that are being hurled back and forth, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Is it 2025?  1990?  The 7^th century before Christ?  This is the situation that the prophet Habakkuk finds himself in when he receives an oracle from the Lord, a vision from the Lord, the word of the Lord.  We’re going to be spending three weeks in this book, which is so timely, as the Word of God is.  I don’t need to describe the situation we face in our city, our country, our world.  I don’t need to describe the situation we face in our church.  Things aren’t what they used to be, are they?  Who are we called to be?  What are we called to do?  Pray.

External circumstances often seem beyond our control because they are.  They’re external.  It’s in the name!  Prior to King Charles’ visit to read the Throne Speech, I heard a story about a group of young women who had gone to London for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953.  They called the “Coronation Girls” – 50 young women who had been collected by grain as it travelled across Canada.  They then went on to London.  They reunited last year to visit King Charles – a wonderful, long-standing connection that they share.  They were each given a memorial coin to mark their visit in 1953, on which was inscribed these lines of verse – “'Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales, that tells the way we go.”  Later in the poem, we read “'Tis the set of the soul/That determines the goal/And not the calm or the strife.”

While these lines are not explicitly Christian, they speak to a larger truth, and this image of the church as people in a boat is a good one.  We just finished many weeks in the Gospel of Matthew, and all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) contain this story.  Let us hear it and hear good news this day.  Told in 5 verses by Matthew.  Read Matthew 8:23-27.

Dear friends, there are many circumstances which vex and perplex.  We may ask, “How long?” We may ask, “How could such a thing be?”  One of the messages which we will hear from the prophet Habakkuk (and remember, prophets tell it like it is) is “We have a hope.”  Circumstances, the wind and the waves which seem about to swamp us, are not outside God’s control.  International/societal/demographic/socio-economic/geo-political/church-wide trends/indicators/successes/failures do not come to God as a surprise.  What sort of man is this, the disciples asked, that even the wind and the waves obey him?  He’s our risen Jesus, and he is in the boat with us.

Habakkuk lived in a time when only little Judah was left.  The Kingdom of Israel, as it had been known in David and Solomon’s time, had been divided.  Things weren’t like they used to be.  The northern kingdom of Israel (or Ephraim) had already been invaded and taken over by the Assyrian Empire.  A new empire was rising to the south – though really the south-east in Babylon.  The Babylonians or Chaldeans, as they’re referred to here.  Listen to the words that Habakkuk uses to describe the situation that he sees – violence, wrongdoing, trouble, destruction, violence, strife, contention, the law becomes slack, justice never prevails, the wicked surround the righteous, judgement comes forth perverted.  What I know about a loving God is not in line with what I’m seeing.   How do we live by faith in the middle of such turmoil and such questions?  We turn to God.  We lament.  Habakkuk begins a conversation with God in chapter 1, and he starts with lament. “O Lord, how long?”  “How long, O Lord?”  I was talking to someone recently who told me how they were coming to a deeper understanding of prayer, of how prayer is so much more than simply asking God.  I told them to read the Psalms.  Pray a Psalm every day, they’re prayers.  Listen to this lament from Psalm 13 – “How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?  How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?” (Ps 13:1-2a)   ament – “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?”  Things are difficult.  The question of why is uppermost.  I don’t understand.  Read verses 2-3.  We’re reminded here about the importance of praying for others.  intercessory prayer.  Praying for others without ceasing.  This is a really interesting thing about this lament.  Here we have Habakkuk asking the question on behalf of others.  Violence is all around him.  Injustice is all around him.  People with money and/or position, and/or privilege, are able to work the system to their advantage, and there is no justice.  The law becomes slack.  The wicked surround the righteous.  How could we not cry out to God?  How could we not be jarred and dismayed?  We who follow Christ are called to be clothed with Christ, remember, to be clothed with mercy and kindness and compassion and peace and justice and love that does nothing but seek the good of others.  How could we not be jarred and dismayed by the violence and strife and contention and vitriol and fear and anger and hate by which we are surrounded and into which we may all too easily be sucked in?  I like to say that God wants us to be honest with Him.  These words of Habakkuk give us both permission and a language with which to bring our concerns before God. 

The thing is, these concerns needn’t only be societal.  They needn’t only be geopolitical.  Habakkuk is searingly personal.  One writer puts it like this:

“Habakkuk here faces the dilemma that has confronted faithful people in every age – the dilemma of seemingly unanswered prayer for the healing of society.  The prophet is one with all those persons who fervently pray for peace in our world and who experience only war, who pray for God’s good to come on earth and who find only human evil.  But he is also one with every soul who has prayed for healing beside a sickbed only to be confronted with death; with every spouse who has prayed for love to come into a home and then found only hatred and anger; with every anxious person who has prayed for serenity but then been further disturbed and agitated.”  With the soul who has prayed for reconciliation and has only found a broken relationship.  With the soul who has prayed for their children and has found them straying.  

So we pray.  We lament.  We listen for God’s voice.  God’s voice may not speak what we want to hear.  It’s not about what we want to hear.  Are we in the habit of only telling people what they want to hear?  Do we want others to tell us only what we want to hear?  If so, I hope we get out of that habit.  Listening for God’s voice must never be about looking for what we want to hear or how we want things to go.   What God says might be considered somewhat surprising, but we can take it.  Remember who is in the boat with us.  Here’s the thing.  It’s bad, Habakkuk.  It’s going to get worse.  “Look 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.”  God goes ahead and tells it anyway.  “For I am rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.”  An expansionist empire that is dread and fearsome.  Such empires have always been with us, and they’re around today.  Their justice proceeds from themselves.  Their horses are swifter than leopards, more menacing than wolves at dusk; their horses charge.  You may be going “Hold on hold on – these are the people through whom God is going to advance his salvation plan – his kingdom plan??”  Well, yes, actually.  You didn’t think he only used the righteous, did you?  You didn’t think he relied solely on us?  Now that’s humbling.  This gives us a lens through which to look at world events.  Empires rise and fall, the word of the Lord endures forever.  The word of the Lord is that one day the renewal of all things will come.  The word of the Lord is that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.  There’s a lot of talk around right now about national sovereignty,  No event in human history is to be understood as outside of the sovereignty of God, or derailing God’s story into which we are invited to be caught up in Christ and in the power and presence of the Holy Spriit of God who is roaming abroad and in us. One writer puts it like this  -“God is always at work, always involved, always pressing forward towards his Kingdom.”  Let us press on together in Him. 

We get perplexed.  We don’t understand. Habakkuk doesn’t understand how God could use such a people to advance God’s saving plan.  Things are going to get worse, says God.  Judah will be invaded multiple times in the coming decades.  Jerusalem will be overrun.  It’s best and brightest carried away into captivity.  So many killed.  This will not be the end, though.  Those captives will be told by God, “Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat what they produce.”  Do not lose heart, do not lose hope.  “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”  And also, I’m going to bring you back.  The destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC was not the destruction of God’s saving plan, any more than Good Friday was the destruction of God’s saving plan.  A righteous remnant remained, you see.  Relatively small in number, things not like they used to be, but God’s plan moves forward. So fellow exiles, so fellow post-Easter people, we do not lose hope.  Destruction is not how the story ends, and lament is not where we end either.  We may be afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed, sure but not driven to despair, persecuted but never forsaken, struck down but not destroyed.  Listen to the end of Psalm 13 – “But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.  I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.”  The most famous song of lament must be Psalm 22.  I say most famous because Jesus spoke it from the cross.  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  In the middle of his lament and questioning, Habakkuk reminds us of truth and declares he belongs to God – “Are you not from of old, Oh Lord my God, my Holy One?”  Listen to the next lines, which follow the opening lament of Psalm 22,  In Christ, circumstances do not dictate the end, not even death itself.  The wind and the waves do not dictate our course. The risen Christ is in the boat, and there is always an “And yet…” Listen to the whole thing from verses 1-4 and be glad! Psalm 22:1-4.

Who will stand with me in this hope?  I’m still standing.  This is the last of the three responses into which we are being invited this morning.  God has answered.  Habakkuk is perplexed.  Another answer is coming, which we’re going to hear next week, and it might be unexpected too.  As we wait, we stand together.  Habakkuk is still perplexed, but he knows what to do. “I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, what he will answer concerning my complaint.” (2:1)

Cliffhanger!  Tune in next week. Same church time, same church channel.  In the meantime, let us be people who pray, hope, and stand.  May this be true for us all. Amen