O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?
Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? [Habakkuk 1:2].
As I comb through the “Matrix”—my electronic system that houses a long-running journal, my sermons, homilies, meditations (like this one), and notes on scripture passages, I see a hole. Over these many years, I have devoted virtually no time at all to the minor prophet, Habakkuk. My only reference is buried in some notes I’ve assembled on Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Quoting from Habakkuk 2:4, St. Paul gives us one of his core theological principles: “the righteous shall live by faith” [Romans 1:17]. Alas, living by faith isn’t easy.
Several factors conjoin to explain my lack of attention to Habakkuk. First, the Revised Common Lectionary assigns but a single reading from Habakkuk in its entire three-year cycle. That reading, Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4, is one of the two Old Testament options for this upcoming Sunday, the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost, Year C. Second, the Gospel reading assigned for this Sunday is everyone’s favorite, the story of the beloved, “wee little man” named Zacchaeus [Luke 19:1-10]. Who wants to write or preach about a stuffy old “minor” prophet when you can have fun visually climbing sycamore trees?
We don’t know much about Habakkuk. In fact, were it not for a rather innocuous political reference in 1:6 to “the Chaldeans”—a/k/a, the Neo-Babylonians—who under the rule of their powerful king, Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BCE), ransacked Jerusalem in 597 (BCE), carried off hostages, and then returned in 586 BCE, to destroy the city, and the Temple, we’d be unable to pin down Habakkuk’s historical setting at all.
In this short, three-chapter poetic offering, Habakkuk—like a number of other minor prophets—raises the issue of theodicy. That’s a $32.40 word (adjusted for inflation) that Div School grads like me use to make sure you remember that we went to seminary. Technically, as many of you know, theodicy means the “vindication of God,” but it essentially boils down to the struggle that many of us have with the issue of why a “good” God permits the manifestation of evil. You may debate the question within yourself when you watch the evening news, even if you don’t use the expensive word.
In 1:2, the prophet asks Yahweh the question that we might similarly fashion, “How long will he cry out for help and fail to get an answer from his LORD?” He continues in verse 3: “Why do you make me see wrongdoing?” Indeed, why must the prophet “look at trouble?” Although these are difficult, painful questions for the prophet, they show us a level of deep honesty between Yahweh and Habakkuk. The latter can articulate these questions to Yahweh only because he trusts his Lord. And so, he cries out to Yahweh:
So the law becomes slack, and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous; therefore judgment comes forth perverted [Habakkuk 1:4].
Those who live by faith—particularly if you’re a Christian in Nigeria, or a Christian or Muslim in China, or a mere citizen in Ukraine—are often surrounded by others who march to the beat of a callous and evil drum. We recall from our recent readings in Jeremiah that in the years before the Babylonian conquest of Judah—the same time frame about which Habakkuk speaks—the house of Judah had turned from Yahweh. They began to ignore widows, orphans, and the elderly. Cheating was rampant in the marketplace. Particularly the prominent people in Judah began to look to themselves for security, instead of toward Yahweh. The future was in their hands, or at least, that’s what they thought. Disobeying Yahweh’s law, the evildoers seemed to flourish, while the righteous suffered.
In the verses between the two segments of text that make up this week’s OT reading (i.e., the text between 1:4 and 2:1), Habakkuk announces that Yahweh has determined to deal with this evildoing. In a message quite consistent with Jeremiah, Yahweh tells Habakkuk that he will use the Chaldeans to “make right” the issues about which the prophet laments.
And yet, Yahweh’s “fix” produces further worry for Habakkuk. To be overrun by foreigners, to be carried off to a land far removed from Temple worship, to be deported and enslaved—Habakkuk wonders if Yahweh’s cure isn’t worse than the disease itself.
Finally, as we turn to the final verses appointed for this week, we see that after Habakkuk has made his strong and powerful statement, after he has voiced his bitter complaint to Yahweh, after getting things off his chest, Habakkuk makes an unusual announcement. He’s going to wait for an answer!
Rather than shrink into the shadows, or take a sabbatical to collect himself, Habakkuk will “stand at [his] watchpost.” The prophet will “station [himself] on the rampart” [2:1]. In the face of the dangers that abound around him, while others are doing their best to hide or fend for themselves, Habakkuk will persevere. While his head tells him that Yahweh has heretofore been silent to his pleas of “How long?”, his heart determines that, as long as it takes, he will await a response from his LORD. “I will keep watch to see what he will say to me …” [2:1].
And as Habakkuk keeps his watch, guess what happens? “Then the LORD answered me …” [2:2].
In a somewhat bizarre response, Yahweh tells his prophet:
Write the vision: make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it” [2:2b].
I’ve seen several takes on this verse in the commentaries. One insists that the idea is that the vision would be written on tablets so that the runner could call out the message as he or she runs through the city. I can’t walk at a decent pace and read a book on my iPad, so I’m not sure how that would work. Another commentator allows that perhaps Yahweh means something like “put the vision’s message on a billboard, so that even a runner could see it.” The difficulty here is that the prophet never articulates the vision. It’s the vision that is truly important, not the medium. Yet, we can’t see the vision (to offer a lousy pun).
And I think that, dear friends, is the point of the passage. It is as if Yahweh is telling Habakkuk, “There is a vision—I promise there’s a vision—but you must wait for it” [see 2:3b]. It will surely come, but you must wait. Yahweh’s message indicates that it will come at “the appointed time” [2:3a]. In short, the vision will appear when Yahweh is ready for it to appear.
The Greeks had two words for time. Habakkuk didn’t, of course, write in Greek, but I think Yahweh—through Habakkuk—is here making a similar point. There is chronos, the sort of time that we might think of as chronological. It is the plodding tick of the clock, the steady passage of time through a day, a month, a year, or a lifetime. Ah, but then there is kairos. It is defined as “the right, critical, or opportune moment.” The church often refers to kairos as “God’s time.”
Yahweh’s promise to Habakkuk—and to the people—is that His Word will come to pass. There is no stopping it. It is all-powerful and irresistible. The people are called upon to the faithful and to wait for it. It will come, but it will come in Yahweh’s time. Until then, the people are called upon to live by faith.
“The righteous live by their faithfulness” [2:4]. These are the words that form the core of St. Paul’s message to the early church. Though we read them some 2,600 years after Habakkuk wrote them, they are words that are vital for today’s church.
The challenge to the “modern” church is not that different from the challenge given to Habakkuk and the people of Judah. We are to live between the times. We are to live between the time represented, on the one hand, by our cries for justice and peace, our cries for love and tranquility, our tearful laments that can appear to fall on Yahweh’s deaf ear, and the time represented by Yahweh’s appointed, kairos time on the other. To live as Yahweh’s righteous people means to live as those who have been promised a vision, but who have not yet fully received it.
Habakkuk ends his little book with a hymn of thanksgiving. As children of the promise, as heirs of the vision, may we sing it in our hearts:
Though the fig tree does not blossom,
and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails,
and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold,
and there is no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will exult in the God of my salvation [(3:17-18].
Be First to Comment