"Wait, Watch, Work, Pray" October 7, 2007 Proper 22 Pentecost 19

(First, read the text for this sermon: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4)

It’s one of the hardest questions of all. If God is good, why do so many people suffer oppression and injustice?

That’s what the prophet Habakkuk is asking, in this morning’s verses.

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen?
Or cry to you "Violence!"
and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrongdoing
and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack
and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous--
therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

Habakkuk is speaking out for the people who are suffering in the kingdom of Judah under the corruption of their King, Jehoiakim, at the beginning of the 6th century BCE. Jehoiakim is supposed to be caring for the poor and the powerless, as God desires kings to do! But, instead, this inheritor of David’s dynasty is oppressing the poor! (In fact, in only a few years, King Jehoiakim and the kingdom of Judah will be overrun and destroyed by the Babylonians. The Biblical prophets will declare that God allowed that to happen – because the kings in the Davidic line had not cared for the poor and those who are helpless.)

The problem that Habakkuk raises is one of the most difficult we face as people of faith – the challenge of believing in the ultimate power of justice in a world that is full of injustice. Even in the leadership of those who believe they are called by God, there is injustice!

Is God even noticing? That’s the startling challenge that Habakkuk hurls at God:

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen?

That is a shocking charge: that God is not listening to the cries of God’s people! The prophet is accusing God of being unfaithful!

In this crisis of faith, Habakkuk does not lose faith. He declares:

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.

Now hear God’s answer, as it comes to Habakkuk:

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;
it speaks of the end, and does not lie.
If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come,
it will not delay.
Look at the proud!
Their spirit is not right in them,
but the righteous live by their faith.

What is God’s answer, as it comes to Habakkuk? Wait. Watch. God does have a purpose for history. Wait. Watch.

Can that be all?

If our church building’s stained glass windows were being installed today, I’m sure Mother Teresa would be one of the figures up there. I’m also sure that many of you have read reports of her journals that are being published. According to the report I read, in her journals Mother Teresa describes hearing the call to go to India as a young woman, to work in the midst of oppression and injustice, bringing comfort to those who are poor and suffering from their poverty. But then, according to her journals, Mother Teresa never heard a clear message from God again!

Have you heard a clear message from God? Sometimes God speaks through the words spoken by another person, when you’re struggling to discern the next step in your life’s journey. Sometimes it comes during prayer over a couple of verses of Scripture, during the practice of the lectio divina prayer form. But often, doesn’t God appear to be silent? Does this lead to despair?

This experience of God’s silence was described by great saints of the Church, long before Mother Teresa. For instance, the 16th century Spanish mystic, John of the Cross devotes many pages to what he calls “the dark night of the soul.” The great insight in this work is that we come to know God when our ideas about God are stripped away. God is mystery, far beyond human knowing. Any idea we have of God only offers insight on a very limited “piece” of God. And so, what about when that idea of God that we have clung to for many years is not sufficient for what we’re experiencing now? When it doesn’t “work” anymore? Does that mean that God doesn’t exist? Or that God isn’t listening? It may well mean, instead, that God is silent to lead us into a dark night of the soul, where our limiting ideas about God are stripped away. Then God can open us up, so that we will come to receive more fully who God is, in fact.

Wait. Watch. Is that all?

That wasn’t all for Mother Teresa. During those years, even as she experienced God to be silent, as she waited and watched, she worked! She lived with the poor every day and worked among them, bringing what relief she could to those who were suffering. And she prayed for an end to that suffering.

Wait. Watch. Work to end injustice and poverty. Pray for that end to come. There are many times when that is the wise and faithful course.

But it’s so uncomfortable! There is so much unresolved tension! We feel such pressure to do something! We want to force a resolution!

On the geopolitical level, that’s why we’re in Iraq. President Bush enjoyed the support of most in Congress when he advocated forcing a resolution, to go in and find those weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps it would have been better to continue what had been the previous course: Wait. Watch. Work to end injustice. Pray for that end to come.

We feel that same kind of pressure in our families – to do something when there is dysfunction, to try to “fix” the person who is acting out! (How often does that make a family dynamic worse?)

Wait. Watch. Work to respond with healthy behavior yourself in the face of diseased family dynamics. Pray for that health to come to the family.

A person who is hospitalized may feel the same need to force a resolution, to determine “the reason” for what’s going on. “Why am I sick?” I have even heard parishioners ask, “What have I done? Why is God punishing me?” Trying to force a conclusion leads to despair!

Much more helpful, in my own experience were those visits from my friend, Pete, who would simply sit with me. He would ask, “Where is God in all this?” And he would say, “It will take you months to figure that out.”

Wait. Watch. Work to be healthy, to do what the doctors are telling you to do! Pray for that health to return.

God is God. God is far greater than our ideas of who God is. God is not directed by our assumptions of how God is “supposed” to act!

Wait. Watch. Work. Pray.

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia