That's the Plan !?!
June 14, 2009
Habakkuk 1:2-11
Habakkuk takes it all back to God. He looks around and he sees a world filled with everything that counters what it’s like to be with God. He’s frustrated with his people. Just 12 years before this work of Habakkuk was written a reform swept over these people of Judah. They re-ordered their priorities and made sure that God was the central component of their way of living and being. They were reminded about God’s priorities and they recovenanted to make God’s priority list theirs. But, just 12 years later, they were mostly living as if those promises had never been made. Both the prophet Jeremiah and Habakkuk are from the same time frame. Both of them are reporting to us that it is a time that the Judeans absolutely have forgotten what God has done for them. They have no regard for the religious law and disobey it on a regular basis. They don’t listen to what the priests or the prophets are telling them. It is a time of completely ignoring the teachings, the teachers, the movement, the history of God. And, to complicate this environment, many teachers have arisen who claim to have the answers and they soothe the people by telling them what they want to hear. The response is an entire nation that is functioning without order, without peace, an entire nation functioning out of chaos.
Habakkuk is completely in tune with the chaos and he’s had enough of it. God did not promise this kind of world. He sees the broken human relationships. He sees the weak being targeted by the strong. He sees the endless lawsuits and quarrels. He sees the people repeatedly cheating one another in attempt to “get ahead” in the name of progress. Habakkuk sees, this is not the kind of living that God had in mind. This is not the kind of living that the Holy brings into our experience of the living. Habakkuk cries out to God, “How is this possible?” The chaos of this world is unbearable God, what are you doing in the midst of all this violence? For no matter what the people do, even those who are followers and desire God’s order to be restored, the disorder infects the progress and succumbs to the violence and chaos and out of whack world that surrounds them. It has paralyzed the world from moving toward God!
Habakkuk prays. Habakkuk, cries out to God! “Hey, you made all those promises! Check out what’s going on! These people aren’t living out those promises. There is death and destruction all around us, what are you doing? Get us out of here! My people, your people are suffering! Send them peace! Send them healing! Give them hope by taking away this evil that they are immersed in allowing them to begin again.” And, this prayer from Habakkuk, it meets silence. He’s been praying this prayer over and over for years and years and still it has not been answered, here “in the meantime”. And when our prayers are not answered we assume, God has not heard our cries. And, Habakkuk is confronted with that problem that the faithful in every time have experienced…What happens to the unanswered prayer for the healing of society. No matter how hard Habakkuk prays for peace, there is war. No matter how hard he prays for good only evil comes. Habakkuk is exhausted with the wickedness of the world, he wants relief.
Habakkuk is crying out to God, even here in the meantime because he is aware of what comes next, the until. Habakkuk realizes that this is a living God who gives peace and joy to us within our very being. He knows the trust and unity that can come to any community when they center themselves in the wisdom of God. This prophet has clearly felt the shift from never having enough to the feelings of abundance which flows over beyond an individual relationship with God to a communal sense of resting within God. Habakkuk is crying out let Your Kin-dom come! Let Your Will be done! Come on enough fooling, around already!
Finally, after years of prayer, God responds. Habakkuk, Habakkuk, Habakkuk. Dear child, I am very much alive and at work here. I too see all the violence. I too see that how I have asked the people to live doesn’t matter to most of them. The people working to center themselves in the ways in which I inspire, peace, justice, kindness, compassion, they are swallowed up by those profiting from keeping this in chaos. And, I am in this. I have give you all your freedom to be in this world. So, I go with you all. I go with you into your choice to be a violent world. Judah, you rejected my ways, and chose violence as your master. Therefore you must serve the god of violence. Babylonia is filled with a violence beyond what Judah has, and this will be the consequence of serving this god of violence, you will be returned the violence that you have served. When you feed the war machine, you become consumed by the war machine, this is justice, it is the logical reaction to your action.
Habakkuk is stunned. No! No! No! Not all of us are war mongers. Not all of us agree this is the way we want the culture to be. Is there nothing for us in the midst of this? Yes, says God but in the meantime we’ll have to work with what we have, and things are going to get worse before they get better. Why? Because, you all think your way is better, juicier, easier for you to bare than the ways I asked you to be, the ways I created you to be. In the meantime, in the meantime, before you figure this all out, the natural consequences will continue to beat you all down.
Habakkuk is stunned. He names what’s going on. God agrees and reflects it all right back. And, in spite of the ways in which Habakkuk nails the situation, God says, so be it. God says, I’m right here in the middle of this mess. And, I am willing to go with you all as this plays out as bloody and ugly as it’s going to get. Habakkuk is stunned. He wanted an intervention. God says, “Been there, done that, intervention only matters if people’s hearts are truly changed and if they back it up with will.” Once the next challenge comes along and I don’t swoop in everyone proclaims, I’m not in it. So, freewill, here we go, I am in it. I am in the midst of this chaos and violence. I am willing to go with you. Even if it means, you will be eaten alive by your own appetite for violence and destruction. And even that hopelessness, the thought of it’s going to get way worse I will use for the culmination of the until. I have not abandoned you Habakkuk and you still aren’t going to like how I’m rescuing your people.
We too live in a time of great violence and chaos. No matter what good we try to do to reorder society or align our world with the Greater Good it seems to get infected with the violence around it…Let’s name some things: Foster Care system, judicial system, health care, social security…All things attempting to provide compassion, inspire hope, allow people to get out from under and all things that have become a burden, a disgrace a death dealing agent of chaos.
Today’s good news is that God is here. God gets this living in the meantime. Living in the between time. And, God says, it’s not over yet. And, God says, it’s not going to work out how the Democrats think it’s going to. It’s all warped, it’s all built on chaos. It’s all centered in violence. I’m in the midst of it, but if you want to find your way through, cling to me, I am here but it’s not how you expected. There are no free passes or get out of jail free cards. I am with you, and we’re going to play this out because I’ve tried everything I know to do, and this is what you want, we know this because we keep ending up in this same spot. So cling to me. Be freed by all you know me to be. Have faith. Have faith that there is more to living than what the world is teaching you. Get unstuck in your own internal violence by immersing yourself in my order, my order to be who you are created to be oozing peace, joy, hope in spite of this world, in spite of the track we’ve chosen as a society. There will still be violence…people who pray, begging for healing and die without it. There will still be violence…people who pray for peace and spouses who continue to batter and hate. There will still be violence…taxes that go for bombs instead of healthcare, education, and real security for our elders. There will still be violence until we decide individually, communally, societally that we’ve had enough and choose peace. We started all of this, we can end it…Habakkuk cries out, what are we doing in the meantime!!