How Long?

Scriptures:     Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4,  Psalm 137

2 Timothy 1:1-14    Luke 17:5-10

How Long?

Today is World Communion Sunday, a celebration of the unity of the church.  World Communion Sunday, celebrated on the first Sunday of October, started as a Presbyterian initiative right here in Pennsylvania, in the Pittsburgh area, and later spread to other mainline Protestant Churches.  And notice how this unity is celebrated – not by the reading of a proclamation, but by celebrating communion on the same Sunday – in essence, sharing a meal together, at least ideally, around the world.  One Sunday a year, sharing a meal together!  Of course, every year I remind us of my Roman Catholic friend who reminded me that, for Roman Catholics, every Sunday is World Communion Sunday, because Roman Catholics celebrate the Eucharist at every mass.  So they share a meal together at every worship service…..but as Protestants we’re not invited of course.  So around the table around which we are supposed to be able to gather in unity, there’s brokenness in all directions.  And for us independence-minded Protestants, I suppose getting our act together enough to be on the same page in celebrating communion together one Sunday at year is a considerable accomplishment, and about as much as we can hope for.

As we celebrate World Communion Sunday, our Old Testament texts remind us that we celebrate and break bread together in the midst of considerable pain.  Our Old Testament texts are difficult indeed, full of raw grief and pain.  Our text from Habakkuk, written just before the Babylonian invasion of Judah, begins with the prophet all but throwing up his hands at the self-satisfied corruption and violence that surrounds him, and virtually screams at God to do something about it.  “How long, O Lord?  Things are so bad that just opening my eyes in the morning makes me want to hurl.  Corruption and violence are everywhere, and the police and judges are all bought off.  How can you stand it, God?  Why don’t you do something?  Why don’t you come down here and fix this!”

In a section not included in today’s reading, God responds to the prophet by telling him that God indeed sees and knows all that has gone wrong in Habakkuk’s society, and agrees with all that Habakkuk has said.  God goes on to tell Habakkuk that God indeed is going to act – by bringing on the Babylonians – Judah’s longtime enemies - to conquer Judah.  To send Judah’s people into exile.  To destroy everything the prophet had ever known.  To put it into our terms, imagine – and as a sort of trigger alert, I emphasize, this is just an imaginary scenario to help us understand what Habakkuk was experiencing – I don’t want anyone to wake up out of a nap partway through my sermon and think this is really happening – imagine that one of us complained to God about all that’s wrong with America, and God responded that God was going to fix America’s problems by allowing Russia to conquer us and march us all off to Moscow.   Again, an imaginary scenario, to give us some sense of what Habakkuk would have been thinking when he heard from God that Judah was going to be conquered by Babylon.  At this point, the phrase “be careful what you ask God for” might come to mind.

This isn’t exactly the solution Habakkuk was going for, and he starts to plead with God:  Yes, God, our society is corrupt, dysfunctional, a disaster, but the Babylonians are a thousand times worse!  How can you stand to look on them?   Why would you want to set them up to conquer us?  And so, when we pick up the second half of our reading, Habakkuk is waiting for God’s response.  And God does respond, saying, “There is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to dawdle, wait for it; it will surely come and will not delay.”  God’s bottom line is, “The righteous live by their faith.” 

Psalm 137, our Psalm reading for this morning, comes from the time of the exile in Babylon.  It’s a psalm written in a time of grief and rage.  The Jews are in exile in Babylon, far away from everything they’d ever known and loved.  And their captors are asking them, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.” Again, imagine if you had been marched off from Philadelphia and somehow forced to live in Moscow, and the folks who captured you said, “Hey, we’d like to hear you sing ‘God bless America!’”  You’d be seeing red, I’m sure.  And this might help us understand the grief in this Psalm – “If I forget Jerusalem, let my right hand fall off” – and the rage expressed at Babylon – “Happy shall they be who take your children and smash them against a rock!”          

Well.   We don’t plan to smash any children against rocks this morning – you’re welcome.  But this morning’s readings remind us that the Scriptures give us the full range of human experience – the good, the bad, and the ugly.  The Bible is not a book about a bunch of perfect people perfectly worshipping God and behaving perfectly with perfect love toward one another.  Far from it.   Scripture records the full range of human sin and brokenness, and many of its pages are stained with blood.  And in response to this brokenness and sin and bloodshed, we weep, we mourn, we rage – and God allows us freedom and space to grieve and to rant.  After all, this Psalm that we read this morning was part of the music of the Temple, in essence part of the hymnbook used in worship.               

We wince at that last phrase in Psalm 137 – “Happy shall they be who take your children” – that is to say, the children of Babylon – “and smash them against a rock.”  It sounds so barbaric.  And yet are we any better?  Are we any different?  After 9-11, we were in shock, many of us veering back and forth between grief and rage – and what happened to Judah those thousands of years ago was not an attack on a few major buildings, but the destruction of an entire country, exponentially worse, like 9-11 to the 100^th power.   And in the days following 9-11, many American voices cried out for blood, cried out for vengeance…..and those in power in Washington at the time harnessed those cries for vengeance to declare war on Afghanistan and Iraq – Iraq, of course, containing the territory that was once Babylon.  Many children and adults who had nothing to do with 9-11 were bombed.  Smashing them with rocks would have been humane compared to what our country did to them.  And in turn, many of the survivors were left wanting to dash the children of Americans against rocks, or worse.   After all, if you want to turn someone into a terrorist, killing their children before their eyes will get the job done.

Since that time, it seems like much in this country and in this world has only spun further out of control.  Endless war, financial meltdowns, mutual distrust between police and the communities they are sworn to protect and serve,  shootings and threats of shootings of public schools - it seems like the world is going crazy.  And on a particularly grim note, it was announced that climate scientists say that our planet has passed the threshold of 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide, likely on a permanent basis – a threshold we’re told will likely lead to ongoing and irreversible climate change.  At my age, I won’t live to see the worst of it, but I dread the thought of the world that our congregation’s children, the children of this neighborhood, will inherit from us.   And all of this isn’t even to mention all the individual challenges we face – financial challenges, health challenges, on and on.

In these unsettling and uncertain times and overwhelming times, our readings from Habakkuk challenge us to keep faith with God, even when we don’t see answers to our prayers.  Habakkuk brought his questions to God, and God told him to expect things to get worse, not better.  And yet, even in the midst of exile, God did not abandon God’s people.  In fact, as years and decades in Babylon went by, those in exile learned that indeed they could sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.  As God told Habakkuk, “The righteous shall live by their faith.”  And so can we, even when there are no easy answers, even when we live with uncertainty.  God never promised an easy journey to those who follow him – and throughout Scripture those who followed God often found their lives made more complicated, not easier…..but God also promised his presence on the journey.  And that is enough.

And the exiles in Babylon learned that they could sing the Lord’s song in a strange land together – just as we can journey through the times we live in together, just as we can come to the Lord’s table together.  We are not alone – God is with us, and we are with one another.  World Communion Sunday reminds us that, in these crazy times, we are connected, coming to the table with Christians around the globe.  We mourn the empty seats at the table left by victims of violence, and there are far too many.  But together at the table we can comfort one another, and give one another strength to carry on.

In today’s reading from Paul’s letter to Timothy, Paul is in prison, and preparing Timothy for the hardship that will await him in serving Jesus.  Paul reminds Timothy that God has been faithful to his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice….by way of saying that God will be faithful to Timothy as well, even through the worst of times.  Paul reminds Timothy that God has given both Paul and Timothy- and all believers – a spirit, not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.  Even though Paul is in prison, he writes to Timothy, “I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him.”

“I know the one in whom I have put my trust.”  When the world is going crazy, when our live are seemingly falling apart, these are words we can hold onto.  “I know the one in whom I have put my trust.”  May we once again entrust ourselves to the faithful God we worship, and may others come to trust in God through our words and actions of love. Amen.