I was looking over my 12 years of homilies to see what I had preached on in the past for this Sunday. Noticeably absent from my collection was any preaching on the 1st reading of Habbakkuk. He is one of the minor prophets, which isn’t a judgement of his importance but instead a description of how little he wrote. The minor prophets only left us a few pages while the major prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah were more prolific and their writings significantly longer. Habbakkuk’s book is only three short chapters and his ministry takes place during the decline of the southern Kingdom of Judah. They were about to be destroyed by the Babylonians and sent into exile. Babylon was considered the worst of worst at the time. They were similar to how Al Quaeda or Isis is regarded in our time. About 150 years before this, the Northern Kingdom of Israel was defeated by Assyria and essentially wiped out by genocide, slavery, and assimilation. While this tragedy was happening, the people of the southern kingdom were largely indifferent, enjoying their life of luxury, and arrogantly thinking, “that sort of thing will never happen to us.” Just a few generations later, here they are, about to be pummeled by the one of the most efficient and ruthless armies of the ancient world.
Habbakuk, on behalf of the people, challenges God and says, “how long are you going to let this go on?” We cry out to do you and you do nothing.” Not a good idea to call out God! The prophet and the people get an answer back from the Lord, much of which is cut out of our reading today. God replies he is doing something amazing, so amazing that if he told Habbakuk, he wouldn’t believe it. He is allowing Babylon to conquer and destroy his own people as part of the Divine Plan. This would be like God saying, “I will let Isis be victorious over America and it is all part of my design. Just have faith.” No one, then or now would believe it! In the end, we see God does just that with the Babylonians. It doesn’t happen right away; in fact, it takes a couple hundred years. But in the end, a Persian King from Babylon, named Cyrus, sets the Israelites free and sends them home. Not only that, he even gives them money, materials, and craftsmen to help rebuild the temple and offer pleasing worship to God.
But first the Israelites have to be punished. For generations they have ignored the poor and suffering. The people closest to the Lord, they have scorned. God’s people have fallen in love with the things of this world and the comforts it offers. As a nation, they put their trust in acquiring things: riches, power, and prestige. They stopped worrying about what pleases the Lord and instead spent their energy trying to please the world around them. Worst of all, instead of spreading the message of mercy, salvation, worship that came from their covenant with God, they remained silent and ashamed about their special relationship with God.
God never stops loving his people but they have become so wicked that they will only turn back to him when they see their self-appointed idols of riches, power, and worldly alliances fall apart. Their hearts have become completely hardened.
Only a person with the gift of Faith, could trust that God would work through the Babylonians. Only a person with Faith can avoid having a hardened heart to the voice of God, as we prayed in our psalm. Only a person with faith can bear their share of hardship for the gospel, as St. Paul encourages Timothy to do in the second reading. And if a person has even the smallest portion of true faith, Jesus assures us that they could say to a tree, “be uprooted and cast into the sea” and that would indeed happen.
The obvious connection between all the Scriptures this weekend then is the gift of faith. With it, we can see God’s hand and his care for us, even in the darkest moments of human history. If Faith informs our daily living, we can be like St. Paul, in prison, writing one of his last communications before execution, and still be full of care and encouragement for others.
There is another, darker side to the coin as well. Without faith in God, the kind of faith that wants nothing more than to know, love, and serve him, we decline spiritually at a rapid pace, both as individuals and as a society. I found myself thinking about this sobering point repeatedly as I wrestled with the readings for today. Maybe that’s why so many preachers skip over this first reading and simply talk about faith without the troubling background of Babylon looming over the Southern Kingdom. The context of Habakuk raises the uncomfortable possibility that we, as modern Christians, have become blind to or tolerant of the substantial suffering of our most vulnerable brothers and sisters. How often do we cry out for God to save us and put an end to the ills of our society, horrible things like mass shootings, corrupt politicians, hypocritical clergy, broken homes, and the epidemics of suicide, anxiety, depression, and addiction, to name some but not all. And yet, at the same time we have become largely numb to things like abortion, capital punishment, experimentation on humans at the embryonic stage, human trafficking, the constant death and degradation of refugees around the world, homelessness and so much more. Oftentimes we turn look to the idols of money, materialism, politics, and comfort.
Will God respond to our prayer for deliverance as he did to Habakuk? That He is indeed doing something amazing, so amazing we wouldn’t believe it if He told us because of our lack of faith. Could it be that many of us in our country and in our Church have hardened our hearts so much that we cannot return to God until we have been purified by suffering and loss, just as the Israelites were? Not an easy thing to consider for sure. But the parallels between their times and ours are eerily similar.
Only faith will enable us to see God working amidst the sin, sadness, and tragedy that is all too common in our times. Only faith will soften our hearts and move us to work with God to build lives, families, communities and nations that are righteous, compassionate, and focussed on helping others and offering right worship to the Lord. We receive the gift of faith in small, concrete decisions made each day regarding our relationship with God. We soften our hearts by making time each day to pray and listen to God, reading his Scriptures, going on retreat like many of our teens just did, and looking to serve others in the name Jesus, especially the poor, forgotten, vulnerable and inconvenient. We need to make our own the prayer of the apostles today; “Lord, increase our faith.” Even if we just have a little, it can accomplish incredible things. So please give it to us. Make us willing to suffer and do whatever it takes to be faith-filled people. Increase our faith today, tomorrow, and every day, amen!
