i might show up in a white dress

turn reluctance on its ear

A sermon on Habakkuk's oral vision:

Habakkuk had seen too much. 

Ironically, though, we don’t know much about this prophet ourselves! Habakkuk is light on autobiographical details. For everything Habakkuk had to see, we DON’T have a very clear picture of Habakkuk himself. 

I mean this in the scholarly regard, too. We just don’t have a lot of information on Habakkuk. But my hunch is, like the rest of us, you don’t know much about Habakkuk, either. 

Habakkuk is one of the twelve minor prophets. Meaning his oracle is tucked away at the end of the Old Testament. And the unlikelihood of turning upon his words is compounded by the fact that Habakkuk is short, just three chapters. 

However, that means, in our reading today, you just got the broad strokes of the whole book of Habakkuk! What’s more, you’ve also already heard a good portion of it all already! So you now know nearly as much as the best experts on this book! 

Who knows, perhaps you’ll go home today and read the entirety of this oracle for yourself! Perhaps it’ll set you on the path to becoming the next great scholar of this book. Who knows? May God so bless us. 

Whether this happens or not, though, we do have enough information to consider Habakkuk’s oracle for ourselves. We have enough information to consider Habakkuk’s oracle for ourselves because it’s this oracle itself that provides us with the best way to understand Habakkuk. If you want to know what Habakkuk is talking about, just listen to his words. 

Beginning with the one he uses for his oracle. Our translation renders the word “oracle.” And that’s not bad. But the word Habakkuk uses is a bit more specific. The word Habakkuk uses to describe his oracle is burden. “The burden that the prophet Habakkuk saw.”

And oh, what a burden it is. Everywhere Habakkuk looks, all he sees is violence and injustice. NO one has anyone’s best interests at heart. Everyone’s just trying to get one over on someone else. 

And there’s no use in appealing to the courts, either. No, tragically, the lawmen are just as crooked as everybody else. If not worse!

From the bottom to the top and top to the bottom, the world’s going to you-know-where in a handbasket. 

You know what, though? That’s not even the worst part! The worst part is that God, in all that so-called godly goodness, can’t even be bothered to lift a finger about the sorry state of affairs!

Habakkuk could bear all the injustice. What he can’t bear, though, is the divine indifference! And it’s God’s failure to do anything that makes all the injustice just that much more difficult to bear.

…There’s nothing abstract about this, either. Is there? This scandal is the exposed nerve of faith itself. 

It doesn’t matter who you are or how life has gone for you; each and every one of us CAN relate. We all have some place in our life where the silence of God has made the argument for apathy more persuasively than any evil-doer out there ever could. Don’t we?

This silence can grow too loud to bear after a week of still more mass shootings. God’s silence can become deafening when the division that seems to characterize so much of our civil life shows no signs of abating, if not growing worse. And that silence can even become piercing after a week like any other when you go to church, as usual, but you just sit there, feeling cold and indifferent.

And it doesn’t even have to be out there, either. Does it? Why that’s what’s got Habakkuk so tied up in knots. Habakkuk knows that all the problems he sees out there belie a deeper problem IN *here.

This silence can grow too loud to bear when that old family conflict refuses to be put to rest. God’s silence can become deafening when those perennial misgivings keep you awake for yet another night. And that silence can even become piercing when some long-buried destructive tendency jumps on your back with a newfound viciousness.

That’s just scratching the surface, too. Isn’t it? We all come here carrying this untold litany of wounds and doubts and trespasses and fears and apprehensions and missteps and what else in our life that all cry out for God to say or do something! Don’t we?

And eventually, after too much or not enough of this, that silence from God in those places of our lives suggests horrible words to our lips. Doesn’t it? Words like the ones the prophet Habakkuk gives voice to at the beginning of his burden. Words like how long and why. Words none of us like to utter.

And when, not if, when that happens, every last one of us, without exception, will do the same thing. We will do everything in our power to get ourselves out of that hole as quickly as possible. Won’t we? 

It’s a mistake, though. It’s a mistake because, as Habakkuk witnesses, it’s when all our easy answers fall short that the word of God himself stands most tall! 

…What does Habakkuk do after raising his unhappy objections? Does he head for greener pastures? Does he distract himself? Does he try to come to terms with the wretched state of affairs? Does he try and set the world aright himself?

No! Habakkuk doesn’t do any of that! Does he? What Habakkuk does instead is wait. He sits at his rampart, and he waits.

Habakkuk doesn’t get out of dodge when things get bad. On the contrary, he digs in! After voicing just how bad things are, Habakkuk waits. He doesn’t DO anything. And he doesn’t GO anywhere. He just waits. 

And stunningly, into that miserable situation steps God! God, in all the glory thereof! God, poised and ready to act!

…Advent is about waiting. And waiting doesn’t come easy for us. Does it? 

No, we’re doers. We’re problem-solvers. We get things done. 

Needless to say, we don’t like to sit around and wait when things get bad. And that’s too bad. 

It’s too bad because, as Habakkuk witnesses, the unpleasant places in your life and mine are some of the most spiritually enriching ones! Isn’t that what we like to say around here? That God’s office is at the end of your rope?!?

Yes, none of us like to be at the end of our rope. However, the unanimous testimony of Scripture bears witness to the miracle that the end of our rope is not where faith ends. No, on the contrary, it’s right where faith really begins! 

The end of your rope is where faith finally begins because it’s at the end of your rope that you finally give up that heretical belief in yourself!

Now, God has given us many gifts and capabilities. Each and every one of us has a god-giving calling. God does indeed have a purpose for you. However, that purpose does not include salvation! 

You are not capable of, nor are you expected to save yourself! Or anyone else, for that matter! Salvation is a matter best left in God’s capable hands.

And isn’t that right where Habakkuk sees God’s power in his vision of God in all that unfathomable glory? “Rays came forth from his hand,” Habakkuk says. “His hand, where God’s power lay hidden.” 

“Where God’s power lay hidden.” That’s important, too. It’s important because God’s power will always be hidden to the world’s standards. 

On Good Friday, no one pointed to the cross and said, “God’s at work there.” And on that first Christmas, no one pointed to that unwed couple with nowhere to give birth to their firstborn child and said, “God’s born right here.” 

And yet, it was right there, and nowhere else, that God was most powerfully up to something! Wasn’t it? What looked to the world like a wound was really the very fullness of God’s power! And tucked away in that manger with nowhere else to go was truly the advent of all God’s might!

And it’s no different for you THIS Advent, too!

God, in Jesus Christ, comes to meet you in your lowliness! And he doesn’t come to take it away or even tell you how to get out of it. No, instead, he comes to saddle up right next to you in the midst of it! 

Isn’t that what “Emmanuel” means, sisters and brothers? God with us! God with us in the thick of it! 

It’s in the messiness and the brokenness and the injustice of this old world that unto us is born a savior! Jesus Christ, the Lord!

…I know; I know this doesn’t SEEM like much. It looks like weakness. It looks like a baby. Or a cross. BUT hidden therein is all the power of God! The power of God to hold on to a broken world full of broken people and never let go!

And that means, if you have any jagged edges in your life, you’re RIGHT where God’s power is most applicable! You’re RIGHT where God breaks the silence every time! And it sounds like Jesus taking your cries upon his lips! “My God, My God why - why have you forsaken me?”

God speaks loudest in those cross-shaped places of your life. 

However, Jesus isn’t just company for your misery! No, he comes to transform your malady! He comes to take it upon himself. To bear it upon his shoulders! 

During those terrible three hours upon the cross, Christ suffered the full silence of God. And when he died, he took that emptiness to the grave. And there, he buried it forever!

But then, when he was raised three days later by the glory of the Father, Christ filled that void with his resurrection shout! 

In Christ, the abyss that suffering puts between God and us has been closed once and for all! In Christ, those places where God appears most absent are now filled with God’s most holy presence! In Christ, those places where God seems most silent now echo loudest with that sacred resonance of salvation itself!

Yes, for now, this is a promise we walk in light of. In Advent, we wait. Slowly but surely, though, this holy commotion is drowning out all other sounds! And on that great Last Day, it’ll be the only sound left! That great sound of God’s praise never ceasing!

That is why we, with Habakkuk, can dare to say, “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!”

Yes, that’s no easy thing to say. Yet, NOW, on account of Christ, even those godforsaken places ring with that sacred sound of God’s most holy and precious work, redemption itself!

And so, let us join that sacred tumult! Let US rejoice in the Lord and exult in the God of our salvation! 

Comfort, Comfort, Now My People; ELW 256