"Vision"

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE PROPHETS Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4 Click here to watch the sermon "Vision"

I tuned in briefly this week to one of the World Series games and noticed that there was a player on the Toronto Blue Jays named Bo Bichette. My ears perked up. Bichette? I got curious, because one of the star players on the Colorado Rockies baseball team back in the 90’s was Dante Bichette. So, I did what I so often do when my curiosity gets the better of me. I asked Google. Is Bo Bichette related to Dante Bichette? The answer is yes. Dante is Bo’s father. I do this quite often. Turn to Google to answer all the questions my short attention span brain likes to ask. Is Anthony Edwards injured? Is Morrow on Alien Earth a cyborg? Is Grogu a clone? When was the last time the Broncos lost to the Cowboys? Too soon? Anyway, the point is that I’ve become reliant on Google to answer these and the other random questions that populate my brain. But there are some questions that not even the best Artificial Intelligence can answer with any reliability. Like the one posed by the prophet Habakkuk in this morning’s reading. “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?” It’s a question in response to a world that is in disarray. There’s little scholarly consensus about who this prophet might have been, or even when exactly the short book of this minor prophet was written. The best guess is that it was written sometime after the rise of Babylon, but before that Arabian superpower besieged and toppled Jerusalem and its temple, carrying the people off to exile in a foreign land.  

Unlike other prophetic writings, Habakkuk begins not with a word from the Lord to the prophet, but with a question from the prophet to the Lord. “How Long?” Because the prophet doesn’t need God to recite the litany of woes and injustice facing his people, he can see it all too clearly for himself. What he can’t believe is that doesn’t God see it.  He wants to know how God can see it and do nothing about it. I know the feeling. 

Over a decade ago now, Albuquerque made national news when local police shot and killed and unhoused man camping up in the foothills. It was part of a larger story about a pattern of police brutality and shootings that eventually brought a Justice Department inquiry into our city and its policing practices. At that time a group of religious leaders began gathering to discuss how we could most faithfully respond to the shootings that had become all too common. We began showing up to these scenes when alerted to them, so that we could stand united with interfaith partners in prayer for our community. It wasn’t intended as a protest against the police so much as a public witness to the grief caused by such incidents: for the officers involved, for the surrounding community where it happened, and for the civilians affected. And the prayer on our lips was the same as Habakkuk’s, “how long?” How long would our city suffer the scourge of this gun violence where justice never seemed to prevail. 

It's a question that doesn’t seem to go away, though the players do change from age to age. After all, no one talks about Babylonian superpowers anymore, but there are plenty of other powers at work in the world right now who, in the words of the verses we did not hear, “transgress and become guilty; their own might is their god.” The question within this question of, “how long,” is how are we as people of faith supposed to respond to the violence, trouble and wrongdoing that we see on a daily basis. What can we do about neighbors who are profiled for their skin color, stopped, abducted and detained without due process by ICE agents who are showing up to training with failed drug tests and disqualifying criminal backgrounds of their own? What can we do about neighbors who will no longer be able to afford their health insurance when the subsidies that were once the law disappear? What can we do about the resumption of nuclear testing, the breaking of ceasefires and African genocides? Like the prophet, destruction and violence are before us; strife and contention arise. And we look to God for relief because we feel helpless to do anything about it. 

Now, at this point there are voices that would counsel that such things are not the concern of faith, or faithful people. These are earthly matters and the solution is to turn our eyes to focus on more spiritual concerns. Certainly, we might pray for such situations, but even that becomes subject to complaints about being too political. Instead, we are told, we should gather on Sunday, sing our songs, take solace in promises of redemption and attend to our own as best we can while God sorts out the troubles of the world.  

There are still others that would suggest that we aren’t doing enough. That we should be holding press conferences and engaging in other performative demonstrations of our faith that announce our stand and signal to all the righteousness of our beliefs. But that isn’t what Habakkuk does. He stands on that rampart looking not to his own community, nor to the world at large but watchful for what God would show him regarding the way forward. He refuses to be consoled by either tired platitudes or self-satisfied activism. He stands in that watchtower like every believer since who has prayed ceaselessly for peace only to be confronted relentlessly with war, who has prayed for an end to the crime and violence in their community only to turn on the local news to hear of another assault, another, shooting, who has begged God for healing only to watch disease advance and take a loved one’s life. And he stands for all of us who grow weary of the fight against injustice because it feels like our efforts are futile and that nothing ever changes. He looks for what God will show him because he knows what is at stake. What is at stake is the end that God has in mind that is about more than what’s in it for me and owning the opposition, it’s about setting right all that has gone so terribly wrong 

Because if we cannot see or will not look to what God would show us, we will almost certainly lose heart. There is a story from the desert fathers and mothers in which a young man goes to visit a wise hermit. He finds the monk sitting outside his cave, enjoying the sun, his dog lying at his side. The seeker askes, “why is it Abba, that some who seek God come to the desert and are zealous in prayer but leave after a year or so, while others remain faithful to the quest for a lifetime?” 

The old man responded, “One day my dog and I were sitting here quietly in the sun, as we are now. Suddenly, a large white rabbit ran across in front of us. Well, my dog jumped up, barked loudly and took off after it. He chased the rabbit over the hills with passion. Soon, other dogs joined him, attracted by his barking. What a sight it was, as the pack of dogs ran barking across the creek, up stony embankments, and through thickets and thorns! Gradually, however, one by one, the other dogs dropped out of the pursuit, discouraged by the course and frustrated by the chase. Only my dog continued to hotly pursue the rabbit.” The young man was confused by what this story had to do with his question. The hermit explained, “Why didn’t the other dogs continue the chase? They had not seen the rabbit.” They were only attracted by the sound of barking. But once you see the rabbit, you will never give up the chase. Seeing the rabbit and not following the commotion was what kept the old monk faithful to the quest. 

One of the ways that we stand with Habakkuk to see the end that God would show us, the purpose for lives of faithfulness lived in community, is by attending to the lives of the saints that we honor and remember today. The ones who have gone before us, like Habakkuk have navigated their own perilous times filled with violence and injustice. Their lives bear witness to the faithful pursuit of what God would make right in this world and show us what it looks like to persevere in the face of trouble and wrongdoing. Their steady insistence on the pursuit of God’s justice, God’s mercy, God’s love that heals, reconciles and raises up those whom the world would have left for dead shows us what the path ahead looks like as we navigate the complacence, strife and contention that cause us to cry out. This is the vision that God would have us see and follow, keeping the faith and seeking always to take our part in what God is doing to set things right.