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Twenty-one years ago I was appointed to my first church as pastor.
San Leon United Methodist was located south of Kemah on Galveston Bay.
It was a church whose average attendance for worship was about
thirty. I did not know what to expect on my first Sunday. I sat in
the pastor’s chair, behind the pulpit and waited for the Choral
Introit as printed in the bulletin. As 11:00 rolled around there was
complete silence, followed by an awkward restlessness. Then movement
started and half of the congregation made their way to the choir
loft. The organist struck a note and the rag-tag choir sang,
“The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before
him.” Another pause followed the musical sentence, then a
sigh from the organist clad in coveralls, finally the organist said
with exasperation, “It’s your turn, preacher!” That was my
introduction to pastoral ministry.
I’ve
thought a lot about that moment over the last twenty-one years. I
remember thinking as the choir sang that one line, “Where did that
come from?”
We are preaching
about old friends you may have never met. Today I wanted to
introduce you to a man of vision. Habakkuk does not get a lot of
recognition in the Christian world, but he was the master of quotable
quotes. There are only three chapters in the book that bears the name
of this Judean prophet from the 6th century B.C. However,
in those three chapters we read quotes like,
o
The righteous live by faith
o
Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read
it.
o
The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the
earth keep silence before him!
o
And
my favorite, found in Habakkuk 3:17-19 on page 873 of your Old
Testament: Hear now the word of the Lord,
“17Though
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,
18yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I
will exult in the God of my salvation. 19God,
the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
and makes me tread upon the heights.”
The Word of God for
the people of God. Thanks be to God. Habakkuk is one of those
old friends you may have never met, but his book is a great book and
his story is a great story. Of course, it begins as all great stories
do, “Once upon a time…”
Once upon a time,
there was a man named Habakkuk. He was a good man, but he had some
serious problems. He had eyes, but he did not like what he saw. He
had ears, but he did not like what he heard. He had a mouth, but he
did not like what he had to say. He had a soul that would not give up
on God.
Let’s examine these
statements briefly.
He had eyes, but he
did not like what he saw.
Habakkuk saw people being mean to each other. Judeans acting like
people who had no morals at all. There was violence, injustice,
constant conflicts, and abuse of the innocent. Habakkuk cried out,
“How long do I have to keep seeing this people behave this badly?”
He had ears, but he
did not like what he heard.
The Lord spoke to Habakkuk and said, “Not to worry. Here’s my plan
– I am going to use the Babylonians (a.k.a the Chaldeans, the
great nation who had risen to power and was on the verge of taking out
the Assyrians, who dominated that part of the world at that time),
I am going to use the Babylonians to teach Judah a lesson.”
Habakkuk protested,
“What kind of a plan is that?! They are worse than we are. Not
only are they violent and unjust, they are treacherous and
idolatrous.” Habakkuk did not like what he heard.
He had a mouth, but
he did not like what he had to say.
He was to write a vision so plainly that a runner could read it as he
raced by. The message was really only two words, “Woe and
Wait.” Woe to the wicked, which he said five times. The
New Revised Standard Version translates it “Alas”, but it means the
same as “woe”. It means. “Watch out, you are going to get into
trouble for that.” The offenses were outlined by Habakkuk as
merciless plundering, wholesale destruction, total disregard for human
life, mistreatment of neighbors, and irreverent idolatry. “Woe,”
Habakkuk uttered five times, “Woe.” And he said, “Wait.
Wait for God to chastise the disobedient Judeans and to punish the
abusive Babylonians. Wait for God to restore the righteous and revive
the downtrodden.” But nobody likes to wait. I am certain Habakkuk did
not like what he had to say.
Yet, he had a soul
that would not give up on God.
Somewhere in the midst of all the chaos he heard that phrase that
would not go away, “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the
earth keep silence before him.” His feet stood in awe of God
and his heart saw what his eyes could not. “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. God, the Lord, is my
strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread
upon the heights.”
It is great story
of promise and certainty in the midst of pain and uncertainty. It
reminds me of a story from years ago that I saw in the movies. The
Green Mile was a movie about John Coffey, the prisoner, and Paul
Edgecomb, his guard. The Green Mile was the phrase given in Louisiana
for the long walk from E Block (Death Row) to the Electric Chair.
Paul, played by Tom Hanks, had walked alongside many men on this
Green Mile and reflected that each of us walk our own Green Mile, from
where we are right now to where our life on earth is done. He said
that it is really a walk of life and not a walk of death. It is a
walk of pain and a walk of promise. John Coffey, his prisoner in
1935, taught him that. Coffey had been wrongly accused of being a
child killer, but it is not death that he fears. He is tired of life,
because he too often feels its pain. He looked at the compassionate
prison guard and said, “I’m tired, boss. I’m tired of being on the
road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain…Mostly, I’m tired of people
being ugly to each other. I’m tired of all the pain I feel and hear
in the world every day. There’s too much of it. It’s like pieces of
glass in my head…all the time. Can you understand?” I am certain
that my friend Habakkuk understood. So can we. Threats from Al-Qaida
and stories of child abuse filled our newspaper just this past Friday.
Tammy and I went to
a Couple’s Retreat last weekend, celebrating our 30th
Wedding Anniversary. We were fairly convinced that we were attending
the retreat in a picturesque setting with twenty-five other couples
without a care in the world. We discovered that there were people in
pain at that retreat. Some had experienced the death of a child, some
had lost parents when they were young, some had suffered abuse and
neglect, some were on the long road to recovery from addictions, and
most just lived quietly with their pain all covered up. It is
impossible to get together with other people and not have a collection
of pain. Yet in the midst of the pain we hear a promise, at first
only a faint echo, “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the
earth keep silence before him.” but then a resounding truth.
“The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence
before him.”
My friend Habakkuk
understood pain, but he also understood promise. He knew that with
God in his holy temple, all would be well. I cannot control the
world, but I can submit myself to God and to God’s promises. In the
movie The Green Mile the prisoner helped to heal the prison
guard from his physical ailment. He reached out his hand and grabbed
the guard’s hand, taking Paul’s illness into himself. Decades later
the 108-year-old Paul Edgecomb who refused to age told a listener,
“When he took my hand, a part of the power that worked through him
spilled into me.”
His listener
replied, “He infected you with life.”
I was reminded of
the woman, described in Mark 5, who had been sick for 12 years and
touched the hem of Jesus’ robe. She was infected with life as a part
of the power that flowed through Jesus spilled into the woman’s frail
body.
So too was my
friend Habakkuk infected with life. He began his writings with a
lamentation about the pain that he had witnessed. “O
Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you
will not listen?” He ended the writings with the joy of a deer
prancing on the heights, unburdened, unshackled, released to rejoice
in the promise - A promise that I heard sung by a small choir in a
small church twenty-one years ago, “The Lord is in his holy
temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.”
It has been good to
spend time with my friend, Habakkuk. He has helped to connect me with
life as I have become more aware of the pain around me. He has helped
to infect me with life as I have become more aware of the promise
within me. Russell Kelso Carter knew about this promise. Carter had
been a teacher, a preacher, and a physician during his 79 years of
life. Each career choice was brought about by a deep spiritual
experience. He wrote textbooks and novels, but his greatest writing
may have been in the form of a hymn he wrote in 1886:
Standing on the
promises of Christ my King,
through eternal ages let his praises ring;
glory in the highest, I will shout and sing,
standing on the promises of God.
Standing,
standing, standing on the promises of Christ my Savior;
Standing, standing, I'm standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the
promises that cannot fail,
when the howling storms of doubt and fear assail,
by the living Word of God I shall prevail,
standing on the promises of God.
Let’s stand
together and sing verses 1, 2, and 4 of hymn number 374. If you are
currently experiencing a time of pain, I invite you to talk with God
about it even as our friend Habakkuk did. If you are somewhere
between the pain and the promise, in a place of wandering or idling,
hear the promise that gives you the feet of a deer treading upon the
heights. People of God, the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the
earth keep silence before him. Amen.
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