Faith in a Time of Fear
When the people saw
that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around
Aaron and said,
“Come, make us gods who will go before
us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt,
we don’t know what has happened to
him.”... He took what they
handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf,
fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, O Israel,
who brought you up out of Egypt.” Exodus 32:1, 4
How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but
you do not listen?Or cry out to you,
“Violence!” but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice? Habakkuk 1:1-3
You know the ancient Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times"!
I guess we live in interesting times, don't we. Who needs to go see scary
movies? Just turn on the news channel.
It is tempting to look for prophecies from Daniel or Revelation to help us
frame our experiences when life becomes larger than life--or at least larger
than our appetites. Adventure is great when it can be enjoyed with a large
popcorn and diet coke. I usually ask for a package of red licorice too, and
yes, I share.
I guess like most of us, I would prefer that this financial meltdown just
go away. I don't like it.
But I am also wondering; not so much if, as how the hand of God is at work
in it.
And rather than looking into prophecies of end times, I find the most satisfactory
answer to look back--way back almost three thousand years. Closer to 2600
years to be more exact.
And I find amazing wisdom and guidance in the words of man with a very funny
name who lived back then.
No, not Mephibosheth or Luz or Og even . His name is Habakkuk. The book that
bears his name is known as one of the minor prophets.
You need to know I am a big time fan of the eigth and six century prophets.
They are perhaps among the most heroic, misunderstood and amazing group of
people you will find.
They remind me of western characters like The Magnificent Seven, though they
were all soloists.
Maybe Gary Cooper in High Noon comes closer to the truth of those Old Testament
prophets. They stood for truth and justice and the little guy and were not
afraid to face down kings and their henchmen to deliver God's verdict on
evildoers. And all with a square jaw, steely eyes and a crooked grin.
But Habakkuk is the exception to the rule.
The other prophets are sent by God to deliver a message both to kings and
nations. Many died for their trouble. Isaiah is said to have been sawn in
half with a wooden saw.
Habukkuk is different in this: his prophecy is not God speaking to the people.
It is his own argument with God that he lets us listen in on.
Habukkuk's issue with God is summarized in the opening sentence.
God! Why don't you listen
when I call out to you about the injustice and violence I see around me?
He does not tell us specifically what it is, but we know from other prophets
that prior to Jerusalem falling to Babylon, civil life had become corrupt.
Maybe it didn't always seem it on the surface, but anyone who knew the goings
on in courts, or palaces or even the market place knew the poor and weak
were being opressed by the rich and powerful. Judges had become corrupt,
the religious leaders just said, "its all fine, don't worry" and people lost
any sense of rightness in public life. And you know how that trickles down
to everyone.
Last week I spoke about what happens when we ignore God's least understood
law of Sabbath and how we become enslaved to debt and how work and the meaning
of life become degraded. It was like that in Habakkuk's time as well, and
apparently he prayed to God to fix it. God did not seem to be in any hurry
according to Habukkuk, and so his complaint.
Where is justice?—says Habakkuk.
God does not give an immediate answer to Habakkuk, but says, “yes, I see
it too and I am going to do something about it.”
God’s answer is to bring a foreign invader in to clean out the corruption.
But now Habakkuk has a deeper issue:
The Chaldeans—read Babylon—are
worse than the disease.
God! How can you call this a cure when it leaves things in a worse mess?
And once again comes God’s answer.
He says, “wait for it.” And take out an ad in the newspaper, Habakkuk—God
is acting and will act. In the meantime, here is your answer. The just will live by faith.
Put in a somewhat different way, God
is saying to Habakkuk that evil in the world, or its excesses have a way
of bringing about their own destruction. Tyrants and the corrupt invariably
sew the seeds of their own destruction.
“With his own spear you pierced
his head” is how Habakkuk sees God overcoming the leader of evil. Earlier
(Hab. 2:6-7), Habakkuk had demonstrated how this would work out: the Babylonians’
own enemies would treat them just as they had treated others. Violence turns
back on the violent. On the surface, God’s power is not always visible, but
the person of faith knows God is behind it all 1
But the problem for us, like with Habakkuk,
is that God’s processes do not fit nicely within the time frame of a feature
length movie. We do not always get the answer and justice in an hour or two
and a half hours. Sometimes not even in a lifetime.
That is a bit sobering.
Consider many of the prophets: They were spokesmen for
God, but did not always live to see their prophecies come to pass.
God says to us in a different place, my time is not your time.
But be assured, it is not out of control.
And in the meantime, live by faith. God’s justice will triumph, in the long
or short term.
We live at the moment on the edge of
a precipice.
We seem to be ensnared, like everyone else in the financial trickery of
greed.
There will be time enough to sort out who did what, but I think it is helpful
to attempt to put a frame of reference around this time we live in.
I am sure that I am not the only one
to whom it has occurred that what is happening might just be God at work
in a system bloated on excess and greed.
Last week I spoke about how unlimited debt instruments
lead to the indenture esp. of the poorest among us. Let’s hope that God is
at work in this crisis and that we all will come out of it into a house swept
clean.
But like Habakkuk, we may have to live
through some times where it is not readily apparent that God is in charge.
And so how do we live when times get turbulent and it is not at all clear
what God is up to?
We follow Habakkuk’s emotional and faith filled lead.
We trust by faith that God is still in control of the world and that God’s
rightness will ultimately win out. This may not always be apparent to us.
We may go through some pain.
Hear the words of Habakkuk at the end
of his dialogue with God—his statement of faith in God’s sovereignty:
I heard and my heart pounded,
my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones,
and my legs trembled. Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity
to come on the nation invading us. Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
He
is saying, “ I am scared, but I believe You are in charge. And even if I
have to go through a difficult time—there is no crop in the field and no
fruit on the tree—I will still trust that You are in this, and more than
that, I will celebrate that You are still God and be joyful in it.”
My greatest fear is not that we may go through
some testing.
My greater fear is whether or not we would learn from it, or just come out
the other end, relieved and glad to get back to life as usual and forget
all about God’s mercy to us…the way the Hebrews did when God and Moses were
out of sight and they asked Aaron to make them a golden calf.
But time will tell.
In the meantime let’s pray this morning for our world and for God’s justice
and mercy to win out in this frightening situation.
A challenge to us all this week is to spend time asking
if there are any substitutes for God in your life. It is easy to ask if financial
security is a golden calf for us, but is there anything else standing between
you and finding the joy of God even in a time of uncertainty. Any practice,
pastime, habit, lifestyle or entitlement that is a barrier?
Lets take the time to clean house individually and collectively
so we will be in the right place at the right time when God’s sunshine break
through the clouds.
And so what should we do this Thanksgiving?
Say like Habakkuk, even if the sky does fall in economically, we will give
thanks to God in whose hands we rest.
Preached October 12, 2008
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian Church
Victoria, British Columbia
Notes
1. THE STUDENT BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION Notes
by Philip Yancey and Tim Stafford
Zondervan Publishing House,Grand Rapids, Michigan
Online Resources Consulted
http://www.preachingtoday.com/
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