HABAK’KUK 1:1-13;2-14

PSALM 37:3-10

2 TIMOTHY 1:1-14

LUKE 17:5-10

Sermon – 10/7/01

“The Righteous Live by Their Faith”

“O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘violence’ and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me…”

Those words were written 2,600 years ago – but they could have been written 3 ½ weeks ago. Those words were written in Jerusalem – but they could have been written in New York. Those words speak to us now, as we recover, regroup and brace ourselves for whatever is coming next; but they were spoken first by an ancient Israelite prophet named Habak’kuk, who was witnessing the beginning of a national calamity far greater than anything America has ever suffered.

The ancient Israelite Kingdoms precariously occupied vulnerable territory; the Holy Land is on the most direct and fruitful route between Egypt and Mesopotamia, the two greatest powers of the Ancient Near East.

Like Belgium when Germany and France were at war, or Korea when Japan fought China, whichever big power won, the little country in the middle would always lose. So it was for the nation of Judah, a small state huddled around Jerusalem, which had already suffered a pounding at the hands of the Babylonian Empire (which occupied what is now Iraq). Not long after Habak’kuk wrote, Judah would be conquered outright by Babylon, revolt and then be utterly smashed, her entire ruling class taken into exile in Babylon, her independence ended, the temple built by Solomon reduced to a smoking, pulverized ruin.

When I was in Jerusalem in 1994, I saw the results of a recent archeological dig: an ash layer carbon-14 dated to 586 B.C. That is all that is left visible of the Jerusalem of David and Solomon, the Jerusalem which had been proudly unconquered for 400 years, the Jerusalem that some believed God would never let fall to its enemies.

To this day the destruction of the temple is remembered by the Jewish people.

For 400 years, the Israelites around Jerusalem had had faith in their King (a direct descendent of David), their priests (descendents of Aaron, Moses’ brother) and temple (built by Solomon) and their political independence. Now, as King, temple and independence were about to be obliterated, I think Habak’kuk was being tipped off that it was time for people to have faith in God.

And it was also time for people not to associate national calamity with God’s indifference or unwillingness to care. Stuff happens, God told Habak’kuk – sometimes really bad stuff. That’s part of life in this broken world, broken by human sin. In the midst of calamity especially, God tells the prophet, “The righteous live by their faith.”

Not faith in their country’s military power, economic power, political power or cultural power, but in God. Those who only had faith in those other fragile, temporary, mortal powers were swept into oblivion when real calamity came. There only was a Jewish faith around for Jesus to be born into because some people had faith in God through thick and thin, not just when things were going well.

Stuff happens. Sometimes really bad stuff. We shouldn’t be surprised. People have free will and can do good or evil, and when people do evil, people get hurt. Jesus knows all about that; those hands of his, with which he is transforming the world, have nail holes in them. Jesus knows all about September 11; he was on the receiving end of an act of terrorism himself, only in his case it was official government terrorism with official religious sanction.

And Jesus knows all about people seeing someone suffer and concluding that that person was being punished by God, because that’s what people said when he was a victim of terrorism. Pat Robertson, read your Bible; maybe you haven’t yet gotten to the point where Jesus dies for the sins of the world. Maybe you would have blamed Jesus, too, Pat Robertson, just like you’re now blaming America’s sins for the attack on our country! Somehow, I don’t think the

people in the world Trade Center died for our sins; Jesus did that. Read your Bible, Pat Robertson, if your Bible is the same one Christians use.

Let us indeed have faith – faith in God, and not worship our own might, as the Babylonians are described as doing and as the terrorists of today do. And let us have faith in God who walked right into suffering and took it upon his own shoulders in the most literal way so that we would not be broken by it.

“Faith”, says one commentator on Habak’kuk, “is compounded of belief and love as well as of trust and confidence amid trials and tribulations.” Amen to that.

That ties in nicely to what the author of the 2^nd Letter to Timothy (Paul or one of his disciples) writes. He expects suffering; it’s no surprise. Suffering happens in life; but the author rejoices in having something to suffer for which is so worthwhile. He even says, “Join me in suffering for the Gospel.” And he – and we – are not enduring just by our own fragile strength, as he writes, “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”

When the going gets tough, the tough get faith. Power, love and self-discipline: let’s say, one part Winston Churchill, one part Martin Luther King, Jr. and one part Olympic marathoner. That’s what God gives us as a gift to face challenges and challenging times; now let’s unwrap the gift and use it every day.

But do we have to be at a world-class level of faith to make a difference? Not at all, as Jesus declares in the Gospel. I used to have a hard time with this Gospel passage, thinking that Jesus was giving his apostles a real put-down when he said “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you!” I think Jesus’ point, driven home with colorful hyperbole, is this: “It takes less faith than you think to make a difference. Don’t wait to magically become a faith superstar; use the little faith you have, and you’ll be surprised at the results. Not only that, faith will grow as you use it. But don’t expect a medal when you do” (that’s the second part of the Gospel passage), “because that’s merely what you’re supposed to do.”

Part of having faith is putting it into action. Faith left unused will shrink. Faith which says, “Who am I? I can’t do anything” will make the person “smaller” to fit their limited sense of their own possibilities. Faith, on the other hand, which assumes the person is on “active duty” all the time (not just at Christmas and Easter, and not just on Sunday morning) will help people grow so that they may amaze themselves – if they stop ministering long enough to look in the mirror.

Let me give an example. Yesterday, I went to a healing service at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Helmetta, and the speaker recalled how he had talked at another church about how we need to listen to God’s “nudges”, that they were calls to ministry which could happen to anyone, no clerical collar needed. During his address at that other church, a woman suddenly leaped up and ran out of the church. He thought at the time she had been taken suddenly ill, and after speaking he looked around for her, without result.

The next day, she came back to church and told him that she had suddenly and very vividly had a vision of a friend of hers, together with a powerful understanding that her friend needed help. She said she was out the door before she fully realized that she was standing up. She ran to her car and drove 15 miles as fast as she dared to her friend’s house.

Her friend opened the door with one hand; in the other she was holding a razor blade.

The lady had arrived just in time.

The lady had gotten the message that, as a Christian, she was on “active duty”, that most of that “active duty” would not be spent sitting in church, and that she needed to be prepared to act in faith. Because of all of that, her friend lived.

Not every call to action by God is that dramatic or, in retrospect, that obvious. Some days we may do things and go to sleep wondering “I wonder what good that did.” God only knows. And someday, I believe, God will tell us.

I hope and pray that each and every one of us will have a long list of things we come to realize we did as acts of faith to serve God and our fellow human beings.

All Christians are on “active duty.” That started at baptism. Perhaps the clothing we wore on the days of our baptisms do not fit us anymore, but the “uniform” we received when we “enlisted” still does. The “uniform” is the cross on our foreheads. At any age and any condition we can still carry the cross, and still “get wet” as we seek, by acts of faith as Christians, to make a difference in the lives of others.

And lo and behold, in so doing, our faith grows. And so do we. To the glory of God. Amen.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church