Sermon Series, Readings from the Minor Prophets — Habakkuk 3:2–4, 17–19; Revelation 21:1–6
Today is the last of our series on the minor prophets. There are seven more of them, these little books at the end of our Old Testament, and I’d encourage you to explore them if you’ve never had the chance. But today, we have a reading from Habakkuk.
Habakkuk is a frustrated prophet. Like much of the Bible writers, he believes that the destruction of Jerusalem by foreign armies is well-deserved punishment for the people of Israel. They have turned away from God, and so God has turned away from them. Fair is fair. (He’s not the best Lutheran.)
But he has a complaint against God as well. He says the punishment is far worse than the crime. The first big, aggressive nation is Assyria, and they have a practice of torturing their captives. They’re followed by Babylon, a little better; they only displace the population from their homes, forcing them into a new culture and a new land. Israel has been unfaithful, yes, and a God of justice needs to do something about it. But a God of real justice would notice that these other nations are much worse than Israel ever was. Why do they get to survive, and prosper?
It’s the old question called “Theodicy:” Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. Why does God let that be?
In chapter two of Habakkuk, the prophet builds a tower, to sit on top of, and watch, and wait. He wants to see what God is going to do with Israel. And God comes to him, and says this: Make tablets so large that someone running by could read it without stopping. Rent out a billboard next to the biggest highway. And on it, write this: When it looks like hope is lost, don’t give up. Hang on. Keep waiting. Keep watching. God is still at work, still a God of justice, and the story isn’t over yet.
We’ve heard words from Revelation these last few weeks, which is arguably the weirdest book in our Bible. It has tales of destruction, plague after plague, worse than back when Moses was in Egypt. Nine-tenths of the people in the world die from the disease and natural disasters that are poured out, and only a fraction is left. And then three quarters of the people in the world are afflicted. And then nearly all of them. If you do the math, everything is gone, many times over.
What’s all this death and destruction about? For the early Christians who read it, it was not a book of death. It was a book of life, of hope and promise for the future. Life under the Romans was terrible, crushing people into poverty and despair and hopelessness. All the destruction in this book is directed against their evil, and the evil ways of the whole world, that seem to reign supreme any time in history when people serve themselves instead of others, and God.
If the great oppressors of the world are being destroyed, then it makes some sense that heaven would sing out in worship again and again in Revelation: “Salvation belongs to our God, and to Christ the Lamb forever and ever.” “The Lamb who was slain has begun his reign, alleluia.”
In the end, the ways of the world will pass away completely, the destructive powers symbolized by the sea will will come to an end, and there will be a renewed heaven, and a renewed earth. There are people who talk about “The Rapture,” when people will be scooped up and taken to heaven to live with God. But Revelation 21 says the opposite: There is no rapture. “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God.” We don’t need to go to Him. He comes to us.
We think that disease and pain, loss and death, are the end of all things on earth. The only things that are sure, we say, are death and taxes. But that’s not what Revelation promises. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, everything from A to Z. It is God who is the beginning, and so too it is God who is the end. And the end we find in him is not death; like water that springs up from the earth, it is freely-given life.
The Jewish people have an interesting ritual as part of their funeral process. It’s a prayer called the Mourner’s Kaddish, a prayer that is supposed to be said every day for an entire year when someone close to you dies, and then every year after that on the anniversary of their death.
It’s interesting because of its content. A prayer at someone’s death, you might think, would be full of words of sadness. “O God, comfort me. How can I live with this loss?” Or maybe a prayer for the person who died, thanksgiving for their life and begging to receive them into God’s arms. Or some crying out for hope, looking forward to the resurrection and afterlife, when we are reunited with our loved ones again.
But this prayer, this kaddish, is very different. It says, “Blessed and praised and glorified and exalted and extolled and adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world;” Amen. It is a proclamation of God’s goodness, which seems to me the last thing I might feel like saying when someone I love has died. And yet, it is somehow exactly right.
Then they pray the other kaddish, an Aramaic word that means simply, “Holy.” They pray the kaddish of Isaiah: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Hosts. Heaven and earth are full of his glory. Hosanna in the highest.” A prayer that we pray with our Jewish sisters and brothers every time we gather for Holy Communion.
Which, for us, makes it the perfect prayer for healing and grief. Christ has died, we say. But Christ is also risen, and will come again. This is the hope we cling to when our world falls apart. Death always leads to resurrection and life; destruction always leads to rebuilding; evil is always defeated by holiness.
And that, too, is Habakkuk’s promise in our reading today. He complains against God, and demands a response. But he finally is also forced to say, “O Lord, I have heard of your renown, and I stand in awe, O Lord, of your work.” Even if the world rejoices in death, “I will rejoice in the Lord,” the prophet says. God is still at work, still a God of mercy, and the story isn’t over yet.
As we consider the future of our church and our world, we might do well to ask how we can proclaim God’s goodness, even when it is impossible to see. God does heal, both us individually, and our community, and all of creation. It may not look like we expect. It may not come as quickly as we want. It may even have to pass through total disaster before new life comes. But it comes. It always comes. How can we offer that hope to those who need it most? And how does God offer it to us?