Episcopal Church of Our Savior

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The Rev. Ajung Sojwal Lament of the faithful , Year C, Sunday October 7, 2007 Habakkuk 1:1-6, (7-11), 12-13; 2:1-4 O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? These words of Habakkuk are words that we have all found ourselves uttering aloud or silently at some point in our lives. Times when God somehow seems to be far away or maybe even abandoned us. All that we know about Habakkuk is that he was a prophet of the pre-exilic period in Israel’s history, and that he was seeing the decline of the Judean kingdom that began with King Josiah in 609 BC. The Prophet ministered amongst the Judeans who in all probability lived under the reign of King Jehoiakim. It was a time when there was great uncertainty in the region. The Babylonian kingdom was growing very rapidly in its power and aggressiveness in the region. Israel was beginning to feel terribly insecure and so it began looking to Assyria and Egypt for help. Prophets like Jeremiah denounced these alliances of Israel as wrong and definitely undermining the special relationship that God had with his chosen people. Habakkuk’s concerns however, had more to do with the internal injustices he saw amongst his generation in Israel and the apparent silence of God in dealing with the evil that was prevalent. “How long” the prophet asks the Lord would he take to answer his prayers. The prophet had obviously been praying for a long time about the prevalence of violence and injustice in the land and for the Lord to intervene, to bring justice and peace. But the prophet is clearly frustrated that the Lord does not seem to hear, and it seems like the Lord was just not interested in helping him or the situation in any way. The prophet was not necessarily accusing God of indifference or finding fault with God, rather it was a cry of loyalty to God and His just ways in the midst of increasing wickedness, destruction, ethical wrongdoings, strife and contention. In a sense the cry of Habakkuk is the perpetual cry of God’s faithful people. It is a cry that comes out of a deeply burdened heart for the scars and wounds of human life. If you look at it, centuries of living together, the tremendous human development and awareness, and an even more rapid technological progress have not really changed the human heart from wickedness and destruction. And the continued presence of evil amongst us reminds us that we are a deeply broken people, people who suffer not only from physical, mental and emotional diseases but suffer also because of systemic problems of injustice, inequality of resource distribution, greed, suspicion, fear and finally hatred. Very often, it does seem like we are left with nothing but the long, cold silence of God. Like Habakkuk, often we too find ourselves bothered with how God could possibly allow such injustice and wickedness to run amuck without apparently doing anything to stop it. One of the most important theological problems that people face today is the seeming silence of God. It is not unusual for us to hear somebody say, “where is God in all these?” where is He when thousands are dying in Iraq? Where is He when diseases like AIDS or malaria are wiping out entire families and villages in Africa? Where is God when everything around us seems to crumble and fall? And then when God finally answers the prophet, it was not quite what the prophet had expected to hear from God. Habakkuk finds out that not only does God see the terrible wickedness of His people Israel, God was in fact going to use the archenemy of Israel to punish them for their rebellious and wicked ways. This response of God to Habakkuk is as problematic to the prophet as it is to us today. And so the prophet goes on to challenge God about His ways in dealing with his people Israel, even though he realizes that Israel has committed a grievous sin against God by allowing injustice and violence to prevail in the land. God’s answer to the prophet’s challenge was to wait in faith. God goes on to tell the prophet that the wicked will not go unpunished. Ultimately it does not matter who the wicked and arrogant are, they will perish in the end. The righteous on the other hand will live by confidence in God’s trustworthiness. God will come to deliver His people who have been faithful, those who wait in faith even in the midst of gross injustice and wickedness, those who put their trust in God’s perfect justice and deliverance. In our world of highly driven people with specialties in “fixing” problems in the shortest possible time, it is a hard call to live merely by faith. After all the heart wrenching cry and the persistent prayers of Habakkuk on injustice and violence, it comes almost as a disappointment to hear God simply say this: “The righteous shall live by their faith.” However, the element of faith here is the very basis of our belief in God who is our ultimate judge and deliverer. It is in fact only when we learn to live by faith that our burdens can be lightened. The word “faith” in this particular context is better understood as faithfulness, constancy or fidelity. It suggests not only the ability to persists but to do so with an understanding that the persistence will eventually result in deliverance. I have always been amazed and humbled by the faith of people who have so little in terms of worldly status or wealth. About a month ago, I got a phone call from my sister in Nagaland who told me that her husbands’ six-month-old niece had died. When the story was told about the circumstances of the little baby’s death, I was filled with righteous indignation and a deep sense of frustration at what I heard. First the doctors had given the baby a wrong diagnosis, so she was given the wrong medication. And when they did find out the real problem they were told that the baby needed surgery and that there was no way the surgery could be performed in their town. When they did manage to have the surgery elsewhere, there were serious complications from infections. Talking to my brother-in-law from one of the world’s most advanced countries I could not help but think something like this would never happen in this country. It was a sinking feeling to remember just how so out of control one can feel in that remote part of the world that I had grown up in. As I struggled to understand where God might be in all of this, my brother-in-law said, “she truly was an angel sent to us for a short time, and now she is back in her home with our Lord.” I asked him what about the doctors? And he said, “we are all just humans in need of God’s healing.” We live tremendously privileged lives here in the United States and it is possible to believe that we can be the masters of our lives. But the truth is that life has a way of turning out to be quite different from what we plan it to be or want it to be. The truth of life is that suffering is our condition; injustice, violence and wickedness continue to prevail no matter how much progress we think we are making in history. And one of the most difficult things for us to do in times of suffering and despair is learning to wait upon God for deliverance. Even in his deep anguish before God, Habakkuk is not shown the contents of the vision God promises him. Instead, God simply gives him the assurance that it is a trustworthy vision with a true promise. It is not empty hopes and promises, but something that will bring justification and deliverance to the righteous. And who are the righteous? The righteous are the ones who wait upon the Lord in faith. They are the ones who will renew their strength in the Lord, they are the ones who will find healing and redemption. Does it mean that we should never question God? Not at all! Jesus himself cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” questions are part of our faith journey with God. God calls us to engage with Him and seek answers in Him. Faith is strengthened and given the opportunity to shine and witness in the midst of our struggles and trials of life. Like the faith of my brother-in-law in the midst of such painful loss, Habakkuk’s anguish and questions before God was a direct result of his unwavering faith in God’s ultimate sense of true justice and trustworthiness. And the faith of the prophet shines through at the end of the book when he says, ”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. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.” (Habakkuk 3:17-19).

The Rev. Ajung Sojwal

Lament of the faithful , Year C, Sunday October 7, 2007
Habakkuk 1:1-6, (7-11), 12-13; 2:1-4

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? These words of Habakkuk are words that we have all found ourselves uttering aloud or silently at some point in our lives. Times when God somehow seems to be far away or maybe even abandoned us. All that we know about Habakkuk is that he was a prophet of the pre-exilic period in Israel’s history, and that he was seeing the decline of the Judean kingdom that began with King Josiah in 609 BC. The Prophet ministered amongst the Judeans who in all probability lived under the reign of King Jehoiakim. It was a time when there was great uncertainty in the region. The Babylonian kingdom was growing very rapidly in its power and aggressiveness in the region. Israel was beginning to feel terribly insecure and so it began looking to Assyria and Egypt for help. Prophets like Jeremiah denounced these alliances of Israel as wrong and definitely undermining the special relationship that God had with his chosen people. Habakkuk’s concerns however, had more to do with the internal injustices he saw amongst his generation in Israel and the apparent silence of God in dealing with the evil that was prevalent. “How long” the prophet asks the Lord would he take to answer his prayers. The prophet had obviously been praying for a long time about the prevalence of violence and injustice in the land and for the Lord to intervene, to bring justice and peace. But the prophet is clearly frustrated that the Lord does not seem to hear, and it seems like the Lord was just not interested in helping him or the situation in any way. The prophet was not necessarily accusing God of indifference or finding fault with God, rather it was a cry of loyalty to God and His just ways in the midst of increasing wickedness, destruction, ethical wrongdoings, strife and contention. In a sense the cry of Habakkuk is the perpetual cry of God’s faithful people. It is a cry that comes out of a deeply burdened heart for the scars and wounds of human life. If you look at it, centuries of living together, the tremendous human development and awareness, and an even more rapid technological progress have not really changed the human heart from wickedness and destruction. And the continued presence of evil amongst us reminds us that we are a deeply broken people, people who suffer not only from physical, mental and emotional diseases but suffer also because of systemic problems of injustice, inequality of resource distribution, greed, suspicion, fear and finally hatred. Very often, it does seem like we are left with nothing but the long, cold silence of God. Like Habakkuk, often we too find ourselves bothered with how God could possibly allow such injustice and wickedness to run amuck without apparently doing anything to stop it. One of the most important theological problems that people face today is the seeming silence of God. It is not unusual for us to hear somebody say, “where is God in all these?” where is He when thousands are dying in Iraq? Where is He when diseases like AIDS or malaria are wiping out entire families and villages in Africa? Where is God when everything around us seems to crumble and fall?

And then when God finally answers the prophet, it was not quite what the prophet had expected to hear from God. Habakkuk finds out that not only does God see the terrible wickedness of His people Israel, God was in fact going to use the archenemy of Israel to punish them for their rebellious and wicked ways. This response of God to Habakkuk is as problematic to the prophet as it is to us today. And so the prophet goes on to challenge God about His ways in dealing with his people Israel, even though he realizes that Israel has committed a grievous sin against God by allowing injustice and violence to prevail in the land. God’s answer to the prophet’s challenge was to wait in faith. God goes on to tell the prophet that the wicked will not go unpunished. Ultimately it does not matter who the wicked and arrogant are, they will perish in the end. The righteous on the other hand will live by confidence in God’s trustworthiness. God will come to deliver His people who have been faithful, those who wait in faith even in the midst of gross injustice and wickedness, those who put their trust in God’s perfect justice and deliverance.

In our world of highly driven people with specialties in “fixing” problems in the shortest possible time, it is a hard call to live merely by faith. After all the heart wrenching cry and the persistent prayers of Habakkuk on injustice and violence, it comes almost as a disappointment to hear God simply say this: “The righteous shall live by their faith.” However, the element of faith here is the very basis of our belief in God who is our ultimate judge and deliverer. It is in fact only when we learn to live by faith that our burdens can be lightened. The word “faith” in this particular context is better understood as faithfulness, constancy or fidelity. It suggests not only the ability to persists but to do so with an understanding that the persistence will eventually result in deliverance.

I have always been amazed and humbled by the faith of people who have so little in terms of worldly status or wealth. About a month ago, I got a phone call from my sister in Nagaland who told me that her husbands’ six-month-old niece had died. When the story was told about the circumstances of the little baby’s death, I was filled with righteous indignation and a deep sense of frustration at what I heard. First the doctors had given the baby a wrong diagnosis, so she was given the wrong medication. And when they did find out the real problem they were told that the baby needed surgery and that there was no way the surgery could be performed in their town. When they did manage to have the surgery elsewhere, there were serious complications from infections. Talking to my brother-in-law from one of the world’s most advanced countries I could not help but think something like this would never happen in this country. It was a sinking feeling to remember just how so out of control one can feel in that remote part of the world that I had grown up in. As I struggled to understand where God might be in all of this, my brother-in-law said, “she truly was an angel sent to us for a short time, and now she is back in her home with our Lord.” I asked him what about the doctors? And he said, “we are all just humans in need of God’s healing.”

We live tremendously privileged lives here in the United States and it is possible to believe that we can be the masters of our lives. But the truth is that life has a way of turning out to be quite different from what we plan it to be or want it to be. The truth of life is that suffering is our condition; injustice, violence and wickedness continue to prevail no matter how much progress we think we are making in history. And one of the most difficult things for us to do in times of suffering and despair is learning to wait upon God for deliverance.

Even in his deep anguish before God, Habakkuk is not shown the contents of the vision God promises him. Instead, God simply gives him the assurance that it is a trustworthy vision with a true promise. It is not empty hopes and promises, but something that will bring justification and deliverance to the righteous. And who are the righteous? The righteous are the ones who wait upon the Lord in faith. They are the ones who will renew their strength in the Lord, they are the ones who will find healing and redemption. Does it mean that we should never question God? Not at all! Jesus himself cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” questions are part of our faith journey with God. God calls us to engage with Him and seek answers in Him. Faith is strengthened and given the opportunity to shine and witness in the midst of our struggles and trials of life. Like the faith of my brother-in-law in the midst of such painful loss, Habakkuk’s anguish and questions before God was a direct result of his unwavering faith in God’s ultimate sense of true justice and trustworthiness. And the faith of the prophet shines through at the end of the book when he says,

”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.

The Sovereign LORD is my strength;

he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,

he enables me to go on the heights.” (Habakkuk 3:17-19).