Luke 17:20-24
20Pharisees asked Jesus when God’s kingdom was coming. He replied, “God’s kingdom isn’t coming with signs that are easily noticed. 21Nor will it say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ Don’t you see? God’s kingdom is already among you.”
22Then Jesus said to the disciples, “The time will come when you long to see one of the days of the Human One, and you won’t see it. 23People will say to you, ‘Look there!’ or ‘Look here!’ Don’t leave or go chasing after them. 24The Human One will appear on his day in the same way a flash of lightning lights up the sky from one end to the other.”
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
Habakkuk 2:2-4, 18-20
2Then the LORD answered me and said,
Write a vision,
and make it plain upon a tablet,
So that a runner can read it.
3There’s still a vision
for the appointed time;
it testifies to the end;
it does not deceive.
If it delays, wait for it;
for it is surely coming;
it will not be late.
4Some people’s desires
are truly audacious;
They don’t do the right thing.
But the righteous person
will live honestly.
18Of what value is an idol,
when its potter carves it,
or a cast image that has been shaped?
It is a teacher of lies,
for the potter trusts the pottery, though it is incapable of speaking.
19Doom to the one who says to the tree,
“Wake Up!”
or “Get up” to the silent stone.
Does it teach?
Look, it is overlaid with gold and silver,
but there is no breath within it.
20But the LORD is in his holy temple.
Let all the earth be silent before him.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
I've got some questions.
Don't worry, I'm not trying to give y'all a pop quiz on one of the least read prophets in the Bible. I've got some things I'd like to bring before the LORD. I've got some questions.
After all, our world is fractured. Families are too often divided, and too many churches are splitting. As election cycles spin up, politicians focus on wedge issues. Across the globe, nations either attack or ignore one another. We're so trapped by our emotional pain that every relationship is bleeding, and it feels like we cannot move forward or back. From top to bottom it seems that we'd rather be right than live in Christ's righteousness. I've got some questions for the Holy One who has the power to set our world right again.
Maybe you've got a few questions too. Habbakuk certainly did.
"Then the LORD answered me and said, Write a vision."
There's a difference between where the people are and where God is taking them. There's a distance between Egypt and the promised land. There's a delay between the cross and the empty tomb. The prophet's task is to stand in the gap between where the people are and where God is taking them. The prophet must see farther, imagine more, so that the people do not get stuck. "Write a vision, and make it plain upon a tablet, So that a runner can read it."
In the face of blinding emotional pain, God reminds Habbakuk that the people are not abandoned. "There’s still a vision for the appointed time. A dream that testifies to the end, it does not deceive." There is a vision for a time when church buildings are inviting and gracious, rather than austere and intractable. There is a vision for a time when we will no longer have to choose between funding a prison, and funding a school. There is a vision for a time when our rockets are used to explore the cosmos rather than to rain down destruction as punishment for violence already done. There is a vision for a time when families are shaped by their love, rather than their grudges.
There is a dream that one day children will not be judged by the color of their skin but for the content of their character. Beyond that dream is a vision of when they will not be judged by the content of their character but by the Grace of God and the Love of Christ Jesus. Because as worthwhile as the dreams of great people are, the vision God has for us is immeasurably more wonderful. "It testifies to the end, it does not deceive."
But as beautiful as the vision is, our questions remain. The vision is written on the tablet, even a runner can read it. But is the vision, is God's providence for us, stuck on that tablet? What do we do in lives that seem so different from the transformed relationships that God has shown us?
"If it delays..."
Children are still judged by their skin because we have a history of keeping ourselves separate from those who are different than we are. Those bad habits, though weaker than they once were, persist.
Parents still struggle with marriage and custody issues because some marriages can no longer work, but they never stop loving their children. Nations still bomb each other because some people cannot understand any language other than violence. We still spend more money on prisons than schools because a criminal is more dangerous to society than an uneducated person. Churches are stern and stubborn because they have a piece of the truth and don’t want to risk losing it to change.
We do not live according to the vision that God has set for us. We have not learned our role in the kingdom of God. There is still a vision for the appointed time, but we cannot embody that vision on our own.
If it delays...
Wait for it.
God’s not done working on us yet. We don’t have the answers to the complex questions with which we are faced, but we cannot allow our fear of being wrong to either prevent our action or to stop us from listening to those God has placed in our lives. God’s not done working on us yet.
We are not mired in this moment, there is a plan for us, an intention. God is not satisfied with the state of the world either, and is intervening in it constantly.
The greatest intervention is the person and work of Jesus the Christ. God saw that we could not, can not, live up to the vision of the image of God in which we are all created. God saw the brokenness of humanity and chose to accomplish his ends for us by becoming flesh himself, experiencing the shame and death of the cross, all for the sake of a world that had not yet come of age. God’s kingdom is already among us! But we can not yet live fully in that new reality. The time is at hand, but the vision is unfulfilled.
If the fulfillment of the vision does not fit our schedule, if the completion of who we are as a people of God works at a slower pace than we hoped for, if our progress in answering God’s call in our lives is set-back, if it delays...
Wait for it.
For it is surely coming.
It will not be late.
That’s easy to hear when we’re comfortable with the order of the world: when the leaders for whom we voted are in office, when our wealth increases consistently. The vision is surely coming. It will not be late. It’s easy to hear when our churches are growing, when our children are healthy, when smiles come easily to our faces.
If it delays, that’s ok, because my life is basically good. I’m living in comfort and have built a good life for myself. I can wait for the vision.
But many of the people of God live on the other side of that coin. They live constantly worried that they will not be able to feed their families, or that they will not be able to maintain a roof over their heads. When your best day involves being ignored instead of attacked, it’s tough to hear that the vision is surely coming, and will not be late.
You’re telling me I have to wait for the arc of history to bend back around to justice? What do you mean it will not be too late? It certainly looks like it’s too late for so many refugees who have died fleeing for their lives. It certainly looks like it’s too late for the martyrs who seek human rights for all people. How many more people have to suffer under the injustices of fear and oppression before God will do something and bring about that vision! What’s the suffering level got to be before God decides it’s “the appointed time.”
When it feels like you’re winning, it’s easy to run out the clock. When you’re on the losing end of things, being asked to wait, for the help from the Lord is surely coming, is offensive. How many civil rights leaders were told “Wait, your rights will be granted to you, just don’t go too far too fast, let us adjust to this new way of life slowly.” How many church leaders have shied away from changes they know are necessary because they don’t want to change too much, too fast. They know the direction, but the inertia of the system drags on them. The vision is there, but just out of reach.
If it delays, wait for it.
For it is surely coming.
Because God’s promise is for all people, even for those who resist being a part of it. The Human One will appear on his day in the same way a flash of lightning lights up the sky from one end to the other. After all the waiting, we will be made one in an instant, and the vision that testifies to the end will be realized.
If it delays, wait for it. For it is surely coming. It will not be late. But some people’s desires are truly audacious, they don’t do the right thing.
We’re guilty of that too. Each of us. In our impatience for the appointed time, or in our complacency with the way things are, we take vision of hope and turn it into a trinket, so that it can fit us, rather than be challenged by it.
Like the master potter in Habakkuk, who begins to love the product of his gifts more than the God who is their source. We grow distracted and lose sight of the vision. “Of what value is an idol,when its potter carves it, or a cast image that has been shaped? It is a teacher of lies, for the potter trusts the pottery, though it is incapable of speaking.” We “create” the God we want, rather than being shaped by the God who formed us.
But God does not leave us there, for the human one has already come to break us out of our molds, and to fill us with breath once again.
It is difficult to be faithful to the vision God has for us. It is easy to get sidetracked by the trappings made with our own hands, overlaid with gold and silver, but with no breath within. We get caught up in our impatience when compared to God’s timeless vision, and would rather build a kingdom for ourselves than wait for the fulfillment of the one God has established forever.
God’s kingdom is already among us, the LORD is in his holy temple. But we don’t fit in that kingdom yet. But God’s vision for us testifies to the end.
The kingdom of God is already among us in a thousand easy-to-overlook ways. In love for one another, in sharing of ourselves with the least among us, in holy moments that reveal God’s creation to us, God’s creation is already among us. But these require faith.
The vision requires the faith of prophet. The prophet must see farther, imagine more, so that the people do not get stuck. The prophet's task is to stand in the gap between where the people are and where God is taking them. There's a difference between where the people are and where God is taking them. There's a distance between Egypt and the promised land. There's a delay between the cross and the empty tomb.
Living in that delays hard, and it requires the faith of a prophet, the guiding support of the community of faith. That’s where the Church comes in. We are the followers of Jesus Christ in a world that is stuck. The task is set before us, all ages, backgrounds, talents, social and economic class, to stand in the gap between where the world is stuck and where God is leading it. The Church is to be gracious and inviting in ways that testify to the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ, without fear that we will lose it, because the truth has claimed us and is carrying us to the appointed time when all of us will enact our faith.
The Church is the tablet on which we are writing the vision, how will our words and our actions make the gospel plain so that a runner can read it? Let us by the way we live our lives together show that God’s kingdom is already here among us, even if God’s visions for us has not yet been fully realized. Let us love one another with the faith that God is still working on us, even those who are not gathered here.
We know, and our life as a community of faith should show, that The LORD is in his holy temple, let all the earth be silent before him, as he appears on his day in the same way a flash of lightning lights up the sky from one end to the other.
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