October 3 sermon

Text: Luke 16:19-31
Preached October 3 at Gol and Hegre Lutheran Churches in rural Kenyon, MN


Grace and peace to you from God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Why do bad things happen to good people?”
“Why am I in so much pain?”
“Where is God? I feel like he’s left me.”

Have you ever found yourself asking questions like this? I know I have. And these are not new questions.

“Oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?”
Twenty-six hundred years ago, the prophet Habakkuk wrote these words from our first reading. This prophet knew suffering and wasn’t afraid to say so.

Habakkuk’s writing centers on how to make sense of suffering. It asks how God relates to us and our suffering. Habakkuk helps us see God’s promise that suffering and sorrow do not have the final word. This prophet has a lot to say about living by faith in a world that includes far too much evil and violence.

This is the only time Habakkuk pops up in our three-year lectionary cycle, so we can’t pass up this chance to take a look at this prophet’s message. We don’t know a lot about the prophet Habakkuk. He probably wrote this book around 600 BC.

At that time, the Israelites were divided into two kingdoms. The northern kingdom of Israel had already been conquered. The southern kingdom of Judah, which is where Habakkuk was writing, was about to be conquered as well. It wasn’t a good time for God’s people.

Habakkuk’s writing is divided into just three chapters, and I want to take a quick look at one important section from each chapter to see what it might tell us about faith and suffering.

We just heard the lament that opens the writing: “Oh 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 wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me….justice never prevails.”

This is powerful lament. The prophet condemns God’s people for abandoning God’s ways. He names the brokenness of the world—life includes destruction, violence, and injustice. The righteous suffer. It’s not easy to accept, but it’s reality. And the prophet puts words to the shared experience of feeling abandoned by God.

Perhaps you’ve experienced times in your life when you felt like God was absent, or at least like he wasn’t paying attention. Many of us have been through individual or family situations like the death of a loved one, chronic pain, infertility or miscarriage, addiction, divorce, unemployment, abuse, mental illness.

We are all affected, either directly or indirectly, by community or global suffering as well. We deal with natural disasters like flooding and tornadoes. We deal with violence and injustice like bullying, poverty, and war.

When you face difficult situations like these, when you feel like God has abandoned you, what do you do? Do you feel comfortable confronting God as boldly as the prophet does? Some of us may have been discouraged from speaking to or about God in ways that might be considered negative, so we might be hesitant to complain so directly to God.

But Habakkuk’s cry to God here tells us that it’s okay to challenge God. It’s okay to ask hard questions, to lament, even to get angry. Habakkuk asks God, basically, “Why aren’t you showing up to fix this mess?!” God wants to hear from us, even when what we have to say isn’t pretty. Even when we are so angry or sad or scared that we can’t even find words to say what we’re feeling.

Even if all we can do is cry or scream, God wants us to turn to him with that pain. The apostle Paul tells us that this is when the Holy Spirit “helps us in our weakness” and prays on our behalf.

God wants to be in relationship with us. Relationships involve sharing of ourselves, and sometimes relationships involve conflict. Even when we have difficult things to say, God can handle it.

In fact, the first thing we should notice about God’s response to Habakkuk is the very fact that God does respond. God does not scold or punish Habakkuk for complaining. God does not ignore his children’s cries.

And how exactly does God respond to this prophet? We look at chapter 2: “Then the Lord answered me and said….There is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come…. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right within them, but the righteous live by their faith.”

“There is a vision.” God does have something to say to us. But, “if it seems to tarry, wait for it.” So God’s response may seem slow in coming. It may not conform to our preferred timeline. But, sooner or later, God will respond.

“The righteous live by their faith.” Does this response to Habakkuk sound like an easy answer to you? Does it neatly explain or resolve the suffering of the prophet and his community? I don’t think so. It seems God’s response won’t necessarily be the clear explanation we might want.

During times when you were suffering, have people tried to give you easy answers or neat explanations? “Everything happens for a reason.” Or, “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” We have probably all heard such things, and we have probably all said such things. Sometimes they’re helpful and comforting.

But, many times, these answers just don’t satisfy us. They don’t recognize the intensity and contradiction of our emotions. They don’t leave room for our anger and questions. In times of intense sorrow and pain, there often are no easy answers. God’s response to Habakkuk is no exception.

But what does God’s response say about where God is in our suffering? God is right there with us, continuing in relationship with us. God is present to hear our cries and respond to our anger, confusion, and pain.

This verse speaks of salvation: “The righteous live by their faith.” Paul picks up on this verse in Romans 1 and Galatians 3 when he explains that it is Jesus Christ who makes us righteous. We are reconciled to God by our faith in Christ, not by our own work. So we become the righteous, and we live eternally by our faith.

This verse also speaks of a way of living: “The righteous live by their faith.” We live by faith when we trust that God is present, that God will respond to our cries, and that God’s response will be true. Faith is trusting that God is faithful to his people and his promises. And we see again that faith is about relationship, because trust can only occur within a relationship. So the righteous live each day by their faith.

Habakkuk’s message concludes with a summary of the situation the community is facing. This passage was not in our reading today. It’s at the end of chapter 3: “Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.”

As the prophet describes this situation, how good are things looking? “The fig tree does not blossom…no fruit is on the vines…the fields yield no food…there is no herd in the stalls.” So there are no crops and no livestock. No food. This is a description of despair. There is nothing left to hope for and things are bleak. What now?

How does the prophet respond? “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength.”

“Yet I will rejoice in the Lord.” That “yet” is a tiny but important word. Habakkuk doesn’t say “in the future I will rejoice,” or “when things get better I will rejoice.” Habakkuk rejoices in the Lord even now, in the midst of this dire situation.

What does this tell us about faith? Once again, faith is trust in God—trust that God will keep his promises and provide for his people’s needs. This trust can give us hope, and that hope can sustain us in the midst of despair.

Habakkuk shows us what it means that the righteous live by their faith. Rolf Jacobson writes that “the righteous have hearts that love God, rather than merely the blessings God gives.” This doesn’t mean the righteous never have doubts. Habakkuk showed us that by with his very direct questions for God.

But faith keeps trusting in spite of those doubts. Faith brings those doubts to God and waits for God’s response, as Habakkuk did. Faith enables us to live with these difficult questions, even when God’s response doesn’t really answer them. Faith enables us to endure suffering we don’t understand, and even to rejoice in the midst of it.

Now, we need to be clear that there is a difference between happiness and joy. We certainly cannot expect to be happy in the midst of suffering, but we can still have the deep sense of joy and peace that comes from faith.

Yes, faith enables us to lament and rejoice at the same time. Faith tells us that God is still with us even as we suffer, and God’s presence is our strength. Faith lets us trust in God’s promise that despair will not have the final word, and in that promise we find life and hope in the midst of hopelessness.

Let us pray.

God of hope, we are all too aware that life includes much suffering, and we give thanks for your constant presence in both joy and sorrow. Empower us to follow the prophets’ example by bringing our pain and our questions to you. When clear answers are not forthcoming, help us cling to your promise that suffering and death will not have the final word. All this we pray in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, who makes us righteous and who is our strength. Amen.