1

“Reality, Grief, and Hope: The Prophet’s Call”

Rebecca L. Hemphill Homily at Hope in the Desert Episcopal Church,

October 2, 2016

Lectionary: Habbakuk 1:1-4, 2:1-5, Psalm 37: 1-10, 2 Timothy 1:1-14,

Luke 17: 5-10

Good morning. I’m Rebecca Hemphill a member of this

congregation. I am up here again today at the request of Father Dan who

is away at a conference. Please join me in praying that the God of all

Hope will open our hearts here and now to the living Word of Truth.

Amen.

I recently watched a video of Paul Simon at ground zero in New

York City at the remembrance ceremony of the 15th anniversary of the

9/11 assault on our country. Looking out on the mourners and the

dark holes of the footprint pools of the World Trade Center Towers, he

strummed his guitar and sang a stark, solo version of the darkly

beautiful song, The Sounds of Silence. (Some of the younger among us

may know the band Disturbed’s powerful recent version of the song.)

Hello darkness, my old friend

2

I've come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

...the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement

halls,

and whispered in the sounds of silence.”

Simon sang these words to the people at Ground Zero and across our

proud nation, as we remembered and Lamented anew the unthinkable –

that even in our power and might and goodness we are vulnerable, and

somehow, sometimes, God allows terrible things to happen to good

people.

(Pause)

“Prophets look into the desolation that is often in this world and

are able to perceive the dream of God for us.” I am quoting Old

Testament scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann from his recent

book, Reality, Grief and Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks. (Repeat the

quote.)

Before Jesus and the sending of the Holy Spirit, God raised up

prophets to be God’s voice in the world. Again and again, over a

3

thousand years, the prophets spotlighted reality, grieved, and

proclaimed God’s dream for us, to transform and transcend the ugly

truth. (Walter Brueggemann Reality, Grief and Hope: Three Urgent

Prophetic Tasks, 2014)

The prophets spoke truth to the powerful and complacent. They

Lamented the evil their people brought upon themselves. And through

the prophets, God spoke renewal and hope, like these words of the

prophet Isaiah:

Do you not know, have you not heard? The Lord God strengthens the

powerless…The Lord shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with

wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and

not faint. (Isaiah 40:28, 31)

Sometimes the prophets’ words changed hearts and the course of

events. Sometimes, not – their words echoed in the sounds of silence.

Habakkuk, was a prophet in a time when the unthinkable worst

happened to the Hebrew nation. A time when the Babylonians invaded

and conquered Judah, destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, and carried

away the best and the brightest of the nation of Israel into exile.

4

It was a time when God’s chosen people –people who had been

powerless exiled slaves until God saved them -- had become full of

themselves. By the time of Habbakuk, they were literally paying lip

service to their part of the relationship covenant with God– saying the

right prayers, singing the right songs, assuring themselves that they had

a lock on Divine favor. Instead of faith in God, their faith was in being a

nation of God’s Chosen people. One scholar describes this as a period

when faith and nationalism merged. (Understanding the Old Testament)

What does that mean, “when faith and nationalism merge?” Well,

it would be like me feeling confident that I am a Christian woman of

faith because I am an American: because I say, “One Nation Under God,

when I pledge allegiance to my nation’s flag. Or, I am Christian because

the American money in my wallet says, “In God We Trust.” -- No need

for my behavior to correspond to Jesus or the cross and resurrection, no

living into Christ’s call to care for the least of these. My faith would be

just pride in the US of A, and an assurance that God has chosen my

country over all others. My nationalism would be my faith.

5

The prophet Habbakuk witnessed this reality in his nation. He

saw all the signs of his people forgetting God; he saw looming evil and

destruction. And he called out to God in a Lament.

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 wrongdoing

and look at trouble?...

Destruction and violence are everywhere!

Everybody’s disagreeing and quarreling about what to do!

The law you gave us for our well-being is so loosely followed.

Justice is twisted in our society!

It wasn’t in today’s reading, but listen to how God answered

Habbakuk:

Look at the nations, and see!

Be astonished! Be astounded!

For a work is being done in your days

that you would not believe if you were told.

6

It sounds like God is about to do a wonderful new thing in response to

Habbakuk’s complaint. “Tadaah!” here’s the miraculous rescue! Be

astounded!

But no.

God goes on to give a horrific vision to Habbakuk:

God reveals that the Lord of the Israelites is waking up a vicious enemy

to destroy the nation: the Babylonians are going to sweep through the

Promised Land, leaving nothing in Jerusalem but the lowliest people,

and a stripped temple where your priests promised that God lived.

Can you imagine?! That would be like our crying out to God after

9/11 to save us from the many sources of terror we now see in the

world, and God answering, “I’m empowering ISIS to overthrow not only

the entire Middle East and Europe, but to cross the Atlantic and wipe

out the United States.”

Habbakuk responds, ‘WHAT!!? Why are you bringing them to

destroy us? Where’s the God I know?! Are you a different God from the

one who has always has saved us?!! ‘I’m staying right here on the

ramparts of this watchtower, waiting and watching until I hear you, God,

answer me.’

7

God answers, “Take that vision I just gave you…of the invasion

and destruction. Write it down in large print so that it can be read by

people on the run.” ‘The vision I have given you, Habbakuk, is

“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, it will not delay.”

And then God tells him, why this disaster is being brought upon Israel.

“Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them.”

Your nation, my people, are full of pride and their spirit is not right

within them.

God follows this condemnation with words the promise survival and

hope, for some:

…but the righteous live by their faith.

(Pause)

Habbakuk and the Babylonian exile introduced into the Hebrew

faith a new way of talking to God. Lament. Lament happens when we

8

can no longer avoid a heartbreaking reality, and all our ego and defenses

are stripped away. It is the voice of humbled grief.

Lament is not something we modern Christians have much

interest in or experience with. We see ourselves as winners! Once the

Roman Empire became Holy and Christian, it made us winners. We like

Winners! Not Lamenters!

Just so, the Israelites under their kings and priestly elite

developed a religion that highlighted their exceptionalism and

triumphalism as God’s chosen people, and erased their origin as people

crying out in weakness and exile in Egypt. They preferred thinking of

themselves as God’s chosen because they were special, rather than being

a nation that existed solely because God had chosen to show love for a

“not special” people. Until the Babylonians destroyed the last vestiges

of their nationhood, the Hebrews behaved as though God was their

sure-thing: no matter that for centuries they broke their side of God’s

covenant promises and commandments.

(Pause)

The last time I was up here, I spoke about how saving hope only

comes through suffering and giving voice to that suffering. That was

9

what Walter Brueggemann finds in the story of the Exodus. But less

theologically inclined folks have discovered the same thing. None other

than flamboyant Oscar Wilde wrote, “Where there is sorrow, there is

holy ground.”

When we admit and face our reality, that we are vulnerable…

When we grieve the truth of our weakness and cry out to God in Truth,

God shows up and things shift—we begin to be filled with the spirit of

love and self discipline, just as Paul promised Timothy. It is through

Lament that we enter and receive the hope where God makes things

new and lifts us up on wings like eagles.

But, even today, like the ancient Israelites, we tend to avoid this

painful portal to holy ground like the plague.

We have “unrealistic notions of entitlement, privilege, and

superiority,” says Brueggemann. We feel we have a right to be RIGHT!

Yet, when we remain proud, insisting we should be exceptional

and immune to suffering, we have, as God said to Habbakuk, a spirit that

is not right in us. God wants better for us. God will inevitably, in God’s

goodness and love, strip away our pride and blindness to bring us into a

new reality where our relationship with God is intimately genuine.

10

As theologian Richard Rohr puts it: The work of God’s Holy Spirit

is to keep us vulnerable to Life and Love, and resists all that destroys

God’s flow in us. (Rohr Daily Meditation 9/27/16).

(Pause)

The words of the prophets – God’s guiding wake up calls to us –

did not end with the Old Testament, or even with Jesus. So, what might

the prophetic voice of the Holy Spirit be revealing to restore our

vulnerability and humility and God’s loving flow in us?

To get to the answer, maybe we can ask ourselves: When do I feel

superior? What makes me feel proud that I am in the right and others

are wrong? And what threatens my sense of safety and specialness?

Terrorism? Mass shootings? Nuclear proliferation? Gun purchase

regulations? Deaths of the innocent? Droughts? Floods? Dangerous

world leaders? Viruses? Candidates for president? Peoples and religions

we don’t understand?

PAUSE

Watch TV. Go on Facebook. The signs are everywhere. We are a

frustrated people lashing out at everyone and everything that we think

11

contributes to our feeling vulnerable. We point fingers and blame

anyone but ourselves. And, underneath all our anger is the beginning of

lament. How are we to make it through? Aren’t we good? Aren’t we the

best, and God’s chosen? Where IS God in this mess? Isn’t God wrong

not to be making it clear that we are right? …Making it clear God is on

our side and not theirs?

Remember God’s words to Habbakuk of assurance about how to

survive. God says, “The righteous live by faith.“ He’s not saying, “those

who think they’re in the right live by faith.” God is saying, the righteous

will survive by faith.

What does “righteous” mean? How do we make ourselves

“righteous?” I looked it up. Righteousness doesn’t mean right.

Righteousness means that God molds us, even though we don’t merit it,

by grace, to the image of God, in childlike innocence and simplicity.

(Leo G. Cox, Beacon Dictionary of Theology, ed. Richard S. Taylor, et al) .

God is saying, we will live –not be destroyed – by being like trusting,

simple children, soaking up God’s perfect goodness and the gift of faith.

Neither righteousness nor faith are things we can conjure up on our

12

own to make ourselves feel good or powerful. Because we are not right!

Only God is right. We are not powerful. Only God is powerful.

Doesn’t that look like what Jesus is teaching in today’s Gospel?

His apprentices and friends are asking him how they can get more faith

–and it sounds as though he knows what they’re asking for is more

power, more things to make them special. He tells them, the power of

faith has nothing to do with how much or how big it is. A tiny amount of

faith – that gift from God that you yourselves cannot manufacture or

conjure up– makes the impossible happen. Get over asking how you can

get more of this special power – faith.

Then, in what feels like a non-sequiter, he tells them the story of

the servant who finishes his assigned chores and then expects to be

treated like the person in charge. Jesus asks, is it right to feel so

exceptional that when you do one day’s worth of what you’ve been

called to do for a lifetime, you’re ready to seat yourself at the head of the

table and be served right alongside the master – as though you are equal

to the God who gave you life and work to do?” No. It is gift enough to

know and serve God; you are not God.

13

My preaching mentor suggested I read a dense sermon by Danish

philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard to get ideas about our

rightness vis a vis God. (I feel your collective eye roll and hear your

sighs. “Oh no! She’s going to talk about Kierkegaard now?!” Bear with

me, please. It’s all about love, and I’m nearly done!) The sermon

explores our human tendency to forget that God is God and we are not,

insisting that we are in the right. Its text is Luke 19, where Jesus

prophesies and laments the coming of yet another destruction of

Jerusalem and the temple, this time by the Romans. Another moment of,

“How could you let this happen, God?!” (“The Edifying in the Thought

That Against God We Are Always in the Wrong.”)

Kierkegaard argues, like the prophets of old, that it’s good that

“God is ALWAYS right!” And that means that when it comes to the times

when we feel we have been done wrong by God, we are not right.

But it’s hard to get to that point because we humans love feeling

that we’re in the right! Kierkegaard explores this smug and satisfied

feeling about being right. And he reveals that we actually don’t feel

quite so good about being right if the person we insist is wrong is

someone we deeply love. Love makes it easier to be wrong. The more

14

we love, the less we consider whether we’re in the right or not. Our

deepest selves know God is love, even if our ego doesn’t. Our soul can

only find rest and joy in our beloved being right. And that frees us from

trying to be as right or righter than God.

We’re enabled by God’s righteous love, to face all the other truths

about ourselves and the world – even the hard, unpleasant truths.

When we see the full reality, we fall on our knees before God in awe and

humility.

This is when the words of the prophets no longer echo in the

sounds of silence! Instead, we join the prophets and cry out the voice of

God in our hearts. We perceive and lament injustice. We become

empathetic to others and grieve their pain. As God said through the

prophet Ezekiel, ‘God gives us a new heart and God puts a new spirit

in us; God removes our hearts of stone and gives us hearts of flesh:’

hearts able to open and love. ‘ (36:26)

(Pause)

Before I close, let me just tell you what happened to the Hebrews

after their “rightness” of prideful exceptionalism was stripped away. A

transformation of their whole understanding of God and their

15

relationship to God is what happened. In the Babylonian exile, they

experienced a spiritual renewal, unfettered by the old religious

formulas, and beyond all bounds of nationalism. Deprived of an earthly

kingdom, “Israel began to vision a Heavenly Kingdom…[and] a new and

nobler conception of the character of God...” The ground was laid for he

coming of the Messiah. (J.C. Muir, quoted in Exploring the Old

Testament.)

If we can, like the prophets, allow God to show us the reality of

the ways we diminish God and glorify ourselves, if we grieve honestly

how we are wrong, we will be filled with hopeful courage: with a spirit

of a divine power of love and self control, and with the mustard seed of

faith that allows us to pray expectantly for the unimaginable.

I invite you to join me in praying Habbakuk’s hope-filled closing

prayer:

“Oh Lord…I stand in awe of your work. In our own time revive it; in our

own time make it known; in wrath may you remember mercy…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.” (Habbakuk

3:46) Amen.