“I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart”
Habakkuk 2:1
One of the fringe benefits of 41 years of pastoral ministry is that it has afforded me the privilege of getting to spend many of my waking hours with the Bible. I realize that sounds almost sickeningly pious. Yet this love I have for the Hebrew scriptures and the Greek writings of the early church was not born of my devotion and piety so much as it grew out of sheer fascination with the strange and wonderful collection of writings that our forebearers had the good sense to preserve and collect in one place.
The words of this book hook me. They can both draw me into a fulfilling conversation that I do not want to end and make me want to throw the book across the room in frustration for all they do not explain. They mirror my experience, and they tell me stories that I have never lived. They inspire me to aspire to something better and they remind me of how uninspired and base my life choices can sometimes be. But what most arrests my imagination and defies my complete understanding is the way this book keeps giving me reasons to make space in my life for the God who created me. More specifically, the way this book keeps reminding me that this One who created me actually wants to engage me, and not just me, but everything else this One has spoken into existence.
One of the gifts I am giving myself (and hopefully you) is to spend this last year before I retire working with texts that have been especially good friends to me over the years of pastoral ministry. Part of what helped me to push the retirement button was the question: “What texts do I want to preach in my last year of preaching every Sunday to a congregation?” I started this last year of preaching with Ash Wednesday and a Lenten series on Romans 8. I will end with yet another a look at Isaiah 40-55. I am now at the mid-point of this year and have decided to spend some time with an old friend whose name is Habakkuk.
Habakkuk is one of the 12 Minor Prophets whose works comprise the last 12 books of the Old Testament. The Germans refer to these books as der zwolf kleinen Propheten, the twelve “little” prophets. This designation is a measure of the length of the books and not the stature of the prophet or the importance of his message. These little books pack a punch and Habakkuk’s contribution to this collection is profound. For the message of this little prophet wraps itself around a very big question. Namely, how can this God who is all powerful, all loving and completely righteous, permit evil to flourish in the world?
No one who works with this question ever arrives at a satisfactory answer. For to “answer” it we have to deny at least one of the three propositions that go into creating it. We have to minimize or deny the power of God and suggest that evil exists because God has no control of it. Or we have to reason away the reality of an operative evil force in the world and suggest that evil is merely an appearance or illusion and can be wiped away if we work harder at focusing on the true reality of the goodness of God. Or we have to deny the goodness and righteousness of God and suggest that God somehow is either unconcerned with evil, or worse, creates it and uses it for his own ends. In short, as I have said before, putting the caption “God is in control” under a photo of Boeing 767 flying into one of the Twin Towers brings me neither explanation nor comfort. And I am not sure I see any reason to pray to the God whose “control” brings about ends such as this.
So where do we go with this question and how do we continue to pray in the face of it? Habakkuk gives us some direction in this matter. He chooses to go directly to God and ask it. By example he invites us into the struggle of prayer. He jumps into the scrum and wrestles with God as he seeks an answer. Habakkuk’s answer is to make the active decision to stay in relationship; to embrace and make space for the mystery of God and wait things out, trusting that God will be God, and justice and righteousness will be revealed. “I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what [God] will say to me and what [God] will answer concerning my complaint.”
Perseverance and patience hardly seem like a satisfactory response to the problem of evil. On first viewing, the better choice seems to lie in walking away from the One whose apparent neglect or unconcern occasions the question in the first place. Yet what leads Habakkuk and others like him to make their way to the watch tower and scan the darkness for some hint of light is the sense that they are being held by the One they are tempted to reject. Faith at its most basic level is the choice to take the risk of trusting in the faithfulness of God. Our faith is about faithfulness: Putting our weight down on, and resting securely in, the truth that God made us for relationship with Himself and will not let us go.
David Rohrer
09/11/2023