All Along the Watchtower

Who’s going to stand on the ramparts with Habakkuk? Who’s going to go up to the watchtower with him to look to the horizon and see what’s coming? Who’s going to stay awake? Who’s going to keep their eyes open when there are so many reasons to look away? Who’s going to live out of hope when the soup de jour is hopelessness? Who’s going to look for salvation when the world is talking about damnation? Who’s going to remain faithful when the day seems to belong to the faithless, the proud, the wicked and the unjust? These are just a few of the questions raised when you turn to the book of Habakkuk.

There are actually a lot of questions to ask about the book of Habakkuk. Number one being – Just how do you pronounce his name? But the question that seems to be at the top of the list is where the people of God find their strength in the midst of trials. And I am here to tell you today that we find our strength on the horizon. We find our fortitude on the frontier. We find our faith in the future.

The future. The goal. The end. That which is to come. It’s the thing that makes Christians different from other folks. We are on a timeline here. We’ve got an eye on the horizon because we believe that there is narrative here. We’re in the midst of a story. It’s a story that has markers in the creation and in the covenant with Israel. It’s a story that reaches its climax on a cross on Calvary’s hill and in an empty tomb somewhere nearby. And it’s a story that will reach its conclusion with the return of Christ and the establishing of God’s reign throughout the heavens and the earth. Everything…everything hangs on that story and it changes how we view the world. If we did not have this story, then each moment would not be significant. If we didn’t have this story, then what I do today would be pretty inconsequential. Time would be rolling along but to what end?

I don’t know how many of you are football fans, but if you are then you have probably heard about a new rookie running back who is rewriting the record books. Adrian Peterson plays for the Minnesota Vikings and in eight games this year he has already run for over 1,000 yards, which is a great year for a running back. Last week against the San Diego Chargers he ran for 296 yards, which is not only a record number of yards for a rookie to run in one game, it is the NFL record for anybody ever. Peterson is a phenomenal athlete and a wonder to watch.
What is most amazing is the way that he runs. He’s kind of small for a back at only 6’1” and a little over 200 pounds, but he runs over people. He doesn’t spend a lot of time juking and jiving, he just runs straight ahead. Tiki Barber last week said that the thing that was most impressive about Peterson was the way he kept his eyes on the end zone. He keeps looking straight ahead, ignoring the distractions on either side of him, and uses all of his power to move him towards the goal line. Part of Adrian Peterson is living in the end zone already; his body is just trying to catch up.

Well, welcome to the world of Habakkuk and to the world of God’s people. Our journey makes sense when we recognize that part of us is already living in the future that God is ordering. Our bodies are just trying to catch up. We stand with the future.

Now I admit that when I say something like that, “We stand with the future,” it sounds kind of like a cute “buzzwordy” phrase. Something like you might see on a corporate billboard. You know, like “Microsoft: We Stand with the Future.” But that’s not what I’m after here. Christians stand with the future, not because we believe in a cult of progress. We stand with the future not because we believe that every day and in every way we’re getting better and better. We stand with the future not because we’re guaranteed some sort of golden ticket that makes us immune to the slings and arrows the world might send our way. None of that is true! We stand with the future because of what we’ve seen in the past and what we’ve seen in the past and know in the present is the God who has revealed salvation in the covenant with Israel and ultimately in Jesus.

Habakkuk recognizes this. We know very little about who he was, but it seems that he was a prophet in Jerusalem just as the southern kingdom of Judah was coming to an end. Babylon was rising to the east and soon the nation would be attacked, conquered and many of its people carried off into exile.

Things looked bad. The book of Habakkuk begins with the prophet lamenting that the people are crying out for help and it seems that God is not answering. “O Lord,” he says, “how long shall I cry for help and you will not listen? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention also. The wicked surround the righteous.” It’s all falling apart for Habakkuk. He wonders where God is.

Something happens by the beginning of the second chapter of the book, though. Habakkuk goes up to the watchtower and to the walls of the city. Those would be the places where the guards and sentinels kept a watchful eye for the approaching Babylonian army. But Habakkuk is not going up to look for the end; he’s waiting on God. And he hears a word from God.

“Write this down,” God says. “Put it on tablets. Write it big so that people running past it can see it. There is still hope. There will come a day. There will be an appointed time. The word is true. The promise is sure. It may seem to tarry, but wait for it. The day of the Lord will come. That’s why you must not be like the proud or the wicked. The righteous live by faith.” This is the God that Israel had staked its life on. This is the God who redeems. This is the God who promises to come again in power.

Now you might say, “That’s great, but how many thousands of years have passed now since Habakkuk went up on the ramparts to look for God? How many years have we been waiting? To coin a phrase from Langston Hughes, ‘What happens to a dream deferred?’ When does Jesus return? When does God come? When do the unjust get what’s coming to them and when are the righteous redeemed?”

So we work to explain the discrepancy. Maybe Habakkuk meant the day of the Lord metaphorically and it’s really about some spiritual reality. Maybe there’s a Hebrew word that just didn’t get translated right. Maybe the problem is us.

Or maybe violence, destruction, injustice, anxiety and fear are not the exception to the norm of life in this world. Maybe violence, destruction, injustice, anxiety and fear ARE the norm. Maybe the world does not look so great on an average day. Maybe wars and rumors of wars are just the normal, everyday newspaper headline. They have been for all of my life. Maybe struggle, abuse, and death are not all that uncommon for human beings. Maybe every generation feels like the generation behind it has lost its bearings, lost its moral compass, lost its sense of propriety, and lost its common sense. Maybe life has always seemed a fragile thing. Maybe I don’t feel as good as I used to. Maybe cats have always left hairballs in just the place your toes could find them. Maybe acne has always plagued teenagers. Maybe things just aren’t as they should be and by golly, if the end isn’t near, it sure ought to be.

If that’s true…If it is the case that the world is always a frightening place in the present tense then maybe what we need is a watchtower to stand on. What is it that Habakkuk says? What is it that Jesus tells his followers? Keep your head up. Be of good courage. Pray for strength. Because you don’t stand with the present. You stand with another reality that is drawing near. The reign of God is drawing near.

What is it that is drawing near? Redemption, liberation, hope, the kingdom, the power and the glory, Jesus, the future is drawing near. And we do not fear. We do not grow faint. Our arms do not grow tired. Our backs do not grow weak. Our feet do not grow weary. We keep our heads up because…we keep our heads up because we Christians stand with the future. And the future is assured because of Jesus, the one who came and lived among us, who knew our pains and sorrows, who shared our joys and passions, who died our death, and went down into the grave so that he could break through into new life. We stand with the future because the past tells us everything that God intends to do with us and this crazy, chaotic world. God’s answer to the question of death is no and God’s answer to the question of life is always yes. That’s where we stand.

So Jesus really does make all the difference. It makes every place that we stand a new place – one in which the sufferings of this present age don’t get to define the meaning of this time. Because Jesus has redeemed every moment, all these moments are holy and will be taken up into God. They seem like so many loose ends now. We can’t see the purpose in a young girl’s terminal fight with cancer. We can’t see the meaning in a young boy’s life cut short by a roadside bomb in Iraq. What do we do with the senseless ruin that drugs and alcohol can bring to lives? What do we do with the wounds in our minds and in our souls that just don’t seem to go away? All of those loose ends are taken up by God in ways that we can’t perceive. In God’s economy all those threads are drawn together into a tapestry of grace. What is lost is found. What is dead is made alive. This is the work of God is Christ.

I remember having a great discussion with a student once on a mission trip to Mexico. A few years ago I went with a team of students from the Wesley Foundation at UVA to the border region of Texas and Mexico. We were working at projects on both sides of the border and one day a small group of us was resealing the roof on a kindergarten run by the Methodist Church in Reynosa, Mexico, which is a huge, sprawling city of about a million people right across the river from McAllen, Texas.

After working on the roof, a doctor in the Methodist-run clinic nearby took us over to a colonia on the south side of the city. Colonias are neighborhoods, often with no city services, that grow up when new migrants come into the region looking for work. This one grew up on a landfill. You see, the industry that supports most of the 14,000 people living in this colonia is trash. Every day carts pulled by donkeys go through the streets of Reynosa collecting garbage and every night they come back and empty the trash into their neighborhood. So now it is a small city built on piles of rotting paper, food, and worse.

A river runs by the colonia and separates it from the main part of the city but so much trash has collected here that there are now islands in the river. And on top of the new islands are houses. Shacks really. No running water. No electricity. At night the dirt streets are pitch black. And 14,000 people, many of them children, live here. The border with the United States is less than a mile away.

It’s hard to stand with the future in the streets of this colonia. It’s hard to see liberation drawing near for the children who call it home. But there’s something else in this neighborhood. There’s a Methodist Church. This is what the clinic doctor who brought us there wanted us to see. Three brand new buildings. One, a dining hall to serve breakfasts to up to 300 children a day. One, a clinic to serve the many medical needs of the community. And the last, a sanctuary where large groups gather to worship and praise God and to witness to a hope they don’t yet see.

One of the students who was in that small group saw this and she was angry at what she saw. She wondered how the church could simply set up shop in this neighborhood without challenging some of the reasons why the neighborhood had grown up there in the first place. Wasn’t this just accepting some great injustice? Couldn’t more be done to ensure that such places never had to exist anymore?

On the other hand you could see the place as a watchtower. The Methodist Church of Mexico is small. It doesn’t have many resources. But some of its leaders believed that if God is anywhere, God is in the midst of a suffering people. And what little resources they have for new expressions of the church they are putting into places like this church compound, which is called El Sendero, The Way. U.S. church volunteers have come to help build El Sendero and they have come away talking about how they have seen faith in action in a very disturbing place. But when you worship at El Sendero, you stand with the future. And that’s what Christians do.

The world is fierce and vast and devastating and beautiful and God is everywhere within. This is the vision of Habakkuk and God’s people. And God will come to bring God’s people home.
If you are in the midst of some deep struggle this morning, you should know that it may seem to have great power but it does not have the power to change what God has done and what God will do in Jesus Christ. We stand with the future because of what God has done. And God is faithful. And for that reason the righteous live by faith. Thanks be to God.

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4 (NRSV)
The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw: 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 before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous -- therefore judgment comes forth perverted…I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.

Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For 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, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.