Oct. 5, 2025 - Proper 22 - Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4

I remember a number of years ago when someone was trying to highlight areas of wasteful government spending. Some institute was using a government grant to study the speed of ketchup running downhill. As you can imagine, the results were...well...not surprising. I don’t know why anyone thought this was a worthwhile expenditure of time and resources unless they were just looking for cushy, no stress jobs.

I suppose, if you were really serious about this kind of thing, you might actually learn something about patience. You’d have to do plenty of research to have the data you need and you’d have to be willing to watch and wait. Any data you get would be pretty minute. It would take quite a lot to get enough to show differences.

Again, not a bad gig if you what you want is a cushy, no stress job. As long as you keep putting numbers down and as long as money keeps coming, you don’t have much to worry about. I would think it’s a bit different for something like cancer research. You, as the researcher, might not actively stressing over things. It might not be affecting your life personally, but there’s a different sort of urgency there. How fast your ketchup flows isn’t going to make a big difference in your life. That changes if you’re now talking about cancer. If you have a promising treatment, you’re getting it ready for drug trials. You’re working hard to fix up any problems it might have so that it can be useful. There are people who are dying from the problem you’re trying to solve. They’re depending on you to find a solution. If you hit a setback, if your treatment fails the trial, then it probably feels like a huge failure. You have to go back and start over again. People will die in the meantime.

Having that kind of disappointment hanging over you isn’t something anyone would look forward to. What about if the roles are reversed? You’re not the researcher, you’re the cancer patient, suffering from an illness trying to eat you from within, all while being told that, unless some new treatment comes out, there isn’t much that can be done? There isn’t much more to be done at that point. It all becomes a waiting game. Each day you get up and nothing has changed, except perhaps that you feel a little bit worse than the day before. How long before God actually gets up and does something about it?

People just trying to survive in war torn countries, people living here in America in poor communities riddled with gang violence. You already have your hands full trying to stay alive and put food on the table. You have to keep your kids from getting picked up by the enemy or pulled into gang life. Every day you’re thinking about how all you want is to get out of here. You want to find a place where you can be safe, where your family can be safe.

Maybe it isn’t something quite so dramatic. Your income isn’t keeping up with your bills. Day after day you see your savings dwindling a little bit more. Something has to change, but you aren’t sure what. People you work with constantly belittle you, constantly cheat, constantly take credit for your work. You struggle to get ahead. You try and do a good job, but you never seem to be free of them and nothing will change until they’re gone.

That deep depression that pulls you down when you look into the future and see nothing changing. Each day it just gets a little worse. Your life, the lives of people around you, the life of the country as a whole, all of it suffering, all of it bleak, all of it looking ahead to an endless nothing. Never getting better. Nothing to look forward to.

Is God watching ketchup slowly dribble down hill? Is he waiting for it to hit the bottom before he finally acts? God could do anything. He can do anything anytime he wants. So why doesn’t he? Why does suffering continue? Why do your people continue to live in fear? Why does injustice flourish? Why is violence everywhere?

The assumption we all make is that, because we don’t see anything happening, there must not actually be anything happening. If I don’t know it’s there, then it must not be there. If God doesn’t show me right here and right now that he’s busy, then I know he’s just lounging around up there without a care in the world while I’m down here in the thick of it all.

In the Old Testament reading, Habakkuk is voicing the concerns of the righteous. Assyria had already destroyed the northern kingdom. Now, perhaps a century later, Assyria still looms. Judah is small and, at least in earthly terms, powerless to stop the mighty empire from sweeping down upon them. What are they to do? Judah was never going to be one of the great empires of the world. It was never going to have the military might withstand the forces Assyria could send down upon it.

If that weren’t a big enough problem, the righteous were also suffering from all of the cruelties and injustice being perpetrated by the heathens right in their own country. Judah as a nation is lasting longer, but, by this point, it isn’t faring much better spiritually. The righteous seek deliverance from external threats and from internal strife, but no deliverance seems to be forthcoming.

God responds to Habakkuk’s first complaint, which we heard in chapter 1. “Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome; their justice and dignity go forth from themselves. Their horses are swifter than leopards, more fierce than the evening wolves; their horsemen press proudly on. Their horsemen come from afar; they fly like an eagle swift to devour.”

In another few decades, Assyria would cease to exist as an empire. Babylon was rising and would soon sweep through Assyria and trample it all underfoot. Assyria would no longer be a threat to Judah. Babylon itself would be a problem, but that was for later. The hope was that Judah would come to its senses and turn back to God before Babylon was necessary. Alas, it would not be so. But, even here, God is working. All of the injustice and corruption percolating in the land would be dealt with as the unrighteous are mostly swept away by Babylon. Babylon, heathen nation though it may be, is the tool God uses to clean house. In this case, just because you don’t open your door and see the army right on your front porch doesn’t mean they aren’t coming.

In big ways and small ways, God is always at work. It took thousands of years for the messiah to be born. It took another couple of decades for him to die and rise again. But he did. God had planned it for precisely the time necessary, so Christ’s work and the message of his resurrection would spread far and wide. May righteous didn’t live to see it, but God’s plan still included them and the salvation won by Christ was still given to them.

Trusting what you cannot see is never an easy thing. Yet, the evidence of God’s work is all around us. God’s plan brought Christ here to us, where he could offer himself as the necessary sacrifice to pay the debt of sin. You may not have seen it happen, but God has made sure it has come to you nonetheless. His plan, working down through history, has brought the message of salvation through Christ here to you. Down through generations, through untold paths, from messengers to messenger, the Gospel has come to you and you have heard it and believed. The death and resurrection you never saw are yours, all according to God’s plan.

We moan and complain to God about the dangers all around us. We assume he is blind to our plight. But he is not. It is our own sin that blinds us to his work until he reveals it to us. Our life of repentance is built on the trust that God is working all things for your good, but spiritually and physically. His work goes on whether we see it or not. His salvation came to us without any help from us. Even if you don’t know the path the Gospel took to get to you, it still did because God planned for you to hear it, to believe it, and be saved by it. That salvation is there even when you don’t see it. His forgiveness will cover you when you finally realize that God has been there all along, and he will be glad to give it to you.

If only our expectations of God were also applied to us. Is there any child who has ever lived who hasn’t demanded mom and dad’s attention for some immanent peril? “Mom, if I don’t get dinner right now I’m going to die! I’m going to wither away and perish and you’ll forget all about me! Mom! Mom! Mom are you listening? Mom!” How long must I wait? How long must I be made to suffer? Minutes have gone by without anyone attending to my urgent need! Of course, the need is pretty minor and half the time mom already has something in the oven for you, or some other plan already in place to attend to your problem.

Later, when dad tells you to clean your room or do your homework or something like that, it’s, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it. I’m busy right now.” We demand urgency in others, especially when it comes to things we want, but then we aren’t so interested in showing the same kind of urgency when it’s asked of us.

God does have an urgent task for us. We are to share the Gospel and the love of Christ with the world. This is a greater need than any of the more mundane concerns we demand that he attend to. Our salvation is already accomplished. Our eternal life is already assured. Nothing in this world can take that away from you. However, there are many who still do not have them because they have never heard of Christ has done for them. People perish every day without knowing there is a savior who loves them.

God has worked and is working on our behalf, caring for us at all times. His plan is still underway. The Gospel has come to you, sharing the love of Christ who died and rose again for you. You have the assurance not just of salvation but of eternal life. Whatever seems urgent to you at the moment must be weighed in comparison to the eternal life that lies ahead of you. But for others, those who have nothing to look forward to, the need is urgent indeed. We ask our gracious God to guide is attending to this task that he has set before us, that his love and mercy may spread to those who are perishing without it.