Nature Coast
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship September
15, 2002
Lecanto,
Florida
Habakkuk
A First Person Sermon by Lloyd H. Dunham
Scripture:
Habakkuk 1:1-3; 2:12-14, 3:17-19
Bel and the Dragon 23-42
My name is
Habakkuk.
It
is not a Hebrew name,
as you might expect.
It
is an Akkadian name
which means “a
garden plant”.
I
hope I was as fruitful as the best of garden plants!
My
father was a Levite or priest
His name was Jesus,
nothing
to do with Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus
was just a popular name among my people.
I was born about 630 years before the common era.1
You may never
have heard my name before,
though I am
sure you have heard some of the words I spoke. Remember your rabbi or priest
saying:
“The
Lord is in his holy temple.
Let
all the earth keep silent before Him!”
My father used
to say that in the synogogue
They were very reassuring words to me
so I have
passed them on in my little book.2
Have you read my book?
It’s
in the Hebrew Bible.
Take a look at it sometime!
I am sure
that
you know of my contemporary and friend,
Jeremiah.
Jeremiah
was an independent prophet
and
something of a firebrand.
Both
of us spoke our piece
about
the time that much of Judah had already fallen
to
the massive and brutal Chaldean army.
They were
advancing on Jerusalem.
It was nearly 600 B.C.
The Chaldeans,
and the Assyrians before them,
made a practice of taking large groups
of prisoners,
especially people who might become leaders.
1 Leslie,
Elmer; Interpreters’ Bible Dictionary, Vol. E-J, p. 503
2 Habakkuk
2:20
September 15,
2002 As the
Waters Cover the Sea – Habakkuk 2
They took them
away
to be slave labor in far away Babylon,
not far from modern Baghdad.
There they were forced to work at
building
great new cities and buildings,
buildings which later
were completely destroyed
when their nation was defeated.
It served those Chaldeans right, I
say!
There is a
folk tale about me
that you can find in the Bible
at least in your Catholic neighbor’s Bible!
Among
the writings you call the Apocrapha
is a book called “Bel and The Dragon”!
Sounds more
like a fantasy fiction book doesn’t it!
In
BeI and the Dragon
there is a story about me
and
the prophet Daniel.
Daniel
was in Babylon.
When the king ordered him to worship
the great dragon
as the living god,
Daniel proved
to the king that the dragon was no god.
The dragon
worshippers were angry
and they demanded that Daniel be
thrown into the lions’ den
to be eaten alive.
Under great pressure the king finally
consented.
But Daniel was
alive and well among the lions
He was just
hungry --
as
were the lions! -- after six days.
As the tale
goes,
God found me
in Judah preparing a meal.
God
asked me to take my food to Daniel.
According
to the legend
I didn’t know
Daniel,
nor did I know where Babylon was.
God
picked me up by my hair!
and
transported me all the way to Babylon
where I gave Daniel my food.
Then
the king rescued Daniel from the lions.
That is quite a tale!3
Does it sound
familiar?
There
is a similar story in the book of Daniel.4
These
stories may be a bit far fetched
but
they make the point that,
in
my faith there is only one God, Yahweh,
and
Yahweh always has the last word!
3 BeI and the Dragon 23-42
4 Daruel
6
September 15,
2002 As the
Waters Cover the Sea - Habakkuk 3
You know
nothing about me
other than
what I wrote.
My
personal background
is really unimportant.
But let me
tell you a little
about the time in which I lived.
For
a time things were going well.
We
had been through some tough times.
Israel,
the land to our north,
had been captured
and many of its people carried away as slaves.
It
looked like that would happen to us as well.
But then we
got a good King,
King Josiah.5
He wanted to follow God’s laws, like
King David.
His people found a great new law book.
You have a copy!
You call it Deuteronomy.
King Josiah thought this new code was
better than what we had. He led the nation in making it our way of life.
It was a great
time of reform.
It really made a difference.
We were a much
better nation for quite a few years --
and the threats of defeat and destruction
seemed
to disappear.
God seemed to
be pleased with us
and didn’t need to punish us!
It was a
tragedy that King Josiah was killed in battle,
just
when he was doing so much good.
Then
things turned sour.
Josiah’s
son,
Jehoiakim,
later became king,
but
also became a puppet of the Egyptians
who took over our nation for a time.
Jehoiakim
was the opposite of his father.
He
threw out the reform movement,
the Deuteronomic law.
He
was cruel,
selfish
and indulgent.
He
was the only king ever to kill a prophet of Yahweh!6
I came here
today
because I know
that many of you
struggle
with tough questions,
like
I did.
5 IIKings 22ff
6 Anderson,
Bernhard; Understanding the Old Testament, p. 330
September 15,
2002 As the Waters Cover the Sea – Habakkuk 4
Some
of you worry
about the future of your nation and
the world..
You
worry about terrorism,
about
the Iraqis and Saddam Hussein.
about
the AIDS epidemic.
You
worry about economic policy
and
talk as if one political party has all the answers
and the other one is always wrong!
Some
of you are trying to understand some very tragic events
in your nation
and in your
personal lives --
and wonder why God lets such awful
things happen.
Maybe you even give up believing in God!
Your problems
sound so much like mine!
For
me it was the cruel Chaldeans.
It
was people in the King’s own family
who refused to
go along with the reform movement
even though it was making us a better nation.
Maybe
if I share with you
the way I wrestled
with some of those same questions
I can help you with your struggles.
I was,
and
still am,
much
concerned about the justice
and goodness of God.
Yes, I still believe in God!
Most
of our people were good people.
Yet
they were suffering greatly
at the hand of unrighteous
and ungodly foreigners
who had invaded our country.
At
the time, our suffering seemed so unfair!
I
called out to God,
“0 Lord,
how tong shall I cry for help,
and you will not save?”7
Why
would God allow the terrible Chaldeans to be so cruel
to all of us
who were God’s chosen people?
Do
you ever feel angry with God,
like you want to say as I did,
“0
God, how long shall I cry for help!”
Why does God
govern the world in such a way
as
to permit violence?
Why
should wicked and violent people
be allowed to swallow up the righteous?
It
is a question that has been the struggle of people.
7 Habakkuk 1 :2a
September 15,
2002 As the
Waters Cover the Sea - Habakkuk 5
for ages.
Even
you don’t have an answer!
So we go on
pondering
“why a good God,
should allow the righteous to suffer
and
the evil to prosper.8
Is God too weak to help us?
Is God too indifferent to care?
Or is God using some mysterious way
to
work out a high and holy purpose?9
I believed
then,
as I do now,
that God is working a purpose out in
human events.
Back
then I believed
that God
raised up evil nations
to punish the chosen people.
I
believed that God used the evil Chaldeans
to punish Judah for our unfaithfulness.
It seemed
unfair
until we saw that the Chaldeans came
to far worse defeat
than
we did.
Jesus of
Nazareth didn’t say that God uses one nation to punish another. But he did say
that God has ways
to
work out good things in human events.
God’s time isn’t always our time.
He
believed
and I believe
that God is always present --
within human events
If
this is not your theology of history
you had better discover your own.
Without
a theology of history,
a belief about
the way everyday events come about,
you really don’t know where you are going.
I never came
to a simple answer to my Questions --
but
I struggled with them enough
to come up with some thoughts
that
gave me hope
and strength
and faith.
My
short book gets lost in the Hebrew Bible.
It is very rarely
read
so I want to
share what I learned
right now
while
we are together.
Then I hope
you will take the time later
to
read my book.
8 Taylor,
Charles, Jr.; Interpreters’ Bible, Vol. 6, p. 978
9 Blair, Edward; The
Illustrated Bible Handbook, p. 200
September 15,
2002 As the
Waters Cover the Sea - Habakkuk 6
It is very
short.
It won’t take
you more than ten minutes!
And
while you’re at it,
take another five minutes — just for fun -
to
read BeI and the Dragon!
First,
remember
that all evil carries with it
the
seeds of its own destruction.
I
don’t care how bad a thing is,
if it is not
good,
if it finds no
favor with God,
it will sooner or later destroy
itself.
It has the seeds of its own
destruction within.
Never fear!
Any
evil that afflicts you
will not succeed forever.
It will finally fail!
Of
course that could apply to your own nation,
as well as to others.
Second,
I
urge you to live by faith
through thick
and thin,
through even
the worst
that
life demands of you.
If
you can remain faithful to your beliefs,
Your God will come to you
and take care of you.
As I’ve heard
some of you sing,
“Spirit of Life, come unto me.”10
Finally,
I
want to assure you
that our time
is not God’s time.
In
God’s good time
all will be made well.
You can count on that!
We
get mighty impatient waiting --
but
as I have watched cruel and terrible things happen
over
many years,
I
have found
that God always has the final word.
So I say to you, “Have faith my friends!
It will be the same for you! God won’t
abandon you.”
If you can
carry those three thoughts with you,
you
will have strength to bear hardship
and
suffering
10 Singing The
Living Tradition” - #123
September 15,
2002 As the
Waters Cover the Sea - Habakkuk 7
until the day
when God shall bring an end to the evil that hurts you!
Believe
me,
that is the way my God works!”
My
faith is best stated
in those words of a poem
often sung in some churches --
“....the earth
shall be filled with the glory of God,
as
the waters cover the sea.”!
That’s
my faith!
References:
Blair, Edward;
Abingdon Bible Handbook
Anderson,
Bernhard; Understanding the Old Testament
Bel and the
Dragon (from the Apocrapha)
Daily Study
Bible- Twelve Prophets, Vol. 7
Blair, Edward;
The Illustrated Bible Handbook
Interpreters’
Bible
Interpreters’
Bible Dictionaty
Mould, Elmer; Essentials
of Bible History
Pfeiffer,
Robert H.; Introduction to the Old Testament
11 Taylor; Ibid.
12 Ainger, Arthur
C.; God is Working His Purpose Out, as appears in the Pilgrim Hymnal,
#298