postID: 6964; title: The Twenty-Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
groupKey: secondary
groupKey: other
The Twenty-Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in thy well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Proper 29)
Array
(
[date] => 2013-11-17 16:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 880
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => formatted
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2013-11-17 16:00:00
)
2 post(s) found for dateStr : 2013-11-17postID: 6769 (Hugh of Lincoln)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6769; date_type: fixed; year: 2013
fixed_date_str: November 17
fixed_date_str (mod): November 17 2013
formattedFixedDateStr: 2013-11-17
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6769
displayDates for postID: 6769/year: 2013
Array
(
[0] => 2013-11-17
)
postPriority: 98postID: 6964 (The Twenty-Sixth Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6964; date_type: variable; year: 2013
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6964
displayDates for postID: 6964/year: 2013
Array
(
[0] => 2013-11-17
)
postPriority: 3primaryPost found for date: 2013-11-17 with ID: 6964 (The Twenty-Sixth Sunday After Pentecost)
The Twenty-Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
Array
(
[date] => 2013-11-17 16:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 880
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => simple
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2013-11-17 16:00:00
)
2 post(s) found for dateStr : 2013-11-17postID: 6769 (Hugh of Lincoln)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6769; date_type: fixed; year: 2013
fixed_date_str: November 17
fixed_date_str (mod): November 17 2013
formattedFixedDateStr: 2013-11-17
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6769
displayDates for postID: 6769/year: 2013
Array
(
[0] => 2013-11-17
)
postPriority: 98postID: 6964 (The Twenty-Sixth Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6964; date_type: variable; year: 2013
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6964
displayDates for postID: 6964/year: 2013
Array
(
[0] => 2013-11-17
)
postPriority: 3primaryPost found for date: 2013-11-17 with ID: 6964 (The Twenty-Sixth Sunday After Pentecost)
The reading_id [310468] is already in the array.
No update needed.
Scripture citation(s): Habakkuk 1:1-2:1
A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
on
Habakkuk 1:1-2:1
✛
The Prophet's Burden
Array
(
[0] => 60737
)
book: [60737] (reading_id: 310468)bbook_id: 60737
The bbook_id [60737] is already in the array.
No update needed for sermon_bbooks.
Our first reading tonight, the first part of the short Book of Habakkuk, shows a prophet whose standpoint is unique among the prophets of ancient Israel. Normally, a prophet receives a commission and a word from God. The prophet then speaks that word to the people of Israel.[1] But the entire Book of Habakkuk is a dialogue with God in which the prophet tells God he doubts divine justice. Habakkuk’s complaint is like that of Job. Job’s complaint is that he has been punished while living justly. Habakkuk’s complaint, or “burden” as he puts it at the start, is that the Lord’s punishment does not fit Israel’s crime.[2] Today’s reading is the first of three parts of his dialogue.
Habakkuk’s life and ministry appears to come a little before the Babylonian invasion and destruction of the southern kingdom of Judah and the Holy City Jerusalem – near the end of the seventh century (the 600s) BC and the beginning of the sixth century (the 500s).[3] The Babylonians, or Chaldeans, were the second wave of invaders from what is now Iraq, ancient Mesopotamia, the area of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to the far northeast of Israel beyond Syria. The first wave of invaders were the Assyrians, who, a century earlier, wiped out the northern kingdom of Israel but left unconquered the southern kingdom, Judah with its capital Jerusalem, as a remnant of the nation. The Babylonians, now led by mighty Nebuchadnezzar, had overthrown the Assyrians to become the great power in the Middle East.
Tonight we hear the prophet cry, “How long?” How long, Lord, shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? I cry, “Violence!’ and you will not save. He sees within his own society moral and spiritual corruption, greed and crushing of the poor, wicked kings and priests, and widespread idolatry, even within the Temple of the Lord. One good king, Josiah, comes and goes, but his work is too little, too late.
Then the Lord answers the prophet’s cry: Behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that “bitter and hasty nation” who shall march through the breadth of the earth, even to Egypt, seizing everything, dreaded by everyone, fast and furious, scoffing at kings, overwhelming cities, guilty and idolatrous men who worship their own strength while mocking the worship of the Lord. In other places in Scripture, the Lord actually calls Nebuchadnezzar “my servant.”
Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple in 586 BC, carrying off the king and princes and priests and all the leading class of Judah, into Babylon, a captivity which lasted 70 years. Habakkuk did not live to see it, but he knew enough about these future invaders to know that their invasion would be a punishment far worse than his people of Judah deserved. Within Judah were still many faithful people. Were they, the righteous, to be destroyed along with and for the sins of the wicked? “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity,” cries the prophet. “Holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he? And makest men as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things…they catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag… Shall they therefore empty their net, and not spare continually?” Our reading today stops here, as the prophet says, “I will take my stand on my watch post and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me…”
What we have here is a complaint by one of the Lord’s faithful prophets, concerning God’s rule over history itself. Yes, one can see that social iniquity eventually contains the seeds of its own destruction. One can also see, on the international scene, that “bitter and hasty” nations come eventually to a bad end. But this is very rough justice. Good people and decent societies are crushed by it. Violence and oppression seem overwhelming; sometimes a total massacre. Certainly Israel “received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”[4]
A great commentator from the nineteenth century writes, “The prophet’s main subject is the affliction of the righteous amidst the prosperity of the wicked. The result of all will be one great reversal, the evil drawing upon themselves evil, God crowning the patient waiting of the righteous in still submission to his will.”[5] The righteous shall live by their faith, and “the faith triumphs most, when all, in human sight, is lost.”[6]
So what is the Lord’s answer to the prophet’s complaint? – His own Person: The Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, God the Son, Jesus Christ. The great reversal of evil is accomplished in Christ’s crucifixion. His cross redeems the universe. He reconciles all things in his own Body. The prophet on his tower looks ahead, across centuries,to nothing short of the Death and Resurrection of the Lord, who will return in glory to judge the world. The prophet’s waiting is not in vain.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
_______________
[1] Then there is Jonah, the rebellious prophet, who receives a commission to preach to Israel’s arch-enemy Nineveh and runs in the opposite direction – only to be turned around by extraordinary means. Jonah’s issue with God is that he fears Nineveh will repent and thus be spared by God, which is what happens.
[2] The Oxford Bible Commentary, John Barton and John Muddiman, editors, pp. 602-603.
[3] Ibid. Also “Introduction to Habakkuk,” The ESV Study Bible (2008), pp. 1719-1720.
[4] Isaiah 40:1-2
[5] E.B. Pusey, The Minor Prophets, Volume II, (New York 1885), p. 165.
[6] E.B. Pusey, op.cit., p. 177.
