“Floaters”
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
1:1 The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.
1:2 O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save?
1:3 Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.
1:4 So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous-- therefore judgment comes forth perverted.
2:1 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.
2:2 Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.
2:3 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.
2:4 Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.
I will never forget the week that Dr. Donald Gowan, my Hebrew Bible professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, taught on this one of the twelve minor prophets in the Bible. As he was writing the name of the prophet (and his book, of course) on the blackboard, one wiseacre at the back of the class asked if we would lose points if we didn’t spell it correctly on the test. Dr. Gowan said, “Yes, you will,” to which the class sighed collectively out loud. Dr. Gowan turned around with a surprised look on this face and said, “Oh, come on now, it’s one of the easiest books of the Bible to spell (class swoons again)…It’s an H and an A, a B and an A, a K and a K, and a U and a K!”
H-A-B-A-K-K-U-K!
No one ever forgot how to spell it after that!
Habakkuk was a MINOR PROPHET but with MAJOR WORDS for Israel. Minor prophets were dubbed “minor prophets,” by the way, just because they wrote less than the “major prophets” like Isaiah and Jeremiah.
The message of Habakkuk can be summed up in the confession of faith that culminates this week’s lesson: “the righteous live by their faith” (2:4). The challenge of preaching Habakkuk is unfolding the meaning of this confession. And the shape of the whole of the book provides an argument that defines who the righteous are and what faith in the one, living, true God looks like.
--As the scholar Jerome Creach (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary) has convincingly argued, the term “righteous” is not first-and-foremost a moral term. Rather, it is first of all a relational term. The righteous are those who are dependent on God…
Habakkuk ARGUES with God, because God is going to send a judgment on God’s people for YET AGAIN not living “righteously,” or depending on God. He accuses God of doing a BIGGER INJUSTICE than what Israel was guilty of, namely harshly judging them and punishing them. It’s important to remember that prophets were called by God to bring messages to God’s people, and typically an “advance warning” that something BAD was about to befall them because of something they had done in opposition to God’s commands, or at least against God’s “best wishes” for them. Selfishness and a desire to maintain “local control” were the usual reasons for this bad behavior, both of which could seriously erode, if not destroy, the strong community God was trying to build among God’s people, knowing that if this wasn’t the case, Israel would always be most vulnerable to outside enemies. Prophets spoke in jarring, clear language most of the time, hoping to get Israel’s attention—kind of like the old joke of the farmer hitting his mule on the nose with a board to “get his attention.”
When Habakkuk—not unlike Moses—puts forth an “argument” to God that the severity of the proposed “punishment” is too great for the “crime,” in this case, God instead offers to cast a positive vision for Israel.
The basic elements of this promise were:
To live as one of God’s righteous people means to live as those who have been promised a vision, but who have not yet received it.
Do not give up. Keep the faith.
Even if the vision is slow to come, the righteous (those who rely on God) should trust that the vision will come.
VISIONS are important to accomplishing any major goal, whether for a people or the individual person. They help set the course, kind of like a travel plan. Years ago, long before GPS and Google Maps, our family would decide on where we wanted to go on vacation, and then my wife would make a trip to the American Auto Association, or “Triple A,” as we knew it. She would come home with a bound book called a travel guide for the state or states where we would be traveling, and a tall, skinny, spiral-bound booklet called a “Triptik,” which mapped out the best route for our travel. This served as the “vision” for our trip. The Triptik was a simple map that gave us the roads and turns to get to our destination, and the travel guides told us where the best “approved” hotels were, along with the best restaurants, and the “Gems,” or the best-reviewed sights to see along the way.
A clear vision for a person or an organization can keep you moving toward your goal, keep you from getting lost, and help you not miss important milestones—or lessons—along the way. It may also provide motivation, especially when things happen that make the goal seem impossible. As I mentioned in a recent sermon, Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychologist, was interred in a German concentration camp during World War II. He developed a “vision” that he would like to come to America after the war and teach psychology in a university. Each day, when he awoke, he would close his eyes and imagine himself standing at a university classroom full of students. This goal and his daily revisiting of this personal vision gave him the will to not surrender to the horrid environment of the camp and the spirit-busting persecution of the German camp guards. It kept him healthy enough to survive the camp, and even to focus on helping the other Jewish prisoners. He chronicled this life-saving, vision-based journey in a famous book entitled, Man’s Search for Meaning.
Many years ago, our Western Pennsylvania Conference churches were “required” to formulate a vision for their ministry. This may have been more successful had churches not simply been required to do so, but instead motivated by stories like we hear from the prophets, and from modern prophets like Frankl. Perhaps if churches were given a better understanding of WHY vision was important to their tasks of ministry, they would have “bought in” more strongly to the process. Some simply jotted down a scripture verse or contrived a quick vision to meet the requirement, while others took this process seriously, studied the Bible on what it taught us about the power of vision, surveyed the congregation for their hopes and dreams for their church, and wrote a vision that captured these important elements. Their context (community) was also taken into consideration in these effective, “visionary” churches. I served as an associate pastor on the staff at St. Paul’s UMC in Allison Park during this time, and our lead pastor, Dr. Ron Hoellein, led us through a wonderful process to write a vision for that congregation. That vision guided the ministries and growth of that church for over 18 years, and when I was appointed as lead pastor, following Dr. Hoellein, we began the process anew. The late Faith Geer, who was an outstanding Conference leader and our Administrative Director at St. Paul’s, was invaluable in guiding this process of “revisioning.” We employed a survey method called “Appreciative Inquiry” to hear afresh the hopes and dreams of the people of St. Paul’s, and then began polling every class, group, and ministry team at the church. This new visioning process took us the better part of three years, but as St. Paul’s has always been guided by its vision, it was important that a new one had full “buy in” by its people and leaders. Interestingly, the “old” vision was early on judged to have been so effective that it had BECOME the Mission Statement of the church, meaning it was now our shared identity—the vision had become “who we were.”
The new vision statement now being called upon to “pull us into the future” was approved by the Church Conference, and was put into effect. All publications including the weekly church bulletin would carry the Mission and Vision statements, as would the stationary. All groups would be asked to do a brief “study” of it, and decide how their group or team saw themselves as helping to fulfill it. Here it is:
St. Paul’s will be a diverse, inclusive church, loving others according to the teachings of Jesus, and working for justice and peace in our world.
This continues to serve as the vision for a congregation that desires to become fully inclusive of all persons, and desires to become diverse, especially since it has historically been mostly a white, suburban congregation. The “working for justice” part of the vision has already given birth to a ministry team that actually CALLS itself “Working for Justice.” This team has begun working with a Black church in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, has developed backpack and feeding ministries with that congregation, and has offered a number of opportunities for the people of St. Paul’s to engage in justice ministries. This weekend they erected a “T-Shirt” memorial on the church’s front lawn for all of the people who lost their lives by gun violence in Allegheny County this year.
A vision DOES make a difference as Habakkuk reminds Israel and us! Oh, at the same time churches were given the assignment of writing a vision, our ordained ministers were asked to do one personally. After much prayer and thought, I wrote a personal vision that indeed guided my ministry over 36 years:
As an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church, I will serve the Lord Jesus Christ and His church, utilizing my gifts and graces to their fullest, and will be a pastor of quality and integrity, exceeding the expectations of the congregations I serve.
Habakkuk’s vision for Israel can be summed up thusly:
The RIGHTEOUS shall live by their faith in Yahweh.
The problem with vision is that a number of things can get in the way to CLOUD our vision! Let’s talk a moment about floaters. A couple of years ago, I was sitting in my office at St. Paul’s, writing my sermon for that next Sunday on my computer. Suddenly, something weird popped into the field of view in my right eye. This black “glob” looked like a spider web, and when I looked at the computer screen, this new development was clearly disrupting my view of it. WHAT in the world is THIS, I thought. There was no pain associated with its sudden appearance. I remember that I kept blinking, expecting it to just go away. Now, I had experience, as we all have, with those transient little strings of dead cells floating across our eyeballs, usually made visible by the bright, morning light entering our bedroom windows. But this thing was huge, and it really scared me. Since I was in no other distress, other than this obscuring blob in my eye, I did what I usually do when I have questions—I Googled it!
I was surprised to see how many entries there were about what are called floaters. Turns out, they are very common, particularly as we age, and since I was approaching 66, I was in that category. I read several articles on sites like WebMD and “ToYourHealth.com.” They all said that such floaters were nothing to be alarmed about. I read over the things that it could be that WERE indications of larger medical issues, but my new spider web was none of those. I remember thinking, “How will I work with this thing in my right eye?” Being that photography was a hobby of mine, and I had just bought a nice telescope to use in retirement, I was quite concerned about my right eye, as it is my dominant one. I thought about this all the way home that day, and while the floater was always there, and moved up and down in front of my field of vision in that eye, it really didn’t hamper my driving. Once home, Dara reminded me that I had an optometrist appointment early the following week, so I could inquire about both the advent of the floater and what I had read over the Internet.
My eye doctor did a thorough examination of my eyes, and said all was well. I told her about the new floater, and she seemed unalarmed, and even nonplussed. She affirmed pretty much what I had read my self—the viscous fluid in the eye begins to thicken as we age, and “filaments” of it occasionally “break off” and become floaters. They never really go away, which is the bad news, and may even increase for us as the years go by. The good news? The amazing brains we all have begin to adapt to them, fashion “work arounds,” and before long, we won’t even notice them. I heard that from the optometrist, I had read numerous articles about it, but I found it hard to believe my mind could just ignore this spider blob of mine. The other good news is that, over the next few weeks, this is exactly what happened. And now, as I type this message, I have to make a conscious effort to even FIND the thing floating there, even as I stare at the bright, white page on my computer screen! Oh, I can find it if I want, but it takes an actual EFFORT to do so. If I don’t think about it, it just doesn’t “exist.”
What a metaphor for the things that get in the way of our spiritual “vision”! Life will throw up all kinds of such floaters to obscure our vision, and one might even believe some of these “spider webs of darkness” may be a device of the devil, who loves to create deceptions to keep God’s people from having a life-changing plan or “vision” of their future. In the church, such floaters may take the form of naysaying parishioners, short-sighted pastoral leaders, temporary financial challenges, or unexpected circumstances. Like eye floaters, none of these things has the power to totally block the church’s vision, but if one fixates on any of them, progress toward fulfilling the vision may grind to a halt. Even as our minds are able to brilliantly work around and even totally ignore our personal eye floaters, so God’s Holy Spirit is able to help us push past the momentary challenges to God’s vision for the church—or for our own lives.
Believe me, when these floaters first appear, they can be frightening. But with a little accurate information about what they are, and some expert guidance from a professional source, they usually fade into the background and allow the power of vision re-emerge. The good news for the Christian disciple, and for the church, is that we have access to all kinds of accurate information (think of Wesley’s Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason) and “professional” or “expert” guidance—God and God’s Spirit. Why, Jesus taught us much about “light” and “vision,” such as when he reminded us to take the “log” out of our OWN eye before criticizing the “speck” in another’s eye. Floaters are like that, too. They cause us to lose perspective, at least at first.
As a pastor, when I would be assessing a new church appointment as to where their challenges were, I would often hear stories about things that happened—or didn’t happen—in the past as reasons why the church was struggling, or why it couldn’t accomplish great things for the Kingdom of God. These are just floaters. Like Habakkuk told Israel, the way to get beyond these setbacks is to formulate a positive vision of the future, and to again become “dependent” upon God—the righteous shall live by faith! Dependence upon God and reliance upon faith causes our spiritual “eyes” to move beyond the floaters, ignore them, and restore sharp eyesight forward.
THINK OF ALL OF THE FORWARD-LOOKING VISIONS Jesus gave his disciples and US:
*”Tear this temple down and I will rebuild it in three days”
*”Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”
*”Peter, do you love me? FEED MY SHEEP”
* “Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”
* “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
Today, as we celebrate World Communion Sunday, we will again share the meal Jesus commanded us to take. Jesus could see a whole patch of nasty, spidery, dark floatersheading the way of his disciples and the future church. So he gave us a meal to always remember him by, to receive a regular, fresh “dose” of God’s grace, and to recapture the larger vision of taking the Good News to all the earth and building the Kingdom of God on earth. No floater can obscure the extravagant simplicity of the broken bread and the cup of Christ’s blood, shared by the People of God. The phrase “Do this in remembrance of me” is the “fresh vision” version of “The righteous shall live by faith.”
So, Dear Ones, what are the floaters that have at least temporarily obscured YOUR vision? Whatever they are, today, put them under the subjection of Christ’s great gift to us:
14 When the hour came, he took his place at the table, and the apostles with him. 15 He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, 16 for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves, 18 for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”
Floaters, BEGONE! Dear Lord Jesus, restore for us and for your church an exciting, fresh vision of what we are called to be and shall be! Amen.
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