Deep down inside of me

I got a fire going on

and part of me

wants to sing about the light

and part of me

wants to cry, cry, cry

That’s a song by Adelle Getty that Jeff Olmstead shared with me the other day. He'd come in to talk to me, as so many of you do, about the state of our union and the state of his soul. And Jeff being Jeff, began with a song…. a song that really captures where so many of us are right now.

In a weird way, or maybe it’s not weird at all - I guess this is what we’re going to talk about today - the harder things get the more grateful I am….not to be living in this moment, but to be living amongst people with the courage to meet this moment.

Anyone else here feel that?

The harder things get the more grateful I am….not to be living in this moment, but to be living amongst people like you.

I’ve been here at First Churches for 12 years now, and we’ve been through some stuff together. We’ve weathered national tragedies and very personal grief, the disruption of Covid and the destabilization of our country, the loss of a pastor and the dinner church ministry that brought me here, not to mention the non-stop maintenance and unexpected repairs demanded by this beloved old building.

We’ve been faced with difficult decisions and heartbreaking realities… emergency after emergency after emergency.  And I will admit that there have been days when all I wanted to do was cry, cry, cry. In fact, there have been days when I have.

And at the same time, as everything has unfolded, whenever things have gone from bad to worse we have been here for each other. We have stood up for each other, leaned on each other, protected each other, served alongside each other, been unfailingly generous with each other, and, well, actually that makes me cry, cry, too, but in a different way.

Friends, I am not thankful that we are living through this hard time, but I am still grateful in the midst of this time: grateful for all the ways that the hardness brings out your softness, all the ways that the cruelty - be it the cruelty of fate or the cruelty of others - brings out your kindness. The darker things get the brighter you shine, and I find that my despair at the state of the world is no match for the faithfulness I find within this church.

It’s why, of all the readings I could have settled on this morning, I chose these words from the prophet Habakkuk because this strange little book is a lament that ends with a hymn of gratitude.

Habakkuk is a prophet who sings through his tears.

Like us, Habakkuk is deeply troubled by the behavior of those who hold power in his day. He cries out to God and wants to know how God can allow the leaders of his people to exploit and enslave others. He is disgusted by their licentious behavior and how their wanton disregard for morals, laws, and conventions has become normalized.

He laments how the powerful have turned from God. He bemoans the ways they pervert justice. And he abhors the fact that they care about nothing more than amassing wealth at the expense of the poor and power at the expense of all.

Well, God hears Habakkuk and lets the prophet know that he has a plan to bring all of these corrupt leaders to justice. He is going to punish these guys, but he going to punish them by allowing the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem and bring them all down with it.

“Wait! What?” says Habakuk. “That’s a terrible plan! Why allow an even worse evil to win? How is that ok? How does that make things right?”

“Well,” and I should probably mention that I am paraphrasing here, “it doesn’t,” says God, “at least not yet. But, you see, in time Babylon will fall to an even greater empire, and then that empire will fall to a still greater empire.

The powerful will take what they can and the weak will endure what they must for awhile longer… but not forever. Eventually, I will come, says God, and put a stop to it all. Eventually, I will come and make things right. Eventually, I will come and make all things new.”

In response, Habakkuk promises to watch and wait and, in an act of tremendous faithfulness, chooses to rejoice in the meantime.

¹⁷ Though the fig tree does not blossom,   and no fruit is on the vines;though the produce of the olive fails   and the fields yield no food;though the flock is cut off from the fold   and there is no herd in the stalls, ¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the Lord;   I will exult in the God of my salvation.

Now you and I both know that a lot can happen in the meantime. 2500 years of wars and atrocities have in fact occurred in the meantime. Though, so have 2500 years of incredible beauty, kindness, and advancement. Whether the good has outweighed the bad is not for me to say.

What I want to speak to this morning is how the prophet’s decision to rejoice in the midst of such devastation could possibly make sense, because on the surface it feels like nothing more than spiritual by-passing.

Which is to say that I think you could hear Habakkuk’s decision to rejoice in the midst of so much pain and destruction as an act of spiritual denial. His words could be read as platitudes meant to placate us as well:

God has a plan, so stand down.

God is in control, so just have faith.

Everyone will get what’s coming to them and everything thing will work out alright in the end. Vengeance is mine….everything happens for a reason….the moral arc of the universe is long… yada, yada, yada, so just suck it up and be patient and trust that God has got this.

But I don’t think the idea that everything will eventually come out clean in the cosmic wash is enough to fill the prophet with a deep sense of gratitude. It certainly isn’t enough for me.

I don’t think Habakuk rejoiced in his time, and I don’t think we simply need to rejoice in ours, in the idea that God will eventually set everything to rights - as wonderful as that day will be -  but in the idea that God has shown us what is right.

God has shown us what is right and that is why we are so aggrieved.

God has shown us what is right and that is why we cry in the midst of all that is wrong.

God has shown us what is right and thank God, because that means we know that there is a better way.

God has shown us what is right which means that even in the midst of the deepest darkness we can still sing about the light.

All this corruption and moral decay we see around us - the abuse of power and people, the violence and the lies, the extortion and exploitation - we know that none of it is ok, because God has given us that knowledge.

We know in our bones that we were created for something better than this and we know in our hearts that we can create a world that is better than this.

We don’t have to wait. We can start right now, because even if we have nothing - no fruit or figs, no flocks or harvest - we still have God, and God has shown us what is good.

“What does the Lord require of you?” - asks Habakkuk’s fellow prophet Micah, “but to do what?…. justice.  Act with …..kindness. And walk humbly with your God.”

We can do that even now. We are doing that even now. And for that I am grateful.

I could end the sermon right here but I want to close with a story. Who here has heard of the cellist of Sarajevo? Then you know how, back in the 1990’s, during the horrible Bosnian War, a bomb fell on May 27, at 4pm, and killed 22 civilians as they waited on line outside a bakery for bread in the city of Sarajevo.

“Not far from the scene lived a musician named Vedran Smailovic.  Before the weight of war crushed Sarajevo’s music, Vedran had been the principle cellist with the opera.  At his wit’s end and sickened by the slaughter, Vedran made a choice that day.  He decided to ‘breathe life’ into the rubble of war.

For the next 22 days, “at 4 p.m. precisely, Vedran put on his full, formal concert attire, picked up his cello and walked out of his apartment into the midst of the battle raging around him.  He placed a little camp stool in the middle of the crater that the shell had made, and he played a concert.  He played to the abandoned streets, to the smashed trucks and burning buildings, and to the terrified people who hid in the cellars while the bombs dropped and the bullets flew. 

Day after day, he made his unimaginably courageous stand for human dignity, for all those lost to war, for civilization, for compassion and for peace.’  ….(Vedran) preached through the gut, wood and horse hair of his cello, musically communicating: ‘People of Sarajevo! People of Bosnia! We are made for so much more than this! Listen, we are made for beauty! Listen, we are made for truth! Listen, we are made for peace! Listen, and be renewed, inspired, and cared for’ (Charlie Peacock quoting Paul Sullivan: “Everything That’s on my Mind” from  CCM Nov 2003).

Listen.

Friends, we cry because our world is not as it should be.

And we sing; sing because we know, thanks be to God, what it can be…even now, even still…

Deep down inside of me

I got a fire going on

and part of me

wants to sing about the light

and part of me

wants to cry, cry, cry

Amen