“Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and clamorous discord.”
So said the prophet Habakkuk
nearly three millennia ago.
But he certainly could be writing today:
war and destruction from Gaza to Ukraine,
political turmoil and violence in our own land,
the federal government shut down
amid strife and clamorous discord,
our anxieties stoked and manipulated
to make us fearful of our neighbors.
there is strife, and clamorous discord.”
So said the prophet Habakkuk
nearly three millennia ago.
But he certainly could be writing today:
war and destruction from Gaza to Ukraine,
political turmoil and violence in our own land,
the federal government shut down
amid strife and clamorous discord,
our anxieties stoked and manipulated
to make us fearful of our neighbors.
We know little of Habakkuk,
but still he is familiar,
for we hear in his words
the cries of a multitude
stretching down to our own day,
all those who call out to God:
“How long, O Lord?
I cry for help
but you do not listen!
I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’
but you do not intervene.”
And we hear as well in his words
the reply of God:
“the vision still has its time…
if it delays, wait for it.”
The vision is of the unfolding of God’s reign,
the ongoing divine work that somehow heals
destruction and violence, strife and clamor,
through the power, wisdom, and goodness
of the God who loves us,
a vision that presses on to fulfillment
and will not disappoint
if only we can wait for it in faith.
I’ve been thinking about this word “wait.”
We use it for sitting around as time passes,
anticipating the arrival of someone or something,
doing nothing, it seems, except, perhaps,
growing ever more agitated.
Because we’re not very good at waiting.
The impatient foot-tapping
as we stand in line:
“How long is this going to take?”
The reiterated question
emanating from the back seat:
“How long until we get there?”
“Are we there yet?”
“How many more minutes?”
Waiting for the light to change.
Waiting for a guest to arrive.
Waiting in enforced inactivity,
suffering the slow passage of time
that we are helpless to control
but must simply let wash over us
as we lament, “how long?”
But we also use the word “wait” in another way,
as it is used in today’s puzzling parable:
the master says to the servant,
“Put on your apron and wait on me
while I eat and drink.”
This is “waiting on,”
not “waiting for.”
Those who work in restaurants will tell you,
waiting on people does not involve
standing around tapping your foot
or repeatedly asking,
“how many more minutes?”
There is more than enough to do,
and, if anything, the passage of time
is accelerated as one moves from task to task.
The “waiting on” that occurs in Jesus’s parable
is not enforced inactivity but tireless labor:
from plowing and tending sheep
to serving at the master’s table.
Waiting in faith as we suffer time’s passage
amid violence and clamorous discord
somehow involves both these kinds of waiting:
we wait on God as we wait for God.
It somehow involves actively serving God and neighbor
while at the same time recognizing that all our labor
does not hasten the fulfillment of the vision
that we must await in faith.
We declare ourselves unprofitable servants
because we know that the vision’s fulfillment
belongs to God, not to us mere mortals,
and yet we are still called in love
to wait upon God and our neighbor,
to bear, as Paul writes to Timothy,
our share “of hardship for the gospel
with the strength that comes from God.”
This might be a recipe
either for frustration or for freedom.
We might find it immensely frustrating
that all our labors cannot shorten
our time of waiting.
Or we might find it freeing to know
that our service of God and neighbor
will not be measured in terms of success
but of the love with which we do it.
I am liberated to undertake
the seemingly impossible,
for, as St. Paul says,
“God did not give us a spirit of cowardice
but rather of power and love and self-control.”
And what makes the difference
between frustration and freedom is faith,
even faith the size of a mustard seed.
As St. Theresa of Calcutta put it,
“God doesn’t ask that we succeed in everything,
but that we are faithful.
However beautiful our work may be,
let us not become attached to it….
The work doesn’t belong to you but to Jesus.”
The work of God in Christ through the Spirit
is what drives our world forward
through days of destruction and violence,
days of strife and clamor,
toward the fulfillment
of the vision of God’s reign.
And as we wait, we throw
our mustard-seed-sized faith into the mix
by serving God and neighbor out of love.
And if we think God ought to be
grateful to us for this
we have failed to understand
how the whole God thing works.
For all that we are,
all that we have,
all that we do,
is always already God’s gift to us.
Even our efforts are given us by God
so that we might be caught up
in the great work of God,
so that God might labor
in us and through us—
we who on our own
are mere unprofitable servants,
but who through faith
can shine with the fire of the Spirit.
And so, we wait for God
as we wait on God.
We cry out “how long?”
amid violence and destruction
even as we work as servants
of God’s reign of peace and healing.
And as we wait,
we pray that God who is merciful
will have mercy on us all.
