Sermon, October 7, 2001
17 Pentecost; Proper 21, Year C
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Gospel – Luke 17:5-10; O.T. – Habakkuk 1:1-13, 2:1-4

The Scriptures begin today: "O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save?" (Habakkuk 1:1)

Carlyle Marney has written, "Human beings are the most savage of the beasts. Our bite is poisonous; our hand is a club; our foot is a weapon; nothing in nature is so well equipped for hating or hurting. Confuse us and we lash out at anything. Crowd us and we kill, rob, destroy. Deprive us and we retaliate. Impoverish us and we burn villas in the night. Enslave us and we revolt. Pamper us and we may poison you. Hire us and we may hate both you and the work. Love us too possessively and we are never weaned. Deny us too early and we never learn to love. Put us in cities and all our animal nature comes out with perversions of every good thing.

"If you should suspend for a single ten years the processes of education our civilizations would be devastated. If you destroyed past the memory of our generation the etiquette, the laws, the patterns of civilized conduct we would be swamp creatures again. Excite us, frighten us, anger us in a crowd and we are devastating – more than locust swarms or herds of animals.

"And nowhere are we more savage than at home; to none are we more destructive than to ourselves. Society is a composite picture of our great power to harm.

"To subdue our powers of destruction requires all our strength. This is what law is for. This is what civilization is about. Art, Culture, Philosophy, Order, Religion, all our powers are needed to cage and tame our strength for evil." (Quoted and edited for inclusive language by William Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Vol. 29, No. 4, p. 5)

We have witnessed human savagery. And now we watch our televisions and listen to our radios with shortened breath to see what further violence will be provoked as news announcers in their regal voices proclaim that our nation is at war – the War against Terrorism.

I remember watching the horror unfold from the World Trade Center, seeing real people dying helplessly in front of millions of viewers. I remember turning away not only in dread, but also in guilt. It is wrong, I felt, to be watching their terror. But the camera did not blink. And millions watching spoke in paralyzed fear, "Oh God, no. Oh God, help."

Habakkuk cries, "O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? ...[W]hy do you look on the treacherous, and are silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?"

Every weekday at a few minutes after eight in the morning, a handful of St. Paul’s people sit in the Guild Hall and read Morning Prayer together. We join millions around the world in homes and churches and monasteries in listening to the ancient words and praying the traditional prayers. We hear stories and read words that are as violent and savage as is the human race. In the scriptures, the dark side of life is real, especially in the psalms. But reading of those horrors and terrors feels somehow different from watching the television news. Poet Kathleen Norris has said, "The psalms mirror our world but do not allow us to become voyeurs." (From The Cloister Walk)

At Morning Prayer at the end of this week we will read a psalm about a people whose city was invaded and overthrown, burned to the ground, and its people captured and carried into captivity in a foreign land. They have seen terror and horror. "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered you, O Zion; ...and our oppressors called for mirth: ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’" Can you feel the pathos? A defeated, exiled people being called into the party of the victors. "Entertain us. Sing us a song." "How shall we sing the Lord’s song upon an alien soil?"

Imagine the bitterness; the abandonment; the hot anger; the hatred toward the Babylonian oppressors. And listen to the bitter closing words of this psalm from scripture: "O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy the one who pays you back for what you have done to us! Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, and dashes them against the rock!" (Psalm 137) Here is the fruit of human cruelty. The psalms know the depths of the damage human beings will do to other human beings. In these scriptures, the dark side of life is real, as real as the images on our televisions. For centuries it has been our tradition to read such things in prayer. It is an important and healing tradition.

Kathleen Norris says, "The psalms are unrelenting in their realism about the human psyche. They ask us to consider our true situation, and pray over it. They ask us to be honest about ourselves and admit that we, too, harbor the capacity for vengeance. This psalm functions as a cautionary tale: such a desire, left unchecked, whether buried under ‘niceness’ or violently acted out, can lead to a bitterness so consuming that even the innocent are not spared." Ibid

I know I have had bitter thoughts during these days. I have imagined violence and vengeance against Osama bin Laden and against the Taliban oppressors. I need words and emotions that cry out in anguish to God, if for no other reason but to save me from my own hostility. There are times when it seems better to express than to repress anger. Unexpressed anger often converts into depression or more hostility. The important thing, however, is where we ventilate. That’s where the hostile and passionate psalms can help. Psalms are prayers addressed to God. They are not actions taken by a person. Vengeance is referred to God and not expressed directly to an enemy. The psalms know that rage and bitterness are expressed not against other human beings, but to God.

Walter Brueggemann writes, "The Psalms and the entire Bible are clear that vengeance belongs to God. Vengeance is not human business. We may begin with the awareness that the assignment of vengeance to God means an end to human vengeance. It is a liberating assertion that I do not need to trouble myself with retaliation, for that is left safely in God’s hands. To affirm that vengeance belongs to God is an act of profound faith."

"O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? ...Why do you look on the treacherous, and are silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?" The prophet Habakkuk shakes his fist at God in challenge saying, "I will stand at my watchpost, ...I will keep watch to see what [God] will say to me."

And God does speak to him saying, "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. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith."

Hard and deep words. Wise words. Words that take faith. Faith that God is truly working to overthrow evil and establish good. And if you and I take vengeance into our hands, we only add to the sum of violence and suffering in the world and make God’s work harder.

Today’s psalm asks for profound faith. "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret yourself over the one who prospers, the one who succeeds in evil schemes. Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil. For evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait upon the Lord shall possess the land."

It takes profound faith to experience the dark side of life and not to react as a savage animal. No wonder the apostles cried out to Jesus with a sound of such desperation, "Increase our faith!" But know this. Darkness is not the last word. The last word is a dark tomb cracking open to release new life, a Light that has come into the world, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

We cry out in anguish to God our words of bitterness and anger. Then, like the prophet we stand at our watchpost. Like the psalmist we are still before the Lord. We go to our Morning Prayers and make our supplications known to God. How long, O Lord, how long?

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