How Long? [Proper 22C]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4

How Long?

I still remember the day so vividly. Friday, December 14, 2012. It was my day off and so I was home with my family – now three since Oscar was born the previous September. We sat in the family room, a bright, cool winter sun flooding into our space, and we turned on the TV. On the screen was a terrible nightmare that had escaped into the real world. Even now, almost four years later, it's still too horrible to think about. And yet parents lived it. Their little children frozen in time by a mad man with guns.

I remember staring at the television screen, sick to my stomach, sick to the soul, the death toll growing: tiny lives that never fully blossomed, hopes and dreams never fully realized. Denial is the first stage of grief, but it wasn't that, it just seemed unreal, too terrible to be real. Never before, nor since, have I cried so much for people I did not know. I remember those tears, there were so many tears, but also not enough, never enough to cover all of those tiny lives. After the chaos cleared, the final death count came in: Twenty little children killed in a flurry of terrible bullets. Parents' hearts ripped out. Lives shattered. Scars that will never, ever heal.

That tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut was so horrendous, I thought, “Something will have to change. We can't go on like this.” But then this week, another school shooting, children made targets in South Carolina. And I am Habakkuk weeping over the devastation of Judah, lamenting as the Creator's creation unravels. Then and now I pray to God, “How Long?” And still our story is written in blood. The prophet's words are the news crawl of our age: “Destruction and violence are before us; strife and contention arise.”

Newtown. Charleston. Orlando. 9/11. Our story written in blood. You never forget where you were the moment you heard; you never forget the violent images, burned into you brain, into your soul, into your heart; you never forget the stories of the aftermath: pain and tragedy, of families torn apart and lives cut short. And the prayer, a haunted question: “How long, O Lord?”

Iraq. Afghanistan. ISIS. Our story written in blood. You never forget the first strike, flashes of light and clouds of dust; you never forget the images of bombs and torture, of rubble and human lives as collateral damage; you never forget the stories of the men and women who never came home, and innocent children caught up in a grown-up war. And the prayer, the same prayer, “How long, O Lord?”

In our city streets. In our facebook feeds. Creeping ever closer to our front doors. Lives ended with a pop, in an instant. Our story written in blood. Every lifeless body, every survivor left behind, every lethal injection (death piled on death), every violent viral video in the cycle leaves a scar. Violent images have become the icons of our age, reminders of our human depravity. We measure our days in terrorist attacks and bloody wars and mass shootings. We are all victims of the violence; it chips away at our humanity, at our ability to love, at our willingness to live out the Gospel in this world. We are Cain, destroying the Image of God. We are Cain, breaking the heart of God.

And then weeping into the silent night sky, fists clenched, eyes burning: “How long, O Lord?”

And it is from the Cross that our Crucified God hears the question. Humanity sentences God to the death penalty, and yet, God does not walk away, does not leave us. Despite the violence, despite the threat, God did not keep a distance. God was broken by the same violence that continues to break communities and families. God was scarred by the same violence that still leaves marks on our hearts and souls. Our God, a victim of our violence, hears our frustrated prayer: How Long, O Lord?

And replies: “How long, O children of the earth, how long?” Our prayer in the mouth of our Saving Victim. Our prayer returned to sender. Our prayer, God's question, all along. We are Human, looking for someone to blame.

But on our best days, we pull ourselves away from the steady stream of bad news and we dare to dream of something better. We dream of the wolf lying down with the lamb. We dream of swords beaten into plowshares. We dream of a world in which nations will practice war no more. We dream of a heaven absent of pain and sorrow. We dream of a heaven in which God wipes the tears from every eye. On our best days, we might even dare to rage against the dying, to start making those dreams come true – in this world, sowing seeds of love and hope in these killing fields.

This is my dream for the world in which my boys are growing up. And just because it is a dream does not mean it is unrealistic – just that is hasn't happened yet. Just because our history is written in blood does not mean our future will be defined by violence. Past results do not guarantee future performance.

God bore the unbearable weight of our human violence on the cross. God became every victim. God lived every life that ended too soon. Our bloodthirsty ground drank the blood of God. We destroyed God just like we destroy the Image of God over and over again. We wrote God into our history of violence.

But God re-wrote the ending. Our God exposed our guilt, confronted our violence, to show us that there is more to the story, more to the story than violence and death. Into our utter hopelessness God planted a seed of hope, a promise of life. Violence and death will not have the last word. Love is stronger.

When it seemed there was no hope, no answer, no escape, God laid everything on the line, a perfect sacrifice for the whole world, to show us a better way, to give us a future – through death and into life, from the violence of our Good Friday world to the hope of Easter morning. And in this Easter world, the Easter world in which we live, death is not the only answer; in fact, death is not the answer at all. In God's Easter world, death is overcome by life, the grave is where we shout our Alleluias, and the weeping of the dark night, the despair, the hopelessness that weighs us down, gives way to the joy of the morning. This Easter miracle is God's answer to our haunted question; It's God's answer to our fatal disease; It's God's answer to our most desperate prayers. We wrote a heartbreaking history of violence with a Good Friday ending – and no one, not even God, was spared. But that is not the end of our story. Because God wrote a better ending.