"Like The Feet Of The Deer"
Walking lightly through chaos in faith.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, February 16, 2003
Text: Habakkuk 3:2-10; 16-19
This story took place years before September 11, 2001; it would not have taken place after. I was waiting to board a plane from Halifax to Toronto. Immediately in front of me in the line-up was an elderly couple with a luggage cart piled high with no fewer than six cases. When they went up to the clerk and put their bags on the scale I thought I saw the her eyes cross in disbelief. The weight of those six bags was actually beyond the weight restrictions for four people! She looked at them with dismay and informed them that they weren't able to take all their luggage with them. Very upset with this prospect, they remonstrated with her about how important it was to have their luggage with them. The clerk was unmoved.
Suddenly, the gentlemen who was standing behind me approached them and offered to take some of their luggage for them. I watched and listened to this gesture and felt remorseful. Why didn't I think of doing something nice like that? I mean, I'm a man of God, supposedly, why didn't I step forward and help them in their plight? I felt guilty and thought, "What a wonderful man, how kind of him to do this." Just when I was at my most remorseful, I noticed a transaction take place between them - $50 was handed to the "kind" gentleman. I felt better, I really did! My faith in human nature had once again been crushed - and I was delighted!
I thought of that cynical moment when my wife, Marial said something to me on New Year's Day. She had read a newspaper article offering a bit of advice on entering 2003. It said: "Think not like Santa, but like the reindeer." In other words we need to get rid of the excesses that we carry around with us. (Now, I know what she was trying to tell me. I'm not a fool, you know.) But this article intimated that there is other baggage that we carry around with us, like Santa - things that weigh us down. And we need to think and live like the deer: To be free and fast and unencumbered by those things that oppress us.
My friends, very often we are like that couple boarding the plane, or like Santa. We are encumbered - burdened with all manner of things. And these things drag us down, crush us in our desire to live a free and glorious life, and we cease to be the people that God wants us to be.
This wonderful image of thinking and living like the deer is what I want to focus on today. The passage from the Book of Habakkuk is an example of how the prophet felt burdened and unable to fulfil God's call. You see, the Book of Habakkuk's first two chapters were written immediately after the reign of King Josiah. There had been a number of crooked monarchs - a number of leaders who had not been obedient to God but who had lined their own pockets. Josiah tried to bring about reforms in the nation to make it conform more thoroughly to the will of God.
Unfortunately, by the time of Habakkuk the nation had once again fallen into a state of disrepute and injustice. Once again the leaders were lost. Once again the nation was not following the law of God. Habakkuk looked at the state of his nation and was depressed. Israel had just been under the crushing tyranny of the Assyrians, and now they were about to, once again, be usurped by the Babylonians and the power of Nebuchadnezzar.
Habakkuk warned the people that if they didn't attend to Josiah's example, if they didn't follow in the will of God, they would crumble and the enemy would be the victor. Yet, in the midst of this reproach Habakkuk spoke a word of comfort to his nation. The reproach was born out of a profound question: Why is it that injustice seems to flourish? Why is it that the tyrants seem victorious? Why is it that the supposed leaders of God are leading us on the wrong path? For Habakkuk this moment represented a crisis of faith, and he began to argue with God: Why is this happening? Who then are the just? Who are the righteous? If we as a nation called by God and saved from the pit are not the righteous, then who is? Are the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, the Assyrians? Are they the just ones? But how can that be when they are the oppressors of God's people?
Habakkuk looked at the world and saw justice on neither side and mourned. But in the middle of his questioning there arose a phrase to his lips that would be repeated by the Apostle Paul, repeated by the writer of the Hebrews, repeated throughout the Reformation of the church of Jesus Christ: "The righteous will live by his faith." We as a people do not have a natural righteousness. We should not expect justice to come from our enemies or the tyrants. Justice comes from faith. It comes from trusting in God in all things and recognizing God's sovereignty. This revelation solved Habakkuk's problem. He had been looking for justice in all the wrong places - for justice and righteousness come from faith.
Then he echoed another phrase that too, has resounded throughout the ages in hymns, psalms and songs. He asserted in all this chaos: "But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him." In other words, God is sovereign. Habakkuk not only believed that God is sovereign, he went further. He believed that evil - unrighteousness - would someday be exposed for what it is, that what is done in the dark corners and the back rooms will be revealed in the light of God's grace and glory. He believed that God cannot be mocked because God is sovereign, therefore the nations need to remain silent and listen to the One who conquers evil.
These are powerful words, my friends, in any generation, in any time or context. They are particularly powerful in 2003.
I want to look at how Habakkuk dealt with this because in Chapter Three - one of the greatest pieces of poetry in the Bible, one of the most glorious articulations of God and God's faith and sovereignty - we find Habakkuk taking us a step further: This faith in which the just reside is a faith that is strong even in the midst of conflict and chaos. He starts, though, on a negative note. He looked at the state of the nations and said: "He stood, and shook the earth; He looked, and made the nations tremble." Before the Almighty, all the powers of humankind melt and pass away. Then he pleaded for the nations to practise mercy. He pleaded for God to be merciful to the nations but he also said that before God, there are plagues and famines and after God, there is joy, mercy and peace.
Habakkuk understood that when God is not at the centre of things, chaos takes place among the nations - famine, destruction, enmity and strife. He warned his own nation. He warned the Babylonians. No nation was exempt: "He looked, and made the nations tremble." Then he urged the people to remember Sinai; to remember what God has done for us, how He saved us through Moses, who took us through the waters and brought us to the land. He reminded them of God's covenant. He reminded them that God is faithful, even when the nations crumble, God has already proven His sovereignty.
But it is not only the nations that tremble, it is creation itself. In one of the most glorious statements of theodicy - of the power of God over the whole of the world - he says that when God stood and looked, the mountains crumbled and the hills collapsed. The world makes no sense, even in the beauty of creation, apart from the God who made it.
Steven Weinberg, the great physicist who won the Nobel prize for physics in 1979, once made this rather cynical comment: "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." In other words, when one looks at only the state of the world it often appears pointless.
Habakkuk thought it was pointless, apart from God, who gives it meaning. But he went further, saying that the chaos, the troubles of the world, the state of the nations, made his bones ache and his voice quiver. He looked at the injustice of his nation and said, "Where is God?" He looked at the oppressed nations and said, "Where is God?" His body trembled, he couldn't make sense of it. He quivered. He looked at the vineyards and saw that they were not producing fruit, therefore there was no wine. He looked at the state of the fields and there were no crops. He looked at it all and it appeared desolate, meaningless and cold. And yet it was precisely when he saw the world like this that he was reminded of his faith.
Though the mountains may crumble, the just shall live by faith. Though there is injustice and the nations are not listening, the just shall live by faith. Though his body quivered and his bones shook, the just shall live by faith. Though he saw nothing growing in the fields around him and it looked like all was desolate, the just shall live by faith. It is in moments like that when faith becomes most powerful.
Frederick Buechner, one of my favourite writers, in "A Room Called Remember" had this to say:
As the farthest reach of our love for each other is loving our enemies, as the farthest reach of God's love for us is loving us at our most unlovable and unlovely, so the farthest reach of our love for God is loving Him when in almost every way that matters we can neither see Him nor hear Him . . . when the worst of the wilderness for us is the fear that He has forsaken us, if indeed He exists at all.
When there is chaos, when God seems to be at his most silent, then Buechner believes. Habakkuk does not only affirm our trust and faith in the midst of chaos but ironically he uses a myth from, of all places, Babylon - from Persia. It was the myth of Marduk going into the chaos of the deep and defeating Tiamet, bringing about God's justice. You see, Habakkuk looked at the Babylonians and the state of the world they wrought and the danger they brought, and he believed that God could turn even that chaos into joy. And he says so beautifully: "But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him."
This morning in the middle of one of the prayers at the 9:30 service, four children came and sat down in the front pew. They began to chatter away in the middle of the prayer and, I confess, I opened my eyes and winked at them and clearly they must have been looking on something very important because they winked back at me! I couldn't help think about a story I'd heard about a six-year-old girl and her four-year-old brother in church. In the middle of the service the little boy began to laugh and tell the little girl jokes and give her the elbow to get her attention. She said: "Shush, you're in church, you're supposed to be quiet."
And he said: "Oh yeah, and who's gonna make me?"
And she said: "See those two men back there? They will. They're the hushers!"
God is in his temple, let the world be silent. Let the world be silent for a change and listen. For what Habakkuk believed above all else was that above the clamour of all the nations there is an author to history, and he pleaded with God to come into this history, break forth from that cloud of unknowing, let His will be made known among the nations, because he understood and believed that though what we do now is terrible and though there is chaos and injustice, God is the author. He knows the end of the story. Like the writer of a novel, He understands what is at the end and that is why before Him, one remains silent.
In one of the most glorious statements of faith in the whole of the Bible, Habakkuk said: "The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of the deer, he enables me to go on the heights." We will have the feet of the deer, we will not be encumbered any more by our worries and our questions about the justice of God. We will have dealt with those inequities that exist within the earth for we are now free. We believe that the just live by faith, that righteousness comes by trust, that justice comes by the sovereignty of God and therefore, unencumbered, we can walk with the feet of the deer. Gently we can walk along the dangerous paths on the sides of the mountains and we will not fall. We will have the lightness of the deer and be able to climb to the highest mountain top, to be safe above the clamour of the world, for we will know that the just live by faith and we will walk lightly as do the deer. And it is that great ability, to be encumbered no longer by fear that enables us to rise above the chaos.
A few months ago, I spoke to a young Christian woman who for the last 10 or so years has dedicated her life to serving her fellow human beings. As a devout Christian she has moved among the nations of southern Africa to help people suffering from AIDS. As a Christian and as a nurse she has crossed borders and boundaries and territories. I asked her: "How have you been able to do this with such freedom?"
She said: "Well, I have the greatest passport that anyone could ever have. It enables me to enter places nobody else could ever enter."
I said: "Is that a Canadian passport?"
And she said: "No."
I said: "Is it like my British and European passport?"
She said: "No."
I said: "It's not an American passport, is it?"
She said: "No."
I said: "Well, what passport do you have?"
She said: "It is my baptismal certificate."
I said: "Your baptismal certificate? But that's not even a passport."
She said: "Oh, yes it is. With this I am able to enter into homes and churches and the lives of other people who hold the faith, no matter what their language or colour. It is because of my baptismal certificate that I feel I can go to any Christian to ask for their help. If I have a problem I can ask for their support. If I see injustice I can ask them to pray that it will be solved. My baptismal certificate is my passport to a community of faith that lives in freedom, that knows no boundaries, no nation, no ethnicity, no colour, no language. I am able, because I am a Christian, to go anywhere in freedom."
You see, she walks with the feet of the deer. She has the freedom not to be constrained by any nation or power or side. She has the freedom to pray for her own nation and her enemies. She has the freedom to believe that above the clamour of all the nations there is God, and therefore, we remain silent and we walk with the feet of the deer and we trust. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.