Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 141

For the vision still has its time,

 presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;

 if it delays, wait for it,

 it will surely come, it will not be late.

 The rash one has no integrity;

 but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.

Today's first reading from the Book of the Prophet has been heavily edited as the reader might suspect who notices the numbers. The good news “which Habakkuk the prophet received in a vision" follows sixteen verses about the destruction of Israel, and the pagan worship which the invaders forced upon our ancestors. We skip to the second chapter and hear the long delayed response in verse four: “The just one because of his faith shall live." 

Somehow I expected more compensation for all the trouble we’ve endured and survived. An early retirement with a golden parachute? A cruise in the Caribbean? A Nobel Peace Prize? 

Typically, democracies are rash, and have very short attention spans. They want more than they deserve. Faced with a crisis they respond emotionally and prematurely, and expect a ready resolution. If that quick fix doesn't work, they tire of it, get used to it, adapt to the new reality, and move on. If their adaptations later prove inadequate they rename the crisis, calling it something else, and try again; and think they're inventing the wheel when they reuse measures that have already failed. 

  

Fortunately, the Catholic Church is not a democracy and we are good at waiting. We've been doing it for a very long time. At first our ancestors in Jerusalem, the disciples of Jesus,  thought he would come back just as he came back from the dead. The disciples stood there looking at the sky and wondered if he would come back soon. Like maybe three days! It didn't happen. 

After the Holy Spirit came upon them at Pentecost they announced the name of Jesus everywhere, forgave sins, healed the sick, and expected all the while that Jesus would come back soon. And still it did not happen. 

Within a very short time, some of those who knew Jesus in the flesh died; sometimes as martyrs, sometimes by accidents or sickness, and some just died of old age. And so the Church recorded the gospels; wrote the Creeds; and very deliberately taught new Christians about our old faith. Realizing that he was not coming today and might not come this year, we created cemeteries and consecrated them for our beloved dead. We built churches, hospitals, and universities. And schools and orphanages and retreat houses, monasteries, and hermitages, and social services for the poor. We codified principles of a just war; and taught the world. “If you have to make war there must be limits to how you fight, who you kill, and proper reasons for making that dreadful decision. You can’t trust your feelings when you want revenge.” 

So we’ve done all these things and more, and still we wait, and still we’re told, "The rash one has no integrity; but the just one, because of their faith, shall live.” And we realize that we must wait and we must keep the faith because the world is not waiting for the Second Coming, and there is no salvation without faith in Jesus Christ. 

If we should stop waiting, if we or our children, or our great-great grandchildren forget the Lord and stop waiting, perhaps he will never come and all the good we have done will be for nothing. No purpose, no meaning. This beautiful world with its endless suffering will finally mean nothing. As T.S Eliot wrote in his poem, The Hollow Men, 

This is the way the world ends, 
this is the way the world ends, 
this is the way the world ends; 
not with a bang but a whimper.

We use the time, and thank God for the time, to repent and atone for our sins, and to urge our family, friends, neighbors, and enemies to join us in making reparations for all the crimes we have committed since the day Cain murdered his brother Abel. There is time but we don’t know how much time, and we may have no more time, and so we urge people to join us now. Come worship with us now, before it’s too late. 

We “stir into flame the gift of God that God has given us through the imposition of hands; that is our sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, the Eucharist and Confession. We use our impatience to work faithfully as we wait for God’s kingdom to appear. We do not suppose that all our good works actually build the kingdom of God. It will not appear gradually in some kind of Brave New World, like the communists used to promise. There will never be a Star Trek future with no poverty. So long as there is money there will be poverty; so long as sin continues there will be violence, abuse, and victims of every sort. 

Only the sudden eruption of God’s kingdom; the long expected, long awaited Second Coming of Christ will finally end the plagues of sin and death. He could come tomorrow, or next year, or someday; but that’s not for us to decide. We practice our Catholic religion, gather all those who are being saved, and act like citizens of a just and merciful kingdom. We keep the faith, and remember what the Prophet said, 

The rash have no integrity;

but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.