5th October 2025
Reflection with readings below
Habakkuk faces a world in which everything seems to be going awry. All he sees is violence and wrong doing, destruction and the failure of justice. He cries out to God and it seems as if God is not listening. How true does that feel today? Do we not feel like giving up? Giving up on the world where everything seems to be set against doing what is right? Giving up in a world where God seems absent? Can we nevertheless be like Habakkuk and stay in post, keeping up the watch, and wait on God’s word?
How did Habakkuk manage to stay strong? Because he had faith. He had a faith that came out of the close relationship he had with God – “the righteous live by their faith”.
Habakkuk and the Psalmist must have had great patience. They seem to be able accept that they must wait for justice to prevail without any idea of the timescale involved; that they must maintain this patient waiting without not get angry or frustrated! I don’t think we even know if Habakkuk saw the return of peace to the land. He wrote in the period between the conquest of Nineveh which presaged the end of the Assyrian Empire and before the final conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. Certainly he couldn’t have lived to see the rebuilding of Jerusalem.
So how the do we respond to the words of Jesus in the Gospel: “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, `Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”?
What is faith and where does it come from? Synonyms for faith include trust, confidence, credence, conviction, hope, belief, expectation, hopefulness, optimism and assurance. The word faith has a strong connection with religious or spiritual belief although it is also used to describe the relationship a servant and their master, between a knight and their Lord, between a partisan and their political leader – or political creed. Faith it would seem is about relationships. For Habakkuk it was the relationship between the righteous and God. For Christians, faith is, I think, our relationship with God that has developed through our relationship with Jesus.
Where does it come from? It’s certainly not something you can buy! Nor is it something you just stumble across. Rather I think it is something that we all have as a gift from God. We understand God to be the creator – the source point – of all that lives. And we understand that God blessed all that she created, and I would suggest that in both creating and blessing us, God has placed in each of us a seed of faith – one that can never die. On the other hand we each have in our own ways the capacity to enable that seed to flourish enabling our relationship with God to depend and expand – or we can suppress and hide it and try and ignore any relationship with God. (Last week I spoke about the close relationship that prophets have with God).
I’m not sure about faith that can uproot a tree and plant it in the sea but that maybe a hyperbole challenging us to be amazed at what faith can achieve.
Yesterday was the feast of St Francis. During one of the crusades, Francis through his deep faith and his belief that war was contri to God’s will, set out for Damietta where the Crusaders and the Muslims forces were battling with one another in an attempt to secure control of the Holy Land. With only one companion Francis set off on foot for the Sultan’a camp, crossing no-man’s land, with the hope of speaking with the Sultan and finding a basis for peace. His faith – a faith that says continue against the odds because God is with you – took him right to the Sultan’s tent. Whether because of his humility, or his determination or maybe because of his poor and bedraggle appearance, Sultan spoke with Francis. Whilst the outcome wasn’t peace, the Sultan acquired a new respect for this small Christian figure and granted him safe passage back home.
This week a flotilla of little sailing boats reached the waters off Gaza. These boats were crewed by volunteers from around the world who had faith that what ever one does, doing what is right is more important than doing what is safe or tactful, and who had determined to address the painfully acute shortages being faced by the people on Gaza by taking medicines and baby milk and other essentials supplies across the Mediterranean and into Gaza, regardless of the Israeli blockade and the attacks they received on the way (also likely from Israeli forces). They arrived off the coast of Gaza on Thursday morning to be blasted by water canon and surrounded by Israeli vessels who then boarded the boats and arrested all the crew.
As yet we don’t know what the long term impact of the flotilla will be but it has sparked many voices of protest and outrage across the world at what the Israeli government is continuing to do in terrorising the people of Gaza.
Over the last ten days 6 people have been on trial for climbing on motorway gantries in 2023 which they did to highlight the climate crisis and the lack of an adequate response by those in authority. They too have a faith that, what ever one does, doing what is right is more important than doing what is safe or what is popular. In the knowledge that the current trajectory of the world is for at least 2, and possibly more, degrees of warming – which will cause even more suffering with increased risks of floods, droughts, wild fires, crop failures and heat waves – they were not willing to sit back and do nothing while more and more people risk loss of homes and livelihoods and death. At the outset the judge ruled that there were no legal defences that they could use – not even the defence of necessity in the face of a greater threat. All six spoken eloquently and from the heart, remaining faithful to the cause of what is right. All six were found guilty.
As Mother Theresa said, we “aren’t called to be successful; we’re called to be faithful”.
Like Habakkuk we cannot not remain faithful even when things are going awry, when the future looks impossible, nor even when our chances of ‘success’ are pitiful. We can’t always see the bigger picture. We can’t always see what lies ahead of us. But we do know we can always faithfully do that which is asked of us: to love mercy, to seek justice and to walk humbly with God.
The Book of Habakkuk ends with these verses:
Though the fig tree does not blossom,
and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails
and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold
and there is no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will exult in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
and makes me tread upon the heights. Habakkuk 3:17-19
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.
O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen?
Or cry to you “Violence!”
and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrong-doing
and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack
and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous–
therefore judgment comes forth perverted.
I will stand at my watchpost,
and station myself on the rampart;
I will keep watch to see what he will say to me,
and what he will answer concerning my complaint.
Then the Lord answered me and said:
Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
so that a runner may read it.
For 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.
Psalm 37:1-10
1 Do not fret yourself because of evildoers; *
do not be jealous of those who do wrong.
2 For they shall soon wither like the grass, *
and like the green grass fade away.
3 Put your trust in the Lord and do good; *
dwell in the land and feed on its riches.
4 Take delight in the Lord, *
and he shall give you your heart’s desire.
5 Commit your way to the Lord and put your trust in him, *
and he will bring it to pass.
6 He will make your righteousness as clear as the light *
and your just dealing as the noonday.
7 Be still before the Lord *
and wait patiently for him.
8 Do not fret yourself over the one who prospers, *
the one who succeeds in evil schemes.
9 Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; *
do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.
10 For evildoers shall be cut off, *
but those who wait upon the Lord shall possess the land.
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus,
To Timothy, my beloved child:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
I am grateful to God– whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did– when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.
Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.
Luke 17:5-10
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, `Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, `Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, `Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, `We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'”
The Green Tau 