Four Annoying Things About God: Sense of Timingⁱ
Habakkuk 1.2, 3.17-19
Rev. Matthew M. Fry

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Gracious God, Grant unto us now the ability to go beyond our limits, so that we might experience you more fully. Work in us and through us. Speak Lord, your servants are listening. Amen.

God and I have been in this relationship for a long time. Like any romance, in the beginning we were perfect for each other, all wine and roses and neither of us had the slightest flaw. But we’ve been together awhile now, God and I, and there are just a few things about God that annoy me a tiny bit. I’m talking toothpaste-tube-squeezing, toilet-seat-up-or-down kind of things. Not relationship breakers, but very real things about God that are…irritating.

Can we mention those things? Can we talk about those things in public, in church? Can we admit being annoyed with God and survive to live another day?

The answer: absolutely. To be annoyed with God puts us in a long line of faith tradition, even alongside those inspired believers who penned scripture, if you pay attention when reading scripture. Listen. Does this sound like wine and roses romance to you?

Psalm 10.1 “Why, O Lord, do you stand afar off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble.” In other words, Where have you been?

Psalm 13.1 “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” Translation, Couldn’t you have at least called?

Psalm 73.3-5 “I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pain; their bodies are sound and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not plagued like other people.” Or, if you prefer, It’s just not fair.

My subject for this and the next three sermons, Four things that annoy me about God. And you know what, when I was in seminary, I was often referred to as the breakfast-serving-lounge-singer of Princeton. I’m a morning person, and when I would serve bacon and eggs at 7.30, I would look at a tired seminarian and break out in song, in good lounge singer style. So, I say that to say this. As any good lounge singer, I take requests. You got something that you want to add to the “annoys me about God” list, let me know, and I’ll see if I can work this series out a little further.

So, in no particular order, we start with God’s sense of timing.

And the Spirit of the Lord came upon me mightily in a dream, and the voice of the Lord spoke to me and the Lord sayeth, “Fry, you have found favor in my sight, and I will bless you richly. The Georgia Jackpot Lottery is $80 Million; the winning number is 42, 16, 28, 19…; buy a ticket first thing tomorrow.” I rushed to the nearest convenience store; and ordered a ticket; 42, 16, 28, 19… “Interesting choice,” observed the person behind the counter. “That was yesterday’s winning number. But hey, you could get lucky.”

Sometimes God’s timing leaves just a little to be desired. “This is an important meeting today, Lord,” I pray. “Put words in my mouth, give me the right thing to say.” And God does give me the perfect thing to say…two days after the meeting.

I don’t know about you, but I find it a little bit annoying, that God answers prayer, but God’s sense of timing doesn’t fit my sense of timing.

The couple prays for years to have a child; then they add all the medical procedures to their prayers. Finally, one morning she walks out of the bathroom, holding aloft a blue strip of litmus, “I’m pregnant!” she announces. “You’re what?” he responds, almost dropping the infant they adopted three weeks before.

God’s sense of timing doesn’t always fit my sense of timing, and sometimes I find that just a little bit annoying. But not all the time; sometimes I find it, not annoying, but heartbreaking.

These sermons are in the heat of summer in an effort to be fairly light, like summer movies. But this sermon that starts it off can’t do that. Those who preach must always be aware that, in any size congregation, when one preaches, one will do so to at least three people who are facing death – death of a marriage, of a loved one, of a dream. Any sermon preached has to be worth the time those people are giving to it. Especially this one.

People come here on Sunday morning, not just because they’ve experienced the power of God in their lives, but because they’ve experienced the silence of God in their lives, and they are seeking a word about that silence, or a word out of that silence. If preachers are to say anything that really matters to anyone, including anything that matters to themselves, they must speak honestly about the times when God is silent, the times when we are forced to wait. And none of us are very good at silence. None of us are very good at waiting.

We who preach put things into words – it’s what we do – but it is the silence, the waiting emptiness that finally matters and they are the parts of life out of which God finally comes. From Habakkuk 1.2, “How long, O Lord? How long shall I cry for help and you will not listen?”

Jesus himself encountered God’s awful sense of timing. He knew God’s silence at the very moments he most needed to hear God’s voice. In the Garden of Gethsemane, facing his torturous death, he cried out in prayer to God, to his Abba, and, silence. Nothing. Earlier, at his baptism, standing knee-deep in the waters of the Jordan, Jesus heard the Spirit of God say, “You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” On the top of the Mount of Transfiguration, glowing with God’s presence, Jesus and the disciples heard a voice, “This is my Son, my beloved. Listen to him.” But this night, in his darkest hour, when he needed God most – silence. And later still, when he cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why…” Silence.

I’m sorry, but God’s awful sense of timing is not merely annoying; it will make us weep. That’s what Jesus did when he reached the graveside of his friend Lazarus. He wept. The other things he did that day came later, but first he just stood there and wept. His only words were his tears and his silence. “See how he loved him!” said some, to explain the tears. But others had a different explanation: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (John 11.37)

“We thought Jesus was ‘the man.’ We thought Jesus was supposed to take care of things. He did wondrous things for strangers; apparently he can’t be of much help to his friends.” That’s pretty harsh, and pretty much what they said to him at the time.

It was harsh because chances are, Jesus had already said it to himself. If he really was the resurrection and the life, a lot of good that was if he wasn’t around when he’s needed. If God was really in him, and if he and the Father are one, why didn’t God get him there on time? Lazarus was ill; Jesus was delayed; Jesus arrived; Lazaus was already dead and buried. “Couldn’t Jesus have done something?” they murmured.

It was a harsh question, because the answer is harsher still. The answer was clear, “No.” And the tougher answer is harsher still – that the God who was in Jesus apparently could not keep the man from dying either. If “could not” is something you can say about God. Let’s say, “would not” or “did not”, which is just as hard to live with, and which we cannot escape. The man died, and Jesus weeps helplessly in the shame of God’s timing.

Jesus was not called to provide solutions, answers, to lead the U.S. Cavalry to the rescue just at the right moment. He was called to be human, and at that very moment he certainly was. If Jesus’ tears are simply acting, playing a role, completely confident of a happy ending; if Jesus doesn’t know what it is to cry at the graveside and receive no answer, the he becomes the only person who seems to not have had that experience. It also does not make him a very sympathetic character. We have all known God’s awful timing, God’s silence, including Jesus. Jesus shares with us the darkness of God’s awful timing, as well as shows forth the glory of God. Perhaps that is much of why we have never quite been able to stop following him.

The path we take to follow Jesus is a hard path indeed. The path leads always to the cross, and at the foot of the cross, if not somewhere along the way, we suffer the death of our hope in the fix-it God. In Christ crucified, our fondest hopes are crucified as well – that the omnipotent God will protect those who believe in Him; that those who find favor with God will be spared pain, loss, abandonment. We want those things: we want an image of God as reigning monarch, God the giver of orders, fulfiller of need, and solver of problems. That’s what we want. That’s what we pray for. But when we see Christ crucified, we learn that it simply is not true. The presence of the cross, front and center every time we gather, is a powerful rebuttal to the image of a powerful, fix-it God.

Here, in Christ crucified, is what we get instead: a God who is available in our suffering and in the terrible silence; a God who knows what it is to endure. God doesn’t speak from some safe place outside human suffering, but from the very heart of it. By refusing to avoid it or to lie about it in any way, the crucified Christ opens a way through it. He makes it holy by engaging it. He shows us how. We are not supposed to love suffering. We are allowed to hate it, and to do everything in our power to bring it to an end. Only we may not avoid it. We may not demand that God spare us from it. That is not one of our choices. That is our cross.

That is where we are set free. I am speaking to you now not as your preacher, but as your pastor; not as a minister but as your friend. When I no longer cling to a false image of a fix-it God, I no longer require myself to be a fix-it person. Neither I nor the gospel I preach are responsible for solving all the problems, for providing all the answers, for managing all the issues.

The belief that God is present even in God’s silence on the cross makes it clear that God is Lord not only of the living but of the dying. God is not only Lord of the people of prosperity, but also in the ghetto neighborhoods of Norcross. God is not only present when the tests show that you’re in complete remission; but also present when the doctor says, “It’s time to call hospice.”

Here, before Christ crucified, we see the peculiar power of weakness. We glimpsed it when the civil rights marchers crossed the bridge in Selma: who had the real power – those who wielded the fire hoses, or the defenseless ones who marched for justice? We saw it in the days following 9.11: what brought the world to our side as neighbors – the tears shed by Americans whose fellow citizens had perished and whose heroic firefighters died there, or the front page reports of our successful bombing of Baghdad? There is a peculiar power in weakness. Who has prevailed, in the world to come and in the world today – the Roman Empite with its Pax Romana, lashing thousands of victims to the cross, or the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the crucified one?

What do we mean when we say, “Jesus is Lord!”? We mean that Jesus’ humiliation, patience, and suffering are the ways God deals with the world and the ways Christians deal with life in this world. I am not required to be victorious, successful, triumphant; I am asked to be faithful.

The prophet Habakkuk does not conclude his oracle with an answer; he concludes with his faithfulness. Faith when there is no solution, when the only answer is silence. Hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Habakkuk.

Habakkuk 3.17-19.

Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive falls, and the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in Yahweh God; I will exult in the God of my salvation. Yahweh, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.”

The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.