LESSONS FROM THE TREE OF LIFE

Stephen Angell, Professor of Quaker Studies, Earlham School of Religion
Friends Memorial Church, Muncie, Nov. 4
Habakkuk 1:1-1:4; 2:1-2:5; Revelation 22: 1-5

The scripture from Habakkuk is drawn from the Common Lectionary for this weekend. That means that preachers in many other churches are using this Scripture at the same time. Also, that it came up in the normal rotation for what is called Year C in the Lectionary; and, in that sense at least, I did not specially choose it for this service.

Not much is known about Habakkuk. He was a prophet who thrived about 605 BCE, in the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judea. He would have been a contemporary of Jeremiah. He lived in very troubled times. In Habbakuk’s lifetime, the little country of Judea was continually menaced by the great powers, especially the Babylonians, headed by their king Nebuchadrezzar. Within twenty years of this prophecy, the Babylonians actually captured Jerusalem, burned the city, and carried many Judeans into captivity in Babylon. These were troubled times indeed.

Habakkuk begins his prophecy with lament. Why is God not more active in saving Judea? Why is God not listening to our prophet’s complaints? These are contentious, strife-filled times, with destruction and violence ever present. Surely these are the kind of times that call for a God with a little higher visibility. We believe that God must be able to give us more definite guidance. Speak up, God, we implore you! “How long shall I cry for help and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?” Surely God must be concerned about the dysfunctional society near collapse because it is suffering so much stress. “Justice never prevails,” Habakkuk complains. “The wicked surround the righteous – and therefore judgment comes forth perverted.” The suffering resulting from violence and destruction is compounded by the suffering which results from injustice.

Perhaps we can identify with Habakkuk’s lament. Have you ever felt that God is not listening when God ought to be listening? Have you felt more keenly the absence of God when you most wish to be reassured by God’s loving and warm presence? If so, you can probably appreciate where Habakkuk is coming from. And, if we take Habbakuk as our model (there is no reason why we shouldn’t), it is OK to complain. God welcomes our praise and thanksgiving, but God also welcomes our cries and lamentations. Whatever is closest to our heart is what we need to share with God.

The first two chapters of Habakkuk read like a dialogue between Habakkuk and God. Habakkuk’s complaints are fruitful, because God answers back. Some of God’s answers are surprising. God seems to be telling Habakkuk, for example, that God is behind the dread depredations of the Babylonians (or Chaldeans, as they are referred to in the text.) God states that “I am rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.” Habakkuk protests. He argues with God. Surely God’s rousing of the Chaldeans is the wrong move for God to make. He asks God, “Why do you look on the treacherous and are silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?”

God responds again, this time more satisfactorily from Habakkuk’s viewpoint. Be patient, God says. Deliverance will come, but “if it seems to tarry, wait for it. It will surely come, it will not delay.” Habakkuk elaborates, in a passage that would later be picked up by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans: “The righteous shall live by faith.” This may be closely related to a saying often heard in African-American churches that “our God is a time God. God may not come just exactly when we expect him, or when we think that we need him, but God always comes right on time.” God comes on God’s time, not on ours. Recall this statement derived from the black church tradition, one often used by Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” In the short term, things may get worse. After all, the inhabitants of Jerusalem were carried off into captivity not long after Habakkuk delivered his prophecy. But within half a century, the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians, and the victorious Persian king, Cyrus, allowed the Jews in Babylon to return to their homes and to rebuild Jerusalem. A new Jerusalem arose from the ruins. We shall return to that theme later.

Habakkuk’s authenticity and genuineness have often appealed to Quaker prophets such as John Woolman. When Woolman was visiting New England, where many Quakers were involved in the international slave trade. At the Yearly Meeting in Newport, Woolman learned that a large number of slaves had been imported from Africa and then were soon to be put up for sale by a member of our Society. “At this time,” Woolman wrote, “I had a feeling of the condition of Habakkuk as thus expressed: ‘When I heard, my belly trembled, my lips quivered, my appetite failed, and I grew outwardly weak. I trembled in myself that I might rest in the day of trouble.’ (Habakkuk 3:16) I had many cogitations and was sorely distressed.” Woolman was not able to thwart the immediate sale, but he was able to communicate his concern over slavery clearly to New England Friends and government officials. And within a generation, Woolman’s Society had reached unity and had cleared itself of slavery. This passage from Woolman helps us to realize how difficult, how physically taxing, it is to be a prophet. The sensitivity of the prophetic witness leaves us close to tears, to cries, to lamentations. Yet by being faithful to his concern, Woolman was able to speed God’s deliverance of those held in slavery by Friends. May we all be equally as faithful in witnessing to our concerns as Woolman and Habakkuk were.

I would like to shift gears here, in order to address the other Scripture that I have chosen for the day. Incidentally, it was not selected from the lectionary. I was standing, with my wife Sandra, in the basement of a church in northeast Ohio last Sunday. We were admiring a quilt which had been made by the church members in response to the tragedies of September 11. Suddenly our attention was caught by one of the quilt squares in the upper right hand corner of the quilt. The image on that block was of a tree in full, brilliant color in autumn, covered by yellows, reds, and oranges, very similar to those which have showered their glory over Indiana and Ohio in the past month. But the caption was the most arresting. “The leaves on the tree,” it read, “are for the healing of the nations.” That Scripture, from the 22^nd chapter of Revelation, is the portion from the New Testament that I chose to have read today.

There are many aspects to the prophetic message, as illustrated so richly in both Testaments of the Bible. There can be cries and lamentations, as well as words of warning or admonition. But one of the most important elements of the prophetic message are words of hope. As often as it may appear that God is absent in the midst of chaos and violence, we are truly not alone. God is ever-present with us, ready to apply to us the healing balm of the leaves that fall from the Tree of Life. As the author of Revelation has observed, there is a new heaven and a new earth, a new Jerusalem, and that is available to all of God’s children who seek God. Let us open our hearts to God’s healing mercies.

This chapter of Scripture was very important also to John Woolman, the eighteenth-century Quaker anti-slavery reformer to whom I referred earlier. In fact, a reference to it can be found on the very first page of his journal. He recalled that “I was taught to read near as soon as I was capable of it,” and recalled a Seventh-Day, a Saturday, early in childhood when he sat alone and read to himself the twenty-second chapter of Revelation: “He showed me a river of water, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb.” Woolman shared the early Quaker viewpoint that the new heaven and new earth described in this part of Revelation was in great part present in the here-and-now, and was not just something to look for in the future. These verses had a powerful effect on Woolman, as he related that he “was drawn to seek after that pure habitation which I then believed God had prepared for his servants.” The feelings evoked by this Scripture powerfully undergirded his later work of confronting slave holders and working against war and for peace with the Indians. Moreover, this place of reassurance, hope, purity, sweetness, and love is available to all of us, if we can take in the promise embodied in this culminating portion of Scripture into our hearts, as Woolman did into his. We sit under the Tree of Life. Let us continue to rest deeply in God’s peace and God’s healing mercies.