Easy Answers and Mustard Seeds: 27th Sunday OT

We learn not to trust easy answers, don’t we?

Or maybe it's built in, and we’re born that way. Even a small child, if she asks you a deep and difficult question, if you explain it away a little too easily - she'll give you that look that says “I’m not sure I’m buying this.”

But even though we have a built-in healthy skepticism, sometimes we’re faced with things that are so confounding or threatening that we reach to those easy answers for comfort and security. Why does my neighbor disagree with me politically? Easy! He's either stupid or evil. Why do people in that other country seem to dislike America so much? Easy! They hate freedom! 

There are different reasons we might fall back on these easy answers. Maybe we’re just not motivated to seek the more complicated truth. Maybe we’re afraid of it. Maybe we need the security of a bullet-proof answer. It’s a confusing world and we want to get a hold of something solid. 

The ultimate fall-back answer, when nothing else works, is this: “GOD HAS A PLAN.”

It’s true, of course. God does have a plan. But please raise an eyebrow at anyone who is confidently telling you what it is. That brings us to Habakkuk the Prophet, author of one of the shortest books in the Bible, maybe six or seven centuries before Christ. And Habakkuk has some thoughts about God’s Plan. Habakkuk is not a fan of it. Listen to these words, now, and hear the human being behind them.

“How long, O Lord, am I to cry for help

while you will not listen;

to cry ‘Oppression!’ in your ear

and you will not save?

Why do you set injustice before me,

why do you look on where there is tyranny?

Outrage and violence, this is all I see,

all is contention, and discord flourishes.”

This is the prayer of a tortured soul.  It’s not what most people have in mind when they think of a saintly and holy prayer.  But here it is, and God not only acknowledges the prayer, but gives it to us as Sacred Scripture.  It’s as though God is saying, “I hear the prayers of the crushed and hopeless.  I feel compassion for them.  I have an answer for them.”

But what is the answer? Even for God, there’s no easy answer. When things have gone wrong in the world, how will God respond? The first option we find in the Bible is sort of implicit, but it's this: God didn’t have to create in the first place. God doesn’t need the world. And when He did create, He had a perfect world. Everything did what it was supposed to do. Everything worked in perfect harmony and peace and goodness... before us. He could’ve stopped there and kept that perfect world without us. He could have thought of us, with our gift of free will that He knew we'd sometimes make a huge mess of, and thought, "well, we can't have them around, they'll wreck everything." Even with all the sin and evil and injustice we’ve brought into Creation, God chose us anyway. Think about that sometime: God looking sadly over all the horrors of history and still telling us, “you’re worth it.”

Never forget that God could have had a perfect world, but He'd rather have you.

The Bible looks at another divine option a few chapters later, with Noah. God could destroy the world and start over every time things go wrong. Not surprisingly, this isn’t a workable long-term fix. It all goes wrong again about five minutes after the Ark hits land. And God sets his bow over the earth as a sign that never again will he destroy like this, a sign that this ‘solution’ is rejected by God.

The story plays out over the centuries, and across the pages of Scripture. He gives second chances but we fail them. He gives the Law but we break it. Generations live and die and still the world isn’t fixed. Habakkuk stands before all this and speaks for every tortured soul, “Why, Lord?”

God’s answer is not “relax, it’s all going according to my Plan.” Nor is it “I’m punishing you for being bad.” God’s answer is “Hold fast, be patient, trust in the Salvation that will come, live by faithfulness.” Patience, trust... these are things that do not always come easily. 

Habakkuk was asked to trust in God’s salvation, even though he couldn't possibly imagine what was going to happen. He couldn't have dreamed that the invisible, eternal God would one day look back at his people through the eyes of a newborn baby. That God, who always said He hears the cry of the poor, would someday become one of them. That he would accept and take for himself all the ugliness and horror of sin. That his judgment and condemnation would finally come, not against us sinners, but against death itself.

All that Habakkuk couldn’t have imagined, St. Paul has seen and believed. Paul has seen the salvation of our God, and is writing to his young friend Timothy. But even though the Cross of Christ stands revealed as the Tree of Life, still Paul says Faith is needed. Stand fast, keep Faith, hold on to trust. Paul encourages Timothy, “Fan into a flame the gift that God gave you.”

Faith doesn’t mean everything in your life will go well. It doesn’t mean the world will be immediately fixed. It isn’t some magic spell that gets you what you want when you want it. It isn’t a pretty fiction to make us feel better in a meaningless world. Faith isn’t any of those things. Faith is hope in things beyond our sight, a trust in God’s promise.

Everything about these Scriptures tells us to expect Faith to be a challenge sometimes. The time comes in our lives when we’re right there with Habakkuk, asking “Why?” Saying, “God, if this is your Plan, I don’t like it.” And God doesn’t condemn the questioning. Quite the opposite: even this he’s shared with us. In Gethsemene, praying that the cup would pass him by, somehow even God himself knows the pain of trusting God’s plan.

Even the Apostles wished for more faith. I’m sure we all have that in common. From the greatest saint to the most lapsed Catholic, I believe that at some level we all thirst for more faith. What does Christ tell them, and us? His answer is that faith the size of a mustard seed is powerful beyond comprehension. The smallest glimmer of faith can move mountains. You do remember, I hope, the other time that Jesus mentions mustard seeds.  It has to do with their incredible potential for growth.  Faith is like that.  Whatever difficulty you have, whatever doubts, whatever unanswered questions… it’s enough of a start for God.  Hand it over to him, watch it grow, and wait for your miracle.