Wait For It

October 5, 2025 sermon at Ascension Lutheran Church, Montreal, QC by Rev. Charles St-Onge. Text: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4.

Transcript

What did you read in the news this morning? On the web this week? Another 12-year-old killed by a Russian drone in Kyev? Another postal strike? Another transit strike? Another teacher strike? A woman who has to leave Canada because we can’t protect her from her abusive ex? A mafia don shot dead in broad daylight at a Starbucks in Laval. “Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong?”

The news is not uniquely bad now. It has always been bad.  What do you suppose Habakkuk was seeing in his time? Life wasn’t a bowl of cherries for Judah. Foreign powers like Babylon were rising like vultures around the carcass of the Mid-East. Do you think at home that Habakkuk wasn’t stepping around beggars in the street, seeing abusive relationships, sexual immorality, people starving in the midst of plenty? “Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong?”

Lin Manuel Miranda’s hit musical Hamilton finally came to Montreal this summer. I haven’t seen it live, but I watched it on Disney plus with Deb, Emilie and Avery a few years ago. It’s a stunning retelling of the founding of the United States through the eyes of Alexander Hamilton, a Scottish orphan from the Caribbean who ended up as the first Secretary of the Treasury for the newly independent USA. 

His nemesis in the musical is Aaron Burr, who himself would end up Vice-President alongside President Thomas Jefferson. Burr complains that Hamilton’s pace is relentless, and that’s he obsessed with his legacy and “not throwing away” his “shot.” Hamilton, on the other hand, points out that Burr is always, well, “waiting.” Waiting for just the right moment, for just the right time, to act. Aaron belts out in song that:

Death doesn't discriminate / Between the sinners and the saints

It takes and it takes and it takes

And we keep living anyway / We rise and we fall and we break

And we make our mistakes

And if there's a reason I'm still alive

When everyone who loves me has died

I'm willing to wait for it

(Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it)

I am the one thing in life I can control

(Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it)

I am inimitable / I am an original

I'm not falling behind or running late

I'm not standing still / I am lying in wait

We rise and we fall / and we break / and we make our mistakes

And if there's a reason I'm still alive / When so many have died

Then I'm willin' to- Wait for it

Is Habakkuk the Aaron Burr of the Old Testament? He cries out “violence!” he cries for “help”! But then he says, “Wait for it!” He writes, “Still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.”

We are not by nature patient people. Which makes living in Montreal hard! When will our potholes and broken streets be repaired?  WAIT FOR IT! When will our tiny airport and its congested lanes be expanded? WAIT FOR IT! When will we have enough housing for ourselves and our children? WAIT FOR IT!

As town guards in one of my video games can be heard muttering, “The waiting... the insufferable waiting.” Is that all the Lord has to say to us who “see iniquity all around”? Must we continue to “idly look at wrong?” 

Consider African Americans, who were finally liberated from slavery after the US civil war of the 1860s. That day is celebrated on June 19, called Juneteeth. A century later, segregation laws and zoning issues made that liberation seem less than freedom and more like a different kind of slavery. That lead to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. One newspaper publisher accused the movement of “pushing too far too fast.” Martin Luther King responded, saying “I don’t agree. The Negro has been extremely patient for our God-given rights.” In other words, they were tired of WAITING FOR IT. 

But MLK Jr made another famous statement. “The arc of the moral universe is long,” he said, “but it bends toward justice.” It may seem slow. Or sometimes too fast. But the will of the Lord, to see his sinful people reconciled to himself and each other through the blood of his Son Jesus, will happen. 

How can we learn patience? How can we keep “waiting for it”? Habakkuk writes, “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith. 

This is the verse that awakens us to the love of God. It awakened Paul (see Romans 1:17, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”). It awakened the writer of Hebrews (see Hebrews 10:38, “But my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.”). It awakened Martin Luther, for whom Martin Luther King was named, who wrote:

I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the “justice of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage… became to me a gate to heaven (itself). 

The puffed up want everything on their time, on their schedule, because they want it for them alone. They don’t want it because it is right, but because it will benefit them here and now. That’s why so many generations, including our own, think the apocalypse will happen on their watch. If Jesus returns during our earthly life, wouldn’t that mean we are somehow more important than everyone who’s gone before us? That’s puffed up thinking!

The righteous don’t live by what they see – the arc of the moral universe is beyond our vision. Like the “roundness” of the earth, we can’t see it because we are all too close to our sin. We know it bends towards justice by faith – it is often outside our vision but firmly trusted in our hearts. 

Faith is about waiting for it. Righteousness is about confidence and trust. It is about believing that the moral arc of the universe is bending towards justice, towards God’s justice, towards the forgiveness of sins and sinners and our reconciliation with each other and God in the blood of Jesus Christ. 

Conclusion

In our Gospel reading for today “The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” 

Our faith is always small. Smaller even than a mustard seed! But the one in whom we put our trust is great. Our patience for Jesus’ forgiveness and mercy changing the world is low. But God’s slow restoration of the world through the cross of Jesus is great and unstoppable. 

And the more we hear from Scripture about how God is working towards justice in Jesus, the more we are able, to quote Aaron Burr and Habakkuk, wait for it.

Amen.