When Lindsey, Dave and I sat down to plan out the fall worship series, we made the decision to focus our stewardship and 150th anniversary celebration on the saints. Saints being defined as followers of Jesus. Saints of old and saints of new.
But what to focus attention on about saints and 
so we landed on the characteristics saints possess. What gives saints – these followers of Jesus – their ability to follow Jesus especially in hard times? In challenging times?
We landed on four: gratitude during times of suffering, perseverance, risk-taking and courage, and finally, generosity and loving your neighbor. Today we take up the first – being able to express gratitude towards God/Jesus/Holy Spirit during times of suffering.
What do we mean by suffering? Perhaps it is the experience of hardship, distress, grief, pain – emotional and physical. Perhaps it is distressing times we go through. Suffering is a place that is hard to be in. It is the place where we begin to question God, and I want to be clear about this: that is ok. The prophets questioned, the disciples questioned, we question.
And so that is the place I want to begin as we look at our two passages today. First, we have the prophet Habakkuk who likely lived in the 7th Century BCE – around the time the Babylonians were in power. According to my Jewish Study Bible, Habakkuk is not so much about why justice does not emerge, but how we live under a state of injustice. What do we ask of ourselves, of our nation, of God when injustice is all around us.
That is the state of Habakkuk’s nation – they are doing wrong, they are being violent, they are unjust towards their people – and Habakkuk wants to know why God isn’t listening to the cries against this. God replies that God will send another power – the Babylonians against them. What?! Habakkuk isn’t about that at all.
But Habakkuk makes a decision to stand watch, wait at his post (2:1) and see how God responds. Like Job, Habakkuk doesn’t really get an answer; what he does see is God’s power and God’s presence in the world. He sees that God has not abandoned them and will continue to work for justice and against injustice.
God helps Habakkuk see as God sees and to know that God sees the suffering of the people. In our verses today, we see Habakkuk responding with joy and gratitude. That even in the midst of everything dying and immense suffering – think about it – what happens when there is no food – yet he will still rejoice in God, the God of his and his nation’s deliverance.
Saints are able to still rejoice – to still feel gratitude towards God – even in the midst of their own and their nation’s suffering. They can still praise God and know that God will deliver them.
That is a hard task isn’t it? To express gratitude at the enormity of suffering. We can see that both on a community of faith level and our current national situation, can’t we. We’ve been through hard times in this place called FPC-Bethlehem. Times when we didn’t know if we would make it.
That starts way back in the 1870’s – but saints that could see that and still express gratitude towards what God was doing here kept us going. Faith that God both sees our suffering and will deliver us from that suffering is what keeps saints – the followers of Jesus – going. Being able to still rejoice, praise and thank God even when we don’t know the outcome is what keeps saints – the followers of Jesus – going.
It is what will keep us going until our communal and national and international suffering is healed. Until the nations and the people in them are made whole. That brings me to our story from the Gospel of Luke. Ten men with skin diseases are suffering – likely they have been cast out of their communities. They live in an unjust state. Yet – they had the courage to cry out to Jesus when they saw him. They didn’t stay silent – they cried out to Jesus to show them mercy.
But then what happened. Only one turned back – the foreigner of the group – the despised Samaritan – to fall at Jesus’ feet and thank him for healing him. Only one. How easy it is to forget who has saved us, who has healed and continues to heal us. How easy it is to forget that Jesus healed all – not just “his chosen people.” Saints – the followers of Jesus – are able to express gratitude for being healed, to have faith that we will be healed (made whole), and that we can take that action and extend it out to all, excluding none.
Can we do that? Can we work through our own suffering, our own grief, hardship, times of distress and pain, to ask for Jesus’ mercy, for Jesus to heal us? Then, can we see as God sees that the healing will come in God’s time not ours and that it may not look like we want it to look like.
I am sure Habakkuk did not want his nation’s suffering and tendency towards their own violent ways to be met with another nation’s violence. How do we view suffering? Is it a time for our own growth and transformation? Is it a time when we can become more expansively welcoming and Christ-centered? Is it a time when we grow as saints – as followers of Jesus?
If we can do that, then can we say “yet I will still rejoice in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my deliverance?” Can we express gratitude in times when we experience suffering? What might happen if we make that a spiritual practice – individually and communally? What might happen if our faith in God allows us to cry out for mercy – for us and for those facing horrible suffering right now because of the powers in our nation? What might happen if we are willing to question God as the prophets have, as the saints of the past have and be given the gift to see as God sees?
So many questions to contemplate and explore. But as saints – as followers of Jesus – isn’t this what we are invited to do? Let’s be like Habakkuk, let’s be like the 10 who saw Jesus and were brave enough to cry out to him, but then let’s be the one that turns back in gratitude. What might happen if we do that? Won’t it be interesting to find out?