Welcome to Advent!
Good time of year isn’t, for those of who are working we’re into the last stint of the year before holidays, there are many end-of-year events going on as schools finish up and as students are graduating, the Ashes have started & there’s plenty going on around us – so how do you arrive at Advent this time round?
Are you looking forward to the end of the year and the start of a new one, maybe you’re even looking ahead to your plans for 2026 already?!
Maybe it’s so busy you haven’t really had a chance to come up for air lately, so many events to get to and things to organize
Or maybe you’re in the moment at this time of year, enjoying what comes along and just taking a step at a time.
Many different ways we might be coming at this season, good to reflect on that, check the status of our own hearts and minds > right now is a good time to do that!
As we get into Advent this year, as we start to think about our posture at this time of year, how we arrive at this season of hopeful anticipation, we’re going to look at 2 KEY WORDS & 2 KEY PEOPLE.
All through Advent we’re going to be considering these words in front of us, 2 key words here:
RELUCTANT & EXPECTANT.
Those are the 2 KEY WORDS, and the 2 KEY PEOPLE are two really interesting characters from the bible, one from the Old Testament and one from the New:
They are HABBAKUK, the OT prophet,
and the other is ZACCHAEUS, the short-statured man who Jesus singled out to have dinner with.
We’re going to consider the ‘reason for the season’ through the lens of these two characters, one who interacted directly with the voice of God in the OT and one who interacted directly with God in human form in the person of Jesus.
Today our KEY PERSON is going to be Habbakuk, the OT prophet, and our KEY WORD is going to be RELUCTANT.
We’re going to look at Habbakuk’s own reluctance, his reluctance in the face of God no less, and what we can learn from that and apply to our own lives today.
So who was Habbakuk?
He was a prophet, one who prophesies. He received an oracle, or a burden from God in a vision we read at the start of the book of Habbakuk, only a short book 3 chapters long.
His oracle was recorded around 600 BC, as the Babylonian Empire was rising but before they conquered Jerusalem.
There’s a bit of context for us around who he was, but what does he say and why does it matter for us today?
The 3 chapters of Habbakuk can be pretty neatly separated:
Chapter 1 has 2 laments from Habbakuk – 2 complaints, where he says how bad everything is – with an answer from God in the middle. Chapter 2 is more of what God has to say on the matter, and chapter 3 is a prayer of Habbakuk. That’s helpful as we think about his context and what we can learn from it.
We’re going to look at a couple words from Habbakuk today, and another few from him in a couple week’s time as we move through Advent.
Our first word today is the first half of Habbakuk 1:2 – >>>
‘How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?’
Interesting place to start! Maybe that’s how you feel at this time of year, heading into another Advent season!
Maybe you’ve been waiting a long time, and you’ve had enough.
Maybe you’ve been calling out for a long time, but it doesn’t feel like anyone’s listening.
Some of us might be in that position, in that posture right now. Maybe we have been there at some point in the year, at some point in life – we all find ourselves in this posture from time to time, myself included.
And being positioned like that can lead to >>> you guessed it, RELUCTANCE.
What is reluctance, what does it mean and what does it look like, how does it come about?
When you’ve waited patiently, when you’ve hoped and prayed diligently, when you’ve called out for help time and time again but that help hasn’t come. If we’ve experienced those things, we can easily end up in a posture, a state of RELUCTANCE.
Reluctance to trust in God, to believe what he says is true.
Reluctance to be open towards God and towards other people, because we might have been burned in the past and it’s much easier to close ourselves off, to insulate and protect ourselves to keep ourselves safe.
Reluctance to seek out God, to listen to him and learn from him.
Reluctance to keep going with this stuff because it’s all getting too hard, or we don’t see the point any more.
Even reluctance to pray, to do what our God calls us to do.
Peter says ‘cast your anxieties on Jesus, because he cares for you.’ In a state of reluctance we might struggle to believe that, to see how that can happen when it feels like God is anywhere but by our side.
It’s really important here to not be dismissive of this reluctance > it happens, for all of us, even those we could consider ‘example’ Christians to follow, even Paul, even Jesus’ disciples, even Jesus himself experiences reluctance as he prays to his Father before he is taken away to be crucified.
Reluctance is not something to avoid talking about, to pretend like it isn’t happening. It’s something we need to name, to acknowledge, even to own when it crops up in our lives, in our hearts and minds.
It’s something we take to our God in prayer, and that’s exactly what Habbakuk is doing here.
Habbakuk asks questions of his God, he complains directly to his God, he laments.
‘How long must I call but you do not listen,’ how many times do I have to call out for help to you before you will actually help me! Where are you God, what are you doing, why are you not with me and helping me.
We could say Habbakuk is on the edge of reluctance here, nearly slipping into it. There’s a tension in his words, like he’s giving God one last chance to show up or else he’ll give up!
Why do you ‘tolerate wrongdoing’ he says, we might say ‘why are you putting up with this rubbish, why are you allowing bad things to continue?’
Habbakuk reflects our own humanity to us today >
He calls out to his God, even if he’s reluctant that God will actually show up. Calling out to our God for help in our time of need – that’s what we should be doing.
Acknowledging that we need help in the first place, we can’t figure this out on our own, we are only human and he is God! That’s what we should be doing.
And waiting for and listening to God’s response – Habbakuk didn’t have the New Testament to depend on, to live out of – but we do!
We have God’s responses documented for us, we have the hope of Jesus who has died and risen again for us, we have the gift of the Holy Spirit moving among us!
When you think about it like that, how thankful are we that we don’t have to wait for Jesus to come because HE ALREADY HAS.
We know what happens at Christmas, it’s well documented, it’s not going to be a surprise for us! We get to celebrate the joy and the hope of Christmas as it comes around again, not worrying if God will ever hear us but knowing he has and he does and he will! What a gift that is.
So we DO know what happens at Christmas, at the first coming of Jesus because it has already happened, praise the Lord for that.
But we DON’T know exactly when Jesus will come again, when he comes to raise the living and the dead, as we hear Jesus talking about in our gospel reading today (Matt 24:35-44).
He says ‘You do not know day your Lord will come.’
This is true, we do not know and we will not know until it happens.
So what do we do in the meantime?
Jesus says something else here: ‘Therefore keep watch. Be ready.
Keep watch and be ready for the Lord’s coming, even though you don’t know when it will be.
That’s a summary of our context isn’t it, and the context for all believers: people before Jesus’ time lived in constant anticipation of Jesus coming the first time round, and we live in constant anticipation of Jesus coming again.
Now that can be pretty tiring, to live in a constant state of anticipation!
Always hoping, always waiting, maybe that’s why we only do Christmas once a year, the whole year round would be too much.
And sometimes we drift into reluctance as we continue to anticipate Jesus coming again. It happens, we’re only human. It’s part of the waiting and the hoping that we’re called to in our lives as Christian people.
But we continue to call out to God, as Habbakuk does.
The simple act of calling out to God, even if we’re a bit reluctant about it, is actually an act of faith, of trust, of hope.
Putting things in God’s hands, asking him the questions we have, firing the complaints and worries and anxieties at him > because he can handle it, he can handle the lot of it!
He can handle the complaints, worries and anxieties of all of us in this room, of all people! He’s big enough and God-enough to do that for us.
He says he will hear us, he will remain faithful.
We know what God says, we’ve got it written down, we hear from God at least once a week if not more! So we trust in what he says, we hope in his word, we keep watch – just as we’re going to see Habbakuk do in a few weeks time – we get ready and we stay ready.
Even if we’re reluctant we can trust God knows that > he’s not surprised by how we feel! He knows us, he is with us, he calls us to be with him.
God’s peace be with you as we enter into this Advent season!
Tom Kitson 