Habakkuk 2:1-4 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

I will stand at my watchpost,

and station myself on the rampart;

I will keep watch to see what he will say to me,

and what he will answer concerning my complaint.

Then the Lord answered me and said:

Write the vision;

make it plain on tablets,

so that a runner may read it.

For there is still a vision for the appointed time;

it speaks of the end, and does not lie.

If it seems to tarry, wait for it;

it will surely come, it will not delay.

Look at the proud!

Their spirit is not right in them,

but the righteous live by their faith.

There are some old timey words that I wish we still used. They sound great and there is a quality to to them it makes them just sound special.

You know what I’m talking about…

A word like Wisenheimer. Basically, it means smart aleck but the word is just so great. “Don’t be such a wisenheimer.”

Or the word horsefeathers. I just love the sound of the word. It means claptrap.

Or the word claptrap which means nonsense.

Help me. Any old timey you words that you love?

In the south, when your child gets in trouble and you’re talking to an old timer about it, he may just say to you “did you give them down the road?” Did you chew them out.

Perhaps you have heard the word shinnicked which simply means being really cold, so cold you’re paralyzed by it.

Certainly you have heard the word tommyrot, utter foolishness

Or hogwash, which means untruth, a lie,

Oh Steve, so far your sermon is just piffle, which means hooey, Which means lacking in substance.

Whatever you do, don’t lollygag or you’ll be late.

In our scripture today, there is one of those old timey words that is just wonderful in the way it sounds.

Listen for it,

I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint. Then the Lord answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.

“Tarry” means held up, or taking its sweet time.

“Tarry” also means to wait, hold back. So Jesus says to his disciples in the garden, “Tarry ye with me,” wait with me.

If you are a King James Bible reader you will read the word Tarry 53 times as you read through its pages.

If you read the New Revised Standard Version, you’ll find the word Tarry only four times.

If you’re reading one of the newer translations like the Common English Bible, you will not see the word at all. It’s kind of a shame because it’s a great sounding word - Tarry

When one preaches or teachers on this passage in Habakkuk, one usually focuses on the phrase “the just shall live by faith,” because that is the phrase Paul picks up and uses in Romans as he argues that people are reconciled to God not by rules and regulations but by faith alone.

It is these same verses, and Paul’s use of them, that so impact Martin Luther that they become central to his teachings and actions that spirited the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.

But as I was reading these verses, I got caught up in the one word “Tarry.”

In the context of the passage, the concern that is expressed is that God’s judgment and his new thing is taking too long to unfold. And so the prophet reminds the readers, even if God tarries, if it seems to take too long, hang in there, because it is coming.

Waiting is a way of life.

I remember when I was a kid and I would order something from the back page of a comic book or catalog, I would pine away waiting for it to arrive. Every day as I would come home from school expecting that the package containing the new record album or new comic book or whatever would be waiting at our front door. And I remember times when I felt like that which I wanted to arrive would never come. The longer I Tarried, the more helpless I felt.

The first Star Wars movie came out in the spring of 1977. It was the first date that Judi and I had where actual money was spent.

Do you remember the way the first Star Wars movie ended, with Darth Vader spinning out of control in his fighter. I didn’t know it at the time but I quickly surmised that another Star Wars movie must be on its way. And I waited for it, and it came and went, and I waited for the next one, and so on, and so on, and now I wait because on the December 20th of this year the ninth and final of the original series comes to theaters. So it would be a true statement that my entire Adult life, (42 years) has been spent waiting for the next Star Wars movie to come out.

When you’ve been to the doctor, and they’ve ordered the tests, and then you have to wait for the results, it can feel so long. And then for some reason, the results are held up. And you wait even longer. Tarrying can be so hard.

I did a phone interview with the search committee from Second Baptist Church in the early part of 2012. And after that phone interview, which went pretty well, I found myself waiting to hear back from the committee. And while they were not long in returning to me, it felt like long, as I waited hoping we would be pursuing our relationship.

The thing about waiting, is that waiting is hard. Quite often during the waiting period, We begin to see the possibilities for the worst or anticipate the best, and the end result can end up as either a great surprise or a unraveling disappointment.

Another thing that’s really hard about waiting is that while we are waiting we sometimes change, so the thing that we are waiting for has lost its appeal. When I It was a kid, I was a huge Black Sabbath fan, (truth be told, I still am) and I had waited months for the release of their newest album, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. I knew the drop date and I waited all fall and into the winter for the new album to be available. I waited and waited.

The album came out on a Monday, but the Friday before that Monday, I went to see a Jesus Christ Superstar and the Frankfort movie theater, and as a result of that movie I became a follower of Christ. So I became a Christian on Friday evening, and my favorite band put out an album for which I had been waiting forever on Monday. As soon as school was over on Monday, I walked over to Grant’s department store and picked up the album. I took it home, went up to my room put it on my turntable and let it rip.

I studied the album cover, it was a depiction of a man being tortured By demons while he died in the bed with the number 666 on the headboard. As I listened to the music and read the lyrics sheet it struck me, all of a sudden, that that which I had waited months to get meant very little because of my new found faith. The lyrics, the art, the vibe, didn’t fit with the new me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the album, one of Sabbath’s best, but in that moment in time, I realized that that which I had waited for seemed insignificant to that which I just found.

A wonderful thing about Waiting is that it serves as a time to learn. We often don’t see it until the waiting is over, but it is in the times of waiting, in the times of Tarry, that we learn who we are and who we are not, we learn of our strength, and our ability to hang on just a little longer.

Another interesting thing about waiting is that it shapes us. The waiting process is a molding process where we learn what it means to pray, to believe, to practice patience, to learn truth about ourselves and the world we live in.

And perhaps the most frustrating experience of waiting is when we are waiting for God to act. We believe, we trust, we hope, we hold on, but still we wait. Sometimes we want to yell out like Job, enough of this waiting - God show up.

And the promise in the waiting is this, God will show up (for God has never been away from us). It may not be in the way we want God to show up, maybe not the way we’d like it to be, but God will be present with us and we will discover, even if we have to wait, that God is always with us, always beside us.

As we wait, on God, we hold onto the words that tradition says were written on the wall in the Jewish ghetto in Poland during the Nazi occupation,

‘I believe in the sun even when it isn’t shining,

I believe in love even when I cannot feel it

I believe in God even when God is silent.”

If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Sometimes, that’s all we have to hold on to.

Amen.