Habakkuk

As I stilled myself in preparation to sit with the words of the prophet Habakkuk, I heard these words in my spirit:

“The prophetic is queer and the queer is prophetic.”

They first came to me like a whisper carried on a gentle wind then grew in strength until I heard them roar like the rush of the powerful bodies of water that center and soothe my spirit when it gets weary.

The increase in intensity and amplification of the spiritual volume I felt around this thought stayed with me as I prayerfully read the book’s text. Sitting with Habakkuk’s three chapters helped me see that there is absolutely an interplay between possessing a prophetic and queer identity because these two orientations work towards the same ends. That’s because at the heart of both queerness and the prophetic nature lies a yearning to create space for knowing, subvert normativity, and open up possibilities for connection and care.

Knowing and being known are pretty central to the book of Habakkuk and its structure. From the onset of this oracle, Habakkuk is putting his need to be seen out there. He opens this text boldly declaring “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?” (Hab 1:2 NRSVUE). There’s no posturing or faux humility to be found here – just words full of desperation, grief, and a desire to have the conditions weighing down his spirit be recognized and responded to by God. Habakkuk takes the first arc of this writing and uses it to express a lamentation. His words invite both God and the reader to his discontent at seeing violence, strife, and corruption impact the world around him.

We see the prophet ask God why he is being forced to bear witness to “wrongdoing…and trouble” (Hab 1:3). The way Habakkuk frames his words makes me wonder if he was feeling the sort of loneliness that comes with entering into the knowledge that injustice is prevailing and wondering if anyone else “gets” it…or gets you. I think that’s why he boldly cries out and tells his Creator to pay attention to him because he is speaking and he needs to be seen. He needs to be heard. He needs the conditions he is living under to be recognized so that an intervention and reprieve for him and his people can come into view.

A cry like this feels pretty intimate to me. While we all communicate in different ways, many of us reserve the most raw and pressing things for those who we know and trust. God knows Habakkuk and Habakkuk knows God and I believe it’s from that posture that the prophet speaks. Stripping conversational dross away is hella queer and prophetic because the degrees of knowing that these things make space for means that authenticity and audacity are often valued or embraced. Also, the precarity of life faced by queer folks and those calling attention to injustice means that there isn’t time, energy, or space to waste putting on airs or being fake.

This sort of intimacy shared by Habakkuk and God creates space for a subversion of religious normativity that feels sort of delightful. So many people are taught that a relationship with God has to be tempered by (a somewhat narrow interpretation) of respect, reverence, obedience, adherence to power dynamics, and sacrifice. Habakkuk’s text pushes at this in the first two chapters. After Habakkuk’s plea not only does God talk back, the Divine response that’s offered is one full of wisdom, drama, recognition, and shade. Much of the second chapter of Habakkuk is God reading the unjust in Habakkuk’s word for filth. The prophet’s account has God calling them arrogant, prideful people whose greed and consumption is as vast as death itself (Hab 2:4-5). That’s before verses 6-11 transition into God speaking about the coming uprising of the downtrodden that will displace the unearned glory of the unjust and usher in an era of shame and plunder as the consequence of the violence they exercised in the world. Verses 18 to 20 are a Divine mic drop where God’s final words indicate that the gods of the haughty are expensive, breathless trash with the inability to be responsive. This call and response between God and Habakkuk is marked by such a sharp, clear, revelatory, and passionate dialogue. This reads as queer and prophetic because God isn’t stirred by sacrifice or ritual, God expresses care because of witnessing what is happening. The sense of subversion continues because the text suggests that recompense for harm will come through both Divine and human response. This framing suggests that there is space for God and the oppressed to co-labor together so that relief and release can come.

The only reason we know any of this is that God tells Habakkuk to document their exchange. The scriptures show Divine instruction leading Habakkuk to “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it” (Hab 2: 2). This is a brilliant move because writing things down helps to capture a moment of time which can create a sense of connection and community. Words that are externalized and shared can do things like combat loneliness, inspire and encourage, and highlight obscured histories so long as the text survives. Storytelling helps to create a sense of legacy that helps people feel understood so that they can hope someone accompanies them in their journeys or responds to their needs. Because Habakkuk had sense enough to listen we can see a snapshot of his world and maybe even find a bit of hope in the idea that those who’ve gone on before us have cried out to God for relief in ways that feel familiar to us. Writings like this can help us feel less alone as we form and find community and spaces knowing with spiritual ancestors, God, and others and that is deeply queer and prophetic in nature.

Habakkuk reminds me that there is room to know and be known by God. God can meet and collaborate with me and others for our relief, and it is possible to form sacred connections and community that transcend space and time. And all it takes is to achieve all this is to use my voice and share story and experiences like this prophet did long ago when he wrote this short, queer, prophetic text that became scripture over time.

Alicia T. Crosby (she/her) is a writer & justice educator whose work intentionally interrogates the connections between systemic, interpersonal, and spiritual harm and healing.

Alicia’s writing credits include contributions for the NYT Bestseller A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal, The Words of Her Mouth: Psalms for the Struggle, Blavity, the Human Rights Campaign, The Windy City Times, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and Sojourners.

This churchy Black, Queer, super Taurus from NYC enjoys napping, cutting up in her group chats, and kicking with her love Alexis in Durham, NC. You can connect with Alicia on all platforms via @AliciaTCrosby or at www.aliciatcrosby.com.