2025.11.09 | The Stones Will Cry Out

“The Stones Will Cry Out”
Habakkuk 2:6–12

Preached by 
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser 
Eden United Church of Christ  
Hayward, CA 
09 November 2025

Last week I preached on the importance of raising stones  because they tell a story long after we’re gone. I spoke of retelling those stories, of honoring our ancestors and the freedom fighters who have gone before us — that great cloud of witnesses who help us run this race. Stacking stones of remembrance, as our ancestors did, is how we make memory visible — how we build a witness that will not fade.

But today, the prophet Habakkuk reminds us: even if we forget, even if we try to silence the truth or bury it beneath concrete — the stones themselves will cry out. They will not be quiet. They carry memory, and memory is resistance. Even the pillars erected through pillaging carry a plea for justice that will not be silenced.

In chapter two, the book takes a dramatic turn. We move from the back-and-forth between the prophet and God into a new kind of literature altogether: a taunt song, a ridicule, a public reckoning.

Now it is no longer Habakkuk or God speaking. It is the nations themselves — those who have been conquered and silenced — finally finding their voice to confront the empire that crushed them. The victims become the narrators. Their chorus of woes becomes both accusation and prophecy — the cry of the oppressed echoing back against the empire that tried to erase them.

“The very stones will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the woodwork will respond.” Those who build wealth by plundering, those who construct security on the backs of others, those who take and take and take will have their reckoning.

Each stanza begins with the Hebrew word hôy — woe — a word that once opened funeral laments and is now used by the prophets to announce the death of empire itself. Woe unto you…

Imperial power is mocked and stripped bare. A day is coming when unjust wealth will be reclaimed by those from whom it was stolen.

Verse seven even imagines debtor nations rising up to become creditor nations, giving deeper collective meaning to our prayer, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

That kind of reversal terrifies empire. It’s why we hear the fear-filled rhetoric of “invasion” and “replacement.” It’s why DHS propaganda has taken on a Goebbels effect, “Defend against the invaders within.”

And it’s why today the Presidential Determination for refugee admittance for 2026 has been slashed to just 7,500, the lowest in U.S. history, down from a norm of 125,000, a 94% reduction, with most slots already reserved for white Afrikaners. It’s why asylum seekers now face a $100 fee just to apply, and another $100 each year while they wait.

It’s why Temporary Protected Status has ended for Honduras, Nicaragua, South Sudan, Venezuela — and soon Syria. This is the modern architecture of fear — policy as fortress. 

La semana pasada prediqué sobre levantar piedras, símbolos que mantienen vivas las historias de nuestros ancestros y dan testimonio mucho después de nuestra partida. Pero hoy, Habacuc nos recuerda que, incluso si olvidamos, las piedras mismas clamarán; portan la memoria, y la memoria es resistencia. En el capítulo dos, las naciones silenciadas encuentran su voz, entonando un canto de burla contra el imperio. Su coro de lamentos —cantos fúnebres contra la tiranía— declara que quienes amasan riquezas mediante el saqueo enfrentarán su propia perdición, mientras los oprimidos se alzan en busca de justicia. Tales reversiones aterrorizan al imperio, cuyo eco aún resuena hoy en la retórica de la «invasión» y el miedo al extranjero.

Habakkuk’s “woes” are not curses — they are warnings and funeral songs for a dying empire.
“Woe to those who build their house by unjust gain,” says the prophet.
“Woe to those who build a city with blood.”

The prophet mocks Babylon’s illusion of permanence — as if walls and wealth can outlast truth. As if tyranny can stand forever.

But the prophet insists: The same materials used to build oppression — the same bricks, the same budgets, the same laws — will one day cry out against their makers. Because tyranny is suicide.
Their violence rebounds.
Their plunder becomes their prison.
Their security becomes their shame.

As political scientist Chalmers Johnson wrote, “empire cannot control the long-term effects of its policies.” He called it blowback — when empire’s weapons return upon itself, a nation reaps what it sows. Habakkuk called it justice. Ultimately, tyranny is intolerable, an unjust system that has within it the seeds of its own destruction.

We know these “woes” are not just relegated to ancient history.
They echo through El Salvador, through Gaza, and through our own neighborhoods. Forty-four years ago in El Mozote, an entire village was massacred — 800 people, mostly women and children. A silence of cemeteries, they called it. But as Archbishop Oscar Romero said, “Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.”

The cry beneath the stones has never stopped.
The cry from the marble of complicit government buildings neither rests.

And as I prepare to travel with our Conference ministers, Pastors Rhina Ramos and Davena Jones and others, in a UCC delegation to El Salvador, we go not as tourists of tragedy but as pilgrims of peace in a violent world. We go to listen to the stones. To learn from those who have refused to be silenced. To bear witness to the cry that will not die. And learn from those that choose joy amid terror. Because Habakkuk’s woe is our witness. And our struggle toward justice takes all of God’s world.

Las desgracias de Habacuc no son maldiciones, sino advertencias: cantos fúnebres para un imperio moribundo. El profeta se burla de la ilusión de permanencia de Babilonia, declarando que los mismos materiales de la opresión clamarán algún día contra sus creadores. La tiranía es un suicidio; los imperios siempre siembran las semillas de su propia destrucción. Estas desgracias aún resuenan —desde El Mozote hasta Gaza y nuestras propias calles— recordándonos que la paz no es el silencio de los panteones. En mi viaje a El Salvador esta semana con la Pastora Rhina y otros peregrinos de paz, vamos a escuchar las piedras, a aprender de quienes se niegan a guardar silencio y a ser testigos de la alegría que perdura incluso bajo la sombra del imperio.

“Woe,” says the prophet, “to those who profit from pain.”
“Woe,” to those who build in oppression.”
“Woe,” to those who justify cruelty in the name of security.”

And we might add today:
Woe to those who call refugees invaders.
Woe to those who impose fees upon the desperate.
Woe to those who end protections for the vulnerable — TPS, asylum, SNAP — while building palaces of plenty for the few.

These policies are not neutral; they are immoral decisions.

A quote from Alicia Garza stayed with me:“We bring the things that shape us everywhere we go. Unless we are intentional about interrupting what we’ve learned, we will perpetuate it, even as we work hard for a better world.”

Friends, our call is to be interrupters of empire —
to interrupt the cycles of violence,
to interrupt the silence of cemeteries,
to interrupt the worship of power.

And that requires some unlearning.

But here’s the hope my friends: The stones are not only crying out in lament, they’re crying out in action.

The Supreme Court ruled this evening Friday that the administration could pause SNAP payments during the shutdown. The current administration has told states to undo any steps to provide full food stamp benefits to low-income families, threatening financial penalties if states do not comply. 180,000 of us in Alameda County are going without critical food support. Well, we haven’t just been wringing our hands. We’ve been organizing, gathering with our partners. Seeing this on the horizon, we put out the call to support Comida Para Cherryland.

And you responded. You’ve raised $29,000 so far — enough to restart Comida Express this week. Volunteers will be back on the streets delivering food this week. And this is just a start. These are living stones crying out — communities refusing to let despair have the last word. I am proud of us. 

The empire says, “There isn’t enough.” But we say, “There’s still bread to be broken and shared.”

Share foodnow.net with your neighbors. Collaborate. Organize. Reclaim hope. Alameda County Community Food Bank is ordering food back to pandemic levels and we’re gonna help get it out.

I hope to share more stories of action with you upon my return from Central America. 

«¡Ay de los que se lucran con el dolor, de los que edifican sobre la opresión, de los que justifican la crueldad en nombre de la seguridad!», dice el profeta. Y podríamos añadir: ¡Ay de los que llaman invasores a los refugiados y despojan de protección a los vulnerables mientras construyen palacios para unos pocos! Estos no son actos neutrales; son fallas morales. Sin embargo, incluso ahora, las piedras claman no solo con lamento, sino también con acción. Cuando se suspendieron los beneficios de CalFresh para 180.000 de los residentes del condado de Alameda, no esperamos; nos organizamos. Hemos recaudado ya $29,000 dólares para relanzar las entregas de comidas, piedras vivientes que proclaman que aún hay pan para partir y compartir. Habacuc nos ofrece dos anclas en tiempos como estos: la visión de la justicia inquebrantable de Dios y el registro histórico que muestra que los imperios caen y la opresión nunca perdura, nunca perdura. La tiranía se consume a sí misma, pero el amor se multiplica, y la justicia de Dios si perdura.

Habakkuk gives us two anchors in the face of injustice: the vision of God’s steadfast justice, and the record of history that shows empires fall and oppression never lasts. Together they remind us that God’s justice endures while tyranny is always temporary. Oppression consumes itself, but love multiplies.

So yes — the message is heavy.
But as people of faith, we do not live in the heaviness alone.
We end with joy not as escapism, but as resistance.

Because joy itself is an act of defiance.
Dancing in the ruins of empire is a way of saying, “You didn’t win.”
Feasting when others hoard is how we declare, “There is enough.”
Throwing a bigger party — a more inclusive, justice-filled, love-soaked party — is how we live resurrection in the face of tyranny. And oh yes, there will be a party. Be on the lookout for forthcoming announcements of our Justice & Joy Holiday Party. 

So, when the empire says, “Be afraid,” we throw the bigger party. When the world says, “There’s not enough,” we break more bread.

When violence invites our silence, we sing even louder — with the stones, with the ancestors, with all creation — until even the walls echo with justice. For we remember and foretell, that in the Kin-dom of God all are invited to feast, but the first shall be last. Amen.