Zephaniah
3:14-20
December 13,
2015
Someday at Christmas
Men won’t be boys
Playing with bombs
Like kids play with toys
One warm December
All hearts will see
A world where men are free
Someday at Christmas
There’ll be no wars
When we have learned
What Christmas is for
When we have learned
What life’s really worth
There’ll be peace on earth
I’ve realized that at this time of
year I’m a lot like Pavlov’s dog. NOT because when I hear the ring of a bell I
start salivating for food; but there are certain phrases and certain songs that
immediately fill my eyes with tears.
“Daddy, teacher says, ‘Every time a
bell rings an angel gets its wings.’” This closing line from the movie It’s a Wonderful Life is definitely a phrase
that starts the tears flowing. When I started celebrating Christmas apart from
my parents, the song Have Yourself a
Merry Little Christmas took its place on my list of Holiday Tearjerkers.
And in these last years, this song by R&B artist, Mary J. Blige, has joined
that list as well. Technically, it falls under the category of secular
Christmas music, but the hope and longing that it voices spans the divide
between secular and sacred.
Peace on earth. That is our hope and
our desire, isn’t it? Peace on earth. Peace between nations. Peace between
nations and neighbors. Peace in our homes and peace in our hearts. Yet, it
seems that we have never been further away from peace then we are at this
moment, right now. Three years ago,
about this time, I stood in the pulpit in the big church and tried to voice our
heartbreak after the terrible shooting of children and teachers in Newtown.
That day I thought that it couldn’t be much darker than that, but today the
darkness is even thicker, denser and more suffocating than it was then. A world
of peace seems more like a fantasy; one that is nice to daydream about but that
you know will never come to pass. People everywhere claim to want peace, but
actions speak louder than words. The collective actions of people here and
people elsewhere speak more of violence and hatred than they do of peace and
peacemaking. I want to be a peacemaker. I want to work and strive for peace. I
feel it is the essence of my call, my vocation to do that, but I no longer know
where to begin.
The truth is, I am exhausted. I am
weary in body and spirit by the hatred and the violence in our world. I am
weary and heartbroken and tired of hate-filled rhetoric and violence and
fear-mongering. I’m just tired. Aren’t you? I am overwhelmed with the
brokenness of the world. I know that I contribute to that brokenness, but I
don’t know how to change course. I want to stay true to the path I have been
called to walk, but my feet aren’t just slipping and sliding off the path, they
feel weighted with lead. I just want to lie down, cover my head, shut out the
sound of the world’s sorrows and sleep.
It was to this weariness of body and
spirit that the prophets spoke. Certainly, that is true for Zephaniah.
Zephaniah is not a prophet we hear from very often. His book is a quick read,
only three chapters. But those three chapters are intense. The first two are
packed with prophesies of destruction.
Chapter 1, verses 2 and 3: “I will
utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, says the Lord. I will
sweep away humans and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the
fish of the sea. I will make the wicked stumble. I will cut off humanity from
the face of the earth, says the Lord.”
It is almost like the creation story
in reverse. Instead of creating, God will destroy. Not exactly hopeful words to
hear, are they? Zephaniah’s words were aimed at the leadership of the day; both
political and religious. The homes and the lives of the people lay in ruin, but
those who had the power to effect change did nothing. More often than not, it
was those in power who were indirectly and directly responsible for that ruin.
Zephaniah called the leaders to
accountability. God would rush in, he warned them, with judgment for their
apostasy and their corruption. God would rush in with fierce retribution for
the ways they led the people they were supposed to serve astray. The great day
of the Lord would descend upon Israel’s enemies – without and within. But then,
in what seems to be an abrupt about face, Zephaniah closes his message with the
words of hope we read this morning. Zephaniah called the people to rejoice and
to exult with all their hearts because the judgments against them would be
taken away. God would rush into their midst, to judge but also to redeem. God
would rush in, both calling the people to task and offering forgiveness for
their sins. No more were the people to fear destruction and devastation.
Instead the Lord who rushed in would rejoice over them with gladness and song.
The God who rushed into their midst would “remove disaster from them, save the
lame, gather the outcast, change their shame into praise, bring them home, and
gather them in.”
These are such beautiful and
powerful words of hope. If only they would come to fruition right now, on this
dark day, in this dark time. I’m probably not alone in that, but I wonder if we
confuse what it means for God to rush in. At first reading of these verses in
Zephaniah, it sounds as if the Lord will rush in like the cavalry does in old
westerns. Just when all seems lost, God rushes into the midst of the battle,
turns the tide and saves the day. We may not consciously wish for this, but
perhaps we do hope for this reality. Instead of longing for the triumph of the
trinity, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we wait for the coming of the
Lone Ranger, Tonto and the strains of the William Tell Overture. Yet I don’t
think that is what it means for God to rush in. I don’t think that is what it
meant when Zephaniah rose up as a prophet; I don’t think that is what it means
now.
In Hebrew and in the context of the
Old Testament – and in the New Testament as well – righteousness and justice
always walked hand-in-hand. If Zephaniah called the leadership to task because
justice did not prevail, it was because they were not living righteously
either. Paraphrasing the words of another scholar, there is a great difference
between righteousness and self-righteousness. Living righteously means seeing
the humanity in others. It means recognizing the humanity in both the victim
and the criminal. It means acknowledging the humanity of the poor, and the
humanity of the enemy, the different, the outcast, the refugee. On the other
hand self-righteousness degrades humanity. It denies the humanity of those who
are different and those who are suffering. It vilifies the least of these, and
demonizes the poor and the outcast. Justice is warped and twisted when we live
self-righteously. But when we seek to live righteously, acknowledging the
humanity in all, then we cannot help but seek to live justly as well. When we
deny the humanity in others, denying them justice is easy. However the opposite
is equally as true. When we acknowledge the humanity in others, we cannot help
but seek justice for them as well.
It seems to me that when Zephaniah
prophesied that God would rush into the midst of the people, it was not as the
cavalry or the Lone Ranger. It was because God was calling on the people to
once again live as God created them to live. It was because God was calling the
people to be the people God created them to be. When the people returned to
righteousness, it would not be a case of them saving themselves, but they would
no longer be living in a way that pushed God out. It might seem that God would
rush into their midst after a long absence, but in truth, God had always been
there. God had never left them. It was they who had left God.
I find myself praying for God to
rush in. Please God, rush into this dark world. Rush into the hearts of those
who believe that the way to follow you is by killing others. Please God, rush
into the lives of those who ease their suffering by causing the suffering of
others. Please God, rush into the minds of those who use fear as a way to
control, and who demonize others to advance their own agenda. And before I get
caught up in my own perceived goodness and stumble into self-righteousness, do
the same for me. Rush into those places where I have pushed you out. Rush into
the needs I think I can satisfy on my own. Rush into my wrong belief that I can
save myself. Rush in, God, and remind me that you never rushed out. Remind me
that you have never left me or abandoned me. Rush into my life, God. Rush in,
so that I can rush into the lives of others, to love and serve your people with
righteousness, justice and joy. Rush in, O God. Rush in.
Let all of God’s people say,
“Alleluia!” Amen.
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