Zephaniah 3:14-20
December 15, 2024
Have
yourself a merry little Christmas
Let
your hearts be light
From
now on, our troubles will be out of sight
Happy
golden days of yore
Faithful
friends who are dear to us
Gather
near to us once more
If
there is a secular Christmas song that brings tears to my eyes, it’s this one. When
I started celebrating Christmas apart from my parents and my family of origin,
the song Have Yourself a Merry Little
Christmas took its place at the top of my list of holiday tearjerkers. If
you are familiar with the musical, Meet Me In St. Louis, this is the
song that Judy Garland’s character sings to her little sister as they deal with
the prospect of leaving their beloved home in St. Louis and moving to New York
for their father’s job. I’m sure it was written to evoke all the sentiment and
longing that makes itself known at this time of year, and of course, Judy
Garland sang it with such pathos that welling up seems like the most natural
response to have. In the movie this family hasn’t even left their home in St.
Louis yet, but just the thought of it, the overwhelming and inescapable reality
of it has them homesick for what they will be leaving behind.
Homesickness
is something that we tend to write off as an emotion a kid feels the first time
they go away to camp or college. They miss their family and friends and pets
and room, but after a few days they get used to the newness, make friends, and
they’re fine. But I’m here to tell you that homesickness is real, and it is not
limited to kids away at camp. Like I said, the first Christmas that I didn’t go
“home” to my parent’s house, I was much older than a kid, and I was so homesick
that I cried myself into a sinus infection. Homesickness is real, and it can
strike at any age and for any reason.
So,
if I could cry myself sick – literally – from homesickness because I missed
spending Christmas with my parents and in my childhood home, how excruciating
would the homesickness be if the home you knew and loved was destroyed? How
terrible would the homesickness be if you were in exile from your homeland or a
refugee, forced to flee your home, your land, your country because of war,
violence, oppression? That kind of homesickness would be devastating and exhausting.
It would leave you weary in body and spirit and overwhelmed by the brokenness
of the world.
It was to this weariness and
soul-tiredness that the prophets of the first testament 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. Instead of building up, God
will tear down. Instead of fashioning and forming, God will dismantle and demolish.
Not exactly hopeful words to hear, are they? Zephaniah’s prophecies 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 astray the people they were supposed to serve and unite. 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.” God would gather them in and bring them
home.
These are such beautiful and
powerful words of hope. If only they would come to fruition, not only in the
time of Zephaniah but in our time as well. Yet 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 unconsciously
or subconsciously hope for this to happen. Instead of longing for the triumph
of the trinity, God the Father, the 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 meant when we think of God rushing in – then or
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 religious and political leadership
to task because justice did not prevail, that also meant they were not living
righteously. 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 true. When we acknowledge the humanity in others, we cannot help but
seek justice for them.
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, instead 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, a long time away from the
people God professed to love, but in truth, God had always been there. God had
never left them. It was they who had left God.
Maybe this is what John the
Baptizer wanted the people who came to him in the wilderness to understand as
well. Stop thinking that you’re fine just because Abraham is your ancestor.
That is not a free pass for living as God called you to live. And when the
people asked John what they should do, he told them, as Debie Thomas put it, to
go home.
Go home and give a coat to someone
who has none. Go home and make sure that someone who is hungry is fed. Go home
and conduct your work honestly. Go home and take care of the other people
around you. Go home and live justly and righteously. God has not left you; you
have left God. So, go home and do what God calls you to do, live as God calls
you to live, be who God calls you to be.
Those crowds who stood before John
probably didn’t consider themselves homesick. We can assume that at least some
of them had homes and hearths of their own, families and work, and communities.
But what drew them to John in the first place? Maybe they weren’t homesick in
the traditional definition of the word, but perhaps they were heartsick which
is another kind of homesickness. Perhaps they were longing for what they knew
could be but was not yet. Maybe they were heartsick for something, for someone,
for which they did not yet have words. And John’s words, harsh as they were,
resonated with their heartsickness and their homesickness, their longing for light
and love and joy, their longing for God.
On dark days, when the brokenness of
the world feels overwhelming and the news is too much to bear, 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 hearts of those who
are fearful and into those who use fear against others. 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 ease my heartsickness and my homesickness. Rush
in 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, and gather me in. Rush in and bring me home. Rush in, O
God, and bring us all home.
Let all of God’s children say,
“Alleluia!”
Amen.
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