(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)

Zephaniah 3:14-20

14Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! 15The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. 16On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. 17The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing 18as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. 19I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. 20At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord.

So, in case you haven’t figured it out, I’ve tried to at least try to line up with our lectionary texts from Year A.  But, since there’s only three Scriptures plus a psalter each week, writing daily calls for some “fill in”.  This passage is normally read in the third week of Advent during Year C.  We actually only read from the book of Zephaniah three times throughout the three-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary, so we’re probably not experts on it.  The book is probably set during the time of King Josiah.  It was a time of indifference by the people.  Maybe they were tired; perhaps they were just a bit too comfortable; or possibly they just forgot who and whose they were.  They have been hearing an ongoing foretelling of a time of destruction, a time of divine judgment. (I guess that would make me tune out too!)  But then we come to this passage.  It is a voice of hope, foretelling salvation rather than destruction.  And it proclaims, “the Lord, your God, is in your midst.”

Think about what that means.  We’ve talked a lot in this series about waiting for the world to change, about what we do while we’re waiting, about ways to wait and ways to change.  And a lot of our Advent waiting is couched as waiting for God, waiting for the coming of God into our midst.  But this passage says that God is here.  What do we do with that?  So, if you’ve been waiting for a God that is “out there” or “up there” or somewhere “up ahead” waiting for us to catch up, this throws all of that off.  God is here.  God is with us.  God is here, waiting with us now.

I often wonder what the Old Testament prophets would say to us today.  I often think it’s possible that they would be shocked and disappointed that we haven’t come farther than we have, that we still operate out of weakness and fear, that we still allow our leaders to pursue power over justice, that we still do not offer care for the lame and outcasts, that we are still desperately waiting for the world to change.  Go back and read this.  How much of Zephaniah’s words apply?  Probably most of them, as much as I hate to admit it.  But then we read that God is in our midst.  God is here.  God is here now.  So, don’t you wonder what God thinks of our world?  Don’t you think God is sometimes frustrated with us, maybe even angry at times?  I mean, we haven’t come that far from those to whom Zephaniah spoke.

God is here.  Imagine God there with you, sitting with you, experiencing what you are experiencing, rejoicing in your joy and suffering in your sorrow.  When we do not welcome the immigrant, God is here.  When armed troops march into our cities to purge the other, God is here.  When we kill survivors clinging to boats, God is here.  When we do not provide food to the hungry or healthcare to the sick, God is here.  And when our world rocks with war and power struggles and desperation, God is here.  When our public rhetoric becomes wrought with exclusion and racism and xenophobia, God is here.  God is here.  God is not waiting until the world changes.  God is here now.

It reminds of W.B. Yeats famous poem, “The Second Coming”.  He wrote it at the end of World War I and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence, when the world was in chaos, when there was a fear that a new and brutal era would emerge.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

And God was there.  The Scripture we read ends with a promise, a promise of a gathering in, of a homecoming.  It ends with the promise that the world will change.  And God is here, in our midst.  We’re not waiting for God.  God is here, waiting, waiting for us, waiting with us for the world to change.  God did not come when things were perfect.  God waits with us, waiting with us for the world to change.  God comforts us and soothes us and, if we listen, WHEN we listen, will also give us ways to get closer to the vision that God holds for us all.  The Lord God is in your midst.

Bidden or unbidden, God is present. (Desiderius Erasmus, 1466-1536; also attributed to Carl Jung, but this quote was supposedly posted above the door at his house in Switzerland)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli