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December 16, 2012
Third Sunday of Advent
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.
Sermon:
“The
king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst;
you
shall fear disaster no more.”
What an
impossible statement. It is outlandish
to think that a life – or even a day – without some degree of fear is
achievable. But to think of fear being
“no more”? That seems impossible. Especially today. Disaster is all around us: in the tragic, senseless
killing of twenty-six people in a Connecticut elementary school, twenty of
them, children.
If we
were to share these words of scripture: “The LORD is in your midst; you shall
fear disaster no more” with the parents and grandparents who will be without
their children and grandchildren this Christmas and for all the Christmases to
come, whose lives were shattered with the news that a place that should always
be safe and good turned violent and terrible, it would sound callous,
superficial, and deeply, deeply insensitive.
In a
word, quoting this scripture passage from Zephaniah at a time like this would
sound cold. Which is exactly how it
would have sounded at the time the prophet Zephaniah first uttered these words.
You see,
the lectionary takes us back in today’s prophetic reading, to the time of
Jeremiah, back into the Babylonian exile, back into the occupation of the
people of Israel, like the heartbreaking news taking our Christmas cheer back
to the brink of despair.
Zephaniah
uttered these bold words of challenge and hope to a people broken in every way:
broken by their own sinfulness and the sinfulness of the world, broken by loss
of land, life and family, broken by loss of identity and even faith.
When
they were most certainly weeping at the constant violence they faced and
crippled by the insecurity of a precarious life, where survival seemed
impossible, Zephaniah told them to sing.
Sing!
Why in
the world would you sing when life is at its bleakest? How would you find the voice to sing when you
consume fear all day long and are completely consumed by it as the darkness of
night falls? When God seems to slumber
or ignore the rampant injustice all around?
Why would you sing praise to the one who seems to have abandoned you,
allowing the horrors of this world to have free reign?
Perhaps,
reflecting on the time of Zephaniah and our own time, it is precisely in that
dire, desperate place that we most need to sing. To raise our voices above the voices of
hatred, violence and death and sing out that somehow, in ways we will never
understand, God is in our midst. That
God chose to enter this world where unspeakably terrible things can happen, and
that this same God chooses to enter this troubled world again, and again, and
again.
If we
fail to sing, if we fail to hold fast to that inexplicable trust in our
Creator, and allow these times of marked suffering to silence us, then despair
will have won.
Then,
all we will hear are words of vengeance and retaliation, of hatred and fear. We cannot let these be the only voices
heard.
Though
we sing through tears and bitter anger, we must sing of the goodness of
God. We sing because that is the only
way we can survive the bitter pain of this life. We sing because we need to be reminded that
God is with us, even if that reminder comes through our own struggling,
doubting voice. We sing, that even for a
moment, we might glimpse something of beauty in this world. We sing, that others might know that they are
not alone in their sorrow.
Maya
Angelou captures this survival-singing in her poem, “I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings.” I share it with you now:
The free bird leaps
on the back
of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips
his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares
to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his
narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars
of rage
his wings are clipped and
his
feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with
fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed
for still
and his tune is heard
on the
distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of
freedom.
The free bird thinks of another
breeze
and the trade winds soft through
the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a
dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the
grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare
scream
his wings are clipped and his
feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing
The caged bird sings
with a
fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for
still
and his tune is heard
on the
distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of
freedom.
We sing
of things unknown but longed for still.
Of a time when Christ will return to wipe away every tear from our
eyes. Of a time when gun violence will
stop being commonplace in our nation. Of
at time when those struggling with mental illness will find the help they
need. Of a time when parents will not
have to fear for the lives of their children. We sing of freedom: freedom from
death, pain, tragedy and brokenness. We
sing, even as these things still cage us, of the One who is, always has been,
and always will be in our midst.
Because
our greatest act of defiance to evil,
our greatest act of solidarity with the
bereaved,
our greatest act of honoring the lives lost,
our greatest act of hope
in our coming Savior, is our song. Amen.