What could possibly make God sing today?

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;
shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter Jerusalem!
¹⁵ The Lord has taken away the judgements against you,
he has turned away your enemies.
The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;
you shall fear disaster no more.
¹⁶ On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
Do not fear, O Zion;
do not let your hands grow weak.
¹⁷ The 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
¹⁸ as on a day of festival.^*
I will remove disaster from you,^*
so that you will not bear reproach for it.
¹⁹ I 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.
²⁰ At 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.
                           ~Zephaniah 3:14-20


   Today I wrestled with the lectionary from Luke, which follows last week’s passage. John the Baptiser’s words are full of condemnation for humanity’s violations of God’s law, and disregard for God’s deep desire for the people to live in peace with justice.  The condemnation may be even more appropriate today, in the wake of the horrific shootings in Connecticut yesterday, than almost any other time, including Luke’s.  We as a society have allowed this unthinkable thing to happen, killing children, destroying families, altering an entire community, and thus the world.  We deserve to be yelled at like John the Baptist raged at the people, descendants of Abraham, over their stubborn flirtation with evil. 

   So I will recommend that you read Luke 3:7-18 for background, and remember that in his call to repentance, John is saying “It isn’t enough that your granddaddy Abraham was a righteous man, devoted follower of God, establisher of your entire nation.  You can’t ride through life on Abraham’s coattails.  You have to cop some righteousness of your own.  The time is short.  Get on it.  Do something to turn this mess around…NOW!!!!”  And know, friends, that deep in my soul I just want to shout that message loud and clear, and pronounce my Amen and let that be my sermon for the third week of Advent.  With all my heart I wish that shouting prophecy would finally be enough to make the change happen that we need. 

   But my heart is breaking like I’m guessing your heart is breaking over the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School yesterday.  I am a resurrection preacher (which means that I have a compulsion to look for the promise of new life in the worst of situations), and this is the worst of situations.  So I went looking further in the lectionary for promise, and I stumbled across the passage above from a little known prophet named Zephaniah.  He seems to have been a disciple of Isaiah; there are recognizable Isaiah threads in his collection of writings.  His words are woven of two themes: condemnation and salvation.  God is the active agent in both, responding to what God sees in the people whom God loves and wastes a lot of holy hope on.  It will be helpful if you read all three chapters, because the grace and celebration in these closing verses makes no sense at all outside the context of the awfulness of what comes before.  Some terrible stuff is about to come down.  God is really angry with the people for messing up so badly, and there will be consequences!  I want to make clear that I do not embrace a concept of a capricious God who doles out rewards and punishments.  We who share a society experience natural outcomes of collective wise or unwise choices.  In truth, we only have to turn on the news to get a glimpse of the kinds of consequences that come from our inattention to how God calls us to live together in community. 

  I'll always remember the lecture Marjorie Suchocki gave in Process Theology in which she described the responsibility, and the power we have to magnify the lives of others.  In every instant God is initiating the next potential for our greatest good, and we have the freedom to say "yes" or "no" to God.  Our "yesses" open the way for the next possibility, and our "nos" actually limit God's effectiveness in the world.  In society, our "yes" to God also opens the way for the greatest possible good for those around us.  We have enormous power for good or evil by the way we care for and respond to one another. 

   The first verse of Chapter 2 says, “Gather together, gather, O shameless nation.”  Meaningful change begins with us coming together.  We can divide ourselves in arguments over whether the solution is gun control legislation or better mental health care or more secure school buildings or banning violent video games or teaching parenting skills, and if we do, all we will have accomplished (again) is dividing ourselves.  There is probably truth in all the suggestions, so what if we came together and explored all of them, asking what each of us can do to make a difference.  “Gather together,” he says.

   As Chapter 3 opens it looks like things aren’t going to change much.  The religious and political leaders are like roaring lions and evening wolves, attacking and devouring… the prophets are reckless, faithless people, the priests have profaned what is sacred... they have done violence to the law.  But the character of God has not changed…who still imagines the possibility of a transformed nation and is already planning the party for celebrating their repentance, their metanoia (John’s Greek word), their new way of being, “humble and lowly.”

   Suddenly in the lesson for today, the mood of this prophecy changes, projecting a vision of what it will be like when we come back to God… written in present perfect tense as though it has already been accomplished.  There’s the promise I’ve been looking for!  But wait… how on earth can the Israel of Zephaniah's day sing, in present tense, when the nation had not yet been restored?  How can we sing when our hearts are breaking over a shooting in a school that just happened yesterday?  Don’t ask the people of Sandy Hook to sing today.  Not today, and maybe not for a long time.  It is the present perfect tense of the prophet’s words that get in my way.  

   How can we sing out loud when we are afraid?  “Do not fear, O Zion (Jerusalem); do not let your hands grow weak.  The Lord, your God, is in your midst….” You are not alone.  Even if I believe that God is present in our darkest times (and I do), the darkness is real.  And it is very dark.  But a resurrection preacher knows that while the darkness lingers, it will not consume me.  This darkness which envelopes God’s people will not consume them.  Speaking for God, the prophet reminds us that when there is this much brokenness, the potential for the most profound healing lies ahead.  Prophets didn't waste their words on feel-good messages.  This is difficult stuff.  The healing that we need so badly will require hard work, and a willingness to consider our personal responsibility toward society.  Slowly, surely, hope will find an opening and begin to emerge. 

   What is it then that could make God sing – the same Holy One whose heart is breaking with ours?  Look at the scripture again.  God will sing when the people sing.  Sometimes the people can’t sing.  God waits.  When the hearts that are breaking within us can finally sing, our God whose heart has been breaking, too, will echo back our song!  Nothing could make God happier than for the people to be restored.  As healing occurs, God will rejoice over the people with gladness and renew the people with love.  Today is a little too soon.  But someday when we are ready, God will sing to us from a big old stage in a God-concert, like at a festival.  The prophet said so.  Amen.

A prayer for today:  We are waiting, God.  It is dark in our world, though we have heard the promise that there will be light.  How long will we have to wait?  Are you here with us, or are we really as alone as we feel?  This aching void is almost unbearable.  Give us a sign, a word of hope, a sense of your coming.  Amen.

 

© Rev. Linda Miller, December 15, 2012.

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