SING. PRAY. GO HOME.
A Message on Zephaniah 3:14-20
December 16, 2012—3rd Sunday of
Advent
First Christian Church—Palestine, IL
Rev. Dennis A. Steckley
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION
There’s an old gospel hymn that reminds us, “You may have the
joybells ringing in your heart.” That’s a good thought for today because the
third Sunday of Advent carries the special theme of joy. Traditionally,
it’s called Gaudete Sunday. If you remember your high school Latin,
you’ll recognize gaudete as an imperative. The word means “joy,” and so
gaudete is “you will have joy.” I’m reminded of what is said to be an old
drinking song, Gaudeamus Igitur, which says, in English:
Let us rejoice,
therefore,
While we are young.
After a pleasant
youth
After a troubling old
age
The earth will have
us.
Now, I’m not recommending that you find your joy in
drinking! It may work for the short term, but in the long run, that will not
give you a lasting joy at all. Potentially it may give you something completely
other!
Indeed, though Advent is meant to lean more toward the
serious side as we prepare for the Second Coming of Christ, this third Sunday is
a bit of an exception to the rule. We focus on the joy that we have through our
relationship with God—and I’m going to approach that by looking at four Rs we
find in the text—not the three Rs—readin’, ritin’, and ‘rithmetic, but four
Rs.
REJOICE
Our first R is rejoice. If ever there were a Biblical
theme, it would be rejoice. Over and over throughout the Bible we are told to
rejoice. The apostle Paul even says, “Rejoice in the Lord always”—and then to
be sure the hearers get it he adds, “And again I say rejoice [Philippians 4:4].
Now, I recognize that sometimes we go through times of great sorrow and we won’t
be jumping for joy then, but the general principle still holds. We rejoice not
because of external circumstances at any given moment, but because we have
faith in what God is doing. We believe that God is taking all the sorrows
and problems of this old world and somehow making them into a beautiful new
world that is yet to be revealed. Indeed, the process won’t be complete and the
new world won’t be revealed until the Second Advent we are remembering and
looking forward to.
This we accept on faith because we have found our God to be
trustworthy. Our God makes promises and our God keeps promises. As theologian
Jurgen Moltmann aptly points out, “Biblical thought always understands hope as
the expectation of a good future which rests on God’s promise.” You see, the
joy that comes from hope in God’s promise rests on two legs: first, the promise
itself, and second, the ability to fulfill that promise without
exception.
Now all of us can make promises, but we can’t always
keep them even with the best of intentions. I could stand here this
morning and promise to buy you all lunch at Llama’s after church. Please notice
the operative word there—I said “could,” not “would!”
But even had I sincerely said I would take you all to
lunch at Llama’s, I can’t guarantee that it would happen, no matter how sincere
my promise. I might, for example, trip going down the steps, God forbid, and
break my leg—like the doctor that fell in an old cistern and broke his leg. It
just goes to show that doctors should tend the sick and leave the well alone.
But if I fell on the steps and broke my leg, in that case, I wouldn’t be
taking you to Llama’s; instead, I’d probably be taking a ride in an ambulance.
I would have broken my promise even though I sincerely intended to keep
it.
All of us have that situation with any promise we make—our
hearts may be in the right place and we may be 100% sincere—but because of human
limitations, we can never absolutely guarantee we’ll be able to keep a
promise!
God doesn’t have that problem. Because God is God, God can
guarantee God’s promises. If God says something will be done, it will be
done! You can count on it. It’s money in the bank. So we can rejoice because
of the promises God has made; because of the promises God will
keep!
RESONATE
Second—and, yes, I’m pushing a bit to get four Rs out of
this, but the second one is resonate. By resonate, I mean God echoes and
shares our joy. Look at verse 17—it’s always been a favorite of mine: He
will sing and be joyful over you.
Perhaps you’ve seen that video clip on YouTube of the late
Mr. Rogers receiving an award at the TV Hall of Fame in 1999. One of the
surprises the planners of that event had in mind was to bring out Jeff Erlanger,
a young man in a wheelchair whom Mr. Rogers had interviewed eighteen years ago
when this young man with a lifelong disability was a child. When that young man
came out and Fred Rogers realized who it was, you could just see the excitement
in his face, in his body language. He was thrilled beyond words at this
expression of love that came back to him out of a lifetime of giving love,
compassion, and understanding.
You know, you can laugh at Mr. Rogers all you like. You can
make fun of his simplistic message if you wish. But for me, Mr. Rogers with his
calm demeanor, his love, his kindness, his compassion, his acceptance of all
people, makes him a Christ figure and a wonderful role model. He was a
committed Christian, you know. In fact, he was an ordained Presbyterian
clergyman! Mr. Rogers helps me understand what God is like simply by being able
to watch him.
Back to verse 17, God looks at us and starts singing! God is
that happy with God’s followers. God has given us joy, and God is so pleased at
that that God also has great joy—joy expressed in singing, in taking “delight in
you,” in giving you “new life.” God is filled with visible excitement and
overwhelming joy. Now I think that’s pretty nifty—God is so happy to see us that
his own emotions spill out. God resonates with us!
RESCUE
So, we have rejoice, resonate, and now, rescue. Look
at verse 19: The time is coming! I will punish your oppressors; I will
rescue all the lame and bring the exiles home. This is, of course, the
logical culmination of our own rejoicing and God’s resonance with that
rejoicing—because those are pointing forward to what God is doing. And God is
rescuing us, not from a foreign oppressor, but from our own sins, from the Evil
One who strives always to lead us away from God and move us in the wrong
direction. We are being rescued.
When I was in high school, I decided to read the book, The
Catcher in the Rye. I confess that the primary reason I wanted to read the
book was its reputation as a “dirty book.” You want a kid to read something,
tell him it’s dirty and he shouldn’t read it! Works every time.
Now, I’m not necessarily recommending it for young people;
there is certainly some immorality in the book, but I think it’s a great book.
It would probably make my own “top ten list” of the books that have influenced
me the most. Indeed, much of my philosophy of ministry is found in the
paragraph where Holden Caulfield describes what he’d like to be. It’s the
section from which the book gains its title:
Anyway, I keep picturing all these
little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of
little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm
standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch
everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and
they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch
them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I
know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.
Now, I suspect ministry ought to be a little more proactive
than just trying to stop people from falling off the cliff. It would probably
be a good idea to help build a fence at the edge of the cliff, for example! But
I want to be a “catcher in the rye!” And God wants to keep us from plunging
headlong off the cliff into the valley of despair and destruction. Our God is a
rescuing God. Our God reached out to us in that “while we were yet sinners
Christ died for us [Romans 5:8b].” Our God is a rescuing God. Our God is a
“catcher in the rye.”
RESTORE
And finally we come to restore. Verse 20 reminds us,
The time is coming! I will bring your scattered exiles home. We’re not
home, you see. We look forward to that eternal home which is yet to come for
all who are here today. I quote hymns—often two or three in a single message
because they so aptly describe things we’re talking about. Remember this
one:
This world is not my
home
I’m just a-passing
through.
If heaven’s not my
home,
Then Lord what will I
do?
The angels beckon
me
From heaven’s open
door,
And I can’t feel at home
In this world
anymore.
There are certainly days when I feel like that—but there are
also days when I feel more like the man who said, “Everybody wants to go to
heaven, but nobody wants to die.” After all, when God made this world, God
proclaimed it good—and despite the presence of sin and all the evils that
surround us, there is still much good in which to rejoice. There are still many
people who are kind and compassionate. A few months ago when I hit that deer
down south of Heathsville, it was about 11:00 at night. There weren’t many
people out at that time of night, but as I was waiting for the sheriff, the tow
truck, and my brother-in-law, three cars came along—and every one of them
stopped and asked if I needed help. I didn’t, but I was very grateful for their
willingness to help—and I thanked them all profusely for their kindness even as
I explained that I was okay and help was on the way.
Especially at Christmas we like to tell those stories of the
kindness of strangers and the friendly words spoken to and heard from folks we
don’t know. It can, indeed, be a magical time of year, but all those kindnesses
are but small hints of the world that is to come—a time when there will be no
harsh words, no backstabbing, no thefts, no murders, no horrific mass shootings;
it will be a world where as the apostle John tells us in the book of Revelation
[21:3-4]:
3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying,
Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they
shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their
God.
4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;
and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall
there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
5 And he that sat upon the throne
said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these
words are true and faithful.
This world is not our home, but it can be a good place along
the journey. Supposedly, Jesus said: This world is a bridge. Pass over it.
But build not your dwelling there. I say supposedly because that
saying is not found in the Bible, but on an ancient gateway in India. But it
may be authentic and I think it’s something Jesus would say.
Friends, for all the wonderful things about it, this world is
not our home and in God’s own time, we will be restored and dwell in the
house of the Lord forever. So may your hearts be filled with deep abiding
joy as we await the coming of the Christ—both the tiny baby whose birth we
celebrate and the coming king who will return in power and glory.
Amen.
