Before Your Eyes

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Can you remember a moment from this past year in which you felt joy? Maybe there have been many such moments. But think back to those moments of joy and consider this: was joy a lonely experience? My assumption is that your moment of joy has something to do with others, whether being with or thinking about family, friends, neighbors and loved ones. For me, the two moments joy that stick out this year are my younger brothers’ weddings. Family and friends getting together for the sole purpose of sharing and affirming love. Joy is built upon such foundations of belonging, togetherness and community.

We often celebrate Christ as the “cornerstone” of the church, but it occurs to me that one stone does not a foundation make. Paul tells the Ephesians that Christ is the “cornerstone,” who completes the foundation of God’s household along with the “apostles and prophets.” The Advent season is one in which we, as the church, reexamine the foundations of our joy. The joy of Christmas is built on the foundation laid by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, John, Paul, Peter. Christ is the cornerstone of this foundation by filling in space between the prophecies foretelling the coming of a Messiah and the words of the apostles who proclaim the prophecies have been fulfilled in Christ Jesus!

Advent gives us a chance to “Prepare the way of the Lord!” (to use the words of Isaiah) by engaging with the foundational texts of our faith and by examining the way that faith has been shaped, and stretched, and challenged, and grown throughout the history of the people who claim it as their own. This is the faith to which we belong, the history to which we belong, the people to whom we belong. And joy is built upon such foundations of belonging.

Part of the joy of Christmas comes from being able to relate to the conditions of those to whom Zephaniah originally prophesied these words: “Rejoice, Daughter Zion! Shout, Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, Daughter Jerusalem. The Lord has removed your judgment; he has turned away your enemy.” We belong to the history of these words and so we can also claim them as words to us. We might not have the same reasons for judgment, or the same enemies as the people of Judah to whom Zephaniah originally spoke, but we do have similar obstructions to joy. You might feel judgement through guilt, shame, comparing yourself to others, unmet expectations. You might claim fear, depression, loneliness as your enemies…or you might be able to place a few specific names in that category. Wherever your judgment comes from “the Lord has removed it”, whatever or whoever you claim as your foe, “they have been turned away.”

Zephaniah was speaking to a community with significant obstructions to joy. “I will deliver the lame, I will gather the outcast, I will change shame into praise.” These are not words you speak to an already joyful people. These are words to a currently struggling people. These are words which lay the foundation upon which joy can be built. These are words to a people who have lost their homeland, lost their temple, been kicked out of their neighborhoods; these are words that remind them they still belong to one another and they still belong to God. And joy is built upon such foundations of belonging.

One of the problems of skipping the Advent season and jumping straight into Christmas is that we miss the chance to prepare for joy, to address the obstacles we face with honesty and humility over time. But I want to be well now, I want to feel happy now, I don’t want to spend any more time addressing my depression, anxiety, inner conflict. Such impatience only exacerbates my depression and anxiety by suggesting it is inappropriate for me to feel this way. “People sometimes get quite annoyed with themselves unnecessarily,” says Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “especially when they have thoughts and feelings that are really quite natural. I think we’ve got to accept ourselves as we are. And then hope to grow [from there].”

From personal experience with depression, especially this time of year, there are days when the light of hope and peace and joy seem extinguished. I know what it’s like to walk in darkness. There were even moments of darkness and sadness I experienced while afloat in the joy of my brothers’ weddings. One of the most common feelings associated with this darkness, at least for me, is loneliness. It’s a feeling like I don’t belong anywhere. Rationally, it doesn’t make any sense, because I am surrounded by family, friends, community, and church who do love and care for me; but emotionally the feeling of detachment and non-belonging is very real and very heavy. Every year I hope to have prepared myself well enough to be able to escape these feelings, or at least dwell in their presence with a bit more inner light. But when they settle on me, again and again, it’s easy to feel discouraged that my soul is still in exile after all this time, to feel ashamed that I haven’t prepared myself well enough to cope.

Zephaniah “was the first prophetic voice to be heard in Judah since the time of Isaiah and Micah, [over sixty years earlier].” They could teach me a thing or two about exile. Can you recognize the audacity of Zephaniah’s words to this people, now? Generations have been stuck in exile. Those remaining in Babylon don’t even remember Jerusalem except through the words of Scripture they share in worship. Perhaps they feel discouraged to still be in exile after all this time, perhaps they feel ashamed. To them, Zephaniah shares this promise from God, “I will change your shame into praise and fame throughout the earth. At that time, I will bring all of you back, at the time I will gather you. I will give you fame and praise among your neighbors when I restore all of your possessions before your eyes.”

These people have been asked to hold onto faith and hope, but the time is coming when these promises will be fulfilled “before your eyes,” so that they will be able to see and know that God is there, in their midst. God will gather them from places of exile and abandonment; to be gathered in such a way is to be reminded of their belonging to something that they can’t control. Shame will be transformed to praise when they stop beating themselves up for conditions they can’t control.

This is the message of Advent that I often miss: the reminder that I don’t control Christmas. Preparing for Christmas is very different from controlling the conditions in which God comes to dwell with us. Do not be depressed by the manger. Do not be ashamed of the lowly mother. Do not be discouraged by the darkness. These current conditions do not control how the story ends. These are the conditions in which the promise of God is about to be fulfilled “before your eyes.” In Christ, we are able to see and know that God is here to gather us up. Is there any greater way to be reminded that we belong to God than for God to appear before our eyes as one of us?

“In an Advent sermon, Lutheran Larry A. Hoffsis saw the promises of Zephaniah 3:14-20 fulfilled in Christ: ‘The King of Israel, present in our midst, as we gather around his table; God’s judgment removed by the peace which God offered in the outstretched and nail-printed hands of our Lord; our enemies cast out at the empty tomb and the last enemy, death, destroyed; our hands and hearts strengthened and made courageous down through the centuries by Christ’s abiding presence; the church caught up in the [joyous] song of victory.’”[1] The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light; on you who still dwell in the land of darkness, the light will dawn before your eyes. Darkness cannot be permanent for a people who belong to the light. The arrival of Christ is a powerful pronouncement that we belong to the light, that we belong to God. Joy is built upon such foundations of belonging. Let the light of joy grow.

[1] Achtemeier, Elizabeth. “Nahum-Malachi” from Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 1986, Westminster-John Knox. Louisville, KY. 87.