Prepare the Way Series: Do! Zephaniah 3:14-20
Well, we’re half way through the Advent season. Only nine more days until Christmas. Over the past few weeks or in the upcoming weeks it is likely that you will be engaged in singing carols on the radio, watching Christmas shows, decorating a Christmas tree, hanging mistletoe or other greenery, shopping, gathering for parties, joining in a Christmas Eve worship service and many other annual rituals and activities. What I like about Christmas is that it is the one time were the secular world lets Christians talk and even sing about Christmas and are not offended. Last weekend, several of you took a turn ringing the bell and collecting money for the Salvation Army at Kroger. In the car on the way to take my turn, I decided I was not only going to ring the bell but to sing Christmas hymns for thirty minutes. Joy to World! O Come All Ye Faithful! Hark the Herald, Angels Sing! Any other time of the year, people would look at me like I was a mad man, but at Christmas I can talk, even sing, about Jesus all I want.
Christmas has been a part of our history and culture for thousands of years. For thousands of years native European cultures from Scandinavia to Germany to England have held celebrations during the month of December. The cold, short day and the lonely, dark nights of the northern climate created the need for our ancestors to come together, to hold festivals, to eat, sing, dance and be around other kin and friends. Known as Yule or the Yuletide, the twelve days of celebration begins on the setting of the sun at the winter solstice, marking the end of shorter days and turning the corner toward spring.
Christians came into the northern European region over a thousand years ago and began converting the native peoples of Europe to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. While they gave up many of their native rituals and celebrations, the native Europeans of these mother countries stubbornly held on to Yuletide. Yuletide and Christmas interwove to give us this wonderful holiday, a holy day, that we celebrate each year.
The popular Christmas song says, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” But what makes it so wonderful? The Yuletide and Christmas season is about holding out for light, welcoming the return of the sun. The greenery that is on our Christmas trees and that adorns our walls and fireplace mantles reminds us of the gift of life, everlasting life, of the living fire of God within us, which never dies. It is a season of holding on, not giving up, even though life seems dark, not to become a victim, but to wait for and to prepare for victory. It is about saying yes to life and no to fear.
The third chapter of Zephaniah is a welcome relief from the first two chapters of the prophet’s message. In those chapters, Zephaniah warns of cosmic destruction, divine judgment for the sins of Israel and, specifically, for the priesthood. He envisions the arrival of the Day of the Lord, which will be a day of wrath, distress, anguish, ruin, devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness (Zephaniah 1:15-16). Merry Christmas! Right?
But when we get to chapter three, there is a great reversal. Talk of darkness, gloom, storm clouds and ruin is silent and gives way to singing aloud, rejoicing with all your heart, turning away your enemies, fearing disaster no more.
So in this season, we remember that, just when it seems life is at its darkest, if we hold on, if we prepare, if we fight, if we trust, we will overcome. You see, it is so easy for us to get down, to allow ourselves to expect the worse, to expect defeat. But this festive amalgamation of Yule and Christmas reminds us that victory and abundant living belong to the one who walks with the Lord. Christmas comes in all its fullness when we go, when we walk with the Lord, and shared in his victory over death and over darkness.
I want to say a few words to you about victory as Christmas and the coming of Christ Jesus at the Nativity approach. First, God is a warrior who lives in you, and has delivered victory to you if you will pursue it Second, because you have the victory, you should approach life not as a funeral but as a festival. Third, we can only know victory and life as a festival if we return home, to our spiritual and religious and cultural Christian roots. Let’s briefly take these each in turn.
First, the Lord, your God, is in your midst, and he is a warrior who gives victory (3:17). You and I walk in the company of a mighty warrior. Jesus is a shepherd, but like David the shepherd king, he slays giants. The power that lies in you is a power of victory and overcoming. In all aspects of your life, give yourself a gift this Christmas, accept the victory that is yours in Jesus Christ. No longer walk in an attitude of defeat and hopelessness. Claim victory. Proclaim with how you walk, speak and relate that you are accompanied by a mighty warrior. Zephaniah says this warrior will lead you to victory, and he will rejoice over you with gladness. He will renew you in love, and he will exult over you in loud singing. The Lord will lift you on his shoulders and celebrate your spirit and manifestation of achievement.
Second, walk then as if life is a festival, not an extended funeral. Zephaniah says that when you awaken to the warrior God within you in will be like a day of festival. At festivals in celebrations, we eat, we make merry, we give gifts, we sings songs. The one who walks with the warrior Lord takes on a heart of merry and mirth. In popular modern depictions of Jesus, he often looks somber and serious, but one of the criticism of Jesus by the legalistic Pharisees was that he was a little to festive. Jesus said in Matthew 11:18, “John came neither eating nor drinking and you said he had a demon. I come eating and drinking and you call me a glutton and a drunkard. [Which way is it going to be?]. Psalm 66:1 “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!” This is your one on the earth. Enjoy the gift, even as you overcome struggles with the warrior Lord by your side, for the Lord will deal with your oppressors, Zephaniah says.
Finally, victory belongs to those who come home. The warrior Lord who walks alongside you, is not wandering mindlessly through life. He has a destination, he has a purpose. The Lord says, “I will bring you home…when I gather you” (3:20). He says, when you come home, your fortunes will be restored. Come home to your people. The Christians of the West carry with them a native spirituality of heroism, courage, creativity, merriment, and hospitality. Most of us in some painful form or another have been gone too long. Maybe you’ve tried to make yourself at home in the world of materialism and consumerism, thinking a life surround by nice things would bring happiness, but you are lost and empty. Maybe you’ve tried to be at home in the new modern globalist movement where all lifestyles and cultures are to be tolerated and accepted as equal, and yet you have begun to find that there are religions, life choices and cultural habit that are not conducive to a holy, healthy life. Maybe you’ve walked a road of bitterness, or shame or guilt and are tired of being sick and tired. Whatever road you are on, the warrior Lord, born humbly in a manger, accessible to all, but who demands courage, strength, commitment and loyalty, desires to gather you into a renewed and restored people. This Yue and Christmas season, are warrior Lord is gathering a kindred people, who share a like mind, a shared culture, heritage and spiritual memory to come home.
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