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A sermon preached by Mr Antony Weiss The Third Sunday of Advent – Gaudete Sunday Solemn Evensong Christ Church St Laurence – Sunday 13th December, 2015
Zephaniah 3:14-20; Luke 1, Psalm 62 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Ps 19:14 RSV). AMEN. From Psalm 62: My soul truly waiteth still upon God: for of him cometh my salvation. Probably more than anytime in western human history, we are being dragged into a psyche of materialism and well-being of having everything the way we want it and we must have it now. “Patience is a virtue” seems to be dead and buried; we incessantly reach for the smartphone, tablet or other another means at our fingertips to Google, surf, self-adulate or peer into the lives of others via social media. On a less superficial tack, there is so much horror happening about us, brought into our daily lives by the immediacy of technology that perhaps as Christians we ought to be less patient in our expectations of God’s intervention in righting all the terrors of the world. Today is the 347th day of the year. Just a short few days ago the San Bernardino shooting was the 353rd mass shooting in the United States of America for 2015 alone. The tabloid The New York Daily News had as its front page headline “God isn’t fixing this” as a response to politicians’ slowness to act on gun laws and their glib and sickeningly disingenuous slogan of “our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families…” but they fail to act to end gun violence. Such a newspaper title also resonates with those who question God for allowing this and so much such evil to occur. So, amidst all the horror and suffering, which becomes humdrum in the news reports, shows a broken world crying out for God to take action and for Christ to come in glory to set things right as promised in the scriptures. But as believers is that really our prerogative to demand? Are we really entitled to expect Jesus to return on our terms or do we categorically trust God to carry out his plans for redemption as he has promised to do and has intended for all time.
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Advent is a season of strong themes: death, judgement, hell and heaven, darkness and light, hope and expectant waiting for the coming of Jesus Christ the promised Saviour of the World but waiting is not something western secular culture does well these days. As we see, society pushes back against any notion of waiting its turn for its most whimsical needs. Perhaps for different reasons, the same may be said about card carrying Christians who feel that it is our place to lessen the waiting, the longing and the anticipation of Jesus Christ’s impending return to make right the world’s suffering and to meet our own spiritual needs. It can be argued that Christians are not trusting God enough to carry out his plan for the second coming of Christ on his terms preferring they be on our own. God works through people and events so often well beyond our comprehension and as God’s faithful people we must look at how the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation reveals the continuous unfolding of God’s plan for the world and how God works through the most unlikely events and individuals. This evening’s first Lesson comes from the lesser known prophet Zephaniah. Zephaniah lived and wrote between the periods of the great destruction of the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians BUT before the exilic period of the Southern Kingdom by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, so we are looking at a period between 641 and 609 BC. Martin Bucer the Strasbourg Reformer wrote in 1528 in his commentary on Zephaniah, “If anyone wishes all the secret oracles of the prophets to be given in a brief compendium, let him read through this brief Zephaniah.” So my time pushed friends in this expedient age, perhaps no better volume to get your heads around Old Testament prophecy in three small chapters, a book which pointing unmistakably towards God’s judgment and his sudden turning to joy in redemption of his rebellious people. Like much of Old Testament Prophecy, the first two and a half of the three chapters in Zephaniah are centred on the Advent themes of wrath and retribution. In Chapter 1 Zephaniah writes ‘“I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth,” says the Lord. “I will sweep away man and beast; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. I will overthrow the wicked; I will cut off mankind from the face of the earth,” says the Lord.’ (Zeph 1:2-3). What we see resulting from man’s incessant sinfulness is the ‘de-creation’ of God’s handiwork of the Creation in Genesis 1 and 2.
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In the First Lesson, there is a complete and sudden U turn in Zephaniah’s prophecy. The crushing and despondency of total judgement has gone. ‘Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has cast out your enemies.’ (Zeph 3:14-15) and, ‘[God] will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.’ (Zeph 3:17-18a). How can it be that God goes from wrathful avenger in one verse to him being ‘a warrior who gives victory?’ (Zeph 3:17). The answer lies in accepting the canonical scriptures as God’s means of revealing his unfolding plan of redemption and salvation for the fallen world. God has made a covenantal promise and he will stick to it. From Jeremiah, Zephaniah’s contemporary: Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jer 31:31-34) Yet we remain impatient for God to right the wrongs of the world and stop incessant suffering. Let’s be assured, there will be at a time chosen by God that Jesus will come in Glory, ‘Behold, at that time I will deal with all your oppressors. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.’ (Zeph 3:19). In Zephaniah, God places emphasis on the lame and outcast so fast forward 400 years or so to the first century and we see God again working through the marginalised and outsiders. In the Second Lesson indeed more widely from Luke’s Gospel, we encounter the enduring outcast and faithful servants, the rejected and the lowly all of whom are instruments of God’s plan, all of whom are accepting and patient of their circumstances. We meet Zechariah and Elizabeth, long hopeful for a child with the blame lying with the mother’s “barrenness” yet ‘… they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.’ (Luke 1:6)
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Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, we come across Mary, a poor, very young pregnant girl chosen by God to carry the Christ child in her womb. From the Magnificat ‘For he hath regarded: the lowliness of his hand-maiden…For he that is mighty hath magnified me… He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek…’ (Luke 1:48-52) Then there is Simeon, ‘and this man was righteous and devout’ (Luke 2:25) whose song is the Nunc Dimittis, ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; to be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.’ (Luke 2:29-32). What about in Luke the long term and devout elderly Jewish widow Anna who prophesied about Jesus at the Temple of Jerusalem? ‘She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. And coming up at that very hour she gave thanks to God, and spoke of him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.’ (Luke 2:37b-38). Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna and unquestionably Mary, Mother of Our Lord are all the patient, the humble and the meek accepting the promise of God’s deliverance from judgement, calling upon His name patiently waiting for that time when the King of Kings will return in Glory calling the faithful into God’s presence for eternity. As Christians may we be like the patient servants, the humble and the meek, and resist the inclination to be God’s spokesperson for apologising for the horrible wrongs of the world. Let us accept God’s plan for salvation and redemption as revealed through the scriptures and the person of Jesus Christ. This Gaudete Sunday ‘Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let all men know your forbearance. The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.’ (Philippians 4:4-6). +In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN