Second Sunday before Advent
“At that time,” says the Lord, “I will search Jerusalem with lamps.” This is not the image of Holman Hunt, of Jesus at the door with the lamp, that benign figure who offers hope. This image of the Lord searching Jerusalem with the lamp is one of catastrophe, for the Lord says, “I will punish the people who rest complacently on their dregs.” This Lord will come to plunder the wealthy, to destroy their homes, to depopulate the country, to waste the harvest we have tried to create. This Lord is near, his day is coming. This great day may not be what we have been hoping for when we say “Come, Lord, Come!” As Zephaniah tells us, “That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom.”
Need I go on? Zephaniah is certainly taking off our rose-coloured spectacles so that we may see what the day of the Lord will be. Is that the image of the Lord coming in glory and power which you have in mind when we prayed the collect together so fervently? Is the glory of the Lord our destruction, our final realisation that we are not what the Lord wants us to be?
We are the rich. You may not believe it, but we are. Let us compare ourselves to the population in Ethiopia,… or Kenya,… or any where else in the world…
I rest my case.
But are we the rich who rest complacently on our dregs? Well, do we understand that? The rich are those who have drunk deeply from the fruit of the vine and only the lees, the dregs are left in their cup. These rich lay back on their couches and say, “God will not bother us.” These rich are complacent in the extreme, they have no fire in their bellies for the God of righteousness and truth, for the God who is coming. Like the preachers of old, I fear for the “Day of the Lord.” I will be found wanting, and I will be cast away with the chaff as the Lord stands in the threshing floor with the winnowing fan in his hand. I fear the Day of the Lord just as Zephaniah does. His description is ferocious and makes me quake when I read it.
There is no safety when this Lord of righteousness comes searching with his lamp. No one will be left alone in the darkness. All of us will be found and judged in the light of that lamp of truth. All of us will be found wanting on that day.
Oh, such are the perils of being rich! “Blessed are the poor…” for they have nothing left over to rest upon. Zephaniah certainly makes me think this is the case, for anyone who can be at ease must be found wanting. That day of the Lord is coming when the Lord will appear in power and great glory. But will the words of the collect be fulfilled? Shall we be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom? This is a question of tremendous enormity we ask in our rhetoric innocence. Do we dare to hear the answer?
Of course we do! We have faith. We have the courage to be. Jesus Christ has given us that power to stand up tall in the light of that lamp on the last day.
Let us take a step back and try to understand why Zephaniah’s words are so shocking to us today when we read them as an apocalyptic vision, when we read them as applying to Jesus and to us.
One of the great commentators on the Old Testament has guided me in my understanding of Zephaniah, and how the phrase “the day of the Lord” must be concieved. He writes, “For Israel the saving history had come to a leisurely end. The consciousness of being involved at the centre of a history created by Jahweh had vanished. The conservative circles of Jahwism concentrated all the more on making themselves at home in the long-hallowed traditions of God’s mighty acts, and on formulating these traditions ever more carefully.” Perhaps that is what the dregs are, these long-hallowed traditions.
Let us consider that. Israel has rested on the laurels given by God, not even their own. Israel expects the Lord’s coming and they are doing nothing, because the saving history says it all, they need not do anything because the Lord is the Lord of their history, a history which tells the tale of a God and a people in close contact, a tale which allows them to be complacent.
And now this prophet, Zephaniah steps up to the pulpit and calls it all into question. This God in which Israel trusts has acted on Israel’s part throughout history, that is true – no one will deny that. However, the question remains – why? Why has God acted for Israel? That is what the Lord asks when he combs through Jerusalem with his lamp of questing truth. This is the question that the rich resting on the dregs of a dead tradition are asked.
Will they answer? Can they hear the question? “What good have you done on my behalf to the poor who are always with you?” asks the Lord.
So the question we must ask in this Kingdom Season is this – Whose Kingdom do we await? The God of a tradition who is incorporated in the dregs upon which we rest? Or the God of fire who warms our hearts and gives us the courage to stand up against a sea of troubles in order to conquer them? Which God do we worship in christianity? I am not worried about any church, but we must compare ourselves to the active faiths in the world – the Hindu, the Sikh, the Muslim, the Jew. We must look out of our darkened corner where we have heard the stories our fathers and grandfathers have told us in order that we live our lives close to God, on the edge.
It is that edge which we encounter on the Day of the Lord, that day when all is turned upside down, when our expectations are cast aside and we are judged as we stand – in our confusion, our complete incompehension of our present. We must prepare for that day of the Lord!
“Repent, for the kindgom of heaven has come near.” That is Jesus’ proclamation. This is what we must take to heart in order that we feel the fire of God as it courses out from his lamp of righteous judgement, that fire of love which warms the whole of creation in its abiding fervour, that fire of love which consumes impurity and leaves a living faith in the one God whose final act in our lives is to welcome us into the Kingdom for which we have always prayed.